Riverside Shakespeare Company

Every good story has a hero and a villain. The villain is usually considered to be evil and have evil intentions, but often has good hidden somewhere deep inside them. This is definitely the case for the character of Edmund in Shakespeare’s play “King Lear.” Edmund betrays and deceives both his brother Edgar and his father Gloucester in order to achieve wealth and power. While his actions are corrupt and wrong, he should not be considered as entirely evil. His personality and his social status are

In the play King Lear, truth and loyalty are major themes that William Shakespeare seems to focus on throughout the entire thing. However, truth and loyalty each come at a cost, even if the cost is different for each person that has these traits. This is seen through the comparison of two of the characters, Edgar and Cordelia, from beginning to end. They both have the traits of loyalty and truth, but they differ on where these bring them in the story. Although the audience would undoubtedly side

Shakespeare’s King Lear, also follows Poetics guidelines of tragedy with the death of Cordelia, and Lear’s kommos. In the beginning of the tragedy, King Lear is ready to disperse his kingdom between his three daughters. “Which of you shall we say doth love us most, / That we our largest bounty may extend/ Where nature doth with merit challenge…”, Lear challenges his daughters (I, i, 53-55). Lear desires for his daughters to express their love for their father and he will give the daughter, with the

“The oldest hath borne most; we that are young / Shall never see so much nor live so long”, what Edgar, and the remaining survivors, have seen is one of the most impressive tragedies ever written (5.3.331-32). King Lear, written by William Shakespeare, has a deluge of dramatic irony, conflict, and death, making it one of the most tragic plays ever written. Such plentiful amount of tragedy leaves many scholars to ask, “What is the cause for such destruction of lives?” The paramount cause for the massive

Family Ties At the heart of the play King Lear by William Shakespeare lies the theme of the relationship between father and child. Lear and Cordelia’s relationship is strong and it is very different than the relationship between Lear, and Cordelia’s sisters, Goneril and Reagan. Lear and Cordelia have different views of what is important in the world, these different views is what ultimately causes their bond to break. The separation of Lear and Cordelia ultimately causes a rift in the play and conflict

On Thursday 1st December 2016, the RSC’s (Royal Shakespeare Company) production of The Tempest was performed to an audience of around one thousand people at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. It was directed by the RSC’s artistic director Gregory Doran, whose version’s aim was “to break new boundaries in theatre-making” through its heavy reliance on cutting-edge technology to create magnificent spectacles and revitalise used tropes of past productions. Being the first classical

Blindness, in the traditional sense, is the inability of the eye to see. Shakespeare, however, uses blindness both as a mental flaw that one would possess and as a conventional lack of sight. This is mainly observed in his tragic story King Lear, where Shakespeare uses sight both literally and figuratively throughout the entire plot, making it a key theme of the piece. While there were many tragic events that happened during the story, the events with one or both kinds of blindness involved were

Title: King Lear Author’s Background (Source: “William Shakespeare.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 5 Aug. 2017, www.biography.com/people/william-shakespeare-9480323.): William Shakespeare was born around April 23, 1564. He was an English playwright, actor, and poet. He was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon in England, and got involved in theatre by the time he was 20. From there, he worked far and had success in being an actor and a playwright until his death around April 23, 1616. Date of

Goneril in King Lear perfectly exemplifies with this quote how being overly credulous can lead to the downfall of a character. Trust is a complicated issue; people want to believe what others say, and yet it becomes harder to believe as they are let down time and time again. It also manifests itself in many forms, such as mistrust of self or mistrust of others. Trust is a common thread throughout all human history, and yet it has continually proved to be the downfall of everything ranging from great

The Play King Lear was written by William Shakespeare in 1606. The play King Lear takes place in Britain with the start of the play involving Kent the king’s most loyal companion and Gloucester talking about King Lear stepping down from power and dividing the land up to his three daughters Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. King Lear made the decision to split up the land by giving the daughter who loves him most the best piece of the kingdom. Goneril and Regan told King lear in a great depth how much