The Cliff

BBC Radio 4 LW

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

The Cliff: Alan Read on Shakespeare Cliff

Alan Read on Shakespeare Cliff

BBC Radio 4 - The Cliff, Alan Read on Shakespeare Cliff

Alan Read explores the 'dreadful trade' on Shakespeare Cliff in Kent.

Alan Read, Professor of Theatre at King's College London, explores the 'dreadful trade' of Shakespeare Cliff in the first episode of a series about our relationship with cliffs.

Alan Read's starting point for his review of our relationship with cliffs, is his own vertigo. Vertigo for him is not associated with a fear of falling but rather a fear of the ground "coming up to meet me to embrace me, or to engulf me". It's not heights that worry him but proximity. So he has never been to Shakespeare Cliff in Dover but he knows it well from the play King Lear. He recalls the scene where Gloucester, having had his eyes gouged out, begs a man who he thinks to be poor mad Tom, but is instead his own son Edgar, to lead him to the edge of the cliff at Dover. Edgar leads his father, but not to the edge. Instead he imagines the cliff. He describes a cliff, and on this cliff he describes the rock samphire collectors as they move across the cliff gathering this plant - "a dreadful trade". Imagining this scene, Alan says "Here a graph has been drawn, a sequence of points on a grid with two axes, of cliff and beach, joined by a line that describes, in the form of a gradient angle, the nature of trade, dreadful trade indeed" Shakespeare would not have been familiar with graphs. The term wasn't in use until the 1800s. One of the pioneers of cinematography Etiennne-Jules Marey "certainly thought graphs to be the 'universal language' of the future". Today graphs are ubiquitous. For example, we have the fiscal cliff which describes our economies. As Alan reflects on this, he is drawn back to Shakespeare Cliff: "Creatures it would seem, do not thrive on the cliff. It is samphire that grows so well there, and might be left in peace. Dreadful trade."

Actors are David Acton and Sam Dale. 
Additional sound recordings by Chris Watson. 
Producer: Sarah Blunt

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Documentaries

Factual

Four contributors present illustrated essays on the theme of cliffs.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Cliff

Alan Read on Shakespeare Cliff

Genres

Series

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4