https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=70 This article concentrates on the novelties introduced in two contemporary rewritings of Shakespeare’s King Lear: Lear by Edward Bond and Rey Lear by the Argentine writer Roderigo Garcia. If war, violence, torture and social injustice are key issues in the three plays, Bond and Garcia make a new use of two metaphors, the one of the wall which is not present in Shakespeare’s play and the animal imagery which takes on a different meaning. The wall in Bond’s play appears under three guises, as a rampart, a prison, and a tomb. In Bond’s Lear, the function of protection is illusory: a wall inevitably turns into a prison before turning into a tomb, which strongly links Bond’s play with Sophocle’s Antigone, thus probing the conflict between moral law and political imperative. In Shakespeare’s play, the animal metaphor is used to point out man’s animality which is equated with evil, whereas in Bond’s play the animal represents nature, which is being destroyed by man, and, in Garcia’s play, dogs are the guardians of luxury villas, reactivating the debate about private property as the origin of war. In the three plays, public and private spheres are linked by the theme of blindness, which has three functions: first a political one as evidence of the permanence of violence throughout the ages, then a socio-political one as evidence of the upper classes’ indifference to the lower classes’ plight, and, lastly, a psychological one as a refusal to confess to the incestuous drive, leading to madness whose status has changed from social indictment to pathology since Shakespeare’s day. The overall main difference between Shakespeare and his contemporary counterparts seems to consist in an increase of pessimism today. Shakespeare en devenir N°1 — 2007 I. Réécritures théâtrales fr mer., 27 janv. 2010 18:02:03 +0100 ven., 13 déc. 2024 23:29:09 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=70 0