“Shakespeare’s King Lear is a play of redemption in which the King moves from a state of moral blindness to one of clear vision. Evaluate this view of the play considering the King’s journey through the play.”
Shakespeare’s King Lear is a portrayed as a play of redemption and clarity for Lear’s outlook on life, however Lear may not have changed as much as most have thought. King Lear began being rash and foolish but through mental suffering and insanity he changed and grew to love his daughter Cordelia. Once Cordelia died Lear’s sanity did as well.
Lear begins the play by having no moral vision and blinded is greatly by his ego. His decision to divide and give away his kingdom was hastily made and foolish. He does not realise until several
Lear realises that he has given away his power and is relying on his daughters to support him. He begins to see that their love for him was not real and he has given up his kingdom only to be left alone and powerless. Lear becomes enraged when his number of men he is allowed is lowered and even more so when his daughters say that he needs none. In Lear’s rage, he curses his daughters, and storm out of the castle into the storm, when he is then locked out. While he is leaving Lear yells “Blow winds…rage! Blow!” (III.ii.1). This is Lear’s final attempt to regain control. He has lost everything. While out in the storm in Act III scene iv, King Lear meets Poor Tom, a mad, naked beggar (Edgar). However when Lear hears his delusional speeches he mistakes Tom for a wise man. Josephine Waters Bennett said “He is the king, thinking charitably of others, and then, suddenly, one of those “wretches”, Edgar disguised as Tom o’Bedlam, appears, and Lear, just controlling his own sanity by thinking of others, suddenly confuses the Bedlam beggar with himself, and he is over the brink.” in ‘The Storm Within: the Madness of Lear’ - Page 140. Lear sees Tom and is moved by him, he relates to him and strips himself of his cloaks and clothing to run around mad with Tom. This is where it is believed that Lear does truly go
Amy said “When I was younger, I felt a terrible shock at Cordelia’s death. It seemed so inappropriate, so unexpectedly gratuitous. Why did she, the most innocent, have to die for the sins of her father? Now her death no longer seems gratuitous, but at the very centre of the tragedy. There would be no tragedy if Cordelia didn’t die.” In Norman N. Holland’s paper ‘Transactive Teaching: Cordelia's Death’ - Page 278. Cordelia’s death in the play tested Lear’s sanity and his transformation. Is it possible that Lear hadn’t changed as much as it seemed, that at the root of everything he remained to be the same ignorant, foolish man? After Cordelia dies Lear comes out carrying her in his arms. The first lines he speaks after bringing her in he absorbed in her death, he pays no attention to anyone else. He says “Never, never, never, never, never./ Pray you undo this button. Thank you, sir./ Do you see this? Look on her! Look, her lips!/ Look there! Look there!” (V.iii.306-309). This is a similar behaviour to the beginning of the play, Lear is refusing to see the reality of any situation and only see what he wants. Lear wants Cordelia to be alive more than anything else. He wants to believe this so strongly he convinces himself that she still moves, that she is still alive even after he has carried her lifeless body in his arms. Lear behaves irrationally
Through Lear, Shakespeare expertly portrays the inevitability of human suffering. The “little nothings,” seemingly insignificant choices that Lear makes over the course of the play, inevitably evolve into unstoppable forces that change Lear’s life for the worse. He falls for Goneril’s and Regan’s flattery and his pride turns him away from Cordelia’s unembellished affection. He is constantly advised by Kent and the Fool to avoid such choices, but his stubborn hubris prevents him from seeing the wisdom hidden in the Fool’s words: “Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool” (Shakespeare 21). This leads to Lear’s eventual “unburdening,” as foreshadowed in Act I. This unburdening is exacerbated by his failure to recognize and learn from his initial mistakes until it is too late. Lear’s lack of recognition is, in part, explained by his belief in a predestined life controlled completely by the gods: “It is the stars, the stars above us govern our conditions” (Shakespeare 101). The elder characters in King Lear pin their various sufferings on the will of...
Lear becomes blinded by his flaws, leading him to make irrational decisions which ultimately cause him to go mad. After Cordelia is unable to state how much she loves her father and outdo her sisters exaggerated professions of
undergoes a redeeming reversal of character. Lear slowly starts to go mad, Lear. O, let me not be mad,
I think it is pretty evident that the relationships that King Lear had with each of his daughters were completely different from one another. In the end, although they went through some rough times, Cordelia still remained his favorite daughter. I think this play is not only a good display of different father daughter relationship but also, it can be taken as lesson learned. It can teach people that pretending just to get your way won’t get you far.
King Lear's hot temper and hasty decisions play a significant role in his fall from grace. His old age has caused him to behave impulsively, without any consideration for the consequences of his actions. When Lear asks his devoted daughter Cordelia to express her love for him, he becomes upset with her because she cannot put her feelings into words. He does not realize that she cares deeply for him and disowns her by saying, "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 (1.1.120-123)." It is only later, when Cordelia has left him, that Lear realizes he had made a wrong decision. In another fit of rage, Lear ...
In King Lear by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare recounts the tragedy of King Lear as he fails to acknowledge his tragic flaw and thus falls into tragedy and unintentionally brings others with him. Throughout the play, tragedy befalls undeserving people and they suffer greatly even though they have not done anything to deserve their suffering. Although Gloucester, Edgar, and Cordelia all live happy lives at the beginning of the play, they experience great suffering despite their inner goodness, a fact that highlights Shakespeare’s belief about the blindness of a justice that does not necessarily strike only the wicked.
Lear is estranged from his kingdom and friends, causing his loss of sanity. In the midst of Lear's self-pity he is discovered by the fool. Fittingly enough the fool is the one able to lead Lear back to the normal world. He is made to appreciate the people who truly cared about him from the beginning. He sees that they were right all along, and repents from his foolish decision, though it's too late to do him any good.
King Lear is often regarded as one of Shakespeare’s finest pieces of literature. One reason this is true is because Shakespeare singlehandedly shows the reader what the human condition looks like as the play unfolds. Shakespeare lets the reader watch this develop in Lear’s own decisions and search for the purpose of life while unable to escape his solitude and ultimately his own death. Examining the philosophies Shakespeare embeds into the language and actions of King Lear allows the reader a better understanding of the play and why the play is important to life today.
When the audience is first introduced to Lear, he is portrayed as a raging, vain old man who can not see the purity of his daughter Cordelia's love for him from the insincerity of her sisters Goneril and Regan. In his fiery rage after disowning Cordelia, Lear commands to Kent, "Out of my sight!" (1.1.156). Kent fittingly implores the aging king to "See better, Lear; and let me still remain / The true blank of thine eye" (1.1.157-8). Kent recognizes love in its most noble form in the person of Cordelia, and is able to see through the hypocrisy of Lear's other two daughters. In beseeching Lear to "[s]ee better," Kent is, in effect, asking Lear to look beyond his vanity and inward pride to see the honesty of Cordelia, who refuses...
As the play opens one can almost immediately see that Lear begins to make mistakes that will eventually result in his downfall. The very first words that he speaks in the play are :- "...Give me the map there. Know that we have divided In three our kingdom, and 'tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths while we Unburdened crawl to death..." (Act I, Sc i, Ln 38-41) This gives the reader the first indication of Lear's intent to abdicate his throne.
The first stage of Lear’s transformation is resentment. At the start of the play it is made quite clear that Lear is a proud, impulsive, hot-tempered old man. He is so self-centered that he simply cannot fathom being criticized. The strength of Lear’s ego becomes evident in the brutal images with which he expresses his anger towards Cordelia: “The barbarous Scythian,/Or he that makes his generation messes/To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom/Be as well neighboured, pitied, and relieved,/As thou may sometime daughter.” (1.1.118-122). The powerful language that Lear uses to describe his intense hatred towards Cordelia is so incommensurable to the cause, that there can be only one explanation: Lear is so passionately wrapped up in his own particular self-image, that he simply cannot comprehend any viewpoint (regarding himself) that differs from his own (no matter how politely framed). It is this anger and resentment that sets Lear’s suffering and ultimate purification in motion.
Shakespeare, William, Barbara A. Mowat, and Paul Werstine. The Tragedy of King Lear. New York: Washington Square, 1993. Print.
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.
King Lear is one of Shakespeare's more complex plays and within it many different themes are addressed and explored. King Lear is the somewhat unfortunate vehicle that Shakespeare uses to explore many of these themes creating a complex character including the roles of a father, king, friend and adversary.
Overall, while King Lear is able to fit many of the criteria of a tragic figure, such as being arrogant and noble, and also being responsible for his own downfall that leads to his own catastrophic end, he does not execute being a tragic figure well as he is missing the ability to draw pity from those following his story. Through Lear’s careless distribution of land, and the disowning and disrespect of Cordelia, Kent and the fool and the fact that he never understands and is remorseful for the tragedies that he caused, he is unable to become the true tragic figure he could have been. If King Lear had been able to make a change along the way and think about his actions and treatments of people, he would have been able to cause people to feel pity for him, which would have made him William Shakespeare’s greatest tragic figure.