Behold! We give you King Lear in all it's Peepy goodness

My school is running a Peep Contest. Pick a story or a novel and create a diorama using marshmallow peeps. Teachers are allowed to play too....so my wife and I decided to honor the Bard with our interpretation of King Lear.

Lear's youngest and most beloved daughter, Cordelia, refuses to flatter her father, going only so far as to say that she loves him as much as a daughter should. Lear, unjustly enraged, gives her no land. Mend your speech a little, Lest it may mar your fortunes. (1.1.97) (Lear)

Lear is soon to find out how much love Goneril and Regan (his other daughters) actually have for him. Both treat him miserably when he stays with them, and Lear is transformed from a powerful king to an impotent old man How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child! (1.4.312)

The Fool is Lear’s own stand-up comedian, sure, but more interestingly, he’s the only guy that Lear allows to criticize him. Maybe it’s because the Fool is, well, a fool, but Lear doesn’t seem to care that he’s really hitting him where it hurts (i.e., Cordelia).

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once That make ingrateful man! (3.2.1)

I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less; And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

My wife was the designer behind most of this. I was just the stage hand who ate the occasional peepy mistakes.

[Images all taken by Al Gunn:Creative Commons_Attribution]