Shakespearean

Drama

King Lear Knowledge Notes

Chain of Being

The Elizabethan World Picture Elizabethans viewed their world order according to what is called The Chain of Being, much of which worked its way into the literature of the time, including Shakespeare's plays.

Everything on earth and in the universe is linked in a particular order - everything has its place.

The most heavenly beings are placed at the top of the chain, seated at the foot of God.

The basest creatures are at the bottom, furthest away from God. The best way of envisioning this is probably to think of a ladder

What is a Tragedy?

TragedyThe protagonists (main characters) must be admirable but flawed characters

=HUMAN

The audience must be able to understand and sympathize with the characters

THEMES TO LOOK OUT FOR IN KING LEAR

Kingship; Crown Inheritance; Division; Justice; Parents and Children Ingratitude of children Love: self-love and

false love Legitimacy Loyalty; Hospitality

Eyes and Sight Madness and Insanity Civil Disorder Nothing; The poor/poverty The Elements Nature and Nurture Identity Cruelty and Violence Fortune Warmth and Cold

LANGUAGE

1. Treat language like special effects2. Treat language like a voiceover in a

film .3. Characters overflow with words

Special

effects

Bad GuysGood guys

Profile of Gloucester

· representative of the old regime: weak, elderly, inert, credulous

EDMUND Thou, nature, art my goddess. To thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should IStand in the plague of custom and permitThe curiosity of nations to deprive meFor that I am some twelve or fourteen

moonshinesLag of a brother? Why “bastard”? Wherefore

“base”?When my dimensions are as well compact,My mind as generous, and my shape as trueAs honest madam’s issue? Why brand they usWith “base,” with “baseness,” “bastardy,” “base,”

“base”—Who in the lusty stealth of nature takeMore composition and fierce qualityThan doth within a dull, stale, tirèd bedGo to th' creating a whole tribe of fopsGot ’tween a sleep and wake? Well then,Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.Our father’s love is to the bastard EdmundAs to the legitimate.—Fine word, “legitimate”!—Well, my legitimate, if this letter speedAnd my invention thrive, Edmund the baseShall top th' legitimate. I grow, I prosper.Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

TRAGIC HERO

Qualities of a Tragic Hero:Possesses high importance or rankExhibits extraordinary talentsDisplays a tragic flaw—an error in

judgment or defect in character—that leads to downfall

Faces downfall with courage and dignity

King Lear Lear’s basic flaw at the beginning of the play is that he values

appearances above reality. He wants to be treated as a king and to enjoy the title, but he

doesn’t want to fulfill a king’s obligations of governing for the good of his subjects.

In relying on the test of his daughters' love, Lear demonstrates that he lacks common sense or the ability to detect his older daughters' falseness.

Lear cannot recognize Cordelia's honesty amid the flattery, which he craves. Similarly, his test of his daughters demonstrates that he values a flattering public display of love over real love. He doesn’t ask “which of you doth love us most,” but rather, “which of you shall we say doth love us most?” (I.i.49).

Hubris is a Greek term referring to excessive and destructive pride. In the ancient Greek world, hubris often resulted in the death of the tragic, heroic figure. This is clearly the case with Lear, who allows his excessive pride to destroy his family.

What does it mean to see the true nature of people’s hearts? How do you see a liar?

Profile of Gloucester Represents the old

regime: weak, elderly, inert, credulous

Dramatic role · to head up the minor plot · his fate mirrors Lear's

Historically · represents mindless continuity, · end of an era inertia,

Who are his sons?

What do you know about them?

TRAGIC HERO Qualities of a Tragic

Hero: Possesses high

importance or rank Displays a tragic

flaw, an error in judgment or defect in character—that leads to downfall

HE DOESN’T SEE THE TRUE NATURE OF HIS DAUGHTERS

TRAGIC HERO Knowledge Check question

What is Lear’s tragic flaw or error in judgment?

Do people know of his plan?

How does he go about it?

Points- Good GuysProfiles of Lear 'bad' characters:

Category Edgar Kent Cordelia Albany

Appearance

not flash, younger, not as confident as might be, sensitive

shabby, older, gaunt

plain, slight, maidish, low of voice, alert

avuncular, poised,

Characteristics, temperament

gentle, easily led,

to get things right, to teach restraint, aware of the error of excess

not boastful, careful of exaggeration, few words, a natural goodness, not wimpy.

calm, patient, slow to anger, not devious, knowledgeable

Motivations caring, loyal, honest

loyalty, devotion, honesty

love, justice, tragic

justice, balance, pity

Appraisal

misunderstands Edmund, weak?, untested, driven by care and pity, endures hardship for his father

unable to be diplomatic, free of anything underhand, predictable to a fault

hides her goodness = (expects it to be enough?), accepts fate, strong devotion to the truth as only guide to life

respected by Lear, strong in himself, puzzle what he saw in Goneril to marry her

Points -Bad GuysCategory Edmund Goneril Oswald Cornwall

Appearance lusty, young, dark,

'wolfish visage', late 30s

foppish, weasel, oleaginous

sly, like Regan

Characteristics, temperament

ambitious, hungry, self- important, cagey, manipulative

aggressive, manipulative,

sycophantic, unscrupulous, ambitious

ambitious, untrustworthy

Motivationspower-hungry, cruel, deceitful

gain, greed, self-seeking, hard, pitiless

gain, opportunist, opportunist

Appraisal unscrupulous to be feared repugnant conspirator

Profiles of Lear 'bad' characters:

The FOOL Knowledge notes Act 1 scene 4+5

Q- What is the fools role in the play?

He is used to show Lear’s true feelings and highlight Lear’s foolishness

The fool acts as a commentator speking the truth

Fool Kent tries to point out that the fool is telling the

truth

    All thy other titles thou hast given away; that     thou wast born with.

KENT

    This is not altogether fool, my lord.

thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown,     when thou gavest thy golden one away.

Refers to his royal crown

LEAR DIVIDED HIS KINGDOM BETWEEN GONERIL AND REGAN

Fool

    I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are:     they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt     have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am     whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any     kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be     thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides,     and left nothing i' the middle:

The Fool -Act 1 Scene 5

He is critical of Lear but also kind and humorous pointing to Lear’s foolishness

ExamplesDaughters are as sour as crab applesHe remarks Lear should have been

‘wise before being old’Lear should be like a snail with a

house to put his bald head intoHe uses animal imagery and

metaphors

King Lear Act 2. scene 1 – Manipulative Edmund

Edmund begins this scene with deceit and treachery He tricks his father into believing Edgar is hungry for power

and land and is willing to murder GlouscesterHe is a consummate liarHe is manipulativeHe cuts his own arm to add credence to his lies saying Edgar

injured himHis father believes him and calls him loyal and natural

HOW HE LIES His language reflects the theme of Natural order.

He use pregnant imagry and refersto the natural orderHis language is duplicitous and ironic and he is a skilled in his speechesHe is the real villain, not Edgar

King Lear Act 2 Scene 4 Overview

Kent is in the stocksRegan and Cornwall refuse to meets

himRegan demands that he return to ask

forgiveness form GonerilSisters greet each other as friendsThey sadistically reduce his retinue

to noneLear is reduced to level of animalLear gave all, his daughters gave

nothing

Lears’s heroic struggle to endure

1. Disbelief They durst not , they could not I gave you all

2. Overwhelmed Down thou climbing sorrow ! Thy

elements below3. Angry

I would rather wage against the enmity of the air

4. Powerless + isolated Man’s life is as cheap as beasts

TRAGIC HEROLear’s tragic plight

Kingship/ Power destroyed

Seeing the error of his ways

Displays new humanity in character

Lear’s Turmoil KING LEAR

    O, reason not the need: our basest beggars     Are in the poorest thing superfluous:     Allow not nature more than nature needs,     Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;     If only to go warm were gorgeous,     Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,     Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,--     You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!     You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,     As full of grief as age; wretched in both!     If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts     Against their father, fool me not so much     To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,     And let not women's weapons, water-drops,     Stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,     I will have such revenges on you both,     That all the world shall--I will do such things,--     What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be     The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep     No, I'll not weep:     I have full cause of weeping; but this heart     Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,     Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

Humanity

Impotent rage

Madness

Knowledge Act 3 Scene 1

Lear against the elements

Lear is Contending with the fretful element:Bids the winds blow the earth into the sea,Or swell the curled water 'bove the main,That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,Catch in their fury, and make nothing of;Catch in their fury, and make nothing of;Strives in his little world of man to out-scornThe to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,The lion and the belly-pinched wolfKeep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs,And bids what will take all.

Madness

Natural order is disturbed

Division between Albany and Conwall

Close reading

Storm Scene

This political chaos is mirrored in the natural world.

We find Lear and his courtiers plodding across a deserted heath with winds howling around them and rain drenching them.

Lear soon finds himself symbolically stripped bare.

He has already discovered that his cruel daughters can victimize him; now he learns that a king caught in a storm is as much subject to the power of nature as any man.

A symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention.

The Storm As Lear wanders about a desolate heath in Act III, a terrible

storm, strongly but ambiguously symbolic, rages overhead. In part, the storm echoes Lear’s inner turmoil and mounting

madness: it is a physical, turbulent natural reflection of Lear’s internal confusion.

At the same time, the storm embodies the awesome power of nature, which forces the powerless king to recognize his own mortality and human frailty and to cultivate a sense of humility for the first time.

The storm may also symbolize some kind of divine justice, as if nature itself is angry about the events in the play.

Finally, the meteorological chaos also symbolizes the political disarray that has engulfed Lear’s Britain.

Lear is trying to face down the powers of nature, an attempt that seems to indicate both his despair and his increasingly confused sense of reality.

Both of these strains appear in Lear’s famous speech to the storm, in which he commands, “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! / Lear’s attempt to speak to the storm suggests that he has lost touch with the natural world and his relation to it—or, at least, that he has lost touch with the ordinary human understanding of nature.

In a sense, though, his diatribe against the weather embodies one of the central questions posed by King Lear: namely, whether the universe is fundamentally friendly or hostile to man.

The storm marks one of the first appearances of the apocalyptic imagery that is so important in King Lear and that will become increasingly dominant as the play progresses. The chaos reflects the disorder in Lear’s increasingly crazed mind, and the apocalyptic language represents the projection of Lear’s rage and despair onto the outside world:

Along with Lear’s increasing despair and projection, we also see his understandable fixation on his daughters: “Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: / I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness” (III.ii.14–15). Lear tells the thunder that he does not blame it for attacking him because it does not owe him anything. But he does blame his “two pernicious daughters” for their betrayal (III.ii.21). Despite the apparent onset of insanity, Lear exhibits some degree of rational thought—he is still able to locate the source of his misfortune.

Finally, we see strange shifts beginning to occur inside Lear’s mind. He starts to realize that he is going mad, a terrifying realization for anyone. Nevertheless, Lear suddenly notices his Fool and asks him, “How dost my boy? Art cold?” (III.ii.66). He adds, “I have one part in my heart / That’s sorry yet for thee” (III.ii.70–71). Here, Lear takes real and compassionate notice of another human being for the first time in the play. This concern for others reflects the growth of Lear’s humility, which eventually redeems him

King Lear Revision Guide 2Act and Scene summary

Act 1 (937 lines) 1. 1. Lear divides his kingdom2. 2. Gloucester believes Edmund about

Edgar3. 3. Goneril shows her hatred of Lear4. 4. Lear curses Goneril5. 5. Lear rejects Goneril and fears

madness

Act 2 (634 lines) 1. 1. Edgar flees. Gloucester’s heart

cracks2. 2. Kent abuses Oswald and is put in

the stocks3. 3. Edgar becomes Tom4. 4. Regan rejects Lear. Lear goes mad

Act 3 (615 lines) 1. Kent looks for Lear 2. Lear wanders in the storm 3. Gloucester confides in Edmund 4. Lear confronts the disguised Edgar 5. Edmund betrays Gloucester 6. Lear tries his daughters 7. Gloucester is blinded

Act 4

Act 3 Scene 3 - SubplotAlack, alack, Edmund, I like not this

unnatural dealing.

   

Most savage and

unnatural!

Edmund

    The younger

rises when the old

Doth

fall.

ClothingThe play’s interest in clothing and the imagery

associated with it is central to its exploration ofidentity.

LEAR Lear describes his abdication of the throne, using the play’s first clothing

image, as ‘divest[ing] us…of rule’ (I.i.49). By the start of the first storm scene (III.ii), Lear is

‘bareheaded’. On first meeting Poor Tom, he attempts to strip off his remaining clothes,

which he calls mere ‘lendings’ (III.iv.106), to reveal the real man (‘the thing itself’) beneath. (There is

clear irony here )

Edgar, who is pretending, ‘a poor, bare, forked animal’ (105-106), is seen by Lear as the most accurate picture of the human condition on stage. Is this a reflection of Lear’s muddle as he descends into madness, or a reflection of the play’s deeper truth?)

Even when Poor Tom is naked, Lear continues to be obsessed by the idea of his clothing (III.vi.76-78).

In effacing his identity as Edgar, Edgar removes all his clothes – anticipating Lear’s progressive stripping away of layers,

1. first metaphorically (his titles), 2. then metonymically (his knights) and

3. finally literally (his clothing), at the end of which he arrives at a fuller sense of self.

Clothes areseen as a generally bad thing at this

point in the play – Lear recognises that the hypocritical

Regan’s clothes do not keep her warm (II.ii.458-459) and Poor Tom twice draws attention to the

extravagance of dress he used to enjoy before his fall (III.iv.84-94, 131-132).

When Lear reappears, after a break of four scenes, in IV.iv, he has begun the process of

reclothing himself – beginning with the crown of wild flowers that establishes the contrast

between old and new (the old, angry tyrant of the court in I.i and the new, unselfconscious king of

nature) and, somewhat ironically, the inalienable nature of kingship (q.v.): however much Lear

has changed, the crown remains. (Whether this is touching or grotesquely parodic is debatable,

however.) Ultimately, he is reclothed only when he reaches Cordelia’s party in IV.vii –

symbolising perhaps the rebirth and fresh sense of self that he is to find, secure in Cordelia’s

love.

Act 3 scene 4

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,     That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,     How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,     Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you     From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en     Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;     Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,     That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,     And show the heavens more just.

Power and Evil

Power is the ability to manipulate and control whatever one desires; to do what one pleases to do without answering to authority.

The power that corrupts the characters plays an extensive role throughout Shakespeare’s play, King Lear.

Goneril and Regan are corrupted by the power that Lear offers them. Edmund’s corruption comes from the trust of his father.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely with the characters, because once have full control, they are so cold that they will do anything to keep the power – or to gain more.

The quest for power corrupts, but when absolute power is attained, treachery and deceit is the only path to take.

EvilThis play deals with evil inherent in humankind and also with supernatural evil.  We see the hell-on-earth, which ensues when humankind surrenders to the seductive power of evil in this play.  Evil is portrayed in the action particularly in the murder of Duncan and Macduff’s family. We also see the profound and absolute evil in the witches.  The witches are intended to represent the metaphysical world of evil spirits. Their meetings take place in conditions suggestive of cosmic disorder. Their function on a symbolic level is to mirror the spirit of evil roaming around Scotland. All their actions are a perversion of the natural order. It is Banquo who recognizes the satanic quality of the witches in his question,’ can the devil speak thus?’ He also recognizes their manner of working ‘ the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence.’

Evil works in the play through deception. The witches as instruments of evil operate in terms of false appearance. As agents of the devil they seek to reverse the normal order of things and by so doing obscure reality. The essence of their intention is embodied in the line,’ air is foul and foul is fair.’ However, the crime to which they incite Macbeth is committed by him and the responsibility for succumbing to the temptation is Macbeth’s alone. Macbeth is his own betrayer. The witches are merely catalysts who bring to the surface the latent evil, which lies buried in his subconscious mind.