Walking Off The Dover Cliff

Abstract

Hidden inside the “Dover Cliff” scene of William Shakespeare’s King Lear is a trick with setting that the modern audience may not appreciate entirely. The modern audience often sees Shakespeare performed in naturalistic settings that clearly represent Lear’s throne room and the storm-swept fields of England. However, the Elizabethan audience in the Globe Theater never saw lightning, naturalistic settings, or realism, but instead was exposed to ploys and illusions on a bare stage. Cambridge University lecturer Steward Eames¹ states that the Elizabethan audience comes to the theater ready to fill, with their imaginations, any gaps in perceived reality. A scene like Edgar and Gloucester on the Dover Cliff is written specifically for an audience that imaginatively sees lightning, throne rooms, and the fields of England as the verbal cues direct.