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Transcript

King Lear

Presented by: Sarah Atif & Erin Ngo

King Lear is a..

Tragedy

Genre

King Lear, now old and ready to retire announces that the Britain will be split between his three daughters. Before he assigns his daughters their respective portions of land he asks them how much they love him. Goneril and Regan blandish their father and tell him that they love him more than anything. Cordelia, however, the youngest of the three daughters, tells him that she loves him as much as a daughter should, no more no less.

Hearing her statement, Lear is outraged he disowns her and banishes Kent a loyal nobleman who disagreed with his judgement. Having been disowned one of Cordelia’s suitors retracts his proposal for marriage however the King of France, another suitor still insists on marrying her and takes Cordelia to France with him even without Lear’s approval

Plot

Simultaneously Gloucester a nobleman loyal to the king is put in a situation similar to lear’s he is deceived by his bastard son Edmund and believes that his legitimate son Edgar is out to get him. Edgar is advised by his manipulative brother: Edmund, to flee and hide from their father’s wrath.

Eventually, King Lear realises his mistake after Goneril and Regan use the authority he’s given them against him and take away his soldiers, unable to stomach this betrayal he begins his descent into madness.

Edgar strips off his aristocratic robes and disguises himself as a crazy beggar called poor Tom in an attempt to evade his manhunt and soon chances upon his father (who has been blinded for helping Lear) and leads him to Dover where Lear has also been brought and where Cordelia’s French army has invaded England as an attempt to provide aid for her father.

Edmund, aware of Cordelia’s invasion, leads English troops to subdue Cordelia’s french army. He succeeds and captures Cordelia and Lear sentencing them to death.

At this point Edmund has not only caused conflict between his father and brother but has also (unintentionally) ruined Goneril and Regan’s amicable relationship. Previously Goneril and Regan joined forces against Lear, however, after developing romantic feelings for Edmund, are now willing to go to great lengths to obtain his affection and would literally kill for him.

All these events lead up to a climax where Edgar duels with Edmund (after Edmund defeats Cordelia’s army) and emerges victorious;Gloucester dies (despite Edgar’s successful attempt at preventing him from committing suicide). Goneril poisons Regan out of jealousy then ends up killing herself after Edmund has been fatally wounded by Edgar; Cordelia dies after being sentenced to death by Edmund after her army was defeated, Lear passes away due to unbearable sadness and Kent who remains loyal to him until the bitter end, soon joins him. Leaving Edgar and Albany to rule England.

This play has a total of 18 speaking characters, the most significant of which are, in no particular order: Edgar, Regan, Goneril, the Fool, Gloucester, Edmund, Cordelia and king Lear.

Character

King Lear

King Lear

The main protagonist and the retiring king of Britain. Initially he is seen as quite shallow, relishing in complete power and control but refusing to partake in any of the responsibility which comes with his role.

Cordelia

She plays the role of Lear's youngest daughter, and is disowned in the beginning after she refuses to blindly flatter her father. She is mostly seen as a symbol of devotion, kindness, beauty, and honesty.

Edmund

Gloucester’s youngest, illegitimate son.

Edmund is denied any inheritance and familial love seemingly throughout his life, seeing as his father clearly prefers Edgar, his older and ‘legitimate’ son.

Power

Theme

Justice

Justice

Crowded with human cruelty and terrible, disastrous events, King Lear is undoubtedly a brutal play. The progression of heinous and grim events during the play questions the presence of any justice or remaining righteousness left in the hostile,unfair world the characters are thrust in.

Chaos

Although Lear begins as a figure of authority and order, when he gives up his power and Goneril and Regan turn against him, he falls apart, going mad. Moreover, his personal decline parallels a farther-reaching dissolution of order and justice in the British state. Lear's error, based on blindness and misjudgment, doesn't just ruin him personally. It leads to a political situation in which there is no order to guarantee justice.

Power

Important is the notion of power — who has it, how one obtains it, how one defines it, and how it plays into King Lear. With this look at power should also come an investigation of issues such as age and gender. Consider, for example, the treatment of the elderly by their offspring. And think about the power and placement of women in Shakespeare's time as compared with the position of women in society and the home today.

The Stars, Heavens, and the Gods

Animals

Clothing and Costumes

Blindness

The Storm

Symbolism

Blindness

Gloucester’s physical blindness symbolizes the metaphorical blindness that grips both Gloucester and the play’s other father figure, Lear. Only when Gloucester has lost the use of his eyes and Lear has gone mad does each realize his tremendous error. It is appropriate that the play brings them together near Dover in Act 4 to commiserate about how their blindness to the truth about their children has cost them dearly.

The Storm

As Lear wanders about a desolate heath in Act 3, 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. Finally, the meteorological chaos also symbolizes the political disarray that has engulfed Lear’s Britain.

The Stars, Heavens, and the Gods

In Shakespeare's time there was a particularly strong belief that order on earth depended on order in the heavens—or, as Kent puts it, that "the stars above us govern our conditions". Celestial bodies are thus both a metaphor of order and a potential source of disorder, when they go awry.

Animals

From start to finish, King Lear is full of references to animals, usually incorporated into insults and curses or used to describe states of maximum human degradation.Throughout the play, animals present a vision of brutal nature to which men can descend, and yet the animals are also held up as less corrupt than men.

Clothing and Costumes

Complementing the many references to animals throughout the play are mentions of clothing and instances of disguise. Kent, banished by Lear, disguises himself as the commoner Caius. Edgar, fleeing Gloucester's mistaken wrath, transforms himself the mad beggar, Poor Tom.

As the honorable characters of the play must take off their fine clothes and put on disguises to remain loyal, and Lear associates Goneril and Regan's fine clothing with their duplicity, clothing becomes a symbol of the desire for power and status that corrupts characters like Goneril, Regan, Edmund, and Cornwall.

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