Relating The Tragedy of King Lear to our lives today: Relevance, relationships and reality.
TOPIC: Assess Shakespeare's play, King Lear, on criteria of realness for relevance to us today and success as a drama.
Pre-writing brainstorm and
planning: The Real The Surreal The Fantastical What happens; what is projected to happen; what normally
happens; what conforms to physical laws; what we expect to
happen in our own world today Actions taken to their limits; tendencies taken to
extremes; parodies of the real; any juxtaposition of
incongruities and dream elements; the ugly and repugnant;
the amazing The unimagined; the clearly fictional; what happens
beyond reason or logic; events without obvious causes;
randomness a warrior king is unhoused, unhorsed and unclothed on a
heath a king divides his kingdom; a king abdicates two royal widowers share the consequences of their
respective sins (wrath and lust) a king is driven to death by grief and regret for his
foolish and blind actions a king exiles his most loyal courtier and dearest
daughter a king raves in a tempest on a heath and curses his
eldest daughter to sterility Edmund and Edgar duel to the death bastard ("natural") son wins father's trust and the
ascendency; Edmund becomes Earl of Gloucester Edgar wins a duel Poor Tom's a cold Edgar and Lear console one another as hobos on a
heath Lear learns through grief and suffering Kent put in stocks Lear accepts Caius as associate Kent survives it all family feud; family break up; rejection and hurt; Goneril
and Regan feud; Goneril poisons Regan recrimination and civil war death of conspirators; Gloucester blesses Edgar; Lear and
Cordelia reconciled Cordelia returns with French forces to find and protect
her abused father England is invaded Cordelia returns with French forces to assert her
rightful inheritance
© G.
Smith May 2001
"After all, theatre-goers expected the plays to be surreal, and Shakespeare could afford to leave unanswered questions : Who takes over England, What become of Albany, Edgar, Kent, or any poor soul still left standing. How does France react to all this? However, readers expect a novel to be very realistic, especially when set in their own time frame"
Return to King Lear study site
19 May 2001.