English 241 -- Week 7 -- Sept. 27-Oct. 1 1998  

What to cover for King Lear?

1. Character
2. Plot
3. Love
4. Madness
5. Blindness and Disguise
6. Family
7. Language
8. Tragedy
9. Your themes; your reactions

Globe Theater

• Now it has been rebuilt - having its first performances in three centuries
• Creates an intimate setting for plays - audiences surround the stage on three sides
• The Stage-two acting levels
1. The main area was the platform jutting out into the yard - Inner stage - was an area curtained off behind the main stage where they would have special scenes like the bedchamber scene in Othello.
2. The second acting gallery - used for balcony scenes, musicians

Tragedy

Tragedy vs. comedy

• tragedy - ends in death and mourning
• comedy - ends in marriage and dancing

Every comedy contains potential tragedy - harmony may not be achieved
Every tragedy contains potential comedy - possibility that disaster may be averted.

Aristotle's (384-322 BC) characteristics of tragedy set down in Poetics

• Tragic hero must be a person of 'high estate' -- Hero must be fallible - he must fall from this estate
• Audience should pity the hero
• Fall is result of his hamartia (tragic mistake). Some would say that by hamartia, Aristotle meant tragic flaw, which would relate more to a weakness inherent in the character.
• Hero must recognize the flaw - experience some revelation of character.
• Audience should experience a katharsis - unclear as to exactly how this translates, but most people equate it with a purging - perhaps audiences feel a sense of relief at the end of a tragedy -as if their pent-up emotions have been freed. The point is, that tragedy, though sad, should not be a negative experience for the audience.

Influence of Roman tragedy on Shakespeare

• Heroes of great size - hero may embody a passion too great for the cosmic order to tolerate
• Theme of social isolation
• Theme of violation and re-establishment of order

King Lear

• First performed in 1606 - probably written around 1605
• 1681 play was adapted by Nahum Tate
• Removed the fool
• United Edgar and Cordelia in marriage
• Lear took throne again
• Not until 1838 was the Shakespearean version brought back to the stage.
• "In no other Shakespearean play does injustice appear to triumph so ferociously, for so long, and with such impunity" (Bevington).
• Earlier versions of the story of Lear end happily
• No other Shakespeare play contains such a large subplot.
• Cinderella -- younger sister triumphs in the end
• Historia Regum Britanniae (1136)
  • Lear overthrown by sons-in-law
  • Lear restored to throne by the help of the French King; Lear dies naturally
  • Cordelia (who succeeds him) is later dethroned and murdered by her nephews.

 
Discussion of Act I --Love

• Why doesn't Cordelia say she loves her father like the others?
• Discussion of how words cannot always express ones feelings adequately; words can only diminish the true emotion.
• Reflects Cordelia's interests and personality - she is not interested in "buying" the land with false words.
• The entire scene reflects back upon Shakespeare's sonnets we read before, which often suggest the inadequacy of words when it comes to expressing love.
• Think about the theme of "nothing"

 Character
 

• Ambiguity of character:
  • France: takes Cordelia; attacks England
  • Edgar: innocent, so why keep up the disguise so long? why fight in a disguise with his brother?
  • Edmund: evil, but he attempts good at the end.
  • Cordelia: why "reject" her father; why does he "reject" her?

Archetype: In literature, certain themes, character types, etc. that will re-appear.  These are grounded in our society.  Literature uses them and makes them new and different.  Sibling rivalry is an example of an archetype that we see in King Lear.

• Artificial Archetype: Literary conventions that literature created and transmits.  In Lear - blind seer and wise fool
• Natural or Psychological Archetype: These are based on outside literary experience but are reflected in the literature.  These are archetypes that help us make connections with the text because we can establish connections between our experiences and the experience of the characters.

A literary work's use of archetypes makes the work universal - allows it to transcend time and place.

Suspension of Disbelief

Madness

• Shown with Lear - he is really mad
• Through madness he begins to see things differently - As long as he retains his original orientation, he can't see anything. The madness actually teaches him something.
• Henry V was how a man became a king; King Lear is how a king becomes a man.
• Sheds his clothes over the course of the play - symbolic for shedding his old self.
• Act I - with crown and robe and other marks of authority - he banishes Kent
• Act IV - He has been buffeted by the rain and wind; now he is crowned with flowers and weeds
• Sacrifices power for the natural world - see him wearing daisies, etc.
• Show with Edgar - madness as a disguise - why this disguise?

Disguises and Blindness

• Disguise
• Functions in both good ways and bad ways
• Symbolic disguises - Edmund, Goneril, and Regan
• Real disguises - Edgar and Kent

• Blindness
• What examples of sight, seeing, etc. did you find throughout the play?
• Both physical and mental blindness
• Lear is mentally blind
• Gloucester is physically blinded and only then can he see the truth
• What is the point of the above irony?
• Look at the blinding scene
• Discuss Gloucester's "falling" off the cliff - why is this important - note what Edgar must do - look closely at the life-affirming scene to follow between Lear and Gloucester

 
Parents vs. children

• Authority of the past over the present symbolized by the Father - you can see this in other plays of Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, but it is stressed the most in King Lear.
• Notion of patriarchy - note that no mothers exist in the play
• How do the motivations of the two sisters and Edmund differ - does Edmund desire love? p. 240 "Yet Edmund was beloved"
• What can you do with daughters vs. sons - do they go about destroying their parents any differently?
• Discuss the competition among the siblings - the patriarchal system of the time encouraged competition, not love among siblings. King Lear reflects this.
• The names themselves suggest a lack of individuality
• Edmund/Edgar
• Regan is an abbreviated version of her sister's name - Goneril; Cordelia is different, however.

Look back at the opening scene and what Cordelia means by saying she can't give all her love to her father if she is to be married. Discuss scene as an example of leaving one family for another.

 
Free Will and Optimistic/Pessimistic World Views

• Free will - lines that refer to it in the play.  For example, p. 119; p 126 and p. 134
• Symbols and events -- Blindness suggests a lack of control, as does madness. Important to realize that play goes both ways in regard to this theme.

How does King Lear fit into the course?

• where does it fit between Beowulf and Canterbury Tales?
  • in terms of quality?
  • in terms of themes?
  • in terms of difficulty?  How do you respond as a reader?
  • in terms of how it presents people?

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