King Lear

The concepts of nature, humanity, power and love lay as a foundation for Shakespeare’s, King Lear. These notions are examined through the actions and realizations of King Lear, himself. Throughout the discourse of this play we view the portrayal of humans as animals and witness King Lear’s mistreatment after he gives away his power. When doing so he makes clear his view on love and its value, solely based on the flattery of words.Through nature, King Lear becomes grounded and recognizes the animalistic behaviors of the rich and the struggles of the poor. This recognition brings him to an utmost discovery that presents the reality of vicious humanity and changes the way he views the world.

On one hand, he may be implying that there is still hope even in such a cruel world. Although there is a glimmer of hope, Lear’s death may steal away the hope from the remaining characters. Conversely, as a result of his newly occurring grief, his words concerning his daughter’s last breath may show only that his maddened state has returned. He finally reached a point of contentment by recognizing the meaningful things in his life when the person who brought him that clarity is stolen away from him.

Our fear and pity for Lear are both intensified and relieved. His disturbed conscious is magnified when he is mad, and the reality and his awareness is further denied by those sensible such as Edgar, Kent, ironically the Fool, and Albany. Although Scene 6 is written with intention to galvanize our fear and pity by presenting to us both Gloucester and Lear wretched circumstances, it also relieves both our understandings and our sentiment. Nevertheless, this tragic “relief” quickly turns into deceit. We learn of an old man seeking awareness in suffering to discover the subplot of another old man betrayed

In working so hard to project this persona, Lear is untrue to himself, and loses sight of who he is. Even the scheming Goneril and Regan notice that their father “hath ever but/ slenderly known himself.” (I, i, 282-283) This makes Lear a very insecure person, which explains in part why he insists that his daughters stroke his ego before receiving any of his kingdom. His identity crisis is highlighted when he asks who can verify who he is, and the response by the Fool is: “Lear’s shadow.” (I, iv, 251) At this point in the play, Lear is sane and is still the monarch of the kingdom. Nevertheless, the Fool’s insightful comment insists that Lear is nothing more than a shadow of his true self. Plato would say that he is trapped in the shadow world of the cave, unable to grasp the true forms.[5] This self-imposed persona estranges Lear from his audience; his vulnerability as a human is masked by his rash behavior and unjust decisions. Bloom says that “before he goes mad, Lear’s consciousness is beyond ready understanding; his lack of self-knowledge, blended with his awesome authority, makes him unknowable by us.”[6] Without understanding a character, an audience is most definitely unable to sympathize with him, and here we run into a potentially problematic issue. Aristotle believes that

Lear, the king, is blinded by his daughters. When he asks what his daughters have to say about him, Regan and Goneril, the greedy ones, tell Lear that he is a great father and Lear rewards them with more wealth and land. Goneril says “Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter; Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty; Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare; No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour” (I.i.55-61). Goneril expresses her false love for

Goneril and Regan use Lears pride to render him homeless. They are aware that he loved Cordelia best but

Sight is perhaps the easiest deceived of all the senses as it cannot comprehend error. The human eye is unable to perceive the intangible, leading to false judgement based on appearances alone. In King Lear, written by William Shakespeare, Lear divides his kingdom between two of his daughters, banishing the third because he believes she does not love him. Simultaneously, the Earl of Gloucester is tricked by his son into believing that the other son wishes his father dead. Both characters trust that their perceptions of others’ personalities are accurate. However, the characters cannot rely solely on what they can see and instead must look past intentional false impressions created to deceive.

Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear can be interpreted in many ways and many responses. The imprecision’s and complication of the play has led

The fact that King Lear is not aware that he is Lear further proves that he is loosing his mind. He keeps asking the Fool if Lear would act the same way that he is acting. Lear’s mental decay is a cause of chaos because he is the ruler of England, and if the ruler is not able to successfully process thoughts and ideas, much less comprehend who he is, then the country will not be able to run smoothly, and as a result, chaos will ensue. This proves that chaos is more powerful that authority because the chaos within Lear is overpowering the authority within Lear, which causes his mental decay. In the following scene, Lear begins to notice that he is in fact descending into madness. Lear’s realization of his madness is triggered by the Fool’s line, “Thou should not have been old till thou hadst been wise” (1.5.41-42) The Fool’s line relates to the idea that when people age, they become old and wise. But the Fool believes that Lear is not wise, and therefore should not be old. Lear hears this line and

    In King Lear, the recurring images of sight and blindness associated with the characters of Lear and Gloucester illustrate the theme of self-knowledge and consciousness that exist in the play.

In addition, he strips himself to expose the true nature of man which he realizes as insignificant. It's as if he is intentionally trying to alienate himself. As if he views all mankind to be a foreign concept due to the irrational state of life. He curses, “You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!(III. ii. 32)” to defy the elements. We can't help but see Lear act against nature as if he is the storm itself. Moreover, he tries to justify his temper by mentioning that nothing can hurt him more than his daughters. Not even the elements can corrupt this poor, old man. We see the storm bring about awareness when Lear exclaims,“You sulfurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head!(III. ii. 33)” as if he begins to finally discover his true hair color which directly correlates with his age. I see that Lear is becoming aware of his age, but not willing to accept the anemic state of his body and mind. He intentionally makes note of his hair color, but the realization leaves him in a state of mental insanity soon to discover his impending death.

King Lear is frequently regarded as one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, and its tragic scope touches almost all facets of the human condition: from the familial tensions between parents and children to the immoral desires of power, from the follies of pride to the false projections of glory. However, one theme rings true throughout the play, and that very theme is boundless suffering, accentuated by the gruesome depictions of suffering our protagonists experience . There is no natural (nor “poetic”) justice depicted in this pre-Judeo-Christian world Shakespeare presents, as the relatively virtuous individuals (Kent, Gloucester, and Cordelia) in this

Shakespeare’s King Lear fabricated a world of its own, in which distinct virtues and vices were personified by individuals with diverse points of view. With each conflict in the play, the characters’ actions and decisions were parallel to the integrity of their heart and mind, exhibiting the virtue or vice they represented. With this strategy, Shakespeare shares that with trust should come discretion.

As Regan and Goneril show their disdain and, thereby, expose their `natural' selves to Lear, his recognition of them and the wrong he did to Cordelia are also expressed with the language of nature; of Cordelia he says, "O most small fault, how ugly dids't thou in Cordelia show! That, like an engine, wrenched my frame of nature from the fixed place" (I.iv. 262-265). And when Lear realizes that both Regan and Goneril have deceived him, he calls them "unnatural hags" (II.iv. 276).

Lear has been driven mad because of his own poor choices and decisions he has taken in his life. His blindness to Gonoril and Regan’s false flattery and his inability to see Cordelia’s real affection has led to his insanity. When he goes mad, the turmoil in his mind reflects the disorder that has descended upon his kingdom. However, his madness teaches him humility and provides him with important nuggets of wisdom by reducing him to his bare humanity, stripped of all royal pretensions. There is a dramatic value in Lear's madness whose roots lie in his moral and spiritual defects, and the cure is his moral regeneration which has come late. Madness is a central theme in King Lear’s characters between the ones that act in an insane way that are the wisest, and the sane characters that act in a foolish and unreasonable way. Lear’s madness is real compared to Edgar’s which is feigned as Hamlet’s. Edgar who has been the victim of a brother’s treachery perfectly enacts the role of a fool in his