Fate & Chance

Fate & Chance

1. Lear: ...that future strife may be prevented now...

   • Irony
     • Oedipus' pursuit of truth leads to his downfall

2. Lear: ...While we, unburthen'd, crawl toward death.

   • Inevitability of death
   • Thou mad'st thy daughters thy mothers
   • Imagery Juxtaposition
   • Reducing himself to only a man
   • Divine justice
     • Divine right of kings - rejecting God-given position
       • Hubris
   • Oedipus embracing his duty leads to his downfall
     • Therefor is it all inevitable?
       • Lear rejecting his which leads to his downfall

3. Fate or destiny? Or just the human condition?

4. The gods

   • Connections with the audiences
     • Oedipus' audience would believe in the same gods as in the play
     • Lear's audience would be disconnected from the gods in the play

5. Cordelia: Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides.

   • Prophetic - inevitability
   • Goneril and Regan revealed as deceptive
   • People who cover things up will eventually get punished/shamed
     • The honest are also shamed at the end
     • Oedipus - hidden but not deliberately - 'no plighted cunning'
       • Tiresias reluctant but forced
         • "I shall never reveal my heavy secret"

6. Kent: Fortune, good night;smile once more, turn my wheel. [Sleeps]

   • Fate is not decided, it changes a lot
   • Anthropomorphisation
   • Personally humiliating
   • Lack of respect for position
   • Apostrophe - addressing something that isn't there
   • Edmund: The wheel has come full circle

7. Gloucester: As flies to wanton boys are we to th'gods. They kill us for their sport.

   • The Gods are in control of destiny, no free will
   • Divine Intervention vs. Human Agency
   • Sadistic gods? Killing for sport
   • Uses the gods to explain or excuse?
   • Refusing to acknowledge meaningless/insignificance

8. Gloucester: Shake patiently my great affliction off

   • Unburthen'd

9. Explores the great questions of human existence

10. Tiresias: It will be easier for us both to bear our burdens

    • He doesn't bear it well - blinds and banishes himself
      • Suffering
    • Burden there whether spoken or not
    • Paradox - humans have the choice to follow the laid out path for them