"The shoes of Lear and Estragon pinch, Kott is happy to point out. I have been unable to find pinching shoes in King Lear, but even if there were, the shoes, after all, would belong to different feet. And here, perhaps, is the clearest example of the danger of superimposing Beckett on Shakespeare. For Lear is a king, and Estragon is a tramp. The king may become a fool and madman, but he was a king when he first appeared on stage and he is a king when the play ends."Though, I agree that there are dangers of superimposing Beckett on Shakespeare, I think Berlin totally misses the point here. Kott is not looking at the plays as literature, he is looking at the plays as theatre, and theatre is always bound to the context (ie. time and place). Berlin's objections are like that of a literary scholar criticising stage productions. From a literary point of view, it may be dangerous to say that Shakespeare worked along lines of thought that became prominent some hundrend years later, and it would be absurd to assume him a time traveller who was influenced by Beckett's works. Secondly, Berlin fails to recognize what Fischer-Lichte calls as the "king's two bodies", and only considers the body politic. When talking about King Lear, the break between nominal position (that is being a king) and actual position (that is being a man stripped of the costume of a king) must be taken into consideration. King Lear pictures the opposite direction of dressing than Macbeth does. Lear is not a king when the play ends.
In my opinion.
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