Editorial note
When editing this page from Act 1 Scene 1, we wanted to reimagine this scene through a modern-day digital lens and present the characters as X (formerly Twitter) accounts in a thread. X/Twitter is a highly influential app which has impacted much of the culture recognizable by the younger generation, also known as Generation Z. This editorial is meant to make the story of King Lear more accessible to people who are social media savvy. Our intention was to lighten the scene with comedy and relatability, to embellish the scene with extra characters from the play. In this scene, Kent calls out King Lear for being blinded by flattery and cautions him against his treatment of Cordelia.
We borrowed language from popular hashtags and trending meme imagery. We also implemented emoticons to create a stronger emotional tone. We lean into the dramatics of power dynamics through characteristics of this form (likes, retweets, comments) and adapt Shakespearean ideas and language from the text to current-day verbiage and more contextually applicable for a social media thread (example: site = sight). In this case, Lear’s banishment of Kent comes in the form of blocking him and having the man suspended from the website. Lingo such as oomf (which means one of my followers / friends) and ratio (which means to receive more likes than the original post, therefore having a higher ratio than them) are used to showcase the relationship between Lear and Kent and the arrogance of royalty. Their profile photos and usernames are emblematic of their character. We’ve set it up so that it assumes that Kent created the first tweet and everything that happened after was a direct cause of that tweet.
Kent's First Tweet, which changed everything.
King Lear and Kent's initial interaction with each other.
Kent's exit from the discourse.
King Lear proceeded to block Kent right after, and his account was swiftly suspended.
Image credit: Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, copy *KC 1608. His True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King Lear and his three Daughters. First Quarto. London: 1608.
Citing this page: Shakespeare, William. King Lear, B3r. London: 1608. Cacodemon Digital Shakespeare. Edited by [Kylan Benton & Grace Mahon]. Source edition: Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library (*KC 1608). http://cacodemonshakespeare.com/tragedies/lear/b3r.
Edit Image credit: https://www.tweetgen.com/
