Nothing Will Come of Nothing

In his review of the Theatre for a New Audience's production of Shakespeare's King Lear, directed by Arin Arbus, Ben Brantley (2014) suggests that in this particular reading of the play, the key event of the entire tragedy occurs in the very first scene, that the tragedy has already occurred when Lear asks his doomed question.

Brantley writes about how this rendition of King Lear, and its focus on the half-considered effects of speech, conveys fundamental truths about the fragility of familial relationships especially well. He describes the father's tragic speech act-his request to his daughters to declare their love in the form of a competition for his legacy-to be the sort of event that often casts families into extended strife.

As Brantley put it, referring to the actor Michael Pennington, “As Mr. Pennington plays the moment, you can tell that Lear regrets what he's said as soon as the words leave his mouth. There's a softening plea in his glowering eyes that seems to say: ‘I didn't mean it. Get me out of this’” (p. C1). With a kingdom at stake, that is not easily done, but as Brantley goes on to say, “I don't know about you, but I've certainly experienced family quarrels in which an ostensibly small slight assumed a long and smothering life of its own. The imp of the perverse (to borrow from Poe) is never more self sabotagingly present than in arguments with loved ones, when feelings run so deep that we can't even fathom them” (p. C1).

Many an analyst has encountered the same phenomenon, when a seemingly small remark has an impact for better or worse in the clinical setting, where feelings likewise run unfathomably deep. The tragedy of Lear in this instance is the tragedy of language that sets us up as fragile speakers to utter things whose effects we know not. Thus, while we often trust in the spontaneity of an utterance, we can as easily be undone by it. When we invite our analysands to say whatever comes to mind, we