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King Lear – Tragedy

King Lear – Tragedy. Dividing up the Kingdom. At the beginning. Lear is King of Britain Gloucester (pronounced Gloster ) is a Duke Both are in high positions “halfway between earth and sky” This is a pre-Christian Britain. Lear’s 3 daughters.

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King Lear – Tragedy

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  1. King Lear – Tragedy

  2. Dividing up the Kingdom

  3. At the beginning • Lear is King of Britain • Gloucester (pronounced Gloster) is a Duke • Both are in high positions “halfway between earth and sky” • This is a pre-Christian Britain

  4. Lear’s 3 daughters • Goneril and Regan tell their father how much they love him so they can get shares of the kingdom • Cordelia refuses to play the game

  5. Gloucester’s two sons • Edgar is older and legitimate • Edmund is younger and illegitimate • Edmund pretends that he has received a letter from Edgar suggesting treachery against Gloucester • Gloucester is gullible and actually Edgar is, too – they both do and believe what Edmund tells them • Eventually, Edgar is forced to flee because Gloucester believes Edgar has betrayed him

  6. King Lear is outside • He is in a raging storm which is both external and internal because he is going completely insane • He is returning to nature

  7. Cornwall (Regan’s husband) pulls out Gloucester’s eyes on stage • This is in revenge because Gloucester has gone out to see King Lear in his little hut and has tried to help him

  8. Lots of plot • Edgar, naked and pretending insanity, finds his father and leads him around • His father, Gloucester, wants to commit suicide by jumping off the cliffs at Dover, • Edgar helps him by letting him jump off a little bump in the ground • Then Edgar pretends to be somebody else at the bottom of the cliff

  9. More plot • Cordelia and her husband, the King of France, come to England to fight the other two sisters and rescue Lear. • They find Lear insane and try to heal him. He gets well enough to have a small reconciliation with Cordelia. • Cordelia loses the war and she and Lear are taken prisoner.

  10. Cordelia dies (Edmund’s orders)

  11. Everybody dies • Edgar kills Edmund • Regan dies of poison and Goneril commits suicide • King Lear and Gloucester die • Edgar becomes King

  12. Major themes • Edgar, Edmund, and Gloucester – their plot and the issue of free will • Return to the debate between Edmund & Gloucester about responsibility for one’s actions • Paganism and Christianity in the play • Cordelia 4.4.26+ • “As flies to wanton boys” scene 4.1.40+ • Kent – “It is the stars” 4.3.38+ • Gloucester and his eyes • How he begins actually to “see” 4.1.18+ • “I see it feelingly” 4.6.164 • Seeing as a major theme of the play • It may go with the theme of reading letters

  13. Wisdom and foolishness King Lear’s fool is wiser than heThe fool tells him that he is the fool – and he is

  14. Major themes, continued • Interior = Exterior • King himself is the land – divide the kingdom and the king loses his psychic integrity • Storm scene: madness of nature & of Lear

  15. Existentialism: What is “unaccommodated man”? • Lear and the storm scene – • Wheel of fortune – “I am bound upon a wheel of fire 4.7.52+ • Lear and the trial of his daughters • The Fool and Edgar on the Great Chain • Meta-theatre – “this great stage of fools” 4.6.200

  16. Lear comes to recognition? • what Lear learns: his prayer 3.4.31+ • Unaccommodated man speech 3.4.107+ • Lear turns around, anagnorisis (recognition)

  17. Akira Kurosawa’s Ran Kurosawa’s version of King Lear = Ran, the fool: “Are there no gods?”, trailer

  18. Finally • Great Chain of Being • Parallel plots – or not so parallel? • Edgar and existentialism and Early Modernism

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