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Weaknesses of king lear
Character of king lear
Character of king lear
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“‘Here I disclaim all my paternal care,/ Propinquity and property of blood,/ And as a stranger to my heart and me/ Hold thee from this for ever”’ (Shakespeare 1.1.114-17). King Lear exclaims this as his youngest daughter Cordelia refuses to tell him how much she loves him. Lear does not think it is good enough to see the love, but his mind needs to hear it too. Throughout the play the reader can see King Lear descend into madness. In the tragic play King Lear by William Shakespeare, King Lear’s mental illness affects his daughters Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia; along with others in the Kingdom of Leicester such as the Fool, Earl of Gloucester, and Earl of Kent. Although, Lear may not have been the cause of his mental illness, his family may be using the excuse to get …show more content…
They thought is was contagious, everyone will get it in their lives. Anything that looked odd and off the charts was then diagnosed with a mental illness. Munson addresses, “Whether Lear’s decision to divide his kingdom stems from what could be called ‘Disability in his natural Body’ depends largely on the concept of disability. At the time, the term disability did not carry any specific connotation of physical injury or mental deficiency, but meant simply ‘inability, incapacity, or impotence’ (OED, 1a)” (Munson 19). Anything out of the ordinary was diagnosed as a mental illness. King George was diagnosed with with a mental imbalance in October of 1788; in 1966 Dr. Ida Macalpine made a diagnosis of mental illness and in the end the diagnosis was acute intermittent porphyria which was a metabolic disorder in genetics (Ambrose 59). With the information we have in this day and age, doctors are able to diagnose patients much easier. It would be fairly easy to diagnose King Lear with a mental illness as the facts all point towards it. With monarchs being diagnosed with mental illnesses, the destruction of the monarchy
With Cordelia declared as banished, Lear states, “With my two daughters’ dowers digest the third...Only we shall retain The name and all th’ addition to a king. The sway, revenue, execution of the rest, Beloved sons, be yours” (Shakespeare 17). Lear’s fault here is that he believes that he can divide up his kingdom to his daughters and still retain the title as king; he wants to retire his position and responsibilities as a king but still remain respected and treated as one. His flaw in wanting to be superior leads to his downfall, as he is so blinded by his greed that he decides to divide up his kingdom to his two daughters who are as hungry for power as he is. They only want to strip him of his position and respect to gain more influence. Lear, not realizing the impact of such an impulsive decision, descends into madness when his daughters force him out of his home. After being locked out of his only shelter by his daughters, he states, “Filial ingratitude!...In such a night To shut me out?...O Regan, Goneril, Your old kind father whose frank heart gave all! O that way madness lies. Let me shun that; No more of that” (Shakespeare 137). Lear becomes fully aware of the consequences of his actions. He realizes how ungrateful his daughters are and how they have treated him unfairly even though he has given them everything; much to his dismay, he is left with
Mental illness can be a virus. It attaches to those with wild thoughts, actions, and comprehensions of a world known and unknown. It hits the soul, pulling at once a kind being into anxiety, pain and loss. In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, his main character, Hamlet, comes down with the illness. It enters him through actions by friends, enemies, and even his own family. The hardest thing to understand is whether Hamlet's insanity is completely real, or an act put on to win revenge. However, no matter what the reality of his psychotic mind is, the real question is what brought this whole thing on. In 1601 when Shakespeares Hamlet was written, Hamlet would be diagnosed with suffering from melancholy, but with today's high technology and knowledge he would of been diagnosed with bipolar I disorder. In Shakespeare’s time there was no concept of depressive illnesses, although melancholy was well known during his time.
Lear has an emence amount of pride in the beginning of the play. This pride makes him blind to who he loves the most and why this foolish blindness puts Lear in the hands of his evil daughters, Goneril and Regan. Who ultimately leads to his madness? Therefore Lear has brought about his own madness through his blindness.
It’s clear that the characters in Hamlet are suffering from some kind of mental illness. Some more serious than others, but given all of their backgrounds, it’s clear to see why. Having to deal with things like murder, your uncle becoming your father, and the girl you love killing herself becomes a lot to handle. The story begins with King Hamlet’s funeral where we later find out that Prince Hamlet’s uncle is marrying his mother and claiming the throne as his own. Months pass and Hamlet is still noticeably upset about his father’s passing and he’s been acting very strange. He’s then visited by the ghost of his late father, when he learns that his uncle killed his father. Prince Hamlet swears to his father that he will get revenge for his untimely
In William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, various mental illnesses are displayed. The mental illnesses are frequently discussed by various critics. Some believe Hamlet is simply love sick, while others argue he has no disease at all. Poet and Shakespeare contemporary, Ben Jonson says, “If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick.” Ben connects mind with body to imply that a person’s mental state can relate directly to their physical state. This quote relates directly with Hamlet’s mentality. Hamlet has driven himself to madness and, in his own mind, has made himself sick. Hamlet shows clear signs of clinical depression, and because no one is there to help and support him it only gets worse. A person with depression needs
journeys to resolve their issues or complete an ill begotten fate. Shakespeare’s play King Lear is
Despite its undeniable greatness, throughout the last four centuries King Lear has left audiences, readers and critics alike emotionally exhausted and mentally unsatisfied by its conclusion. Shakespeare seems to have created a world too cruel and unmerciful to be true to life and too filled with horror and unrelieved suffering to be true to the art of tragedy. These divergent impressions arise from the fact that of all Shakespeare's works, King Lear expresses human existence in its most universal aspect and in its profoundest depths. A psychological analysis of the characters such as Bradley undertook cannot by itself resolve or place in proper perspective all the elements which contribute to these impressions because there is much here beyond the normal scope of psychology and the conscious or unconscious motivations in men.
In the play “Hamlet” and the novel The Things They Carried the main characters both suffer from a psychological or mental disorder. Throughout the play “Hamlet”, Hamlet exerts signs of suicide, loss of interest in the things, and poor logic and reasoning. While in The Thing They Carried, Tim O’Brien describes himself suffering from stress, memory problems, and life-like flash backs. All of these are certain signs of a particular psychological condition.
In Act 4, Scene 1 Lear asks the fool if he is a fool: "Dost thou call
King Lear had come so accustomed to his praise, that it is the sole thing he lived for, he needed it to survive, his treatment as a king was his Achilles heel in this play. He wanted to step down as king and divide his kingdom into 3 sections, giving them to his daughters to rule. Goneril and Regan were more than willing to accommodate his request to demonstrate their love for their father and king by professing their love to him in dramatic fashion combined with a good bit of exaggeration. While Cordelia on the other hand, found it a struggle to profess what she thought to be known by her father and king, she states, “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave / My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty / According to my bond; nor more nor less (Scene 1.1, Lines 91-93).
While insanity is a mental disorder, a mental disorder is not insanity. In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, the prince exhibits eccentric behavior as he acts the part of madness. Despite his crazy disposition, Hamlet is not insane, but is burdened by a swirl of emotions and a couple of mental disorders. Shakespeare does not over dramatize Hamlet’s mental illness, but he does exaggerate Hamlet’s lunacy. Prince Hamlet’s state of mind is is hard to deduce, but it is clear that he is not insane after analyzing the reasons for his eccentric behavior and understanding his mental disorders.
Perhaps Lear's most difficult moment to endure is when he discovers his youngest and most prized daughter, Cordelia, dead. His initial reaction is of unbearable pain, but, being in his current state of madness, some of the anguish is alleviated when he "realizes" that she is alive. The king overcomes his earlier mistakes only after losing the one daughter who truly loved him. It's debatable whether Lear is completely conscious of his loss, but more plausible to suspect he is not fully affected by it as he is no longer in his right mind. Finally, Lear has dealt with the consequences of his decisions and is redeemed.
Shakespeare expresses two major themes in King Lear: love and wisdom. King Lear’s struggle to recognize authentic love, love himself, and acknowledge the wisdom imparted on him, due to his weak emotional state, results in needless conflicts and the deaths of many. In the first scene of King Lear, Lear reveals his plan to split his kingdom between his daughters by asking them how much they love him. The daughter that proves she loves him the most receives the largest portion of the kingdom (1.1.46-50). Kent intends to calm Lear down, yet Lear’s unstable emotions at the time lead to him thrashing out against Kent, even threatening him.
King Lear is a play about a tragic hero, by the name of King Lear, whose flaws get the best of him. A tragic hero must possess three qualities. The first is they must have power, in other words, a leader. King Lear has the highest rank of any leader. He is a king. The next quality is they must have a tragic flaw, and King Lear has several of those. Finally, they must experience a downfall. Lear's realization of his mistakes is more than a downfall. It is a tragedy. Lear is a tragic hero because he has those three qualities. His flaws are his arrogance, his ignorance, and his misjudgments, each contributing to the other.
Throughout Shakespeare’s career he superficially wrote about love, ironic tragedy, drama, and so much more. In his play, Hamlet, he wrote about a character, that I think, could be diagnosed with a psychological disorder, known as Bipolar disorder. In this play there are many signs of his bipolar-ness including: being happy, then all of a sudden being furious, “Behaving impulsively and engaging in pleasurable, high-risk behaviors.”(Bipolar Disorder) Hamlet’s behavior in the play relates to a story that took place in Texas, in 2004. A 35 year old named Dena Schlosser killed her 11 month year old daughter for no apparent reason but later still wanted to take it to court to say plead that she was innocent. Both of these stories are interesting in the sense that neither of them realized that they had such a disorder