Reviews for Negro Protest Pamphlets : A Compendium (American Negro : His History & Literature)

The average rating for Negro Protest Pamphlets : A Compendium (American Negro : His History & Literature) based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-02-15 00:00:00 Kevin Adkins To say that this play has no value beyond being source material for Shakespeare’s King Lear is a complete fallacy. True, it is indeed source material for the play. Shakespeare probably got his names, the rough plot of his play, and its overriding moral themes from this anonymous source. However, this play is different enough from Shakespeare’s masterpiece to justify it being reviewed in its own right. The first thing that really struck me about the play came at the very beginning. We actually have a rationale for why Leir wants to marry his daughters! Their mother is dead, the girls adrift, and Leir unsure whether he can fulfill the maternal role on his own. His choice to dispense with his kingdom is not as mysterious as in Shakespeare: the princely daughters need a dowry after all. Serious appreciation here. Then, we get justification for why Gonerill and Ragan hate Cordella. Cordella is evidently quite arrogant. She tries to exceed her sisters in all the new fashions. Gonerill says at one point that Cordella could never hope to be a nun because of her love of fashion. Even more than this, however, Cordella’s seems to posses a humility, a quietness, that her sisters can’t quite understand. Ragan longs for a mermaid’s voice to make her entreaties more appealing to her father as if she thinks the only way to combat Cordella’s silence is with a more beautiful voice. We see the misunderstanding, the source of the hatred between sisters, clearly in this play. The plot point that really sold me on this play, however, was the fact that, unlike in Shakespeare, we have a clear moral message. True, unambiguous morals sometimes take away from a play. However, in a story as already absurd as Leir’s, I think clear morality is not too unacceptable. I wanted to know that what Leir learned over the course of the play was that he should value daughterly duty over daughterly flattery. I felt this was crucial to understanding his arc as a tragic hero. Perhaps I am just a sap for morals. Perhaps I am a student of the written word who desperately wants to understand. This play is good. We have humor as in Shakespeare’s Lear. We have the same deceitful daughters. However, we also have clear character motivation and an overriding moral message. In short, this play is easier to understand and, therefore, easier to read than Lear. I literally am only taking off a point because (due to Shakespearean prejudice) I still fear Lear was executed just a tiny bit better (and even this may only be because of later editorial choices). 4 stars.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-09-05 00:00:00 Dan Kliber This play is not famous for being (an older) alternate version of the Leir story (and virtually all the Chronicle sources material calls him Leir, as opposed to Shakespeare's innovation, Lear). And comparison with Shakespeare doesn't help the play. This Leir comes off a petulant, which works against any sense of tragedy, and like later rewrites of Shakespeare will, it has a happy ending. It has crudely comedic moments, too, that stand out, which may have pleased a groundling audience, but would probably cause period polemicists and poets given to strict decorum to go into a passion. It's quaint, at some points a little interesting, but little more than a sidenote to the grand drama of King Lear.