King Lear Revision

King Lear – Revision

Male Potency

Goneril’s emasculation of Albany in the first and final Acts, “milky gentleness…harmful mildness” [p.212 A1S4]; “[weak]-mannered man!” etc
Elizabethan understanding of the word “nothing” which is so much repeated.
It’s daughters not sons taking away Lear’s power.
Old men, Lear and Gloucester. “I am ashamed…” [p209 A2S4], Fool: “horns without a case” [A1S5]

Goneril calling Lear’s knights a “rabble”, shows Lear to be an impotent leader. Thereafter, daughters take away his knights “have less knights” – take away his power.

Monstrosity

Theme centred largely around Lear’s daughters
Lear to Goneril “She’ll [Regan] flay thy wolvish visage” [A1S4 p210]
Extreme* nature of the language Shakespeare employs in the descriptions of the daughters’ monstrosity. Suggestions of a rather misogynistic subtext in the play, whereby men are often victimised by the devilry of Regan and Goneril.

Madness

End of Act I, conspicuous thematic demarcation of the beginning of Lear’s psychological collapse, “O let me not be mad…” [p215]

Fool

Emblematic of irony. Despite playing part of the Fool, as in multiple Shakespeare plays (give example) – it’s the Fool who makes the shrewdest observations, or, in the thematic language ofLear’s transition from power and sight to powerlessness and blindness, the Fool who has the keenest sight. Seen when Fool teaches King a lesson about the value of the sort of Machiavellianism ethat the likes of Lear’s daughters and Edmund, already know “Sirrah I’ll teach thee a speech”, “Have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest”.
In some productions of the play, on the heath the King is seen iving whatever is left of his clothing to the Fool for warmth. Level of closeness between such unlikely characters…
Cordelia parallel: in multiple productions of King Lear, for example atin the 2012 production at the Globe, the Fool and Cordelia are played by the same actor. Through hthis paradigmgm the Fool serves wto whoolly augment thesignificance of the character of Cordelia. For when we consider COrdelia as representing the King’s ultimgreatest tragic flaw, his one mistake that set his “great wheel run down a hill…” – the Fool is almost the spectre of Cordelia, of Lear’s tragic flaw, tgat folhaunts him through the play. IN this way, this parallel lends credence to the interpretation of the Fool as Lear’s conscience. Rathrather conscpiuous textual evidence of this parallel can be seen in Act I, Scene 4 whilst the Fool is advising the King ofa a more realpolitik philosophy; the Fool asks “Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?” and Lear, echoing almost verbatim the chiding words he spoke to COrdelia in A1S1(?), when she would not partake in the expedient* games of her sisters., rereplies “Why no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing”.

- Fool essay advice
- past paper questions
- practice mini essays
- imitate first essay
- theatrical/textual analysis
- explain literary devices with a view to the intended theatrical effect