Welcome to my study site on Shakespeare's
King Lear (139K)
"Shakespeare took a story which had a happy ending, and gave it a
sad ending. He transformed a fairy-tale about virtuous and wicked
people into something morally ambiguous. He took a story of wrongs
being righted, and turned it into the story of painful discovery. He
included passages which deal with ideas instead of advancing the
plot." Ed
Friedlander
-
Teaching
Notes © G. Smith 1996
See also Bradley
by me & Bradley
by The English Zone
G. Harrison Shakespeare's Tragedies pp
158-183. Dewey 822.33.
- Lear first played in spring 1606
- Elizabeth died 24 March 1603.; court degeneracy followed
- 1605 Gunpowder Plot led to universal horror & a great
eclipse and the trial of Father Garnet
- disgusting visit of the King of Denmark
- a feeling that the universal was corrupt and on the point of
dissolution
- a universal gloom; a fear of vast and vague calamity
-
- Playing Lear demands power and maturity from the actor or else
it is tedious; most difficult and most concentrated of all
Shakespeare's plays
- an elaborate plot and skilful characterisations
- a threefold story:
- - Lear by his own folly brought destruction on himself and his
daughters
- - Gloucester is destroyed by his own sins.
- - Edmund played for high stakes and lost.
- the "nothing' of Cordelia is a devastating paralysis of
will.
-
- Scene I: three central characters
- Lear is not a sympathetic character: violent temper and
foolish judgement.
- Yet Cordelia values something in him.
- Edmund is natural man - For him, Nature is the Goddess of the
Ruthless Beast. natural son of his father Gloucester. image of
Renaissance Man.
the destruction of both fathers begins with "nothing" I.i.91 &
I.ii.32.
To a man suffering intolerable grief and strain are granted four
degrees of relief: words, tears, madness death.
- Lear quite mad
- Edgar simulated lunacy
- Fool's half witted barbs
King Lear is never a popular play : too much horror too much
grief.
not for weakings. it's merciless - a purgation.
Lesson notes on
Lear from Knights Some Shakespearian Themes pp
84-119. © G. Smith 1996
Play has three features:
- timeless & universal
- crucial place - author's inner biography
- indicates a stage in the emergence of modern European
consciousness,
- Central issue: Is Nature a norm for conduct?
- Brutality, greed and passion compared with mercy, justice,
moral excellence.
- For the 16th Century, Nature was ordered for the good of
Man.
- Any erosion (of that order) leads to an amoral collection of
forces.
- The play presumes nothing but Nature, natural energies and
passions.
- The positives in the play are fundamentally Christian
values.
-
- Othello 1604 - "revelation of character" - a new focus on the
individual.
- Lear - a universal allegory; certain permanent aspects of the
human situation.
- The consciousness of Lear is part of the consciousness of
humans.
- Voices echo one another.
- Interrelation of Man and the Cosmos; exploring the social
body.
- "I have no way and therefore want no eyes;
- I stumbled when I saw." Gloucester IV.i.18-19.
- "Who is it who can tell me who I am?" Lear I.iv.238.
-
- The action of the play is designed to force the hidden
conflict in Lear into the open.
- Lear embodies perverse self will i.e., knows neither himself
or the nature of things.
- His perverse demands lead to (results in) distortion of the
actual,
- therefore he is deceived by appearances.
- Lear goes mad because he is a mind in conflict; a ferocious
egotism.
- Imagery of beasts of prey whenever mentions of Regan and
Goneril.
- Recurring themes are lust and cruelty.
- Pessimism symbolised by blind Gloucester "a ruined piece of
nature" IV.vi.136.
- stripping away of layers of appearance v. love and forgiveness
of Cordelia.
- the achievement of honesty and humility (true knowledge of
self and one's real place).
-
- THEME: Neither Man's reason or his perception operate separate
from his personality (quantum sumus, scimus) = How he feels
relates to what he feels.
- attitudes have to break through the hard crust of his own will
(commands, threats, imperatives, curses)
- leads to: "I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning."
III.ii.58.
- indifference of nature and all the disreputable impulses that
find a home in the heart of man.
-
- THEME: How to cope with a world so revealed is the question of
the play.
- tirades of Appetite and Authority IV.vi.110f & 151ff.
-
- Subplot of Gloucester is an intensification, a projection of
Lear on a smaller plane.
- Gloucester learns "to see" in his blindness.
- his decision to help Lear is deliberate and heroic.
- THEME: Gloucester learns to suffer, and to feel and in feeling
to see.
-
- The Fool's role is to
- disturb with glimpses of confounding truths.. the truth he
tells is disguised, paradoxical.
- clarify the difference between intellectual and emotional
'seeing'
- cast doubts on the audience's certainties
- sort out wisdom for themselves and 'fools' of loyalty
-
Act IV the mutual treachery of competing egotisms.
- Life is a meaningless comedy of pain.
- Folly is a word with different meanings depending on your
standpoint of the speaker.
- Three recurring references to birth: cry, fright and
protest.
-
Cordelia's love is freely given
- Centre of the play's Action is a complete endorsement of
love
- love = self forgetful concentration on the other
- without love, life is a meaningless chaos of competing
egotisms.
- love is the energising centre of a character and it engines
growth.
- THEME: How to effect personal renewal.
- Notes © by G. Smith 1998
Studying King
Lear
-
- Historical Context
- 1606 Plague 30,000 died; a Black Year = court finances empty;
irregularities in appointing knighthoods, visit of King of Denmark
a disagrace
- 1603 national grief, loss of Elizabeth
- feeling the power of nothing, bareness, barrenness,
abandonment, force of loss,
-
- Cultural Context
- Elizabethans show a movement from divine right to "what helps
prosperity" for the the common good?
- Shakespeare presents the world of Lear: a godless preChristian
England - rampant ambition, warrior King has what he has won,
bulied wrested from others; his goal is his welfare so thereby his
people are secure
- Lear having to undo this worrior thinking, careless about
himself, naked in the storm; unable to take shelter, unable to do
the natural instinctive thing,; unmindful of his own welfare
-
- Metaphoric Context
- A king divinely chosen defines God's social order to maintain
stability, harmony, justice
- But what if a truant king? He defies God's order for the world
- disharmony, division,
- Poses what is our judgement on a truant negligent king in his
deliberate dereliction of his god-given duty
- his duty to the country, his people, breaks their trust in
him?
- culture v nature- overturned in Edmund proud of bastard
nature
- art v human nature
- pathetic fallacy = nature in sympathy with human feelings-
nature expresses Man's state, mood
- Nature almost as a character in the play
-
- Dramatic Context
- the storm scenes Act III: require buckets of water, drums,
howling of winds, storm
- grass in hair
- Redemption of Lear, & Gloucester and even at the end a
hint of kindness / change in Edmund
What's its theme? What's it all
about?
"the stage is empty throughout: there is nothing,
except the cruel earth, where man goes on his journey from the cradle
to the grave. The theme of King Lear is an enquiry into the
meaning of this journey, into the existence, or the non-existence of
Heaven and Hell." Kott The Bottom
Translation p. 118 (1987).
- Gloucester: "as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;/ They
kill us for their sport." IV.i.37
- Edgar: "the worst is not,/ So long as we can say, "This is the
worst." IV.i.27
- Edgar: "Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."
V.iii.321
= the play's indeterminacy resists closure; no purposeful
coherence, no metaphysical summation; "King Lear is endlessly
open and endlessly renegotiated." Philippa Kelly
(1995) Shakespeare's King Lear p. 25.
Shakespeare:
- a man of his age
- enjoyed his own theatre, own plays, own audience
- gave them what they wanted without stirring up
controversy
- has his own prejudice/ignorance
- held a pre-Copernican cosmology
- focused on kings, gods, vice regent level in society
- believed that all matter is either earth air fire or
water
- believed that man is a microcosm of the universe's intricate
order of being.
Tragedy = blood for supper: in Lear 5 dead,
Hamlet 4
tragedy = a sudden reversal, ending or crash
created in plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle.
Elements: actors, place and spectators. Shakespeare had:
- 1. a profound moral sense - pity terror ideal sorrow joy; had
an instinctive sense of human behaviour
- 2. mortality, instinctive ability to feel pathos in human
suffering
- leads to universal experience leads to a complete cleansing
of the emotions.
-
-
King
Lear Exam Preparation
- Identify the speaker and context:
-
- 1. "Come not between the dragon and his wrath" I.i.124.
-
- 2. "He'll shape his old course in a country new."
I.i.189.
-
- 3. "..that which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in,
and the best of me is diligence" I.iv.35
-
- 4. "Old fond eyes/ beweep this cause again, I'll pluck ye
out,/ And cast you, with the waters that you lose,/ To temper
clay." I.iv-v.308
-
- 5. "She will taste as like this as a crab does to a crab. Then
canst tell why one's nose stands i' the middle on's face?"
I.v.18.
-
- 6. "O reason not the need: our basest beggars Are in the
poorest thing superfluous." II.iv.264
-
- 7. "This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his
time." III.ii.95
-
- 8. "Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once, / That
make ingrateful man." III.ii.8.
-
- 9. "I will persevere in my course of loyalty, though/ The
conflict be sore between that and my blood."
-
- 10. "Lest his ungoverned rage dissolve the life/ That wants
the means to lead it." IV.iv.19.
-
- 11. "O matter and impertinency mixed! /Reason in madness."
IV.vi.176.
-
King
Lear Essay Questions
- Question 1: Themes and appeal (700 -800 words)
- "Shakespearian plays like King Lear have appeal, even
today, because of their universal
(identifiable throughout the world) and timeless (relevant in
every age) themes. How true is this statement? Justify your
response through frequent references (and even short quotations)
from King Lear."
-
- Question 2: Character (700 -800 words)
- We learn about characters in the play through:
- what the character says
- what the character does
- what others say about him or her.
- Select one of the dramatis personae and discuss how
each of the above points applies to him or her.
-
- 3. Show that the Fool both emphasises and relieves the tragedy
of the play.
-
- 4. Distinguish between Lear's real and Edgar's simulated
madness.
-
- 5. Character
sketch Cordelia. How true is it that the whole of the plot is
not as important as development of her character?
-
- 6. Compare:
- "When we our betters see bearing our woes,
- We scarcely think our miseries our foes." Shakespeare
-
- "Life is only froth and bubble
- Two things stand like stone:
- Kindness in another's trouble
- And courage in our own." R. L. Stevenson
-
- What attitudes to life's troubles are suggested here?
-
- 5. "I can be patient." II.iv.229
- What reactions do you have when Lear makes this claim?
-
- 6. "The Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted. . .The greatness
of Lear is not in the corporal dimension, but in the intellectual.
We are Lear . . . we are in his mind" Charles Lamb p. 96.
Discuss.
-
- 7."Every new reading of Lear implies a reconsideration
of the way audiences value and respond to the play" Discuss this
statement with reference to one scene and outline its impact on
the play as a whole.
Selected
quotations
- Lear: "Come not between the dragon and his wrath."
I.i.123
- Lear:"Who is it who can tell me who I am?" I.iv.238.
- Lear: "I can be patient."
II.iv.229.
- Lear: "Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once, That
make ingrateful man." III.ii.7
- Lear: "I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning."
III.ii.58
- Edgar: "O matter and impertinency mixed! /Reason in madness."
IV.vi.176.
- Gloucester: "as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;/ They
kill us for their sport." IV.i.37
- Gloucester: "I have no way and therefore want no eyes; I
stumbled when I saw." IV.i.18-19.
- Gloster: "let the man . . . that will not see Because he does
not feel, feel your pow'r quickly" 4.2.69
- Edgar: "the worst is not,/ So long as we can say, "This is the
worst." IV.i.27
- Edgar: "Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."
V.iii.321
- Fool: -"Thou should'st not have been old till thou had'st been
wise."
-
Return to Top of page
- Appraisals of Lear
characters
- A.C.Bradley on King Lear
(1957)
- Relevance and themes ***
- Context exercises and
seminars
- Terminology
- Planning the eulogy assessment
- Other similar English Resources
page
- Re: king lear
site
- Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2000
17:23:59 PDT
- To:
greg@thehub.com.au
- Greg,
- I just wanted to say: Thankyou so
much!
- The information you provided about
King Lear on your site was really concise
- and saved me a lot of time from
wading through lots of other info. to find what I wanted.Thanks
again. Erin
-
- [appraisals]
[benefits]
[bradley]
[contexts]
[eulogy]
[learsettings]
[leartalk]
[objections]
[plotline]
[relevance]
[surreal]
[terminology]
Written and prepared by G.
Smith 27 January 1999. Revised 21/3/99.
6/5/99. 5/6/99, 30 November 1999, 22 May 2001.