Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-26T23:59:32.774Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘How fine a play was Mrs Lear’: The Case for Gordon Bottomley’s King Lear's Wife

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2007

Peter Holland
Affiliation:
Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Get access

Summary

‘[H]ow fine a play was Mrs Lear’ recalled the artist and stage designer Paul Nash when he wrote to its author Gordon Bottomley on 17 January 1917. A few years later Nash was to make a significant contribution to the afterlife of Bottomley’s King Lear’s Wife – and consequently to that of Shakespeare’s King Lear upon which it was based – when his costume and set designs, created for the Amsterdam Theatre Exhibition, were shown at the International Theatre Exhibition in London in 1922, by which time his reputation was established as an outstanding war artist. The correspondence between the two men had begun in 1910 when Nash, born in 1889, was a student at the Slade School of Fine Art and Bottomley, fifteen years his senior, had already made his mark in literary circles. The son of a cashier in a worsted mill in Keighley, where he attended the local grammar school, Bottomley fought a lifelong battle against ill health despite which he produced a steady output of poetry which was highly regarded by discriminating admirers amongst whom was Edward Marsh.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shakespeare Survey
An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production
, pp. 128 - 138
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×