Imagery in Shakespeare's King Lear

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Imagery in Shakespeare's King Lear

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In the immense amount of writing that William Shakespeare

had done in hiscareer as a playwright and or writer in general there

are bound to besome consistencies and reoccurring themes that make

his writing so popular and interesting. In many cases it ishard to

tell whether the thematic structure that many writers follow is intentional

or not, but it is possible that there is a reasoning for a specific kind

of imagery that a writer likes to outline his/her writing after.

There are dominating images which are characteristic of Shakespeare's

workthroughout, however in some of the earlier plays they are very

obvious and in many cases intentional. Imagery, as defined by the

Sixth Edition Handbook to Literature, is in its literal sense "a

collection of images in a literary work that may be an object, phrase

or entity." The Handbook explains that imagery is often not intentional

but seems to be a basis for a look at a deeper meaning of a certain

piece of work. It is important to be aware of certain recurrent images

which are symbolic in Shakespeare such as the use of light and its

components in Romeo and Juliet, disease and how it is used in King Lear

and what I will be discussing in this paper the use of the heart as an entity

and how it is used inthe dramas written by William Shakespeare.

The heart image is seen literally over a thousand times in the

works of Shakespeare with a frequency of almost thirty per play and

mostly in the tragedies. With so many references of the heart used

in the tragedies and the typical time frame used to perform each play,

which was about two hours, the audience might hear twelve to fifteen

heart images an hour and as many as one every five minutes. Of course

there are manyinconsistencies in the allocation of the term within the

plays with King Lear obtaining most of the references.

In King Lear, which seems to have a tragic double plot, the

images referring to the heart cue the reader or audience to the confusion

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