KING LEAR

 One of the great tragedies by

Shakespeare.
 Shakespeare wrote King Lear around
1605.
 Ancient Britain, a pre-Christian world
Some of the topics / ideas explored in the
play are;
 Love
 Madness
 Good vs. Evil
 Suffering
 Parent/child relationship
 Spiritual development and rebirth
 Judgement
 Appearance vs. reality
Love
 Lear’s “love test” in the opening
scene
 Cordelia’s love for Lear
 Edgar’s love for Gloucester
 The King of France’s love for Cordelia
 Kent’s love for Lear
Madness
 Some critics argue that King Lear loses
his sanity.
 Goneril and Regan also go mad as a
result of their struggle for power.
 Gloucester attempts suicide.
 Edmund’s madness in pursuit of his
goals is another example.
Suffering
 In King Lear, most of the characters
suffer. They react to suffering in different
ways:
 - violence vs. kindness.
Good vs. Evil
 Greed and lust for power are sources
of evil; they corrupt human beings
and bring about their downfall.
 Edmund, Regan, and Goneril:
greed, envy, wrath, lust, and pride.

 Edgar and Cordelia: faithfulness,

unconditional love.
Imagery
 Storm images
 Animal images
 Images related to clothing/nakedness
The Storm
 It may be interpreted as a symbol that
portrays the chaos within Lear’s mind.

 The storm is an “anti-pastoral”

element – nature that shows humanity
its insignificance.
 Lear on the heath is “mad, bedecked
with weeds.”

 What about his identity after his

downfall?
 The Subplot
 The story of Gloucester and his sons
is similar to the Lear plot.

 Like Cordelia, Edgar (the good son) is

expelled.

 Gloucester is blind to Edmund’s

treachery.
 Gloucester’s blindness parallels
Lear’s madness.

 Gloucester gains self-awareness

when he is blinded.
 The Fool
 King Lear‘s fool understands Lear and
the motivations of his daughters.
He tries to show Lear his folly.
The Grotesque
 Chris Baldick defines grotesque as
«characterized by bizarre distortions,
especially in the exaggerated or abnormal
depiction of human features. The
literature of the grotesque involves
freakish caricatures of people’s
appearance and behaviour, as in the
novels of Dickens. A disturbingly odd
fictional character may also be called a
grotesque» (108).
 «In literary criticism today, the grotesque
names motifs and situations that evoke
both laughter and fear or revulsion and
as such is always extravagantly ironic»
(Gray et al 112).