Stampfer and The Catharsis of King Lear
At the end of King Lear, when the only characters left standing are Albany, Edgar, and Kent, is the audience supposed to come away from the play with any feeling other than remorse? This search for emotional release by the audience is one which J. Stampfer believes is the most profound problem in King Lear.
The overriding critical problem in King Lear is that of its ending. The deaths of Lear
and Cordelia confront us like a raw, fresh wound where our every instinct calls for
healing and reconciliation. This problem, moreover, is as much one of philosophic
order as of dramatic effect. In what sort of universe, we ask ourselves, can wasteful
death follow suffering and torture?
In his essay "The Catharsis of King Lear," Stampfer discusses sevearal readings of Lear’s death, proves them faulty, and, through analyzation of this and other Shakespearian texts, arrives at his own conclusion concerning Lear’s denouement and the audience’s reaction.
The essay begins with Stampfer defining the relevance of Lear’s death to King Lear and the essay reader. Stampfer does not waste the time of the reader with an elaborate introduction. Instead, the first line defines the problem:
The overriding critical problem in King Lear is that of its ending (361).
Still in the first paragraph, he quotes the line from Lear that causes the interpretation problems, referring to it as Lear’s "desparing question" (361):
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all? (v,iii, 306-7)
The rest of the paragraph discusses problems which, in Stampfer’s opinion, cannot be pushed aside, such as the source Shakespeare used to write King Lear, and the Christian referenc...
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...ld, and abandons athiesm and attempts to save Lear and Cordelia.
This creates a paradox for Stampfer: if characters such as Lear, Gloucester, and Edmund all go through some sort of awakening, why do they all die? Is there any justice in the universe? Stampfer examines Othello, Hamlet, and Romeo & Juliet, and concludes that in each of those tragedies, the play ends with the "reconciliation of the tragic hero and society" (371). Lear, in Stampfer’s opinion, is "the first tragedy in which the tragic hero dies unreconciled and indifferent to society" (371).
So Stampfer finds it necessary to go over the plot of Lear again, and dervie what within the structure makes Lear different from the before mentioned plays, and attempt to find some sort of catharsis.
Stampfer comes up with several key points. The first is Lear’s abandonment of everything he once knew.
Harbage, Alfred. " King Lear: An Introduction." Shakespeare: The Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Many believe that Hamlet does not take immediate action because Hamlet 's character is one of contemplation and unhappiness; not action. Because of these traits, Hamlet needs evidence and assurance that Claudius really has killed Old Hamlet. Hamlet 's philosophical nature allows him to question the Ghost 's existence and collect evidence before acting which delays Claudius ' death. Hamlet 's initial response is to trust the Ghost and act quickly when he says that “from the table of [his] memory [he will] wipe away all trivial fond records,/ And [the ghosts] commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of [his] brain” (Shakespeare 1.5.100-106). Hamlet is clearly comfortable with the situation. However, he later is filled with doubt and whether “The spirit that [he has] seen may be the devil, and the devil hath power t 'assume a pleasing shape. Yea, and perhaps Out of [his] weakness and my melancholy, As [the Ghost] is very potent with such spirits, abuses [him] to damn [him]” (2.2.561-567). It is shown that the Prince is concerned to whether he should believe what he is being told, or if it is possible that it is the Devil and he may be taking advantage of Hamlets weakness. The play which Hamlet wishes to be performed is one involving a murder similar to that which the ghost described, and he decided that "The play 's the thing wherein I 'll catch the
Lear spends his last days regretting the things he had done in his life. He wallows in self-pity, blaming others for his demise. Lear isolates himself from the people who love him, and fills himself with jealousy towards those who will survive him. Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie outlines themes of understanding and forgiveness, whereas William Shakespeare's King Lear explores themes of regret and isolation. It is apparent that both texts show the relevance of death and its effect on human behaviour.
Hamlet is first tormented by the death of his father, the king of Denmark. Then he is cast into utter agony when Gertrude, the mother he loves dearly is hastily married to his uncle, Claudius. Through a ghostly revelation, Hamlet learns that his suspicions that Claudius murdered his father are true. He becomes incensed and wants to enact revenge upon the guilty party. From this point on, Hamlet struggles with his plan for revenge that conflicts with his opposite contemplative nature.
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.
During parts of the play one can argue, Hamlet is no longer feigning madness and has already crossed onto the side of insanity. For instance, during his meeting with his mother in her bedchamber, he begins to yell at her, scaring her in the process causing her to believe her own son is about to kill her (III, iv, 22). In that same scene he stabs and kills Polonius without the slightest hesitation (III, iv, 24-26), and then he essentially mocks Claudius and plays games with him when asked where he has taken the body. However, one can also conclude his erratic behavior only surfaces in the presence of these specific characters. When in the presence of other characters, specifically Horatio he is sane, calm, rational, and in complete control of his behavior. His word exchanges with Horatio are not from a madman, but rather
When writing Hamlet, Shakespeare created a complex play that relies on the roles of two important women to aid the progression of the plot. Although Queen Gertrude and Ophelia rarely speak, they function as a way for the men become informed about Hamlet’s mental state and motives for madness. Each woman made choices that greatly impacted the story plot and the lives of the characters. Ophelia’s suicide causes Laertes’s to desire revenge on Hamlet, and Gertrude’s infidelity and purposeful ignorance intensifies Hamlet’s urge for revenge.
No tragedy of Shakespeare moves us more deeply that we can hardly look upon the bitter ending than King Lear. Though, in reality, Lear is far from like us. He himself is not an everyday man but a powerful king. Could it be that recognize in Lear the matter of dying? Each of us is, in some sense, a king who must eventually give up his kingdom. To illustrate the process of dying, Shakespeare has given Lear a picture of old age in great detail. Lear’s habit to slip out of a conversation (Shakespeare I. v. 19-33), his brash banishment of his most beloved and honest daughter, and his bitter resentment towards his own loss of function and control, highlighted as he ironically curses Goneril specifically on her functions of youth and prays that her
Bradley, A.C. “King Lear.” Shakespearian Tragedy. Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Macmillan and Co., London, 1919. Project Gutenberg. Web. 26 Apr. 2015.
In the opening scenes of the play, the Ghost of old Hamlet reveals the truth about his death to his son, and tells Hamlet to avenge the murder. Hamlet's first response is one that sounds of speedy action, saying "Haste me to know't that I with winds as swift… May sweep to my revenge." (p. 34 lines 29-31) Unfortunately, Hamlet's inability to act on his father's extortion has him reluctant to kill King Claudius by the end of that very scene, when he says, "This time is out of joint, O cursed spite, that I was ever born to set it right." (p. 41 lines 190-191)
Hamlet isn’t a play that ends the conversation of death, but to contemplate it with a greater audience. Hamlet is so multi-faceted that it would be selling it short to call it a specific kind of play that only revolves around the tragedies that unfold throughout the play. The conversations of death go far beyond that of the deaths of individual’s such as King Hamlet, in his death we the audience gets to explore the broader conversation that Shakespeare starts in relation to death. He breaks the barriers that confined the conversation of death to the Church and gives reason to the general populace to explore death in an introspective way. In Hamlet’s hope to find reason in his world full of greed and treachery, we find ourselves on a path to understand, but also to contemplate alongside Hamlet what truly is death and how it does not discriminate. In reading Hamlet with respect to the historical backdrop of Shakespeare’s life we can without stretching the interpretations of the text to our advantages can say Shakespeare drew inspiration by the inherently deceitful practices that the church and state participated in during the renaissance. Shakespeare’s story isn’t setting out to teach a life lesson, or a universal truth, but rather through the addition of his voice on the matters of death and kingship, he subverts the monopoly that the church and those who have royal blood hold on that
Bradley, A.C. Twentieth Century Interpretations of King Lear. Ed. Janet Adelman. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1978.
When Hamlet appears again in act two, it seems that he has lost the conviction that was present earlier. He has yet to take up the part assigned to him by the ghost. He spends the act walking around, reading, talking with Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the players. It is not until the very end of the act that he even mentions vengeance.
Like all Shakespearean tragedies, Hamlet’s ending is no different in end-result. Hamlet’s separation from society and his self-imposed confusion caused by over-thinking results in the unnecessary deaths of most of the major characters. In turn, Hamlet’s pre-occupation with factors inessential to his mission of revenge slows down his action. It is this internal struggle that illustrates the intensity and complexity of Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy, something that is often looked at from a psychological perspective.
Shakespeare, William, and Russell A. Fraser. King Lear. New York: New American Library, 1998. Print.