King Lear notes

King Lear

Characters

King Lear

• Classic tragic hero - a powerful but fatally flawed ruler who, through hubris (excessive pride or arrogance), destroys both himself and those around him
• Initially Lear is introduced as a powerful character - it is made obvious that he has experienced absolute power for many years
• His disinheritance of Cordelia and banishment of Kent affirm that he is a despotic monarch
• He craves flattery rather than truth in the 'love test'
• Gradually his sanity and senility comes more and more under scrutiny
• By the end of the first scene Regan comments 'he hath ever but slenderly known himself'
• Once he has given away his freedom the play charts his journey fro pride to arrogance to self-knowledge and redemption
• The further Lear descends into madness, the sharper becomes his awareness of the world's evils
• Briefly he emerges from his madness to find some kind of peace and reconciliation with Cordelia
• Infuriatingly self-obsessed, morally blind, unjust and unfair

Cordelia

• Speaks only in four scenes yet her presence permeates most of the play
• Early exchanges with Lear show honesty in the face of falsity
• Her asides to the audience accentuate the integrity of what she says and feels
• She abhors deception and pretence ('Who covers faults, at last with shame derides')
• Takes courage to stand up to her father
• Her candid assessments of her sister's behaviour smack of insight and perception (' I know you what your are')
• When she returns to England her regal qualities are often accentuated (powerful costume changes etc). Her language resonates with words of healing and therapy leafing some to interpret her in a particularly Christian way.
• In displaying unconditional love and forgiveness to her father, she is a symbol of hope and goodness
• That her life should be so pointlessly extinguished is perhaps the cruellest act of all.

Gonerill

• Speaks first in the love test and instantly displays how devious and deceitful she is. Her words are 'slick' and 'oily' and play to Lear's vanity - she exploits his weaknesses
• Systematically schemes with Regan to erode the last vestiges of the King's power (reduce followers and make him homeless)
• hates her husband and plots adultery with Edmund
• Poisons her sister
• When Edmund is fatally wounded she kills herself - an act of courage or perverse self-destruction

Regan

• Initially seems less spiteful and more restrained than Gonerill
• As the play unfolds her sadistic disposition comes to the fore
• Proposes Kent's punishment in the stocks should be extended ('Till night, my lord, and all night too')
• Wants to deny Lear even one follower
• Orders the castle gates to be locked against him
• Participates fully in the torture of Gloucester - urges Cornwall to take out the other eye less 'One side will mock another'
• Ambitious
• Keen to seek sexual pleasure, competing for Edmund's favour
• When poisoned she meets what many see as a symbolically just demise

Gloucester

• Lear's loyal and long-serving councillor
• Like Lear he is an elderly father who misjudges his children and achieves self-knowledge and reconciliation with his virtuous child only after suffering extreme pains and distress
• His flippant joking about his illegitimate child Edmund and the ease of which the latter exploits his gullible and superstitious nature do not create a good first impression
• Sympathises with Lear and seeks to offer him solace when he is cast out in the storm
• His blinding, like Lear's madness, leads to new insight and understanding
• In despair he attempts to leap off a cliff in Dover but is saved by Edgar in disguise

Edmund

• Gloucester's bastard son
• Speaks in asides directly to the audience but his soliloquies are more powerful and engaging than Edgar's
• Often portrayed as physically robust and attractive - exudes raw energy and desire
• unabashed in his selfishness and ruthlessly seeks to better himself, using whatever means possible
• Seems to be no pity or remorse in him
• Close to death he is strangely capable of one final gesture of decency in attempting to repeal Cordelia's death warrant: 'Some good i mean to do,/ despite mine own Nature'
• Edmund attempts to save Lear and Cordelia because it is the kingly thing to do. Only a king has the ability to pardon those about to be executed. By attempting to pardon Lear and Cordelia, Edmund symbolically takes on the power of Kingship. Edmund, originally just an illegitimate child and social outcast, dies in command of the kind of power only held by those in the highest position

Edgar

• Gloucester's legitimate and virtuous son
• Duped by Edmund's scheming
• Accused of plotting his father's murder, he disguises himself as the mad beggar Poor Tom to avois capture
• In his disguised form he helps both Lear and Gloucester attain self-knowledge and understanding
• Used a s 'chorus device' - comments directly to the audience on the the intensity of the other character's suffering
• Becomes an overt force for good - kills Oswald who had been sent to murder Gloucester and mortally wounding Edmund
• Neither Albany nor Kent has the heart to take governance of England so it is left to Edgar
• Gloucester has realized that Edgar is innocent, and he longs to be reunited with his son. 'O dear son Edgar ... Might i but live live to see thee in my touch, / i'd say i had eyes again', Gloucester says in Edgar's presence. Edgar hears this, but does not reveal his identity. Some suggest that Edgar's refusal to tell his father his identity is Edgar's way of getting revenge on his father. Scholar Stanley Cavell argues that Edgar's silence is cruel. According to Cavell, by refusing to tell his father his identity, Edgar denies Gloucester the chance to 'see him in touch' and say he 'had eyes again'. By doing this, cavell claims that Edgar symbolically blinds his father a second time. On the other hand, it's worth noting that Gloucester does die of a combination of shock and joy when Edgar finally reveals himself. Edgar might have delayed telling his father the truth out of fear that something like this would happen. There are also reasons that Edgar migh tnot reveal himself to his father that have nothing to do with cruelty. Edgar's horror at his father's weakness might have made him silent. By revealing himself to his father, Edgar will have to watch his blind father realize that his son is now stronger and more capable than he is. Edgar may be afraid of rubbing his strength in his father's face

Albany and Cornwall

• Albany is a force for good, but his role in King Lear suggests that good is often a weak force that can't really stand up to evil
• Albany leads his armies into battle against the King and the French soldiers even though he thinks the opposing forces are in the right. And he ultimately can't confront Edmund (who's been sleeping with his wife) alone - he brings in Edgar to do his fighting for him
• Cornwall, Regan's husband, represents abuse of power at it's worst.

The Fool

• An 'allowed fool', such as Feste in Twelth Night, was able to say what he wanted without fear of punishment
• Lear's fool is 'all-iicesnsed', and so can speak frankly and critically about anything and anyone
• He acts as a kind of dramatic chorus, an ironic commentator on the action he observes. although he is threatened with whipping for impertinence, the fool constantly reminds Lear of his folly. lear is relentlessly used as the butt of the Fool's barbed comments: this fellow has banished two on's daughters and did the third a blessing against his will'; 'thou hast pared thy wit o'both sides and left nothing i'th'middle' ; 'i am a fool, thou art nothing'.
• The fool moves easily between different styles of humour; stand up comedy ('Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav'st thy golden one away'); son ('Fools had ne'er less grace in a year'); rhyme or proverb ('Fathers that wear rags/ Do make their children blind'); and sexual innuendo ('She that's a maid now').
• His language is a mix of sense and nonsense, They may be puzzling but carry significance in relation to Lear's plight- 'so out went to the candle, and were left darkling' - spoken as Gonerill begins to undermine Lear's sanity, prophetic of the blindness and confusion that will follow
• Fool appears in 6 scenes
• From his first appearance, his special relationship with Lear is evident. Sees him follow Lear selflessly into the storm.
• Almost like Lear's alter ego- perhaps his sane self?
• disappears in act 3 scene 6. When Lear says 'and my poor fool is hanged' he could be speaking of Cordelia (fool is a term on endearment), or the fool

Kent

• On stage for almost half the play
• Presented as Lear's loyal and devoted servant, he epitomises the kind of unconditional love that the old king could inspire
• The voice of unflagging honesty and plain speaking, challenging Lear in the love trial to 'check/ this hideous rashness' and to 'see better'. Never afraid to speak bluntly.
• in disguise as Caius he remains constant in his dedication to his master, following him through misfortune, storm and subsequent madness.
• Acts as a bridge with Cordelia, reminding the audience that she keeps a watchful eye on her father
• Her selflessness is marked in contrast to the selfishness of others
• Ultimate act of loyalty is when he hints that he will follow his master into death;: 'i have a journey, sir, shortly to go:/ My master calls me; i must not say no.'

Themes

Madness

• In Jacobean England, the mad were thought to be possessed by devils and therefore had to be confined and whipped to expel the demonic spirits
• Shakespeare was particularly interested in madness as an agent of beneficial change. For example, Hamlet finds calm and understanding after his journey of mental suffering
• Madness in 'King Lear' is most evident in the portrayal of Lear himself
• Lear's madness is that of a selfish, autocratic old man whose will is thwarted
• His moral blindness, misjudgementss and lack of understanding of himself and others inevitably lead to breakdown
• Not only the psychological depiction of the insanity of an individual. Human madness is reflected in disturbance at two levels - natural and social
• The onset of the storm in Act 3 suggests that tempests in nature mirror those in an individual's mind
• As Poor Tom, Edgar puts on the madness of a bedlam beggar
• The fool's madness is professional, eccentric, witty, exposing weakness and folly - 'may not an ass know when the cart draws the horse'
• Cornwall and Regan become possessed by the madness of evil in their obsession with Gloucester's punishment and torture - 'hang him instantly'
• Gloucester, near to death, thinks it better to be 'distract' and lose his sorrow in 'wrong imaginations' as if madness were a blessing which would release him from his terrible suffering.

Lear's journey through madness

• Act 1 - Lear's tendency to mental instability is established. He subjects his daughters to a bizarre love trial, banishes his loyal adviser Kent and disowns Cordelia. He reacts with violent curses to Gonerill's challenges to his wilful behaviour
• Act 2 - Lear's sanity is undermined by his obsession with ''filial ingratitude', the 'unnatural' behaviour of Gonerill and Regan. Infuriated by Kent's punishment in the stock's, Regan refusal to speak to him and Gonerill' alliance with her sister, Lear rants impotently about revenge. Fearing the onset of madness, he storms out of Gloucester's castle
• Act 3 - Lear rages at the storm , calling for universal destruction. His moods swing violently from raging in the storm to quieter sympathy for those less fortunate than himself- 'poor naked wretches'. Lear's 'mad' companions, the fool and Poor Tom, deepen the sense of his decline into insanity. He rips of his clothing - 'off,off you lendings'. Hallucinates about devilish spirits
• Act 4 - a stage direction in scene 5 indicates 'Enter LEAR, (mad)'. Talking with the blinded Gloucester, Lear's language combines sexual loathing with hallucinations about hell and damnation: 'let copulation thrive... there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption'. Lear's disordered thoughts range over morality, justice and authority and erupt in savage emotion: 'and when i have stol'n upon these son-in-laws / then kill,kill,kill,kill,kill,kill!'. At last, reunited with Cordelia, his mental torment ceases.
• Act 5 - the murder of Cordelia threatens Lear's wits once more: 'howl, howl, howl, howl!'. He dies, his final words suggesting that he is deluding himself that she lives.

Nature

• The words 'nature', 'natural', and 'unnatural' occur over 40 times
• Almost every character appeals to 'nature' ti justify their actions or help them
• Lear begins the love trial by asking his daughter to compete for their share in the kingdom with adoring language their natural affection for their father- 'where nature doth with merit challenge'. But within minutes he rejects Cordelia as 'a wretch whom nature is ashamed almost t'acknowledge hers'. Later he calls Goneril and Regan 'unnatural hags'.
• A reason why nature is important in the play is that it is a means of controlling people
• Nature is a goddess -Lear appeals to her in order to get revenge on Gonerill - 'Hear, Nature, hear'
• The plays is a slow and agonising transformation of Lear's view of the natural order of things

Views of nature

• Two different views of nature - malign or benign
• characters are grouped according to their view of nature - this defines their opinions on society, of what people are like and how they should behave
• Nature as malign:
• links to the ruthlessness of Edmund, Goneril and Regan
• A malign force that is a powerful motivator, drives and feed selfish impulses
• Humans behave like violent animals, preying on the naive, innocent and vulnerable. They lack conscience and sensitivity and are concerned with their own advancement and profit
• Edmund sees nature as a deity 'Thou, nature, art my goddess
• Nature as benign:
• Gloucester, Kent, Edgar and Cordelia see nature as a benevolent force which strives for order, stability and harmony
• Gloucester sees the world as orderly and hierachical, valuing trust, loyalty and family bonds. His response to Edgar's apparent villainy is to proclaim him as an 'unnatural, detested, brutish villain'.
• Kent's loyalty to his master expresses itself in his unwavering and unquestioning sympathy and concern for the king throughout the play
• Cordelia' nature is truthful and honest. Her constancy and devotion to Lear act as healing, cleansing forces.

Power/ Politics+

• Firmly rooted in political and social conditions of Shakespeare's time
• Play reflects the political issues which were debated in Elizabethan and Jacobean England - divine right of kings, the unity of the kingdom, the changing social order which triggered a growth of conflicting factions and a threatening underclass
• A play about struggle for power, property and inheritance
• The play opens with Lear portrayed as an absolute monarch who demands unquestioning loyalty, ruling on God's behalf
• Such rulers also acknowledged a god-given obligation. It was their sacred duty to keep their kingdom intact. Elizabeth emphasised that she had to answer to God for her government of the kingdom; it would be a sin against their divinely given authority to abdicate or divide the country
• Jacobean society was one in transition. The feudal world was of medieval time with its strong allegiances and hierachy was collapsing. A new;y prosperous gentry and commercial class challenged the power of the king and of an aristocracy divided amongst itself. Political factions abounded - hinted at in the rivalry between Albany and Cornwall
• Newly acquired property gave power to a new kind of individual. Powerful men emerged who had no obligation to the old feudal loyalties- they were driven by self-interest. Edmund refuses to 'stand the plague of custom'. He seeks to thrive on his own cunning, mocking his father - an upholder of the old feudal style loyalty to the king
• The corrupt Oswald is another example of the 'new man'. Self-serving, ridiculed by Kent, 'such smiling rogues as these'
• Some of these are still relevant - the future of the British monarchy and the Union of the countries of the UK

Justice

• At the end of the play Albany confronts the bloody reality of the death and suffering caused by the division of the kingdom and declares that both 'friends' and 'foes' will get what they deserve
• Edmund is killed by the brother he wronged
• The wicked Gonerill and Regan are dead
• The innocent Cordelia dies cruelly
• Gloucester's blinding and suffering are hardly fit punishment for the 'crime' of fathering Edmund
• Does Lear deserve the agonies of his madness he has undergone and the twisted irony of being reconciled with Cordelia only to have her die

Divine Justice

• A belief in the power of divine justice runs through the play
• Lear - strengthens his early displays of authority and paternal cursing by appearing to pagan deities. He swears by the 'sacred radiance of the sun' , 'the mysteries of Hecate and the night', ' Apollo', 'Jupiter'. He begs for help from the 'heavens': 'if you do love old men... send down and take my part'. He acknowledges the authority of 'high-judging Jove'
• Regan appeals to the 'blessed gods' when Lear turns his anger on her
• The Gods are sometimes seen as kind an d mighty: Albany - 'you are above/ you justicers', Gloucester - 'you are ever gentle gods', Cordelia - 'o you kind gods', with his brother dying and slightless father dead Edgar acknowledges a divine justice watches over and justice watches over and judges all human actions - 'The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices/ make instruments to plague us.'
• Sometimes as arbitrary, indifferent or cruel: Gloucester - 'as flies to wanton boys are we to th'gods;/ they kill us for their sport'

Human justice

• There are 5 'trials' within the play in which one human being judges another: Lear's love trial (1:1), Cornwall's trial of Kent (2:2), Cornwall and Regan's trial of Gloucester (3:7), Lear's mock trial of Gonerill and Regan, the trial by battle between Edgar and Edmund (5:3)
• Throughout the play characters pass judgement on their fellows, always appealing to some higher power or authorites: Lear exiles Kent for daring to criticize him, Gloucester impulsively condemns Edgar, Gonerill and Regan judge Lear and pronounce punishment, Edmund sentences Lear and Cordelia to imprisonment and issues their death.
• The play shows that, when humans exercise justice, there is no guarantee that it will be fair, proper or right. Possession of power is more important than fairness: Gonerill sees himself as the queen, unchallengeable, controlling the law and yet beyond it 'the laws are mine, not thine/ Who can arraign me for't?'; Lear displays insight into the way powerful, rich people can avoid punishment for their crimes 'Plate sin with gold,/ And the strong lance of justice hurtles breaks' and the fallibility of judges 'a dog's obeyed in ofice'
• There is some kind of natural justice at work- a loyal servant protests against Gloucester's horrific treatment and mortally wounds Cornwall. Another helps his blinded master to Dover and Oswald is killed by Edgar.

Morality

• 'The Gods are just and of our pleasant vices / make instruments to plague us,' Edgar tells Edmund. 'The dark and vicious place where thee he got / cost him his eyes' (5.3.169-171)
• Edgar's arguement is pretty extreme; he claims Gloucester's adultery, which produced Edmund, is a sin for which his father deserves a terrible punishment

Family

• At the beginning of the play, Lear and Gloucester appear the believe that they head successful and happy families. By the end of the first scene Lear has torn his family apart and in the opening lines of the second scene Edmund reveals the plot against his brother that will destroy Gloucester's family
• Sharp dramatic focus on fathers and their children:
• The fracturing bonds between fathers and their children is mirrored in the play by the terrible storm in nature, and by the breakdown of society itself
• Gloucester, troubled by the discovery of Edgar's supposed treachery, expresses this mirror-image: 'Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father' ' .
• A family problem is a sign of much wider national and cosmic discord
• Neither family has a mother
• Family can be viewed as an economic unit which allows one generation to build on the success of the previous one through the inheritance of property and power:
• The riches of the kingdom await the heirs of Gloucester and Lear
• The issue of inheritance generates great resentment in some children - the letter which Edmund pretend has been written by Edgar makes this resentment clear: 'this policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times, keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them'
• Gonerill and Regan also detest this 'aged tyranny' and want to take over power, wealth and status.
• Families satisfy the human need for a sense of belonging and the security of love. Edgar and Cordelia remain selflessly devoted to their fathers
• At the beginning of the play Lear seems unable to understand or value family love - he demands his daughters proclaim it publically
• A major function of the family is to provide security for its members as they pass through childhood, sickness ad old age. Lear had expected this from Cordelia - 'I loved her most, and thought to set my rest on her kind nursery'
• Lear shows n calculating attitude tp love when he rates Regan and Gonerill's affection according to the number of his servants they are willing to support- 'thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty, and thou art twice her love'

Women in the family

• The power of women outside the family in 16th- 17th centuries was limited by the rules of inheritance, ingrained traditions, and the prejudiced attitudes of the state, the law and the church. Powerful women were not unknown- James' mother (Mary queen of Scots) and his predecessor (Elizabeth 1)
• Women in positions of authority caused much consternation in the 16th century. By the time King Lear was published this attitude had been changed by Elizabeth's success but women still had low status in society
• In the play, although Lear's daughters are his heirs, the power and authority of the crown is transferred to their husbands. The daughters are not made queens regent (in their own right) but wield their influence through their husbands
• Gonerill has to goad Albany into action when he had doubts
• Both Gonerill and Regan want Edmund, not just as a lover but as a consort
• Lear's wife is dead before the play begins. There is no reference to Edgar's mother and Edmund's is only mentioned lewdly in the beginning

Sons and brothers

• The good and evil qualities of the king's daughters are reflected in Edgar's struggles to protect his father, and Edmund's scheme to harms him

Marriage

• Gonerill detests Albany
• Regan and Gonerill must exercise their power through their husbands
• France favours Cordelia when she has been outcast:
• 'thou art most rich being poor'
• 'Can see the true worth of a person'

Blindness

• When Lear banishes Kent with 'out of my sight!', Kent's reply, beginning 'see better, Lear', highlights Lear's moral blindness, his lack of self-knowledge and understanding
• The king is clearly unable to see through he falseness of Gonerill's claim to love him 'dearer than eyesight'.
• Terrible literalness in Gonerill's 'pluck out his eyes' and Cornwall's brutal execution of that order, 'upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot'
• The many images of sight and blindness which pervade the play sharply underscore and emphasise the dramatic effect of Gonerill and Cornwall's words
• Gloucester talks ironically of not needing 'spectacles' to read Edgar's traitorous letter
• The villainous Edmund can clearly 'see the business'
• Lear speaks of 'old fond eyes' which threaten to shed tears
• The physical pain and suffering of Gloucester as a result of his blinding bringing him insight into his past errors 'i stumbled when I saw'. His new-found compassionate awareness of the nature of the world is vividly expressed: 'I see it feelingly'

context

Nature, the cosmos and humankind

• Plotinus rejected the belief that the stars guide human fortune, arguing that sucha belief gave people a ready-made excuse for teheir own bad behaviour
• The great chain of being was the theory (held by Elizabeth's mathematics tutor Dr John Dee among others) and that that which is 'base' within society could be refined to make it nobler
• Considered by some to be heretical as it showed dissatisfaction with god's natural order

King Lear in performance

• in 1681 the dramatist Nahum Tate rewrote the play with a happy ending, and produced a version that lasted for 150 years. Tate cut the fool, invented a trusted woman friend for Cordelia (whom he married of to Edgar), and ensured that Lear, Kent and Gloucester survived into the happy retirement of old age, leaving Cordelia and Edgar to rule
• During the mental derangement of King George iii, performances of King Lear were suspended as t was
• !9th century productions were increasiingly concerned with spectacle. Large casts, lavish costumes and monumental sets were used to give historical accuracy to the play
• 20th century saw attempts to return to original Shakespeare and to face the bleakness of the play. During the century of real merchandised warfare and human cruelty, King Lear became one of the most popular Shakespeare plays. Peter Brook's version (1962) cut the servant intention in Gloucester's blinding and Edmund's line 'some good i mean to do'
• The hostile universe seemed indifferent to suffering
• 1997 the Young Vic theatre cast a female Lar as if the king was so old he vitually surpassed gender. In a wheelchair, with a bald,shrunken head, he was presented as an inhabitant of a nursing home in a set full of stell scaffolding and large wooden doors
• 2012 Attenborough (Almeida)- emphasised sexual abuse (modern social/ political issues explored)
• 2008 Trevor Nunn (Ian Mckellen)
• 1983 Elliot (Laurence Olivier)

Christian or pre-Christian

• Those who regard King Lest as a Christian play see Lear redeemed by the 'crucifixion' of his suffering. They identify Cordelia as a symbol of Christian redemption, almost Christ-like. She is a healer of suffering, a purger of ills and sins
• Her reconciliation with her father helps to restore his wits. Her language affirms such Christian qualities as tolerance and understanding: 'blest', 'virtues', 'aidant', 'remediate', 'love', 'goodness', 'cure', 'restoration', 'repair', 'pity', 'benediction'.
• When she returns at the head of an army to aid Lear, her words echo those of Jesus, 'o dear father /it is thy business that i go about'
• There is much evidence within the play of a pre-christian world:
• Characters don't appeal to a Christian god but the sun, Hecate, Jupiter and Apollo
• Lear proclaims his faith in 'high-juging jove'
• Gloucester's words is beset by superstitious beliefs in the late eclipses in the sun and moon'
• Edmund puts his faith in nature as a goddess
• Gloucester, Albany, Cordelia and Kent constantly appeal to teh gods as they try tp make sense of the apparently arbitrary nature of fortune and jusstice which they dispense

Gossip of the day

• Real life stories of greed and suffering among the moneyed classes were sensational and popular sources of gossip and in the early 17th century
• Sir Willian Allen, a former lord mayor of the city, in old age split his estate between his three daughters and arranging to live with them in turn. Once they had his money, the old man was treated with cruelty and disrespect
• The eledest daughter of Sir Brian Anesley tried to have him certified as infirm of mind in 1603 but his youngest daughter, Cordell, challenged her sister in court

Hazards of transferring power

• Inheritance in Elizabethan and Jacobean England was determined by male primogeniture
• Lack of sons was therefore dangerous
• At the start of teh 17th century, as the childless Queen Elizabeth's life drew to a close, amny feared a disputed succession and possible civil war
• The folly of deliberately dividing up a kingdom would have been obvious toa Shakespearean audience. They would have understood Kent's putrage
• English history had been traditionally seen as a steady movement towards the security, strength and cohesion of a single realm
• The contrast between the recent peaceful succession of Jaes in 1603, which united the crowns of England and Scotland, and Lear's unwise division would have been clear to Shakespearean audiences.

History play/ legendary stories

• Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote about King Lear in his 'istory of England', over 400 years before Shakespeare. A mixture of myth and lgendbut many people regarded it as historical fact.
• In 1577 Raphael Holinshed re-told the legend. Shakespeare added the characters of teh fool, Kent and Oswald, Lear's madness and the storm, the subplot of Gloucester and his sons, Cordelia's death before Lear's and teh end of the play involving the deaths of Lear's entire family. In Holinshed's version, Lear returns to the throne following the defeat of Albany and Cornwall. COrdelia succeeds him but the reign is cut short by a rebellion by her sister's sons.
• They battle against each other and peace is only restored when one kills the other to rule uncontested.

Literary play

• Shakespeare may have seen or read 'The True Chronicle History of King Leir', a play first performed in the 1590s and published in 1605. In this version no characters die and Leir is restored to the throne. It contains stage directions for 'thunder and lightening' which may have inspired the storm in act 3
• Shakespeare read Samuel Harsnett's 'A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures' (1603) - much of the strange language used by Poor Tom ('Flibbertigibbet@) is taken from this anti=Catholic pamphlet. It claimed to expose the evils of false exorcism and quoted speeches supposedly made by people who pretended to be possessed by demons. By giving such evil language to Edgar, a 'good' character, Shakespeare increases the dramatic intensity of the play- apparance of evil and actual evil are explored etc
• The sub-plot of Gloucester and his osns is based on an episode in Arcadia (1590). The main character in that version is a king and the ilegitimate son is directly responsible for his father's blinding after seizing the throne. The virtuous son is betrayed by his brother, loses his father's favour and is driven into exile. The virtuous son returns to protect his father but refuses to help him commt suicide. The blind king eventually crowns his son and dies happy.

critical perspectives

Folie 37

• Harold C Goddard - the predestined end of unmastered passion is the suicide of the species. That is the gospel accoring to King Lear, only the characters who have mastered their passions can 'avert doom'. Gonerill and Regan's murder/suicide is an example of how ruthless pursuit of passion leads to extinction
• Mark Van Doren - the initial act of the hero is his ionly act; the remainder is passion. An old and weary king, hungry for rest, banishes teh oe daughter who owould give it to him and plunges at once into the long, loud night of his catastrophe. An early recognition of his error does not save him. The poet does not wish to save him, for his instinct is to develop a catastrophe as none has been developed before or since
• Harley Granville-Barker - Lear's progress - dramatic and spiritual - lies through a dissipation of egoism; submission to the cruelty of an indifferent Nature, less cruel to him than are his own kin; to ultimate loss of himself in madness
• AC Bradley - The secondary plot fils out a story which would by itself have been somewhat thin, and it provides a most effective contrast between its peronages and those of the main plot, the tragic strength and stature being heightened by comparison with thte slighter build of the former
• Bridget Gellert Lyons - The subplot simplifies the central action, translating its concern into familiar 9and therefore easily apprehensible) verbal and visual patterns. The subplot is easier to grasp because its characters tend to account for their sufferings in traditional moral language; nit also pictorialises the main action, supplying interpreted visual emblems for some of the play's important themes (e.g blindness)
• DA Travesi = the storm which has broken out in Lear'smind, the result of his treatmetn at the hands of his children, is admirably fused with the description of the warming elements mainly entrusted to his lips; the external storm, while exercising upon his aged physique the intolerable strain under which it finally breaks, is itself a projection of his inner state, being fused with it as a single poetic reality
• Kenneth Muir - the play is not pessimistic and pagan: it is rather an attemptt to provide an answer to the undermining of traditional ideas by the new philosphy that called in doubt. Shakespeare goes back to a pre-Christian world and builds up from the nature of man itself, and not from revealed religion, those same moral nd religious ideals that were being undrmined man reduced to his essentials needs not wealth, nor power, nor even physical freedom, but rather patience, stoical fortitude, an love.

language analysis

imagery

• Vivid words and phrases conjure up emotionally charged pictures in the imagination and create the atmospher of the play- 'I am bounf / upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears / Do scold like molten lead'
• Use of simile - 'we teo alone will sing like births I'th'cage', 'my life i never held but as a pawn'
• Use of mtaphor - 'come not between the dragon and his wrath', 'how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child'
• Personification - 'Thou,Nature,art my goddess', 'ingratitude! Thou marble-hearted fiend'

Antithesis

• opposition of words or phrases against each other - 'so young, and so untender?', 'so young, my lord,and true', it expresses conflict
• Conflict occurs in many forms in the play- father against daughter, son against father, brother against brother, sister against sister, wife against husband. The king itself is divided and invaded by France
• Thematically, sight works against blindness, nature against the unnatural, man against animal, rich against poor, truth against deception
• When Kent is banished in the first scene he expresses moral and social confusion stemming from Lear's decisions in a series of antitheses, 'freedom' against 'banishment'; 'hence' and 'here'; and he will 'shape his old course in a country new'

Lear and the language of power

• Initially Lear has an imperative style of speaking, which matches the king's conviction regarding his absolute power:
• his first words are an order to Gloucester- 'attend the lods of France and Burgundy'
• 'what can you say to draw / a third more opulent than your sisters? Speak'
• even in madness, Lear strives to dictate to the elements, instructing teh storm 'blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!'
• By the end, even when he commands he is softer and more polite:
• 'pray do not mock me'
• 'pray you, undo this button. Thank you, sir'
• his final words, 'Look there, look there' are an impassioned plea for confirmation that Cordelia still lives
• He speaks in the language of power but there is variation in his speech

Animal imagery

• Lear likens his daughter' cruelty to that of predatory birds and beasts - Gonerill is a 'detested kite' whose ingratitude is 'sharper than a serpent's tooth'. Her face is 'wolvish' her toungue 'serpent-like'
• He sees Gonerill and Regan as 'pelican daughters', cruelling feeding on his flesh and blood
• Edgar disguised as poor tom, describes imself as 'hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lionin prey'
• Gloucester likens humans to flies ('as flies to wanton boys are we')

Disease and pain

• The political and moral disruptions in the play are echoed by recurring images of pain and disease, of bodies racked and tortured. Lear's madness and Gloucester's blindness illustrate the theme of mental and physical suffering

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