Review: King Lear?
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 22, 2013
Because you aren't traditionally thought of as a fairy tale.  In answer to Clara Lear, that or I'm getting a fairy tale I never heard of and a Shakespearean play confused.  Alright, so of all the Shakespearean plays you could have picked to be one of the ones you introduced as Shakespeare having a fairy tale spin, it has its merits, but not as much as others.  Seriously, I had to actually sit down and remember that I once had also made a connection between King Lear and fairy tales before.  But it wasn't with modern fairy tales.  In one version of Cinderella, Cinderella is asked this question by her father.  Her two sisters answer the way the treacherous girls do in King Lear and Cinderella was honest and because of that was cast out of her house.  But I only made that discovery because in college I became interested in the origins of fairy tales, not many people would make that leap.And is King Lear a story you really want to be an introduction to kids to Shakespeare?  The only reason that I could think about including her is because the author is assuming kids have already read A Midsummer's Night Dream, The Tempest, and even Romeo and Juliet have become a sort of fairy tale in the minds of the young.  To which I have to ask, aren't we concentrating mostly on fairy tales (at least in the beginning) that kids, tweens, or teenagers can easily identify and then perhaps exploring lesser known ones later on.  In that vein, wouldn't it have made more sense to have the future Titania there bemoaning that she is to lose her daughter and tricked into loving a donkey?  Or even pull an actual evil character to be in that spot instead of an old man who lets his pride get away with him.Which, if it is King Lear we're talking about.  He had three daughters, they all died and so did he.  Is it implied that Clara was some illegitimate daughter that was hidden away while the tragedy was going on.  And when everything came crashing down she was named the new queen and one of her not dead relatives took care of her until she could take the crown?Of course all these questions and more are solved by her not beingKing Lear's daughter, being a different, actual fairy tale story King Lear's daughter.  A story I can't find.And let's be clear, that's all that came to mind while reading this.  Madeline is better in the webisodes, maybe because you aren't in her thoughts, and overall I just didn't feel as connected to her as I felt toward the other characters.  Not because she's weird, but because she was actually frightfully boring.