The text of Suzuki’s The Tale of Lear is from Shakespeare but has been cut, edited, and rearranged into a stark, essential form with a style that is decidedly Suzuki’s own.

 

 

The play is a portrayal of an old man in the last few hours of his life. He sits in a chair beside a nurse who is reading the play, King Lear. As the old man reflects on his life, memories of his children’s betrayal merge with his delusion of himself as a tragic hero, to produce a vivid hallucination. He sees himself as Lear and the other characters emerge from his now diseased mind.

 

In the end, he dies, fallen from his throne; the last king, joining the rest of humanity as a fool.