Lear Theme Critics

Lear Theme Critics

1. Madness

2. Feminist

   • “a play about male anxiety” - Coppelia Kahn
   • ‘an unsound or damaged place; a flaw, crack’ - Peter Rudnytsky
   • as ‘emblems of masculine lust “carnal men made bestial by lust”’ - Hardison

3. Tragedy

   • Comedy
     • ‘much here that is always regarded as essentially pathetic is not far from comedy’ - G Wilson Knight
     • ‘perhaps humour, too, is inwoven in the universal pain’ - G Wilson Knight

4. New/Old Order

5. Gods

   • Christian Debate
   • ‘If gods exist in the play, they are either as blind as Gloucester, or as mad as Tom ‘O Bedlam’ - Minnas Savvas
   • ‘during the Renaissance the Ixion myth was interpreted as an allegory of irresponsible rule and that familial ingratitude is an important part of the myth’. - Hardison
   • ‘framework of pagan cosmology’ - Dunn

6. Chaos

7. Nothing

   • Jan Kott: “there is nothing, except the cruel earth”

8. Nature

   • ‘as if Shakespeare, like Empedocles, were regarding Love and Hate as the two ultimate forces of the universe’ - Dunn
   • ’the storm in his heart and the clash of the elements are fused into one giant cataclysm’. - Dunn