Shakespeare King Lear Paper

Final Paper: Passage # 5
Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, demonstrates power struggles between parents and children in the form of a tragedy. The main conflict of the play is between King Lear and his two daughters, Goneril and Regan, whom he gave his inheritance to. One of the most significant passages of the entire play is where Goneril, the eldest daughter of King Lear confronts him for the first time, and they argue about the issue of King Lear’s one hundred followers. This dispute is literally the spark that ignites the fuse of the explosive conflicts that ensues the rest of the play.
Goneril: I do beseech you
To understand my purposes aright.
As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.
Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires;
Men so disordered, so deboshed and bold,
That this our court, infected with their manners,
Shows like a riotous inn. Epicurism and lust
Make it more like a tavern or a brothel
Than a graced palace. The shame itself doth speak
For instant remedy; be then desired
By her, that else will take the thing she begs,
A little to disquantify your train;
And the remainder that shall still depend,
To be such men as may besort your age,
And know themselves and you.
(King Lear, 1.4.212-27) Goneril begins by saying she is “beseeching” her father to understand her rightful purposes. The word beseech has a weaker connotation to it, like a beggar pleading for something. However, the tone of the rest of the passage contradicts her attempt to seem like she is begging her father. Goneril continues on, saying, “As you are old and reverend, you should be wise” (1.4.218). On the surface, this may seem like a compliment to King Lear, but it is in fact, quite the opposite. By telling King Lear that he should be wise, Goneril is indirectly saying that he is not wise. Furthermore, Goneril is calling King Lear old, which can bring upon a negative connotation. In the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “old” can mean: “Of a material thing: that has been relatively long in existence or use (opposed to new); worn with age or use; decayed, deteriorated, shabby.” Next, Goneril uses the words disordered, debauched, and bold to describe King Lear’s knights. Disordered and debauched both mean corrupt and depraved of morals, while bold has a double meaning, and could either bring a positive connation of bravery, or a negative connotation of audacious. Ironically, the words that Goneril uses to describe King Lear’s knights are fit to describe her. With the choice of these vocabularies, Shakespeare draws out the hypocrisy in Goneril’s argument. In the next few lines, Goneril states that the King’s entourage has “infected” the “graced palace” with their “epicurism” and “lust”. Again, the word choice here draws out the fact that the only people succumbing to lust and epicurism (the pursuit of pleasure), are Goneril and Regan, who both fall for Edmund. Furthermore, Goneril described the palace with the word “grace”, which means: “an attractive or pleasing quality or feature.” This reveals that Goneril is shallow, and cares more about how things look like, instead of their intrinsic value. This reminded me of when Goneril and Regan described their love for King Lear, how their words were exaggerated and had no value, while Cordelia, who was silent, was actually the one who genuinely loved her father. In the next line, Goneril suggests that the “remedy” for the infection of the palace is to disquantify King Lear’s “train”. Logically, this does not make any sense at all. The solution to the perceived problem should be to force the knights to behave, not to disassemble the entire entourage. Thus, Goneril’s motive is not backed up by her argument, but has to do with something else. The Oxford definition of train is “a number of persons following or attending on someone, usually a person of rank; a body of attendants, retainers, or followers.” Based on Goneril’s persistence to disquantify King Lear’s train, readers can safely speculate that she is in fact trying to disquantify King Lear’s rank and authority. This notion is further emphasized in the line, “that else will take the thing she begs.” If you “take” something by force, you are not begging for it. This is where Goneril puts in a straightforward manner that she is the one in control, not her father. She concludes the passage trying to justify her cause with King Lear’s age. This constant reference to King Lear’s age is a symbol of his growing weakness, as the last days of his life inch closer, so does the end of his reign.
Throughout the entire play, Goneril uses repetition, imagery, word choice to try to show how King Lear’s knights are disgusting and shameful, while she is an obedient, caring daughter who is trying to mitigate the problem. While her arguments are ornamented with glamorous and righteous vocabulary, in reality, Shakespeare utilizes her own contradictions and hypocrisies to reveal Goneril’s evilness.
One of the main things that Goneril keeps repeating is King Lear’s age. She keeps emphasizing the fact that King Lear is getting old and weak, and using it to justify her acts of diminishing his power. An example of this can be seen in the line, “And the remainder that shall still depend, to be such men as may besort your age” (1.4.211). Regan supports this as well, when she holds her sister’s hand and says, “I pray you, father, being weak, seem so” (2.2.366). It seems as if the two sisters are joining together to point out that King Lear is getting older, so he should let go of his power by dismissing his knights. Altogether, this does not make any logical sense whatsoever. If the king is becoming physically weaker, then he should be protected by even more knights, not less. Thus, Goneril and Regan’s obsession with reducing the number of King Lear’s followers has nothing to do with his age, and their justification to reduce the number of knights is in fact, a contradiction. As Shakespeare uses King Lear’s age as repetition, the real reason behind the sister’s persistence becomes so much more obvious. The reason why the sisters find it so important to disassemble King Lear’s entourage is to strip away his last remaining source of authority. By “disquantifying” his train, they are actually disquantifying his power, and ultimately, his identity as the king. This was Goneril’s plan all along, and can be seen when through the early interactions between King Lear and Oswald. First, Oswald ignores Lear, and when Lear asks him who he is, Oswald replies, “My lady’s father” (1.4.68). This is extremely offensive to King Lear, as he still expects to be treated like the king, but the only people who still treat him like the King are his knights, the fool, and Kent. This is precisely why Goneril focuses so much effort on trying to disband Lear’s followers by using such negative imagery to relate to them. Once they are dismissed, then Lear has completely lost his identity and authority as the King. Later on, in the same act, Lear asks the fool, “Who is it that can tell me who I am?” and the fool replies, “Lear’s shadow.” In another passage, Goneril says to King Lear, “You strike my people, and your disordered rabble make servants of their betters” (1.4.217) Basically, Goneril is telling Lear that he no longer has the right to hit her men, which indirectly sends a message to Lear that he can no longer command her to do anything, because she is “better”.
When Goneril says one thing, but does another, or uses euphonic words with an aggressive tone, it brings out the worst in Goneril and stands out to the readers, making the readers look down on Goneril even more. In the main passage, Goneril says that Lear’s knights are infecting the court with their epicurism and lust. By saying that, Goneril becomes a hypocrite, because she succumbs to her own lustful desires later on, when she plans to betray her husband to be Edmund’s mistress. Goneril called her father fickle (1.1.284), but she decided that she wanted to be with Edmund as soon as she heard that her husband, Albany, no longer supported her plots. She even kisses Edmund, and insinuates that she wants to be his mistress (4.2.24). Then, Goneril blames her husband, for being a “Milk-livered (cowardly) man” for having morals like a fool (4.2.49-57). This becomes her biggest hypocrisy when Albany finds out from the letter about Goneril’s plot to betray him, and she commits suicide. In a sense, her death spells justice, but readers can easily still feel like she got the easy way out. She realized she had lost everything, and took her own life like a coward rather than facing the consequences of her own actions.
The main passage is significant because it is the first time Goneril challenges King Lear. It is the first time King Lear sees Goneril’s true colors, and serves as a transition for the audience to truly begin to loathe Goneril. The evil things Goneril did already make her a bad character, but when she tries to be tricky and sly, the audience loses all sympathy for her. Her contradictions and hypocrisies dilate her immoral deeds, and Shakespeare portrays this cleverly through repetition, imagery, and word choice. These literary techniques are important because they are more powerful than directly telling the audience how wicked Goneril is; the literary tools dig deep into the audience’s subconscious and take over their emotions. The audience still needs to pay close attention to every line in order to absorb everything Shakespeare presents in his plays.