The Acknowledgement of Love in Sarah Ruhl's Drama ... - Arts

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░ The Acknowledgement of Love in Sarah Ruhl’s Drama 17from the world is doomed, a relation that acknowledges the separatenessof each individual in the world may fare better. Cavell arrives at this suggestionafter thinking about a spectator’s experience of watching the play ina theatre. Though spectators are physically separated from the characterson stage, they can put themselves in “their present.” 34 The act of placingoneself in the same present as the characters demands that oneacknowledge one’s vulnerability: “I am hidden and silent. In a word, thatthere is a point at which I am helpless before the acting and suffering ofothers.” 35 Cavell’s claim is that the experience of watching or reading a playlike King Lear is an experience analogous to love: “what is revealed is myseparateness from what is happening to them [the characters]; that I am I,and here. It is only in this perception of them as separate from me that Imake them present. That I make them other and face them.” 36 Lear’s problemthroughout the play is that he is unable to face Cordelia, to see her assomeone other than his projection of her, and to open himself to her lovefor him.Following Cavell’s reading of King Lear, I would like to suggest thatwhat Eurydice and Cordelia have in common is an unsustainable—albeitheart-rending—relationship with their fathers that avoids the acknowledgmentof an inexpressible (or, in Mathilde’s sense, dirty) love. Both playsend with the dashed fantasy of an otherworldly union. But in dashing thisfantasy, the plays open the way for a more enduring love, which alwaysruns afoul of adequate representation. Cavell says of Cordelia: “All herwords are words of love; to love is all she knows how to do. That is herproblem, and at the cause of the tragedy of King Lear.” 37 Certainly, part ofCordelia’s problem in the opening scene is that it is impossible for her tospeak her love truly in the theatrical setting her father has set up. After hersisters claim to love Lear above all else, Cordelia is speechless:The truth is, she could not flatter; not because she was too proud ortoo principled, though these might have been the reasons, for a differentcharacter; but because nothing she could have done wouldhave been flattery—at best it would have been dissembled flattery.There is no convention for what Cordelia was asked to do. It is thatGoneril and Regan have taken the words out of her mouth, but thathere she cannot say them, because for her they are true (“Dearerthan eye-sight, space and liberty”). She is not disgusted by her sisters’flattery (it’s nothing new); but heartbroken at hearing the wordsshe wishes she were in a position to say. 38The setting of this scene—Lear’s court, filled with spectators—serves tohighlight the impossibility of representing love in theatre. Cordelia is aware
18Thomas Butler░of this problem when she expresses her initial strategy to deal with Lear’slove test: “What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.” 39In Ruhl’s drama, too, we can observe an acknowledgment of a lovethat skirts expressivity. First, as we have seen, love articulated as visions ofa union of individuals fails:Charles: Ana has been in my genetic code. (CH, 62)**********Orpheus: Your hair will stand on end as it plays my music and becomesa hair orchestra. (CH, 339)**********Father: We two alone will sing like birds in the cage. (CH, 377)What counts as a more powerful love, on the other hand, evades representation.Recall the scene, cited earlier, in The Clean House when Lane forgivesAna:They look at each other.Lane forgives Ana.Ana: Want an apple?Lane: Sure. (CH, 93)In the context of Lear’s avoidance of being seen, Lane and Ana’s mutualrecognition here is significant. They see each other as separate from themselvesand follow Cordelia’s advice—“Love, and be silent.”Eurydice is even more sceptical than The Clean House of the possibilityof expressing love. The two love-relations—Eurydice and Orpheus, andEurydice and her father—are doomed. But each is unsustainable becauseof its escapist predilection (the opening scene of the play ends with Eurydiceand Orpheus racing from the beach—from grounded reality—to thesea). What’s missing in these relationships is an acknowledgment of theworld, which includes other people and other relationships. Just as Learnever asks Cordelia about her husband, Orpheus never asks Eurydiceabout her father. The play suggests that if love is going to survive, it needsto be open to and affected by other love relations, particularly in this caserelations with the dead. Derek Goldman, director of a 2009 production ofEurydice, says: “Sarah [Ruhl's] faith [is] in the idea of death as not an endingbut as a space in which a relationship that may not feel resolved cancontinue to unfold. That's the gesture of this underworld even if it's a temporaryspace that has to be left in the end.” 40 Similarly, Vogel comments onthe centrality of death to Ruhl’s theatrical vision: “Sarah is going back to an
Page 5 and 6: 8Thomas Butler░Mathilde: Love isn
Page 7 and 8: 10Thomas Butler░death,” she get
Page 9 and 10: 12Thomas Butler░hasn’t been so
Page 11 and 12: 14Thomas Butler░Eurydice clearly
Page 13: 16Thomas Butler░on Cavell: “At
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