King Lear Research Paper

Is King Lear a Great Character to be Represented on Stage?

Shakespeare is an incredible writer and many people who enjoy reading his works come up with many interpretations of what the significance of story is or how well developed it is. King Lear is one of the plays that has been criticized by many people including Charles Lamb. Charles Lamb argues in his criticism essay titled “From On The Tragedies of Shakespeare.” That King Lear is a character too complex to be performed on stage. To further explain he states that an actor cannot express how passionate King Lear is. He also includes that when King Lear is acted, the audience can only see a fragile and pitiful character, but when a person reads the play he or she can be in the mind of

There are many times where a play does not give the exact emotions than when a viewer read the play, there might be times where the actor poorly portrays the character, but in the other hand there are times where they do an excellent job that end up giving the viewer an experience even better than when they first read the play. In this case I do believe that the play performed on stage by McKellan production is better than reading it. The actor made an excellent job on portraying King Lear, plays are supposed to be seen rather than read. When watching the play a viewer can clearly see how Lear is slowly becoming insane and we can sympathize with him. That is the whole point of a tragedy, it’s to see

Also, Mr Lamb claims that Lear is a great character to be represented on stage, Lear himself says the following, “Pray, do not mock me. I am a very foolish fond old man” (2975). Lear contradicts what Mr. Lamb is arguing about, Lear knows that he is not all that great of a person. Therefore Lamb’s argument is invalid, and Lear is just a normal human being like everyone else. Additionally, why the play is better to be seen rather than read is the scenery, obviously when the person is able to see where events are happening he or she is more likely to be engaged in the play, whereas when a play is read, in this case, it only gives the reader a vague description of the place where the events are taking place therefore we cannot connect to the characters. Moreover, Lamb only talks about King Lear and forgot to mention how important the subplot of the play is, what is going on in the subplot with Edmund, Edgar and the Earl of Gloucester reflects the main plot, but in a smaller scale. Edmund reflects the maleficent older daughter that are eager to for power and Edgar reflects Cordelia the younger daughter that only wants to show her true