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96 King Lear Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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King Lear Themes, Characters, & Analysis Essay As explained by Al Zoubi and Al Khamaiseh, during the ceremony, Goneril and Regan, the oldest and the middle daughters, use flatter and insincere speech to prove their love to the father.
Tragic Redemption in “King Lear” by Shakespeare King Lear and the other characters that were at fault in the beginning of the play are redeemed in the end by the tragic death of the most innocent character.
Comparison of “Hamlet”, “King Lear” and “Othello” by Shakespeare Iago’s reports and the loss of the handkerchief appear to Othello reliable proofs of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness, and under the effect of anger the protagonist is both unable and unwilling to do further investigation.
Regan and Goneril in “King Lear” by Shakespeare Regan and Goneril are portrayed with various defiant actions against the inequalities occurring in the contemporary society of the male-dominated world. The female archetype is described as an element of the oppression in the patriarchal […]
King Lear as a Depiction of Shakespeare’s Era First of all, in order to depict the universality of the events, to show that this is not a particular case he describes but the characteristics of his epoque, Shakespeare doubled the plot, telling, in […]
Analysis of King Lear and Paradise Lost One son in particular, Edmund, allows the pain of being born a bastard and the rejection of his father to skew his view of the world and the intentions of his ambition.
Shakespeare Tragedies: Macbeth and King Lear At the beginning of the play, he decides to abdicate his throne and divide his kingdom among his three daughters. This choice eventually undermines the ethical integrity of this character, and he murders murder to […]
Individual’s Sense of Entitlement and Destructive Behavior in “King Lear” A sense of entitlement can arise from the way a person is treated or from their temperament and as such, it is a dangerous attitude to acquire or encourage because it may lead to disparaging […]
King Lear’s Cataclysm: Analysis of Shakespeare’s Plays He does this by allocating his land and property to his three daughters to the degree to which they are able to convince him that they love him.
Villains in Shakespeare’s “King Lear” In his turn, Edmund, the illegitimate son of Gloucester, is a character who would never commit crimes and cruelty to admire the results of villainous actions.
Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and Smiley’s “A Thousand Acres” In King Lear and A Thousand of Acres, the destinies of both King Lear and Larry Cook encounter unfair attitudes toward daughters and death, as a result. Lear and Larry are in despair because of […]
Deception in King Lear, The Odyssey and Gilgamesh The forms of deception in the book seem to come effortlessly to Odysseus, and the stories he tells throughout the book serve to protect him and his family.
Quotes From Tragedy of King Lear by Shakespeare Chapter three in the book of Genesis tells about the temptation of a woman by the serpent and the violation of the prohibition on eating fruits from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil.
Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and “A Thousand Acres” Film The task of A Thousand Acres is to demonstrate the relevance and popularity of the primary source among the modern reader, simultaneously with criticism and rethinking of specific points.
Shakespeare and His View on Kingship: Macbeth, King Lear and Othello At the same time, it is beyond doubt in the basement Macbeth’s character is clean and as a soldier, he is true to his job and his king.
Personal Conflict of King Lear in Play by Shakespeare From the beginning of the story, he managed to set the readers against the king, which makes the majority of them support the daughters in the conflict between them and the king, the conflict that, […]
“King Lear” by William Shakespeare: A Play Review by Jeremy Bryson Gloucester, in response to the attack on Edmond, promises to bring Edgar to justice, and also states that he is going to make Edmond his heir.
Language of Henry V and King Lear by W. Shakespeare The most obvious similarities in the language of the two plays are that it takes a good actor to be able to deliver the lines at all, and a superb actor to be able to […]
The Role of Trickery in Shakespear’s “King Lear” The trickster and the person being tricked, the switching that the trickster uses in order to play a trick on the person will also be put to light.
Shakespeare’s King Lear: A Bad Judgment Turns Tragic However, in this play, we can be witnesses to a fact that all of the pain that King Lear had undergone can be cathartic.
Shakespeare’s “King Lear” Adaptation by Ian Pollock The panes are arranged in a way that helps to quickly and intuitively follow the major events and receive a clear picture of those before the actual reading of the utterances.
“King Lear ” by William Shakespeare At the end of the day, the character learns the price of such a fatal mistake which is betrayal and loss of everything he loved in his life. The theme of the transformational power of […]
Society Role in Literature: King Lear and Things Fall Apart The difference is that the leader of the plan is much tougher physically and emotionally, and it is evident that he would not give up his values and morals.
Literature Studies: King Lear by William Shakespeare Bad luck is clear in the story through the inconsistent relationship between King Lear and his daughters as well as from the role of dishonesty and power in the play.
Comparison of “Tuesdays With Morrie” by Mitch Albom and “King Lear” by William Shakespeare He is viewed as a man of wisdom, owing to the lessons he has learned from his sufferings since childhood, which he, in turn, teaches Albom.
Similar Themes in the Movie “King Lear” and “About Schmidt” It is clear that both the film directors have used these themes in order to develop the plot of the respective movies and, at the same time, be in a position of expressing the ethical […]
The Effective Usage of Subplots in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Gradual Diminishment of Control Within Lear’s Kingdom in Shakespeare’s Play “King Lear”
The Idea of Imprisonment in the Plot of Shakespearean “King Lear”
The Illustration of Consequences of One Man’s Decisions in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Use of Parallelism in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Importance and Role of Rejection in William Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Importance of Responsibilities in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
Relationship Themes Evident in William Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Importance of Sight and Blindness in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Important Contextual Influences on Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Madness of Edmund in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Many Effective Images Incorporated Into William Shakespeare’s Play “King Lear”
The Metaphor of Being Blind in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Natural Response of a Person to Judgement in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Opposing Views to Lear’s Temperament in the Play “King Lear”
Patience Standards Portrayed in “King Lear” Drama
The Play “King Lear” and the Audience’s Minds During Watching a Play by William Shakespeare
The Power of Religious Redemption in William Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Protagonist’s Attainment of Self Knowledge in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Use of Paradox as Related to the Theme of Truth in “King Lear”
The Theme of Insight and Sight Between Gloucester and Lear in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Tangled Web of Secrets in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Representation of Women in “King Lear” and “The Vicar of Wakefield”
The Road to Self-Knowledge in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Role of Femininity in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “Othello,” and “King Lear”
Cultural Heritage Portrayed in “King Lear” Play
The Significance of Nature in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Similarities of Events That Lear and Gloucestor Experienced in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Story of Treachery and Deceit in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Themes of Sanity and Madness in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Temporal Allusions in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Theme of Consciousness in “King Lear” by Shakespeare
The Themes of Deception and Shame in William Shakespeare’s “King Lear” and Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”
The Test of Love in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Three Major Roles of the Fool in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Tragedy Ending in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Tragic Consequence of Blindness in “King Lear”
The Themes of Gender and Sexuality in Sigmund Freud’s “Dora” and William Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Tragic Heroes in “King Lear,” “Hamlet,” and “Oedipus Rex”
The Recurring Theme of Sight Against Blindness in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
The Trait of Goodness in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare
The Use of Motif on Filial Responsibility in William Shakespeare’s “King Lear”
What Will Make “King Lear” Continue to Be Worthy of Critical Study?
How Is Power Shown in “King Lear”?
How Does Shakespeare Set up the Beginning Scene of “King Lear”?
What Important Changes Happen to Lear in “King Lear”?
What Are Two Key Scenes From “King Lear” by William Shakespeare?
What Are the Three Mental Stages of King Lear in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare?
How Does Shakespeare Use the Fool in “King Lear”?
How Does Shakespeare Explore Nature in “King Lear”?
What Is the Basic Story of “King Lear”?
How Does Shakespeare’s “King Lear” Hold Its Appeal to a Modern Audience?
What Are the Most Important Themes in “King Lear”?
What Does “King Lear” Learn From His Sufferings?
What Mental Illness Does “King Lear” Have?
How Are Sibling Relationships Presented in “King Lear”?
Is King Lear a Sympathetic Figure or a Victim of His Own Flaws?
How Does Shakespeare Present Edmund in “King Lear”?
Does “King Lear” Present an Implicit Theory of Leadership?
What Is the Significance of the English Language in “King Lear”?
Is There a Moral to the Play “King Lear”?
What Does the Play “King Lear” Teach About Patience?
To What Extent Does Fate Determine the Characters’ Actions and Outcomes in “King Lear”?
What Is the Conclusion of “King Lear”?
Was “King Lear” Mad or Suffering From Senility?
How the Sub-Plot Mirrors the Main Plot in “King Lear” by William Shakespeare?
How Clothing Imagery Defines the Characters Within “King Lear”?
What Is “King Lear” Most Known For?
Does “King Lear” Play the Tragic Hero or the Autocrat?
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Sample essay titles for your delictation and delight.

King Lear William Shakespeare Essay Questions

1. “Shakespeare’s King Lear is a play of redemption in which the King moves from moral blindness to a clearer vision of what really matters.” Discuss and illustrate

. 2. “King Lear is not only a tragedy of parents and children, of pride and ingratitude; it is also a tragedy of kingship.” Discuss with reference to power relations in King Lear.

3. ‘King Lear might start like a fairy-tale, but most of it is like a nightmare.’ Discuss.

4. ‘The ending of King Lear is unbearable.’ Discuss.

5. “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’gods; They kill us for their sport.” Discuss with reference to both the King Lear main plot and the Gloucester subplot.

6. “Cordelia is admirable, but not entirely.” Discuss.

7. “Gloucester’s physical blindness is a mirror image of Lear’s spiritual blindness”. Discuss the ways in which the sub-plot in Shakespeare’s King Lear is a reflection of the main one.

8. “King Lear is a play about the corrupting and destructive effects of power.” Discuss.

9. “King Lear is a play dominated by the contrast between wisdom and foolishness.” Discuss.

10. “King Lear is a play in which madness is the key to the realization of the truth”. Discuss.

11. “Lear is a contemptible figure at the beginning of the play, but he deserves some admiration by the end of it.” Discuss.

12. “Lear’s fool is a jester by profession, but the effect he creates is not one of professional control and expertise, but of jokes pulled out of agony and frustration.” Discuss the role of the fool in King Lear and his function in the unfolding of the plot.

13. “Some good I mean to do, i. Despite of mine own nature.” Discuss the complex relations between character and circumstance in King Lear.

14. “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices i. Make instruments to plague us.” Discuss the complex relations between vice and justice in King Lear. King Lear William Shakespeare

15. “The individuals in King Lear always move across landscapes of the widest extent, criss-crossed by innumerable simultaneous purposes.” Relate this statement to the parallelism between the main and the sub-plots in Shakespeare’s play.

16. Assess the importance of the theme of loyalty in King Lear.

17. Critically examine Lear’s changing relationship with Cordelia.

18. Discuss the importance of the characters of Edmund and Edgar in King Lear.

19. Discuss the importance of the storm scenes in King Lear.

20. Discuss the theme of suffering in King Lear.

21. Fully discuss and illustrate the themes of Hypocrisy and Division in Shakespeare’s King Lear.

22. Fully discuss public and private concerns in Shakespeare’s King Lear

. 23. There are many kinds of suffering in King Lear, and little consolation.” Discuss.

24. Unlike other dramatists, who used ‘mad scenes’ for comic effect, Shakespeare seems intent on a serious portrayal of madness in King Lear.” Discuss the different types of madness in the play.

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

What does King Lear ’s use of literal and metaphorical blindness suggest about the play’s vision of the world? What’s the meaning of seeing in this play?

Why does Lear ask his daughters the fateful question at all? What does the first scene reveal about Lear’s character, and how does Lear’s question relate to the terrible events that follow?

Lear’s Fool disappears without a trace after the storm scenes. Why might this be? What does the Fool mean to the first half of the play, and why might he not fit into the second half?

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on William Shakespeare's King Lear . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

King Lear: Introduction

King lear: plot summary, king lear: detailed summary & analysis, king lear: themes, king lear: quotes, king lear: characters, king lear: symbols, king lear: literary devices, king lear: quizzes, king lear: theme wheel, brief biography of william shakespeare.

Historical Context of King Lear

Other books related to king lear.

Full Title: The Tragedy of King Lear
When Written: c. 1605
Where Written: England
When Published: 1608; 1623
Literary Period: The Renaissance
Genre: Tragedy
Setting: England, in pre-Christian times
Climax: Lear raging in the thunderstorm
Antagonist: Regan, Goneril, Edmund

Extra Credit for King Lear

Poor Tom . The character of Poor Tom or the Bedlam Beggar, as which Edgar disguises himself, is based on vagabonds or madmen considered dangerous in England at the time. "Bedlam" was a slang word for "Bethlehem," which was the name of a mental institution in London.

Two Versions . There are actually two different versions of King Lear — The History of King Lear published in quarto form in 1608 and The Tragedy of King Lear , which was published in the First Folio (1623) and is very substantially revised from the play published in 1608. Before the 1990s, editors usually "blended" the two texts, taking what they believed were the best versions of each scene. In recent times, some editors have started focusing on the "original" 1608 edition.

Poor Fool . In Shakespeare's day, the roles of Cordelia and the Fool were often "doubled"—played by the same actor—since the two characters are never on stage at the same time. Shakespeare alludes to this fact at several points in the play. The first time that Lear summons the Fool, in 1.4, both he and his Knight observe that the Fool has been melancholy ever since Cordelia was sent to France. More famously, in 5.3, upon learning of Cordelia's death, Lear remarks "And my poor fool is hanged" (5.3.369). Sometimes directors staging the play invent a scene in which the Fool himself is hanged, to explain this line, but the tradition of doubling the characters is the better explanation.

The problem of artistic consummation, being the problem of magnitude in the highest degree, is imperiled by its own scope, but fortunately there is a part of King Lear that by assent is its most tragic region, the region where suffering takes on such dimension that even Shakespeare could find no better word than “madness” to contain it. Furthermore, since the madness of Lear is almost entirely Shakespeare’s invention 2 and is crucial in the transformation of the many stories of King Lear into the only Tragedie of King Lear , it brings us face to face with both the tragic art and the tragic artist. Now, to speak of a consummate poetic accomplishment is to imply that the kind of criticism which views all a writer’s problems as unique has overlooked a part of the whole of truth. For, to speak of an artistic attainment as possessing magnitude in the highest degree is to imply the existence of attainments somewhat analogous and in this and that common respect somewhat inferior; it implies either this or the existence of a critic who has some a priori conception of a poem more wonderful than any yet written, in which case the critic should change to a more wonderful profession and contribute its culminating splendor. For us at least, it is certainly easier and wiser to say that every writer in each particular act of composing faces problems that have various levels of universality, and, if this were not so, we could not recognize any uniqueness in his achievement; the chances are we could not even recognize what he had written. In only certain senses, then, does Shakespeare forever elude us and refuse to “abide our question,” for, if there are general problems confronting every writer, we should be able to ask questions that Shakespeare of all men made no attempt to elude.

At a high level of universality, to write anything well, whether it be intellectual or imaginative, is to assume at least two obligations: to be intelligible and to be interesting . Intelligibility, too, has its levels of obligation, on the lowest of individual statements, and even on this level the obligation is never easy to fulfill and perhaps even to genius could be a nightmare if what the genius sought to represent was “madness.” Only to a limited degree, however, can individual statements be intelligible—and in many instances and for a variety of reasons the individual statements are meant to be obscure, as in “mad” speeches. Since full intelligibility depends upon the relations of individual statement to individual statement, the concept of intelligibility, fully expanded, includes order and completeness ; for a fully intelligible exposition or poem having relations has parts, and all the parts ought to be there and add up to a whole. The second major obligation, that of being “interesting,” includes unexpectedness and suspense , for expository as well as imaginative writing should not be merely what the reader expected it would be—or why should it be written or read?—and the unexpected should not be immediately and totally announced (in other words, expository and imaginative writing should have suspense), for, if the whole is immediately known, why should the writer or reader proceed farther?

But the accomplished writer gives his selected material more than shape—he gives it proper size . For a piece of writing to have its proper size is an excellent thing, or otherwise it would be lacking in intelligibility or interest or both. Thus, if Lear’s anger had been transformed into madness in a single scene, all the odds are that such a transformation would seem beyond belief, and it is just as certain that the play would have died in the memory of men for want of suspense. On the other hand, the madness of Lear could have been drawn at such length that the spectator, like Kent, could not continue to view the suffering or, worse still, until the spectator began to suspect an author was manipulating suffering for suspense—and in either case the spectator would feel that he had seen too much. Moreover, the size of any literary particle is not a matter of quantity only. Every art has ways of making a thing seem bigger or smaller than the space it occupies, as Cordelia is more wonderful by far than the number of lines she utters and is even tragically present when she is tragically absent, and as Lear becomes more gigantic when he can utter only a few lines or broken lines or none at all.

We have come close to the special realm of imaginative or poetic writing, with its special obligations, two of which we shall refer to as vividness and probability . As poetic writing is the representing or “making” of human experience, so the poet is the writer who possesses the powers and devices that transfer “life” from flesh to words. These possessions of a poet are not merely a knowledge of “life”; Machiavelli knew much about successful and unsuccessful rulers and wrote The Prince , and analysts know much about madness and come no closer to King Lear than case reports. Shakespeare “made” many rulers, successful and otherwise, and one he “made” mad. In so far, then, as a poem possesses “life,” it has vividness . A poem, however, makes not “life” only but a “world.” Hence any of its parts, when related to the others, must seem probable . Not any living being may enter Lear , and the few who may are severely limited in freedom of thought, speech, and action. What may happen in a poem must be compatible with the general conditions of “existence” as postulated by the poem; and what actually does happen and the order in which it happens must appear as adequately caused by the constitution of the individual characters and by the circumstances in which they are placed. The same legendary figure may enter two worlds and in the early Elizabethan play may spell his name “Leir” and survive his misfortunes, but, having ventured upon the thick rotundity of Shakespeare’s world, he cannot be saved, and certainly not by the alteration of any neoclassical poet.

In certain ultimate senses the world that is each poem is bound together so that it binds the hearts of those who look upon it, of whom the poet is one. To look upon a poem, then, as distinct from looking upon much of the succession of life, is to be moved, and moved by emotions that, on the whole, attract us to it and are psychologically compatible. All of us, therefore, seem to be asking for less than we expect when we ask that poems have emotional unity ; but this is so commonly the language of the request that we shall assume it means what we expect it does—that the emotions aroused by any good poem should be psychologically compatible and also of a kind out of which attachments are formed. We may ask for many other things from poems—biographical information, or political or theological wisdom—but, in making any of these further requests, we should recognize that we are asking for what only certain good poems give, and then generally not so well as something else. What is here taken as ultimate in poetry is what is true of all good poems: they give a high order of distinctive pleasures, and it may be said summarily of high and distinctive pleasures that no man seems in danger of exceeding his allotment.

In a way a poet is untroubled about all this—about writing or writing poetry, for these are abstractions that cannot be engaged in, and he is trying to find the first or next word, and after “thick rotundity” he listens to “of” and is troubled, and then hears “o’ ” and so moves on to other troubles, leaving behind him “the thick rotundity o’ th’ world.” In a way, then, even in a long life a poet never writes poetry—just a few poems; and in this sense a poet’s problems do not begin until he closes in upon a piece of paper with something less abstract in mind than writing or writing poetry. He may wish, as many lyric poets have wished, to write a drama or a novel, but the story is so distinct from the lyric that few poets, despite a tendency of poets to be expansive in their ambitions, have been eminent in both poetic arts. Shelley and Keats had a maximum of aspiration but hardly a minimum of gift for plot and character, and even Browning, with his surpassing delineation of men and women in dramatic monologue, could not make anything happen in a drama. Coming closer to the paper on which King Lear was written, we also know that to have the characters tell their own story on a stage raises problems very distinct from those required for putting the story between the covers of a novel. It may seem that the distinction between manners of presenting a story is largely classificatory; yet stories are so locked artistically to those selected to tell them that great novels seldom remain great when they are strutted upon the stage, and vice versa. Particular manners of presentation are particular artistic problems, and particular artistic gifts are needed to solve these problems, and, if not, who are those who are both great novelists and great dramatists? And, more particular still, who among dramatists wrote both great comedies and great tragedies, although tragedy is only drama that moves certain emotions in us? Yet these two dramatic arts are so distinctive that Shakespeare is the single answer to the question of what dramatist eminently possessed both the tragic power and the power of moving to laughter. Even more specialized, personal, and unique are the problems to be focused on in this study—what confronted Shakespeare and Lear, who stood outside when a storm arose and a daughter ordered a door shut. Mind you, before this particular moment Lear had been a successful king and Shakespeare had written great tragedies, but neither had ventured far into madness.

This was a lonely moment in art; yet the moment that is the poet’s moment is not his alone, and his problems that seem highly unique would not even occur if he were not concerned, however secretly and for whatever reasons, in loading each particular vein with what can generally be recognized as ore. It is true that he would have no poetic problems at all if each particular moment of art did not have to enter the general world of art, for unattended self-expression is another occupation, altogether lonely.

We propose to follow Lear and Shakespeare across the heath to the fields of Dover on what for both was a unique experience, and then to be even more particular, considering the individual scenes leading to this meeting of Lear and Gloucester when in opposite senses neither could see. And, for smaller particulars, we shall consider an incident from one of these scenes, a speech from this incident, and, finally, a single word. In this declension of particulars, our problems will be some of those that were Shakespeare’s because he was attending Lear and at the same time was on his way toward a consummation in the art of tragic writing.

At the end of Act II night has come, an external storm threatens, and an external door is shut; in Act IV, scene 6, Lear, “fantastically dressed with weeds,” meets Gloucester and Edgar upon the tranquil fields of Dover, the tempest now a tempest of the mind and at its worst. To view this large expanse of suffering as a single dramatic unit is also to see that, in the form of organic life called a poem, “parts” are “parts” and in certain senses “wholes.” By the end of Act II the major external causes of Lear’s madness have occurred; by Act IV, scene 6, they have brought Lear to “the sulphurous pit” and unrestrained madness, from which, even in the next scene, he is somewhat “restored.” For a variety of reasons we shall state the unity of this dramatic episode in terms of a change that it brings about in Lear’s thoughts and beliefs concerning man, the universe, and the gods, a change in thought that is both a cause and a projection of his madness.

Prior to this episode (and presumably always before it), Lear believed in a universe controlled by divine authority, harmoniously ordered and subordinated in its parts, a harmony reflected in the affairs of men by the presence of political and legal institutions, and social and family bonds. Men were the most divinely empowered of divine creations, and the special power of kings was a sign of their special divinity. At the end of this episode (Act IV, scene 6), the world that Lear tells Gloucester he should be able to see even without eyes is one in which man is leveled to a beast and then raised to the most fearful of his kind: the source of man’s power, as with the beast’s, is sex and self, but above the girdle which the gods inherit is the special gift of reason; only it is a kind of sadistic ingenuity by which man sanctifies his own sins—the universally inevitable sins of sex and self—by declaring them anathema for others (“Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! / Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back”). Therefore, as king, Lear dismisses the phantom of the adulterer arraigned before him, because, all offending, “none does offend, none—I say none!”

The moment we imagine Shakespeare’s pen in our hand and Act III unwritten, we begin to sense the immensity of the problem that arises merely from the first general requirement of all good writing, intelligibility. For the problem is to make clear that the mind of Lear progressively loses its clarity and comes at last to a moment everyone will recognize as “the worst” and be willing to take as “madness.” Analogically, what is needed are recognizable circles of the inferno descending to the pit and ways of knowing when the pit has been reached. To present a character becoming more and more disintegrated emotionally, therefore, is fundamental but not enough, since emotions under pressure lack outline and precision, with the result that the best of lyric poets know their task is to find “objective correlatives” for what otherwise would remain in prison or confusion. In the next section, dealing with the scenes leading to Lear’s madness, we shall see how Shakespeare uses actions, which are more discernible than emotions, to mark the descent into the pit; here we are concerned with the fact that Shakespeare added “thought” to action and emotion, and “thought” in many ways is more precise than either of the other two. In solving this problem of intelligibility, then, Shakespeare was “abundant,” utilizing the maximum of means, and one way we have of knowing at what circle Lear is stationed for the moment is to learn what Lear for the moment believes is the nature of men, beasts, and gods.

When intelligibility was first discussed, it was expanded to include the concepts of “order” and “completeness.” Order, being a matter involving all the parts, is a matter for later consideration, but we may already observe that the change in Lear’s thought during this large episode is a complete change. Lear does not have merely different thoughts about the nature of the universe and of those who crawl upon it; the beliefs he has about the universe at the end of Act II are philosophically opposite to those he expresses upon the fields of Dover, and a complete change is one that goes as far as it can. Thus, because the change in Lear’s thought is so bitterly complete, we recognize the pit when Lear has reached it. Shakespeare also took care that we should know where Lear started. Lear’s last speech in Act II is the first one he gives in which thought of a general nature is directly expressed; it is appropriate to his character and the accumulated situation that at this moment he should say man is not man without some gorgeous possessions not needed to keep his body warm, and the speech is also a location point before the heath by means of which we can more easily see what a falling-off there was.

Ultimately, however, it is only of secondary importance that Lear’s thoughts clarify our understanding; they lack the power of poetry if they are not moving. Let us begin less intensely, and therefore with the second requirement of all good writing, to be interesting, for, if we are not interested, we surely will not go farther and be moved. Until his last speech in Act II, Lear’s thoughts have all been particular and have been concentrated upon the indivdual natures of his daughters and their husbands. This is appropriate to the circumstances and Lear’s character, which is driven rather than given to philosophical speculation; yet, partly as a result, Lear is a character, even by the end of Act II, with whom we have only slight bonds of identification; he is an old man over eighty years, who, so late as this, is in the process of discovering that two of his daughters are nonhuman and that the one who could say “nothing” was alone worthy of all his love. In contrast to Hamlet and Othello , King Lear is a tragedy in the course of which the protagonist becomes worthy of being a tragic hero, and one dimension that Lear takes on is the power of thought. Moreover, his thoughts upon the heath and upon the fields of Dover are of universal significance and therefore “interest” us, for the question of whether the universe is something like what Lear hoped it was or very close to what he feared it was, is still, tragically, the current question.

Earlier we said that material of general, human interest could be handled by an artist in such a way as to take on an added interest—the interest of the unexpected or surprising. It is surprising in life or in literature for a serious man to reverse his philosophical beliefs about the common human problems, but Lear’s change in thought is dramatically as well as philosophically unexpected, for the beliefs that have become the protagonist’s by Act IV, scene 6, are his antagonists’—Goneril’s, Regan’s, and Edmund’s—who also hold that sex and self are the sole laws of life. Lear has indeed “veered around to the opposite”; it is as if the tortured came to have the same opinion of the rack as the inquisitors.

There is, finally, the contribution that this change makes to the special emotional effects produced by tragedy. Now the tragic writer is also upon the rack, pulled always two different ways, for the deep emotions he stirs he also alleviates. A certain alleviation of fear and pity is necessary to make the emotional effect of tragedy one that we are consumed rather than repelled by; and proper tragic alleviation excludes any supposed consolation that might come from the avoidance of disastrous consequences after we have been asked to suffer emotions such as are aroused by clear premonition of disaster.

By the time that we and Edgar are confronted with the “side-piercing sight ” upon the field of Dover, the grounds are many for fearing that Lear and all that is admirable are condemned by some hopelessly formidable perversity of power ultimately beyond challenge. Othello’s fate was his own—at least many of us could have escaped it; but Lear’s tragedy comes to a point where it threatens what we should wish to be with inevitable inclusion. As a very minimum, we know suffering such as the sufferer can account for only by believing the worst that can be thought of everything, including himself. The minimum, therefore, has some kind of maximum of fear and pity—we are almost certain that such suffering will leave him without the power to better his fortune and without the mental resources needed to gain a clear picture of what is the truth, if this is not it. And, indeed, in the end Lear is deprived of Othello’s modicum of consolation—that of seeing the situation as it was—for he is not even permitted to believe that he and Cordelia can be God’s spies (pitiful, imprisoned spectators of a conspiratorial universe), since in the same scene the role of a nonparticipant in the universe proves to be nonexistent, Cordelia is murdered, and the mind and body of Lear are asked to suffer no further vexation.

We perhaps do not think sufficiently of the other task of the poet who makes intense emotions—the task of constantly taking away something from them lest they become intolerable or change to some other emotions not intended or desirable, just as the unrestrained grief of Laertes at the grave of Ophelia produced contempt and indignation and not compassion in the heart of Hamlet. Our fear and pity for Lear are both magnified and mitigated. These terrifying thoughts are held by him when he is mad, and their validity is further denied by all those in the play who are intelligent, loving, and somewhat disengaged—their complete validity is called into question by even the existence of people such as Kent, Edgar, and Albany. In addition, the action is arranged from beginning to end (that is, from the beginning of Act III to Act IV,scene 6) in such ways that fear does not become horror, or pity some kind of excruciating anguish. In the first scene in Act III, before we see Lear on the heath we are given subdued assurance that friends are organizing to rescue him and the kingdom. This scene can be criticized for its execution, because it is a scene merely of talk between Kent and a Gentleman, whose talk is obviously directed to us as much as to themselves, but the intention to save us from horror is right. Moreover, throughout the scenes leading to Lear’s madness there are continuing preparations to remove him to Cordelia, and, oppositely, the intervening actions of the antagonists do not make their complete success probable, for Cornwall is killed, Albany becomes disillusioned, and jealousy turns Goneril and Regan upon themselves. And, finally, although scene 6 is constructed to magnify our fear and pity by confronting us with both Gloucester and Lear and their combined anguish, it is also designed to alleviate our suffering and serves as a superlative example of the paradoxical task of the tragic artist. The thoughts to be expressed by Lear upon the fields were Gloucester’s as he approached the cliffs of Dover (“As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods. / They kill us for their sport”), but Gloucester has been purged of these thoughts just prior to Lear’s expression of them, and, since Lear and Gloucester have been made parallel in so many ways, one might assume that Shakespeare had constructed this scene to assure the beholder that the beliefs he is about to hear from Lear are not the final beliefs of either. We must recognize, however, that a certain number of critics read King Lear in such a way that Gloucester’s lines are taken as a condensation of Gloucester’s and Lear’s and Shakespeare’s ultimate “philosophy,” although this seems to me to be an interpretation of another book, possibly one written by Hardy. Surely, though, by the end of the scene, if our feelings and the creator do not deceive us, the world is such as to make a man a man of salt—but for purposes more magnificent than the laying of autumn’s dust.

So far our view of King Lear has been both panoramic and confined. In looking upon the large expanse of lines from the end of Act II to Act IV, scene 6, we have confined ourselves to the reversal in Lear’s thoughts and feelings that occurs therein and makes it a single, though large, tragic episode. Lear and Shakespeare had conceptions of the tragic that mark them as men who saw “feelingly,” but, as a dramatist, Shakespeare had his own set of dismaying problems—the dramatic problems of objectifying tragic thoughts and feelings into commensurate actions and then of dividing and arranging these actions into parts which would be themselves little tragedies and yet stations on the way to some more ultimate suffering. In making these problems ours, we become more particular and yet, in certain ways, closer to the general qualities of great writing which, in order to have a name, must also have a local habitation.

Many a tragic drama has itself met a tragic ending for lack of drama, and the odds increase that this will be the case when the tragedy in some central way involves internal changes, changes in thoughts and states of mind. Byron, too, wished to depict a soul in torment, and he produced Manfred , but, despite the subtitle, “A Dramatic Poem,” it is largely a series of soliloquies addressed to the Alps in inclement weather. Drama is movement, and, in the four scenes depicting the increasing tempest in Lear’s mind, the stage is also in flux—the actors on it move naturally and interestingly, and other characters enter mysteriously and leave on secret missions. Moreover, these actions are designed not merely to keep the stage from becoming static while everything else is dynamic; they are in a higher sense dramatic actions, actions involving an agon, “objective correlatives” to the conflict in Lear’s mind. Lear challenges the storm; he arraigns his daughters before a justice so perverted that it is represented by the Fool and Edgar disguised as a madman; he imagines impotently that he is raising an avenging army and is distracted by a mouse; and he assumes he is judging a culprit guilty of adultery and finds no sin because he finds the sin universal. Such are the inventions of a dramatic poet, and by them he makes the passage of Lear’s tortured soul intelligible, probable, and tragically moving. Scholars are still in search of the exact meaning of certain speeches in each of Shakespeare’s great tragedies—and we should like to assume that those who saw these plays for the first time did not have perfect understanding of all of the lines—but so great was Shakespeare’s power to conceive of action from which thought and feeling can be readily inferred that all of us know Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth more intimately than we know many men whose remarks we understand perfectly.

Yet a master of tragic drama would also sense that, in scenes depicting a great change in thought and state of mind, action should be kept to a certain minimum, lest too much outer clangor obscure the inner vibrations and tragedy pass over into melodrama. He would sense, too, that language suggesting madness, if sufficiently understood, would put tremendous demands upon our powers of concentration. Three scenes lead to the madness of Lear and are alternated with three leading to the blinding of Gloucester. Unlike the “internal” Lear scenes, the other three are action cut to the bone; and unlike the clogged language of Lear, the Fool, and Poor Tom, the speech of the conspiracy is lean, bare, and cruel. Removing us momentarily from Lear, these scenes relieve both our understandings and our feelings, but tragic “relief” quickly becomes tragic illusion, when the master-touch is upon it. We turn our eyes away from an old man seeking in suffering to discover the final cause of suffering, only to have it dawn on us that we have turned to a horrible replica of the action that was the immediate cause of this suffering, another old man tortured by his offspring and by Lear’s as well. Suffering, then, as it works out its lonely and final course upon the heath, is combined with action such as initiated it. Moreover, in another way the two tragedies are one—Gloucester’s attempts to rescue Lear from his suffering are the immediate cause of bringing on his own. Thus the interplay of these two tragedies gives to both more than either singly possesses of intelligibility, suspense, probability, and tragic concern.

But, although Gloucester’s tragedy is also Lear’s, our concentration is upon those scenes in which Lear goes mad and which collectively make intelligible the scene upon the fields of Dover, where his madness is complete. It is not enough, therefore, that action in these scenes is kept at a certain minimum and within this guarded minimum is maximal, or that the action also is dramatic, involving conflict. It has also to be action everywhere suggesting “madness,” and, secondly, it has to be arranged in such a way as to lead Lear to “madness.” Let us consider first the materials and then the order out of which such disorder is made.

Certainly, Shakespeare’s choice was right in introducing no totally new material in these scenes that center in the depth of Lear’s mind; they are made out of materials already in the play—Lear’s Fool, Edgar who previously had decided to disguise himself as a madman, and the storm. Distraction that is great and is not the general confusion of a battle but centered and ultimately internal is rightly made out of a certain minimum of material that can be assimilated and out of material already somewhat assimilated. Moreover, such a reduction of material not only helps our understanding at a moment in literature when it stands most in need of help; actually, art attains the maximum of unexpectedness out of restricted sources (as a good mystery story limits the number of possible murderers) and out of material already introduced and about which we have expectations (as the best mystery stories are not solved by material that has been kept from us by the detective and the writer until the end). While on the heath, Lear might have been attacked by a gang of robbers and, in culminating suffering, have thought this some symbolic act, signifying that all men are beasts of prey; surely, it is much more surprising that it is the legitimate son of Gloucester, counterpart of Cordelia, who makes him think this.

Out of a proper economy of material, then, a maximum of madness is made, and everyone who has read King Lear has sensed that the heath scenes are composed of complex variations upon the theme of madness—a noble man going mad, accompanied by a character professionally not “normal,” meeting a character whose life depends upon his appearing mad, amid a storm such as makes everyone believe that the universe and even the gods are not stable. We add that Kent, too, is present in these scenes and that a point constantly calm is useful in the art of making madness.

The musical analogy of a theme with variations must be used only up to a certain point and then dropped lest it stop us, as it has stopped some others, from going farther and seeing that these scenes are a part of a great poem and that in this part a noble man goes mad, which is something more than orchestration, although orchestration has its purposes. Ultimately, we are confronted with a poetical event; and the storm, the Fool, and Poor Tom are not only variations on madness but happenings on the way which collectively constitute the event. That is, the setting and two characters, all previously somewhat external to Lear, successively become objects of his thought, and then become himself transubstantiated. The storm becomes the tempest in his mind; the Fool becomes all wretches who can feel, of whom Lear is one, although before he had not recognized any such wide identity; and then a worse wretch appears, seemingly mad, protected against the universe by a blanket, scarred by his own wounds, and concentrating upon his own vermin. He is “the thing itself,” a “forked animal,” with whom Lear identifies his own substance by tearing off his clothes, which are now misleading. We know Lear, then, by Lear’s other substances, which are dramatically visible.

There is another substance present with Lear, for the madness that comes upon him is more terrible than the madness that translates everything into the ego; in the mind of Lear, when his madness is complete, all substances—the universe, man, and Lear himself—have been translated into the substance of his daughters, and perhaps something like this is what is technically meant by a “fixation.” Although actually never appearing, Lear’s daughters are the central characters in the inverted and internal pilgrim’s progress that occurs upon the heath, and ultimately we know the stage of Lear’s progress by his daughters’ presence. In the first appearance of Lear upon the heath (Act III, scene 2) the daughters are already identified with the storm and the underlying powers of the universe, and Lear dares to defy them and to confront the universe, even though he now sees what he began to see at the end of Act II, that the ultimate powers may be not moral but in alliance with his daughters. Either possibility, however, he can face with defiance: in his first great speech to the storm, he calls upon it, as he had called upon the universe before, to act as a moral agent to exterminate even the molds of ingratitude; his second speech is one of moral out rage (“O! O! ’tis foul!”) against universal forces that may have joined “two pernicious daughters” in a conspiracy against his head. In the beginning of his next scene (scene 4), he has still the power of defiance, but it is only the storm as a storm that he can confront; he knows that he no longer dares to think of his daughters, for “that way madness lies.” Almost at that moment Poor Tom emerges from the hovel, and with him in Lear’s mind another substance (“Hast thou given all to thy two daughters, and art thou come to this?”). The shattering of the resolution not to think on this substance leads Lear down the predicted way, and first to a complete identification with a mad beggar; then his mind, rapidly disintegrating, leaves equality behind and, in deferential hallucination, transforms the mad beggar into a philosopher of whom he asks the ancient philosophical question, “What is the cause of thunder?” At the end of this scene, then, Lear’s thoughts return to the storm, but it is no longer a storm that he might possibly endure. By many signs Lear’s final scene in Act III is the final scene on Lear’s way to madness. Poor Tom places Lear’s mind in the underworld with his opening speech : “Frateretto calls me, and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend.” With this speech, Lear’s thoughts literally enter the pit, and here he finds the forbidden women. What he knew at the opening of the earlier scene that he must avoid now becomes his total occupation, and the mind now revels in what the mind once knew it could not endure. Elaborately and in elation Lear arraigns his daughters upon the shores of the lake of darkness, 3 and, just before drawing the curtain, he asks the final philosophical question, “Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?”

It is later, properly much later, when we see Lear again, since by then he has found in madness an answer to the questions that led him there. Then, looming upon his mind, is a universe the basic substance of which is female:

Down from the waist they are Centaurs, Though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit, Beneath is all the fiend’s [Act IV, scene 6, II. 126-29]. 4

In the opening of this section we promised to say something about these scenes as being tragic wholes as well as parts of a fearful and pitiful event, and already a good deal has been said indirectly about their separate natures. But their natures are not only separate; they are tragic, each one arousing and then to a degree purging the emotions of fear and pity. In the first of these scenes, our immediate fear and pity for Lear as we see him trying to outface the elements are intensified by his second address to the storm in which he realizes that the universe may be allied with his daughters “‘gainst a head / So old and white as this!” But, shortly, Kent enters, and that makes things somewhat better; then Lear has an insight into the nature of his own sins, and although his sins are pitifully small by comparison, still self-awareness of sin is a good no matter the degree or the consequences—and it is a good to Lear, purging his feelings so that at the end of this little tragedy he turns to the Fool in new tenderness and in a new role, for the first time considering someone else’s feelings before his own (“How dost, my boy? Art cold? / I am cold myself”). And such, in a general way, is the emotional movement of the other two scenes in which Lear appears in Act III—they begin with Lear alarmingly agitated; the agitation mounts (with the appearance of Poor Tom or with the prospect of arraigning his daughters in hell); but in the enactment of the enormous moment he (and we) get some kind of emotional release for which undoubtedly there is some clinical term, not, however, known to me or to the Elizabethans or to most people who have felt that at the end of each of these scenes both they and Lear have been given mercifully an instant not untouched with serenity on the progress to chaos. “Draw the curtains. So, so, so.”

There are many tragedies of considerable magnitude the effects of which, however, are almost solely macrocosmic. The greatest of tragic writers built his macrocosms out of tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy.

The third time that we shall consider Lear upon the heath will be the last, for the full art of tragedy has three dimensions, like anything with depth. The tragedy with depth is compounded out of a profound conception of what is tragic and out of action tragically bent, with characters commensurate to the concept and the act—and, finally, it is composed out of writing. The maximal statement of an art always makes it easier to see how many lesser artists there are and why; and thus the author of The American Tragedy could not write—a failing not uncommon among authors—and the author of Manfred , although a very great writer in many ways, was so concentrated upon his personal difficulties that he could form no clear and large conception of the tragic, and his tragic action is almost no action at all.

In addition to the remaining problem of writing, one of the general criteria introduced early in this essay has not yet been dealt with directly—vividness, or the powers and devices that make a literary moment “come to life.” For a consideration of both, we need units smaller even than scenes, and so we turn to what may be regarded as a small “incident” in one of the scenes and, finally, to a speech from this incident and a single word from the speech. It is easy to understand why the moments of a drama usually singled out for discussion are those that are obviously important and splendid with a kind of splendor that gives them an existence separate from their dramatic context, like passages of Longinian sublimity; but this study is so committed to the tragic drama that it will forego the sublime—although few dramas offer more examples of it and concentrate, instead, upon an incident and a speech, the importance and splendor of which appear largely as one sees a tragic drama unfold about them.

On a technical level, this incident is a unit because it is a piece of dramatic business—in these lines, Shakespeare is engaged in the business of introducing a character:

KENT: Good my lord, enter here. LEAR: Prithee go in thyself; seek thine own ease. This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more. But I’ll go in. [ To the Fool ] In, boy; go first.—You houseless poverty— Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep. Exit [ Fool ] Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them And show the heavens more just. EDG.:[ within ] Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom! Enter Fool [ from the hovel ] FOOL: Come not in here, nuncle, here’s a spirit. Help me, help me! KENT: Give me thy hand. Who’s there? FOOL: A spirit, a spirit! He says his name’s poor Tom. KENT:What art thou that dost grumble there i’ th’ straw? Come forth. Enter Edgar [ disguised as a madman ] EDG.: Away! the foul fiend follows me! Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind. Humh! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee. LEAR: Hast thou given all to thy two daughters, and art thou come to this? EDG.: Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, o’er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow and halters in his pew, set ratsbane by his porridge, made him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting horse over four-inch’d bridges, to curse his own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five wits! Tom’s acold. O, do de, do de, do de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes. There could I have him now—and there—and there again and there! [ Storm still (Act III, scene 4, ll. 22-64)].

Now, the business of introducing a character can be transacted quickly in brackets—[ Enter Edgar, disguised as a madman ]—and when the character is some straggler in the play or not so much a character as some expository information, like a messenger, then the introduction properly can be cursory. But in the drama of Lear’s madness, Poor Tom becomes “the thing itself,” and the mere size of his introduction is a preparation for his importance. And artistic size, as we said earlier, has qualitative as well as quantitative aspects.

From the time Poor Tom first speaks until the end of this passage, his name is given five times, and it is given the first time he speaks. Yet a complete introduction does more than fasten on a name, especially if the person is distinctive and we should be warned about him. Three times before Poor Tom appears, he is said to be a “spirit,” and after he appears he says three times that “the foul fiend” is pursuing him, so that, leaving out for the moment his confirmatory actions and speeches, we surely ought to be forewarned by his introduction that he is “mad.” It is not always needful to be so elaborate and repetitive, even when introducing a character of importance, but when, in addition, the moment of introduction is tense emotionally and the character is abnormal, we are grateful, even in life, to have the name repeated. Or, if confirmation is sought from literature, we may turn to the opening of the first scene of Hamlet and note how many times in the excitement the names of Bernardo, Marcellus, and Horatio are called back and forth and how often the ghost is referred to before he appears. This introduction, then, has one of the qualities of all good writing, intelligibility, and in circumstances not favorable to understanding.

Moreover, this is an introduction achieving a maximum of unexpectedness and suspense, effects desirable in themselves as well as qualitative signs that the character being introduced is dramatically important. The king is about to escape from the storm into the hovel, but, before doing so, he turns to the heavens with a prayer in behalf of all “poor naked wretches.” Nor from above but from within the hovel a supernatural voice cries out, “Fathom and half!” If a lesser pen had turned Poor Tom loose upon the stage at this moment with no further identification, we would have been dismayed, and, furthermore, the suspense latent in the unexpected would not have been realized. When he does come forth, we have identified and awaited him, but unexpectedly and in consternation Lear identifies him—identifies him as himself. Then, surely, it is unexpected that the alter Lear goes into the singsong of a mad beggar whining for a handout.

As merely unexpected, the entry of Poor Tom is a diversion and serves a purpose: that of momentarily affording us much needed relief. The art of tragic relief is itself worth a study, although all its highest manifestations are governed by two conjoined principles—the moment of relief should be psychologically needed, but the moment of relief should be a momentary illusion which as it is dispelled, only deepens the tragedy. Mere unexpectedness thus becomes consummate unexpectedness, with what seems to be a turning from tragedy an entry into darker recesses; and the entry of Poor Tom, viewed first as a piece of technical business, is the appearance of greater tragedy. Lear’s prayer, among its many dramatic reasons for being, is preparation for the appearance of something worse. The audience, after it becomes confident in its author quietly assumes that, when something big is said and something big immediately follows, there is a connection between the two, although not too obvious as Shakespeare himself said earlier in King Lear , the entry should not be so pat as “the catastrophe of the old comedy” (Act I, scene 2, 11. 145-47). The prayer comes out of suffering which has identified Lear with the Fool and with a whole class whose feelings before were unknown to Lear, “poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are.” And “wheresoe’er” might unexpectedly be within the hovel at hand, which was to be a refuge from suffering, and the wretch who emerges, poorer and more naked than the Fool, might be fraught with greater suffering. “Fathom and half, fathom and half!” he has called from within, and this is certainly a mysterious cry and, in the circumstances, not a rational utterance, but it is also a sounding of depth. Of the two tragic emotions, it is fear that is aroused by this cry, and it is fear that sends the Fool running out of the hovel, and it is at least in alarm, a diminutive of fear, that Kent commands the “spirit” to come forth. Then Lear’s tragic complement appears, and almost in the next moment the pity aroused by the sight of unprotected madness is transposed to the object about which all pity should be centered in a tragedy—the tragic protagonist, who in startled compassion asks the new thing if the two of them are not identical in substance. Poor Tom’s answer to the tragic question on the surface and at first seems no answer at all, but what nevertheless might be expected of a mad beggar, a routine whine for alms, a routine that one of the most ancient professions has invariably divided into two parts—first a self-commiserating account of the beggar’s own suffering and then a prayer that the possible giver be spared any such suffering, the prayer being, as it were, anticipatory repayment which, by implication, can be taken back and changed to a curse. Surely, the art of panhandling here comes to life, and literary moments that come to life have been called “vivid.” But it is Shakespeare’s art, referred to by so many as “abundant,” to make two moments come to life in one, and, from a mad beggar’s routine emerges an answer to Lear’s question and hence a moment filled with tragedy and latent with tragedy to come. As Poor Tom’s account of himself proceeds, it becomes apparent, although not to Edgar, that he is describing Lear and his own father. At first the multiple identification is scarcely noticeable, since it depends only upon similarity in immediate and outer circumstances—others besides Poor Tom are led through fire and flood. Then the similarity becomes both more inclusive and deeper as tragic flaws and tragic courses of action become parallel—Lear and Gloucester, in pride of heart, are also trotting over four-inched bridges and coursing their own shadows for traitors. And, since the prayer for the possible almsgivers that immediately follows (“Bless thy five wits! … Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking!”) approaches the tragic ultimate in vain request, perhaps enough has been said about the introduction of “such a fellow” as was to make both his father and Lear think “a man a worm.”

Given the confines of this paper, the speech to be considered must be short, for the focus finally is upon the smallest unit of drama, a speech, and the smallest unit of speech, a single word. Moreover, given our other commitments, the speech should also be in essence dramatic and tragic. Let us take, then, the speech in which Lear first recognizes his identity with unprotected nakedness scarred with self-inflicted wounds:

Hast thou given all to thy two daughters, and art thou come to this? 5

This is not one of those speeches, somewhat detachable as sententious utterances or lyric poems from which are collected The Beauties of Shakespeare ; yet upon the heath it is one of the great moments. It is tragic drama contracted to its essences—fear and pity. The question is asked in consternation and commiseration; and it arouses in us, who are more aware of implications than Lear, fear and pity in some ways more enormous than his.

These two qualities of the speech—its shortness and its enormousness—at the outset may be considered as somewhat separate and paradoxical qualities. The speech is short not only in over-all measurement but in the individual words composing it, for all of them, with the exception of “given” and “daughters,” are monosyllables, and all of them are short qualitatively, being ordinary, colorless words. Of conceivable adjectives that could be attached to the daughters who had brought Lear to this place, none could be more simple, neutral, or needless seemingly than the number “two.” What, if anything, can be said of such a complete contraction of language? Well, as a simple beginning, it is easy to understand, and the moment demands understanding. Then, too, just as language, it is unexpected. In forty-odd lines called an “incident,” there are the “superflux” of prayer, the eerie cry of Poor Tom, the scurrying prose of the Fool and Kent, the singsong and shivering rhythms of Poor Tom that rise into an actual line of song—and then this, to be answered by a long beggar’s whine, colorful but seemingly confused, since the speaker, as announced, is from Bedlam. This is a great deal of dramatic dialogue for forty lines, and perhaps might be contrasted to certain modern schools of writers who have found the essence of drama and reality to be iteration and reiteration of monosyllables. But Shakespeare’s contractions are not exhaustions of his language, which was almost limitless in its resources. Ultimately, the kind of verbal contraction here being considered is right because the immediate moment of tragic impact is a contraction—abdominal, in the throat, in the mind impaled upon a point. The vast tragic speeches of Shakespeare are anticipations of impending tragedy or assimilations of the event after its impact, like scar tissue after the wound. Thus every appearance of the ghost in the first act of Hamlet, being awaited, is immediately preceded by a long, imaginatively unbounded speech; but, when the ghost reveals his tragedy, his son, who makes many long speeches, can only exclaim, “O my prophetic soul! / My uncle?” Othello enters Desdemona’s chamber with a culmination of tragic resolutions, and his opening speech (“It is the cause,” etc.) has the magnitude of his fears and his resolutions; but he has no speech, not always even complete sentences, with which to answer the prayers of Desdemona; and her last prayer, that she be allowed to pray, he answers with the ultimate words, “It is too late.” In Shakespeare, as in life, the instances are many that the enormous moment, precisely at its moment, contracts body, mind, and utterance.

From life, however, come only the suggestions for art’s patterns, not art’s final accomplishments. Specifically, life makes it right that Lear’s speech at this moment is not a “speech” ; yet art demands that no moment of such import call forth, as it often does in life, some truly little, inadequate response. It is the task of the artist to give the enormous its proper dimensions, even if, as in this instance, the illusion has to be preserved that only some little thing was said. Our task, therefore, is to look again at these few, short, ordinary words to see how they add up to what our feelings tell us is something very big. Here, as elsewhere, there can be but the suggestion of a complete analysis; and, in respect to words, the accomplished writer lifts this one and this one and this one and listens to both sound and significance.

Rhythmically and metrically, Lear has asked a tremendous question. Its return to iambic rhythm after seven lines of mad cries and scurrying conversation should in itself encourage the actor to add some dimension to its delivery, and metrically it is seven feet, for, although there is a pause after the fourth foot (“two daughers”), it is all inclosed within a question, and the second part (“and art thou come to this?”) mounts above the first. A seven-foot mounting question is a big question. Moreover, the fact that the words, with two exceptions, are monosyllables gives them collectively a pounding effect, especially when they are blocked by so many dentals, only three of the fourteen words being with out d, t, or th, and these (“given all” and “come”) stand out as it were by their phonetic displacement, two of them being the verbs and “all” being probably more important than either. The fourth foot (“two daughters”) has also properly been lengthened, “daughters” being terminal to the first half of the question and being, in addition, the largest word uttered. Rhythm, too, makes this foot speak out, for only a schoolboy would scan it as a foot with a feminine ending (“two daugh ters”), although no one seemingly can be sure how “daughters” was pronounced at this time, anyone ought to be sure that in this place the second syllable of “daughters” gets as much emphasis as the first and the whole foot is as long roughly as this scansion (“two daugh ters ”).

Grammatical mode of utterance brings us closer to significance. Some dimension, some significance, goes out of the speech if it is not a question but a declaration: “Thou gavest all to thy two daughters, and now art come to this.” Gone is some of the immediacy of the moment, too big at its occurrence to be believed and recorded as fact. To a degree, then, fear and pity are made out of grammar, and, if we say that each point so far discussed is a little matter and singly is no great accomplishment, then all we have said is that much of art is composed of little brush strokes and that this is especially true when what is being composed is “the seemingly simple.”

Yet there is one big word within this speech—the one right word, the one word that is not a touching-up of another word which could itself have remained with out the notice of aftertimes. The right word is also in the right place; it is the last word, “this.” Perhaps we are accustomed to thinking of the mot juste as a word giving a definite, irreplaceable image, and certainly the right word should be irreplaceable and in some sense definite; only there are moments so tremendous that their exact size is without any definite boundary. There are moments, moreover, which have a size that is unmentionable, moments which cannot, at least at the instant, be fully faced or exactly spoken of by those who must endure them. Poetry may make a perfection out of what would be an error in exposition, and moments such as these may set at naught the rule of composition teachers that “such,” “it,” and “this” should not be used with out a definite, grammatical antecedent. Likewise, what has been said about “this” has a relevance to “all” in the first part of the question that is for this moment the exact question:

Hast thou given all to thy two daughters, And art thou come to this?

There is always a test that should be made of such matters—can we, after searching, find something at least as good? The test does not always lead to humiliation, and always it should lead to some improvement of ourselves, but the most rigorous test of Shakespeare is Shakespeare himself. Marcellus’ first question to Bernardo, both of whom have twice seen the ghost, is the forced mention of the enormous and unmentionable: “What, has this thing appear’d again to-night?” The ghost of Hamlet’s father, as it is awaited, is “this thing,” “this dreaded sight,” “this apparition,” sometimes “it,” more often “’t,” but never the ghost of Hamlet’s father. In the first soliloquy Hamlet’s thoughts move past the canons of the Everlasting, past the general unprofitable uses of the world, until they come to the loathsome point focal to his whole universe: “ That it should come to this! / But two months dead! Nay, not so much, not two.” So a second time in Shakespeare we have “come to this.” And at the end Hamlet comes to his own tragic moment which he believes cannot be avoided: “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.” In themselves, “it,” “to come,” “be,” “will,” and “all” are some of the smallest, least precise and colorful words in our language; but words are so important that from the least of them can be made the uttermost in meaning and emotion—the suffering of man triumphed over by some slight touch of serenity. “Let be.”

1. Wilfrid Perrett, The Story of King Lear from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Shakespeare (Berlin, 1904), pp. 9 ff.

2. “Lear’s madness has no place in the old story; it is Shakespeare’s own invention” (George Lyman Kittredge, The Complete Works of Shakespeare [Boston, 1936], p. 1196). According to Perrett, certain versions of the story contain suggestions of madness (op, cit., pp. 225-26), but the suggestions, as Perrett says, are remote and are limited to phrases (such as “crazed thoughts”) and, moreover, they are probably stereotypes not intended to suggest actual madness, just as we speak only in figurative cliché when we say, “He was mad with rage.”

3. In the Folio Lear’s arraignment of his daughters is omitted (II. 18-59 in Kittredge). The Folio also omits Edgar’s soliloquy concluding the scene. The Folio is far more accurate in editorial detail than the Quarto but is considerably shorter, most scholars surmising that it represcnts a version of the play that had been cut for acting purposes. As dramatic magnifications of states of mind and feelings already embodied in the play, both Lear’s arraignment of his daughters and Edgar’s soliloquy are made of material that is often cut if a cutting has to be made for stage purposes. Certainly, it is not difficult to understand the omission of the soliloquy, but the deletion of the trial upon the edge of hell removes from the scene at tremendous amount of its drama and tragedy.

4. All quotations from Shakespeare, unless otherwise specified, are from Kittredge’s The Complete Works of Shakespeare .

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of William Shakespeare’s King Lear

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s King Lear

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 1 )

There is perhaps no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed; which so much agitates our passions and interests our curiosity. The artful involutions of distinct interests, the striking opposition of contrary characters, the sudden changes of fortune, and the quick succession of events, fill the mind with a perpetual tumult of indignation, pity, and hope. There is no scene which does not contribute to the aggravation of the distress or conduct of the action, and scarce a line which does not conduce to the progress of the scene. So powerful is the current of the poet’s imagination, that the mind, which once ventures within it, is hurried irresistibly along.

—Samuel Johnson, The Plays of William Shakespeare

For its unsurpassed combination of sheer terrifying force and its existential and cosmic reach, King Lear leads this ranking as drama’s supreme achievement. The notion that King Lear is Shakespeare’s (and by implication drama’s) greatest play is certainly debatable, but consensus in its favor has gradually coalesced over the centuries since its first performance around 1606. During and immediately following William Shakespeare’s lifetime, there is no evidence that King Lear was particularly valued over other of the playwright’s dramas. It was later considered a play in need of an improving makeover. In 1681 poet and dramatist Nahum Tate, calling King Lear “a Heap of Jewels unstrung and unpolish’d,” altered what many Restoration critics and audiences found unbecoming and unbearable in the drama. Tate eliminated the Fool, whose presence was considered too vulgar for a proper tragedy, and gave the play a happy ending, restoring Lear to his throne and arranging the marriage of Cordelia and Edgar, neatly tying together with poetic justice the double strands of Shakespeare’s far bleaker drama. Tate’s bowdlerization of King Lear continued to be presented throughout the 18th century, and the original play was not performed again until 1826. By then the Romantics had reclaimed Shakespeare’s version, and an appreciation of the majesty and profundity of King Lear as Shakespeare’s greatest achievement had begun. Samuel Taylor Coleridge declared the play “the most tremendous effort of Shakespeare as a poet”; while Percy Bysshe Shelley considered it “the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world.” John Keats, who described the play as “the fierce dispute / Betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay,” offered King Lear as the best example of the intensity, with its “close relationship with Beauty & Truth,” that is the “Excellence of every Art.” Dissenting voices, however, challenged the supremacy of King Lear . Essayist Charles Lamb judged the play to have “nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting” and deemed it “essentially impossible to be represented on a stage.” The great Shakespearean scholar A. C. Bradley acknowledged King Lear as “Shakespeare’s greatest achievement” but “not his best play.” For Bradley, King Lear , with its immense scope and the variety and intensity of its scenes, is simply “too huge for the stage.” Perhaps the most notorious dissenter against the greatness of King Lear was Leo Tolstoy, who found its fable-like unreality reprehensible and ruled it a “very bad, carelessly composed production” that “cannot evoke amongst us anything but aversion and weariness.” Such qualifications and dismissals began to diminish in light of 20thcentury history. The existential vision of King Lear has seemed even more pertinent and telling as a reflection of the human condition; while modern dramatic artistry with its contrapuntal structure and anti-realistic elements has caught up with Shakespeare’s play. Today King Lear is commonly judged unsurpassed in its dramatization of so many painful but inescapable human and cosmic truths.

King Lear is based on a well-known story from ancient Celtic and British mythology, first given literary form by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1137). Raphael Holinshed later repeated the story of Lear and his daughters in his Chronicles (1587), and Edmund Spenser, the first to name the youngest daughter, presents the story in book 2 of The Faerie Queene (1589). A dramatic version— The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his three daughters, Gonerill, Ragan, and Cordella —appeared around 1594. All these versions record Lear dividing his kingdom, disinheriting his youngest daughter, and being driven out by his two eldest daughters before reuniting with his youngest, who helps restore him to the throne and bring her wicked sisters to justice. Shakespeare is the first to give the story an unhappy ending, to turn it from a sentimental, essentially comic tale in which the good are eventually rewarded and the evil punished into a cosmic tragedy. Other plot elements—Lear’s madness, Cordelia’s hanging, Lear’s death from a broken heart, as well as Kent’s devotion and the role of the Fool—are also Shakespeare’s inventions, as is the addition of the parallel plot of Gloucester and his sons, which Shakespeare adapted from a tale in Philip Sidney’s Arcadia . The play’s double plot in which the central situation of Lear’s suffering and self-knowledge is paralleled and counterpointed in Gloucester’s circumstances makes King Lear different from all the other great tragedies. The effect widens and deepens the play into a universal tragedy of symphonic proportions.

King Lear opens with the tragic turning point in its very first scene. Compared to the long delays in Hamle t and Othello for the decisive tragic blow to fall, King Lear , like Macbeth , shifts its emphasis from cause to consequence. The play foregoes nearly all exposition or character development and immediately presents a show trial with devastating consequences. The aging Lear has decided to divest himself of kingly responsibilities by dividing his kingdom among his three daughters. Although the maps of the divisions are already drawn, Lear stages a contest for his daughters to claim their portion by a public profession of their love. “Tell me, my daughters,” Lear commands, “. . . Which of you shall we say doth love us most.” Lear’s self-indulgence—bargaining power for love—is both a disruption of the political and natural order and an essential human violation in his demanding an accounting of love that defies the means of measuring it. Goneril and Regan, however, vie to outdo the other in fulsome pledges of their love, while Cordelia, the favorite, responds to Lear’s question “what can you say to draw / A third more opulent than your sisters” with the devastatingly honest truth: “Nothing,” a word that will reverberate through the entire play. Cordelia forcefully and simply explains that she loves Lear “According to my bond, no more nor less.” Lear is too blind and too needy to appreciate her fidelity or yet understand the nature of love, or the ingenuous flattery of his older daughters. He responds to the hurt he feels by exiling the one who loves him most authentically and deeply. The rest of the play will school Lear in his mistake, teaching him the lesson of humanity that he violates in the play’s opening scene.

The devastating consequences of his decision follow. Lear learns that he cannot give away power and still command allegiance from Goneril or Regan. Their avowals of love quickly turn into disrespect for a now useless and demanding parent. From the opening scene in which Lear appears in all his regal splendor, he will be successively stripped of all that invests a king in majesty and insulates a human being from first-hand knowledge of suffering and core existential truths. Urged to give up 50 of his attending knights by Goneril, Lear claims more gratitude from Regan, who joins her sister in further whittling down Lear’s retinue from 100 knights to 50, to 25, 10, 5, to none, ironically in the language of calculation of the first scene. Lear explodes:

O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous. Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man’s life is cheap as beast’s .

Lear is now readied to face reality as a “poorest thing.” Lear’s betrayal by his daughters is paralleled by the treachery of the earl of Gloucester’s bastard son, Edmund, who plots to supplant the legitimate son, Edgar, and eventually claim supremacy over his father. Edmund, one of the most calculating and coldblooded of Shakespeare’s villains, rejects all the bonds of family and morality early on in the play by affirming: “Thou, Nature, art my goddess, to thy law / My services are bound.” Refusing to accept the values of a society that rejects him as a bastard, Edmund will operate only by the laws of survival of the fittest in a relentless drive for dominance. He convinces Edgar that Gloucester means to kill him, forcing his brother into exile, disguised as Tom o’ Bedlam, a mad beggar. In the play’s overwhelming third act—perhaps the most overpowering in all of drama—Edgar encounters Lear, his Fool, and his lone retainer, the disguised Kent, whom Lear had banished in the first scene for challenging Lear’s treatment of Cordelia. The scene is a deserted heath with a fierce storm raging, as Lear, maddened by the treatment of his daughters, rails at his fate in apocalyptic fury:

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak cleaving thunderbolts, S inge my white head; and thou all-shaking thunder, Strike fl at the thick rotundity o’ th’ world, Crack nature’s mould, all germens spill at once, That makes ingrateful man.

The storm is a brilliant expressionistic projection of Lear’s inner fury, with his language universalizing his private experience in a combat with elemental forces. Beseeching divine justice, Lear is bereft and inconsolable, declaring “My wits begin to turn.” His descent into madness is completed when he meets the disguised Edgar who serves as Lear’s mirror and emblem of humanity as “unaccommodated man”—a “poor, bare, forked animal”:

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp, Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them And show the heavens more just.

Lear’s suffering has led him to compassion and an understanding of the human needs he had formerly ignored. It is one of the rare moments of regenerative hope before the play plunges into further chaos and violence.

Act 3 concludes with what has been called the most horrifying scene in dramatic literature. Gloucester is condemned as a traitor for colluding with Cordelia and the French invasion force. Cornwall, Regan’s husband, orders Gloucester bound and rips out one of his eyes. Urged on by Regan (“One side will mock another; th’ other too”), Cornwall completes Gloucester’s blinding after a protesting servant stabs Cornwall and is slain by Regan. In agony, Gloucester calls out for Edmund as Regan supplies the crushing truth:

Out, treacherous villain! Thou call’st on him that hates thee. It was he That made the overture of thy treasons to us, Who is too good to pity thee.

Oedipus-like, Gloucester, though blind, now sees the truth of Edmund’s villainy and Edgar’s innocence. Thrown out of the castle, he is ordered to “smell / His way to Dover.”

Act 4 arranges reunions and the expectation that the suffering of both Lear and Gloucester will be compensated and villainy purged. Edgar, still posing as Poor Tom, meets his father and agrees to guide him to Dover where the despairing Gloucester intends to kill himself by jumping from its cliffs. On arriving, Edgar convinces his father that he has fallen and survived, and Gloucester accepts his preservation as an act of the gods and vows “Henceforth I’ll bear / Affliction till it do cry out itself / ‘Enough, enough,’ and die.” The act concludes with Lear’s being reunited with Cordelia. Awaking in her tent, convinced that he has died, Lear gradually recognizes his daughter and begs her forgiveness as a “very foolish, fond old man.”

The stage is now set in act 5 for a restoration of order and Lear, having achieved the requisite self-knowledge through suffering, but Shakespeare pushes the play beyond the reach of consolation. Although Edmund is bested in combat by his brother, and Regan is poisoned by Goneril before she kills herself, neither poetic nor divine justice prevails. Lear and Cordelia are taken prisoner, but their rescue comes too late. As Shakespeare’s stage directions state, “Enter Lear with Cordelia in his arms,” and the play concludes with one of the most heart-wrenching scenes and the most overpowering lines in all of drama. Lear, although desperate to believe that his beloved daughter is alive, gradually accepts the awful truth:

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all. Thou’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!

Lear dies with this realization of cosmic injustice and indifference, while holding onto the illusion that Cordelia might still survive (“Look on her, look, her lips / Look there, look there!”). The play ends not with the restoration of divine, political, or familial order but in a final nihilistic vision. Shakespeare pushes the usual tragic progression of action leading to suffering and then to self-knowledge to a view into the abyss of life’s purposelessness and cruelty. The best Shakespeare manages to affirm in the face of intractable human evil and cosmic indifference is the heroism of endurance. Urging his despairing father on, Edgar states in the play’s opposition to despair:

. . . Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither; Ripeness is all. Come on.

Ultimately, King Lear , more than any other drama, in my view, allows its audience to test the limits of endurance in the face of mortality and meaninglessness. It has been said that only the greatest art sustains without consoling. There is no better example of this than King Lear .

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays

Oxford Lecture King Lear

50 King Lear Essay Topics

Table of Contents

Among the brilliant works that Shakespeare created, King Lear is most admired. Hence, topics about this work are examinable in high and college-level education. The King Lear play is also recognized due to its importance in literature, which makes it necessary for instructors to ask students to write about this play.

There are a lot of topics about this play, but you should choose a good one. Selecting an excellent topic is important since this will enable you to complete your writing process without struggling with content. In that case, we’ve listed the best topics, and you can select our list.

What Is the Most Brilliant Technique on How to Select the Best King Lear Essay Topic?

The most recommended technique to use when choosing your topic is to consider the one which you can comprehend easily. In case your professor asks you to select your theme, take your time to do preliminary research first. This type of research allows you to critically analyze themes and instances concerning the specific subjects you’ve selected. In case the information about a given topic can easily be found in literature, consider selecting the theme.

List of King Lear Essay Topics for Your Paper

To assist you in your process of choosing a good theme, we’ve presented 30 easy and interesting ideas. These topics are:

The importance of wisdom (based on the character of King Lear)
Means of modifying Lear’s character
Fool’s allegiances of the Lear
Fool’s functionality in the play
The compassionate trait in the play
Trickery and motivation: Detailed analysis
The history of the Lear’s old age
The objective of Lear’s age
Roles Lear’s character
Community principles of the Lear
Planning and plotting of King Lear play
Impartiality and its importance of the Lear
Anarchy and authorities in King Lear play
Conflict resolution of the Lear play
Patience standards portrayed in the King Lear drama
Expectation themes of the Lear
Indubitable probabilities of the Lear play
Life expectancy fraternity of the Lear’s play
The role of Regan in the King Lear Play
The character of Goneril in the Lear’s play
Good personalities portrayed in King Lear play
Bad personalities portrayed in King Lear play
Detriment attributes shown in the Lear play
Relationship themes evident in the King Lear drama
The nature and contribution of King Lear
Evidence of clashes in King Lear play
Ethics in King Lear play
Cultural heritage portrayed in King Lear play
Construction investigation in King Lear play
Importance of intimate evaluation in the Lear play

King Lear Essay Topics for College

Analyze different characters in the play.
Discuss the plot and how it helps to unravel the story.
What is the significance of the English language in Lear’s play?
Is there a moral to the play? If so, what is it?
Discuss themes of motivation in the play.
In the play, there are instances of suffering. Do they serve ulterior purposes?
Discuss the age of Leal and why it’s significant.
What does the play teach about patience? Do you agree or not?
Is there a clear difference between reality and fiction? If so, discuss with examples from the play.
Analyze the community in the play. How did it accompany the ideas and themes?

King Lear High School Essay Topics

The Theme of Family in King Lear: Explore the dynamics of family relationships in the play and their impact on the characters’ decisions and outcomes.
The Role of Loyalty in King Lear: Discuss the importance of loyalty among the characters and how it shapes the events of the play.
The Consequences of Hubris in King Lear: Analyze the negative effects of characters’ excessive pride and arrogance and the lessons they teach.
The Transformation of Lear’s Character: Trace Lear’s character development throughout the play and examine the factors that contribute to his transformation.
The Role of Fool in King Lear: Discuss the significance of the Fool’s presence and the wisdom he imparts to Lear and the audience.
The Theme of Blindness in King Lear: Explore the metaphorical and literal blindness depicted in the play and its symbolic meaning.
Filial Ingratitude in King Lear: Examine the theme of ingratitude among Lear’s daughters and its impact on the overall narrative.
The Use of Imagery in King Lear: Analyze the various imagery used by Shakespeare and its effects on the audience’s understanding of the characters and themes.
The Role of Women in King Lear: Discuss the portrayal of female characters in the play and their agency within the patriarchal society.
The Tragic Elements in King Lear: Identify and discuss the tragic elements in the play, such as the downfall of characters and the sense of catharsis experienced by the audience.

King Lear Argumentative Essay Topics

The Tragic Hero in King Lear: Is Lear a sympathetic figure or a victim of his own flaws?
The Role of Fate in King Lear: To what extent does fate determine the characters’ actions and outcomes?
Parental Relationships in King Lear: Analyze the complex dynamics between Lear and his daughters, focusing on themes of love, betrayal, and forgiveness.
The Theme of Madness in King Lear: How does Shakespeare portray madness in the play, and what purpose does it serve?
Power and Authority in King Lear: Explore the different manifestations of power and the consequences of its abuse in the play.
Gender Roles in King Lear: Examine the portrayal of women in the play and discuss how their roles challenge or conform to societal expectations.
The Importance of Loyalty in King Lear: Investigate the various instances of loyalty and betrayal in the play, and their significance to the overall plot.
The Role of Nature in King Lear: Analyze the symbolic representation of nature in the play and its impact on the characters’ actions and destinies.
Justice and Injustice in King Lear: Discuss the notions of justice and injustice as depicted in the play, exploring the consequences of both.
The Fool in King Lear: Explore the Fool’s role as a truth-teller and examine how his presence influences the actions and decisions of other characters.

Uncommon King Lear Essay Questions to Comprehend

In case you haven’t found good ideas for your essay, it is important to consider comprehending the question below: These questions include:

How has love been modified in the Lear’s play?
What made Edgar utilize the English language during his speech in the Lear’s play?
Which line of context has been applied in the Lear’s play?
How has the main message in the Lear’s play been conveyed?
What significance is revealed from Lear’s play of old age?
How have relationships been conveyed in the Lear’s play?
Can patience relate with destiny as demonstrated in the Lear’s play?
What is the importance of motivation in Lear’s play?
In what way does suffering affect the lives of the Lear’s play character?
Is there any influence of the Lear’s play language to modern society?

Awesome King Lear Essay Ideas to Apply

In case you are still stranded about which specific topics are best for you, consider applying the ideas below.

Consider choosing the major symbols in King Lear. There are a lot of symbols, e.g. the wind and the storm that represent when certain scenes occurred. So, choose your topic based on the symbols to further illustrate your scenes
Evaluate gender significance in the plotting of King Lear. The play represents some form of a patriarchal community that is mostly dominated by men.
Compare and Contrast fiction and reality in King Lear. There are a lot of themes that show fiction. Reality and appearance make looks to be deceiving.
Traits of different characters in King Lear play. Consider choosing your topics that explain different characters, e.g. Goneril, King Lear, Cordelia or Regan.
Evaluate the contribution of the community in King Lear’s plays . There are a lot of things, e.g. mode of clothing that Shakespeare portrays in the community, and all these emphasize the importance of social classes.

The ideas, questions, and topics included above have been suggested by professional writers. Hence, feel free to use them to write your essay. Alternatively, you can contact a professional service to write a high-quality and plagiarism-free paper for you.

The pro essay writers hired by writing companies are qualified and experienced to do different types of assignments for students in various education levels. Call us now for prompt assistance and get help from professional college essay writers!

King Lear William Shakespeare

King Lear literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of King Lear.

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King Lear Essays

Folly of the fool anonymous.

In Elizabethan times, the role of a fool, or court jester, was to professionally entertain others, specifically the king. In essence, fools were paid to make mistakes. Many of the fool's quips and riddles were made at the expense of the king. The...

Sight and Consciousness: An Interpretive Study in King Lear Sonny Elizondo

The images of sight given, taken, or abused resonate deeply in King Lear from Kent's first imperative, "See better, Lear" (I.i.158), to the painful images of a stumbling, eyeless Gloucester. Such imagery, drawn both dramatically and verbally,...

An Examination of the Inverse Tropes of Sight and Blindness in King Lear Lesley Pallathumadom

In King Lear, the recurring images of sight and blindness associated with the characters of Lear and Gloucester illustrate the theme of self-knowledge and consciousness that exist in the play.

These classic tropes are inverted in King Lear,...

Gender, Power, and Economics in King Lear Sonia Buck

A common practice that William Shakespeare employs in many of his works is the experimentation with gender politics. Shakespeare often shows how notions of gender become unstable as a result of social forces. To discuss Shakespeare's treatment of...

Cordelia's Confidence: The Impact of King Lear's Youngest Daughter's Self-Assurance Rebecca Rendell

In the first scene of the first act of King Lear Cordelia, Lear's youngest daughter, is banished from his sight forever. As per his decree, she does not return to the stage until the end of the drama. Yet Cordelia's actions and attitude...

Models of Action and Observation in King Lear David Taylor

Auden once asserted that Shakespearean tragedy is necessarily parabolic, pertaining to the only myth that Christianity possesses: that of the 'unrepentant thief'. We as the spectators are thus implicated in the action since each of us 'is in...

'All's Cheerless, Dark and Deadly' David Taylor

'All's Cheerless, Dark and Deadly' Are Kent's Words a Fair Summary of The Tragedy of King Lear?

Samuel Johnson asserted that the blinding of Gloucester was an 'act too horrid to be endured in a dramatic exhibition', and that he was 'too shocked'...

Authority: Kent as a Model of Loyalty in King Lear Nadia Berenstein

King Lear, as both head of state and paterfamilias, has multiple claims to power, and to obedience. His spectacle of dividing the kingdom between his daughters confuses their obligations to him as subjects with their filial obligations, duties...

Language in King Lear Anonymous

"There is a cliff, whose high and bending head

Looks fearfull in the confin'd deep.

Bring me but to the very brim of it...

... From that place I shall no leading need."(IV.i.73)

It is often difficult to gain entry into a work of such complete and...

King Lear's Three Deaths: Triumph, Nihilism, and Revision David Sauvage

If Shakespeare penned two King Lears, he created three King Lears. There is the Quarto's hero, the Folio's hero, and the hero who exists somewhere in the interplay. The last of these is not the same Lear who emerges variously in various conflated...

Women, Sex, and Lust in Shakespeare's King Lear David Sauvage

As the audience gears up for King Lear's death, as they bite their nails at the coming sword fight between the two separated brothers, they notice that within all this royal drama a silly cat fight has developed between Regan and Goneril. We can...

"When Regiment is Gone": Close Readings of King Lear, V.iii.8-26 and V.iii.305-9 Alex Hoffer

Throughout most of Shakespeare's King Lear, the hero is mad; when not, he is deluded. In his gorgeous speech of V.iii.8-26, Lear displays a newfound, optimistic view of his future with Cordelia moments before Edmund orders her death. Lear's...

Power vs. Intelligence Cindy Pang

In Shakespeare's King Lear, the characters in a position of power are most often the ones who are blindest to the truth. Only after losing that power are they able to gain a clear understanding of the events occurring around them and to realize...

Order, Chaos, and Climax In King Lear Jeremy Zorn

A recurring theme throughout William Shakespeare's King Lear is the perpetual struggle between order and chaos, played out in the arena of human existence. While such characters as Lear, Cordelia, Albany and Edgar try to impose their sense of...

Everybody Plays the Fool: A Comparison of King Lear's Fool and Don Quixote's Squire Jessica Hindman

The first time the Fool enters in Shakespeare's King Lear he immediately offers Kent his coxcomb, or jester's hat. Lear asks the Fool "My pretty knave, how dost thou?" (1.4.98) This initial action and inquiry of the Fool is representative of the...

Recognizing Through the Self: The Power of Insight in King Lear Natasha Rosow

In The Tragedy of King Lear, William Shakespeare drags his audience through horrific tragedy to get to the core of truth. Violence, pain, betrayal, and finally death come crashing down upon almost every character, good or bad. This peeling away of...

The Three Forms of Madness in King Lear Lesley Paterson

This essay concentrates on Act 111, Scene 4 of Shakespeare's King Lear, a tragic and powerful scene in which we witness Lear's mind tragically giving way to the menace of madness, which has relentlessly pursued him throughout the play. However,...

Equity and Fairness as Presented Through the Villains of King Lear Beth Herskovits

Questions of personal responsibility, free will, and justice move our sympathies through a work of literature, causing readers to relate with or despise characters as they are shaped within a piece. In The Tragedy of King Lear, William Shakespeare...

Lear as a Victim of Circumstance Gareth Owen

Why, in spite of everything do we like Lear and are on his side?

Ultimately any pathos that lies with Lear is due to the fact that he, like all Shakespeare's tragic heroes, does not deserve the severity of the punishment he receives. He is, through...

Recognizing Humanity In William Shakespeare's King Lear Noura Badawi

William Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear, is not merely a story of the ill effects of aging, but an illustration of a man plagued by pride and arrogance. Initially, Lear deems himself a man worthy of worship by his family and friends, an ill for...

The Use of Paradox as Related to the Theme of Truth in King Lear Theresa Kennedy

"May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?"1 (I.iv.223).

This question, posed by the Fool, is aptly descriptive of the world of King Lear,which is a world turned upside down, a cart before the horse existence, whichsets the characters...

A King's World: Thirst for Acceptance Katherine Hughes

Like all Shakespearean tragedies, "King Lear" has several prevailing humanistic themes. Certainly, the plot revolves around the obvious themes of parent-child relationships, sibling rivalries and pride as the downfall of man. However, one common...

The Madness of King Lear Nick Summers

It is odd to think that true madness can ever be totally understood. Shakespeare's masterful depiction of the route to insanity, though, is one of the stronger elements of King Lear. The early to middle stages of Lear's deterioration (occurring in...

Patterns of Reversal, Paradox and Irony in King Lear Chris Hadfield

Throughout King Lear, the play's themes and messages are communicated to the audience using a devastating combination of irony; reversal of situation and fortune; and paradox, underlining the harrowing truth of the futility of human existence...

King Lear - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

King Lear is one of William Shakespeare’s tragedies, exploring themes of power, loyalty, madness, and the human condition. Essays on “King Lear” might delve into the character analysis, the motifs of sight and blindness, or the socio-political commentary within the narrative. This play also allows for exploration into the Elizabethan worldview, the dynamics of family and power, or its modern adaptations and the varying interpretations through different cultural or historical lenses. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to King Lear you can find in Papersowl database. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Animal Imagery in King Lear

Shakespeare uses all sorts of images to express different points in King Lear. One of those images is animals and I believe they are the most powerful images in the whole play. Shakespeare’s imagination is that of wild and menacing creatures with very cruel instincts. One of these creatures just so happens to be a dragon. Dragons are very possessive and always full of fire. No greater example of this would be in Act 1, Scene 1 where Lear compares […]

The Concept of Nothing in King Lear

In one of William Shakespeare’s famous tragedies, King Lear, the author depicts the story of an aging king’s descent into madness after attempting to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. Two of the daughters, Goneril and Regan, rob him of his power and sanity after giving away his kingdom to them, while the other sister, Cordelia, suffers. Eventually, tragic consequences overtake them all. The word “nothing” reoccurs constantly throughout the play in the mouths of multiple characters. The author […]

Shakespeare Uses Nature, both Literally and Figuratively

Shakespeare uses nature, both literally and figuratively throughout King Lear to portray characters, human nature, and human society, as well as to represent the emotional and physical status of characters. Nature, in its literal sense, is used in Act 3 to represent and mirror the emotions and mental status of King Lear. Shakespeare uses the raging storm as a reflection of Lear’s mental conflict against his gradual loss of sanity. The manic Lear stands out in the storm and bellows, […]

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The Nature of King Lear

The tragedy King Lear by William Shakespeare begins by King Lear dividing his kingdom amongst his daughters: Regan, Cordelia, and Goneril. The three of them were asked which one of them loves him the most. Goneril and Regan told King Lear what he wanted to hear, and they were given land. Cordelia, on the other hand, was completely honest and in the end was banished from Lear’s kingdom. By the end of the play, only a handful of characters are […]

King Lear, by William Shakespeare, is a Tragic Play

"King Lear, by William Shakespeare, is a tragic play about a king and his three daughters. King Lear has three daughters: Goneril, the eldest, Regan, the middle child, and Cordelia, the youngest and most beloved by Lear. Both Goneril and Regan are married to men of power respectively: Duke of Albany and Duke of Cornwall. Cordelia, on the other hand, is unmarried and is assumed, like all unmarried women of the time period, to be pure. Continuing, when King Lear […]

Patriarchy and the Shakespearean Woman

William Shakespeare writes during a time when patriarchy was prevalent. Shakespeare includes these personas and attitudes within his plays to illustrate how these ideals played out. He works also to create female characters that hold their male counterparts accountable. In this paper, there will be a review of patriarchal patterns within A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Henry IV, Macbeth, and King Lear but additionally how the female characters counteract the hegemonic masculinity. Because patriarchal patterns were prevalent in the time […]

Shakespeare’s Madness Within Hamlet and King Lear

How do you know if a person has gone mad? How do you know if a person is telling the truth? What about intention? Nowadays, we have psychologists, therapists and all kinds of doctors that help to diagnose mental illness. We are now aware of the different types of “craziness” that a person can be. What about hundreds of years ago? Just like today, some people were truly madmen, but of course, anyone has the ability to pretend to be […]

Seeing Love: a Reflection on King Lear

A tragedy is normally defined as a play that follows the series of events that lead to the downfall of a hero. King Lear is no exception to this rule. It shows the destruction and downfall of King Lear and the people who presided under him. Lear is an old man who seeks to retire and live out the rest of his life jumping between his three daughters. He plans to divide his kingdom between all three while keeping the […]

The Tempest Summary and Analysis

"The Tempest works out as a traditional comedy because Miranda and Ferdinand are kept from coming together as lovers until Prospero believes it is the right time. It seems that he had come up with his plan long ago because he is strangely aware of certain things that will happen, such as Miranda and Ferdinand falling for each other[1]. He thinks it is too soon for them to be together because they fell in love as soon as they saw […]

Struggles and Decisions of King Lear

"In Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, the story takes place in Britain, where the elderly King Lear struggles to decide which of his daughters will inherit his land and kingdom - Cordelia, Regan or Goneril. In Act I, Kent, the King’s right-hand man, advises him in saying, “See better, Lear.” Throughout the play, Shakespeare emphasizes the theme of blindness. Although the characters aren’t physically blind, they lack a moral vision due to their wealth and power, causing them to make rash […]

The Role of Women in King Lear

King Lear is a well renowned play about the patriarchal atrophy of a kingdom ruled by an impulsive king who decides to divide his power amongst his three daughters. As a sign of the times, the women in the play are held to a particular standard while the men are held to a laxer set of expectations. After viewing the play, I argue that the female characters are oppressed to fit into a mold that was seen as acceptable of […]

Sympathetic Character in Stories and Plays

"In many stories and plays, when a character is portrayed as “sympathetic” one means that the audience shares the fortunes and misfortunes of that character. One can choose if the character is worthy or unworthy of sympathy. A story identifies a character as worthy or unworthy of sympathy by defining the characters role in the story or play. The character can be a hero with their struggles and the hope for his success. Another being the rival or enemy of […]

King Lear: Critique between Power, Trespass and Forgiveness

Shakespeare’s story, King Lear, begins with the King handing over his kingdom and the responsibilities that comes with his title to his daughters. However, before he spreads his wealth to them, they must proclaim just how much they love and adore him as a father. The youngest daughter, Cordelia, does not follow her sisters in this game with King Lear and tells him the truth that she acts and feels as a daughter should. She illustrates this by saying, “Unhappy […]

Navigating the Complexities of Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’

"King Lear, by William Shakespeare is a confusing and convoluted tragedy about a king with three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, who doesn’t like the truth when he here’s it. Because it Is written in 17 century English, (it felt like I was trying to read Gaelic for the first time) it is extremely difficult to read. After trudging through the book my strongest feeling regarding the entire book is that someone should seriously consider a modern English format for […]

Reading Response: King Lear Act 4

In act four of King Lear the readers see the aftermath of the blinding of Gloucester. Edgar, who at this point is walking around naked, stumbles upon his blinded father. Gloucester has lost all hope in himself and the gods, “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods; / They kill us for their sport” (4.1.40-41). Shakespeare seems here to be reinstating his theme of darkness and desperate with this loyal follower of King Lear losing all hope […]

King Lear is a Tragedy Written by William Shakespeare

"The play follows the final years of King Lear’s life in which he decides the heirs to his kingdom and reaps the consequences of his foolish choice. The play is very dramatic as many characters become either metaphorically or physically blind. King Lear blindly and foolishly gives his kingdom to his two evil daughters ultimately leading to his downfall. As the play begins King Lear is weak in his old age and believes the time has come to decide which […]

The Theme of Familial and Social Identity

One of the biggest ideas in the soliloquy in Act 1, Scene 2 is the theme of familial and social identity. This theme is seen through Edmund’s emotions and opinions towards the social laws put forth by man in regards to parent-child legitimacy. Edmund criticizes the core logic behind these social laws which spite him, “Why “bastard”? Wherefore “base,” When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous and my shape as true as honest madam’s issue? Why […]

King Lear is Speaking to Kent about the Storm

"King Lear is speaking to Kent about the storm that does not disturb him because even though the storm is horrible, In association on the pain forced against him by his daughter. The storm description elaborates Lear’s misery by portraying how the internal agony surpasses the temporary distress in Lear’s subconscious as he recognizes how his pride led to his complete denial and desperate situation. Lear then presents an analogy, by illustrating a situation if a bear were to strike […]

King Lear Vs. Job: what about Fate?

Throughout life we gain an idea of fate. Whether it be god, god’s or the universe, we have an instinct telling us that something bigger than ourselves is controlling our lives. Shakespeare takes some relating and contrasting idea from the biblical book of Job and writes “King Lear” to create his own idea of how our lives are guided. He questions how we can oppose fate, and if we even can. Through comparing King Lear and Job, it is seen […]

Shakespeare’s “King Lear”

People have many different reactions to being tested. Some people get furious and is toxic to everyone including themselves. Sadly in this day in age, that is all way too common. Along those lines, people would often give up because its “too hard” or a “waste of my time”. When tested we should be patient and reliant on God. We need to be calm and have an open mind. In Shakespeare’s King Lear and the biblical Book of Job, they […]

William Shakespeare’s Lessons in King Lear

“There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God.”- Tullian Tchividjian. How can a person settle with suffering? This question is raised in the biblical book of Job, and in Shakespeare's King Lear. Job and King Lear both experience suffering. Job and Lear loose everything that is valuable to them. However how each men handle his suffering and pain distinguishes him. Some […]

Insanity Within the Plays of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare in his many plays and other pieces of literature created some of the most well thought out characters of all time. The characters often had reasons for what they did or what they thought, shedding new light on what it meant to actually be “insane”. The characters’ motives were often shown during his stories, Because of that, Shakespeare, through his use of literature and understanding of the human mind, shaped western culture’s perception of insanity from negative feelings […]

The Famous Play ‘King Lear’ by Shakespeare

We are going to analyse the famous play ‘King Lear’ by Shakespeare. This tragedy was written by the English author in 1605 but it was played the next year and the play address an act of betrayal of the daughters of the King Lear. The blind trust of a father that provides them all that he has but even so his own daughters prefer possessing all the power. The play starts with the decline of the energy of King Lear, […]

Edgar in King Lear

“The Worst of King Lear.” Critical Insights King Lear, Salem Press, 2012, pp. 297-311. Goldman discuss about the worst things happened in the play for different people; Edgar is usually not presented on stage the way it should be is because it will be difficult for the Lear actor to make contrast with him and stress the suffering. In King Lear, audience are made to accompany the characters and feel the misery they bear. However, the misery and punishing aspect […]

Blindness and Sight as a Contributor to the Tragic Life’s of Parallel Characters

The theme of blindness and sight in Shakespeare’s King Lear is not a commentary on the physical inability to see, but a literary device utilized by Shakespeare to illustrate how the presence of the mental flaw of lacking insight leads to tragic consequences brought on by poor judgment. The main factor that leads to the tragedy in the play is emotional blindness characterized as a lack of perception or insight. The two main characters King Lear and the Earl of […]

Observation 9 Tempest

When one looks at both plays The Tempest and King Lear, one can see that they contain much more differences than similarities. The Tempest is based more on the lightheartedness of odd characters in an island that is very much secluded from many things. They encounter many conflicts throughout the play yet they all live happily ever. While, King Lear contains more of a heart wrenching tragedy story that goes into the family betrayal and injustice. Although both stories are […]

Slings and Arrows Canadian Television Series

Slings and Arrows (2003-2006), directed by Peter Wellington, is a Canadian television series that features the backstage drama, onstage embarrassments, and personal turmoil’s encompassing the staff and actors within the fictional New Burbage Theatre Festival. Most known for its conceit in using plotlines that parallel that of the Shakespeare plays being performed, the third season follows the Burbage Theatre production of King Lear. It should be noted that the characters within Slings and Arrows that this paper will focus on […]

Tensions and Conflicts have had Adverse Ramifications – the Rising Action

Introduction This scene denotes the point of no recovery wherein tensions and conflicts have had adverse ramifications - the rising action. Through their newfound power, the sisters have driven their father to insanity; this is coupled with the ominous presence of Edmund who has sought to betray his brother and father to become the sole heir of Gloucester’s fortune. The insane parody of a trial in the previous scene ought to be a model of rationality compared to the horrific […]

Shakespeare’s Villains

"In two of William Shakespeare’s plays: Hamlet and King Lear, the two characters who are considered villainous with great political ambitions are Claudius, King of Denmark and Edmund, the bastard son of Earl of Gloucester. These two men are resentful, manipulative, and want to ensure they obtain power; nevertheless, Shakespeare provides the audience with an understanding yet unsympathetic perception of their plot to pursue the title and land. Even though these characters are a part of two different tragedies, Shakespeare […]

A Character in a Story

A character in a story can be seen in a different light depending on the portrayal by the author. The author could portray characters a sympathetic or unsympathetic. Shakespeare and Chinua Achebe are two authors who created characters who are to be sympathized with and those that were not worthy of sympathy [Unclear what you are saying]. In Shakespeare’s play king Lear, Lear is considered a sympathetic character. Edmond on the other hand is not. Shakespeare is able to show […]

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How To Write An Essay On King Lear

Introduction to shakespeare's king lear.

Writing an essay on Shakespeare’s "King Lear" involves delving into one of the most profound tragedies ever written. In your introduction, establish "King Lear" as a work that explores complex themes such as power, betrayal, madness, and the human condition. Offer a brief summary of the plot, where an aging king divides his kingdom among his daughters based on their flattery, leading to a series of tragic events. Outline the focus of your essay, whether it be a character analysis, thematic exploration, or a study of the play’s dramatic structure. Setting the stage with a clear introduction is key to guiding the reader through your interpretation of this Shakespearean tragedy.

Analyzing Key Characters and Relationships

The body of your essay should include an in-depth analysis of the key characters and their relationships in "King Lear." If focusing on Lear himself, discuss his journey from pride and arrogance to madness and despair. Explore the dynamics between Lear and his daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, and how their interactions propel the plot. Consider also the subplot involving Gloucester and his sons, Edgar and Edmund, drawing parallels or contrasts with the main storyline. Discuss how Shakespeare develops these characters, their motivations, and the consequences of their actions, contributing to the play's overarching themes.

Exploring Themes and Symbolism

"King Lear" is rich in themes and symbolism which deserve close examination. Discuss major themes such as the nature of evil, the vulnerability of the powerful, and the search for justice and redemption. Delve into the symbolism used by Shakespeare, such as the storm that rages as Lear’s madness peaks, representing the tumultuous chaos of his mind and kingdom. Analyze how these themes and symbols resonate with the audience, reflecting universal human experiences and emotions. This section should offer a thoughtful exploration of the play’s deeper meanings and its relevance both in Shakespeare’s time and today.

Concluding with the Impact and Legacy of King Lear

Conclude your essay by reflecting on the impact and legacy of "King Lear." Discuss its significance in the canon of Shakespeare’s works and its enduring relevance in modern times. Consider the play’s influence on literature, theater, and broader cultural discussions about power, family dynamics, and morality. Summarize how your analysis of "King Lear" contributes to a greater understanding of the play and its importance. A strong conclusion will tie together your insights and leave the reader with a deeper appreciation for one of Shakespeare’s most powerful tragedies.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Plays — King Lear

Essays on King Lear

Prompt examples for "king lear" essays, power and madness.

Examine the theme of power and madness in "King Lear." How do King Lear and other characters' quests for power lead to their descent into madness, and what does this reveal about the human condition?

Family and Betrayal

Analyze the dynamics of family and betrayal in the play. How do the relationships between Lear and his daughters, as well as Gloucester and his sons, illustrate themes of loyalty, deception, and trust?

Blindness and Insight

Discuss the symbolism of blindness and insight in "King Lear." How do characters gain or lose their sight, both literally and metaphorically, and what does this say about their understanding of the world?

Justice and Revenge

Examine the themes of justice and revenge in the play. How do characters seek retribution for perceived wrongs, and how does the concept of justice evolve throughout the story?

The Role of the Fool

Consider the significance of the Fool in "King Lear." What is the Fool's role in the play, and how does his character provide commentary on the events and characters?

Tragedy and Redemption

Analyze the tragic elements of the play and the potential for redemption. How do the characters' actions and fates contribute to the overall sense of tragedy, and is there room for redemption in the story?

Blindness Vs The Ability to Perceive in King Lear

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The Impact of Anger on Characters in King Lear

Tragic injustice in william shakespeare’s king lear, a theme of redemption in king lear, the significance of introspection in king lear, let us write you an essay from scratch.

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King Lear Character Analysis: Representation of Responsibility

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Analysis of Humanistic Themes Resolved in King Lear

Comedy discourse in shakespeare's king lear, hope and suffering in shakespeare’s king lear, how shakespeare’s king lear is still relevant today, paradox and irony: the means of presentation in king lear, a study of a secondary tragic hero in king lear, catharsis in william shakespeare’s king lear, subversion of the old order in king lear by william shakespeare, analysis of king lear in terms of aristotelian tragedy, a theme of justice in king lear by william shakespeare, a theme of blindness versus insight in king lear, analysis of king lear through pragmatic perspective, the journey and return: the theme of wandering in king lear, character's development in king lear and pride and prejudice, insanity and social roles in king lear, connection between chaos and order in king lear, king lear: construction and deconstruction of humanity, the role of montaigne's essays in king lear, reading king lear through the prism of jacobean context, the concept of nature and its subjective connotations in king lear, relevant topics.

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A* A Level King Lear Essays

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24 September 2021

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A* King Lear Essay (Women)

A* King Lear Essay (Madness)

In this bundle are two A* essays on King Lear!

Title: Explore the role of madness in King Lear. You must include relevant contextual factors.

Title: Explore the role of women in King Lear. You must include relevant contextual factors.

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COMMENTS

96 King Lear Essay Topic Ideas & Examples
King Lear Themes, Characters, & Analysis Essay. As explained by Al Zoubi and Al Khamaiseh, during the ceremony, Goneril and Regan, the oldest and the middle daughters, use flatter and insincere speech to prove their love to the father. Tragic Redemption in "King Lear" by Shakespeare.
King Lear Suggested Essay Topics
Suggested Essay Topics. PDF Cite. Act I, Scene 1. 1. In the play, King Lear requests his daughters' public profession of love to him. Cordelia is often criticized for being too proud to give her ...
King Lear essay titles at A level…
Discuss. 9. "King Lear is a play dominated by the contrast between wisdom and foolishness.". Discuss. 10. "King Lear is a play in which madness is the key to the realization of the truth". Discuss. 11. "Lear is a contemptible figure at the beginning of the play, but he deserves some admiration by the end of it.".
King Lear Essay Topics
Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of "King Lear" by William Shakespeare. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student ...
King Lear Essays
Essays and criticism on William Shakespeare's King Lear - Essays. ... there is no lesson to be learned in King Lear by either its title character or the audience beyond the existence of evil in an ...
King Lear Critical Essays
2. He usurps Edgar's legitimate title as the future Earl of Gloucester. C. Kent and Edgar both lose their nobility. 1. The Earl of Kent is banished for his honest defense of Cordelia. 2. Edgar ...
King Lear Study Guide
Historical Context of King Lear. In the period in which King Lear was written—from 1604 to 1607—King James VI, King of Scotland and England, was trying to persuade English Parliament to approve the union of the two countries into one nation. (It was James who first used the term "Great Britain" to describe the unity of the Celtic and Saxon ...
Norman Maclean, King Lear essay
Buy the book. • •. Maclean's essay was first published in 1952 in Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern, edited by R.S. Crane. it would, of course, be an exaggeration to say that the history of the story of King Lear is a history of art. Far back of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, in which Lear's story makes its ...
Analysis of William Shakespeare's King Lear
King Lear is based on a well-known story from ancient Celtic and British mythology, first given literary form by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1137). Raphael Holinshed later repeated the story of Lear and his daughters in his Chronicles (1587), and Edmund Spenser, the first to name the youngest daughter, presents the story in book 2 of The Faerie Queene (1589).
King Lear Essay Questions
King Lear study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. ... (that title belongs to Titus Andronicus), the blinding of Gloucester is one of the cruelest and most violent scenes the bard ever wrote. Technically, Cornwall ...
50 King Lear Essay Topics
These topics are: The importance of wisdom (based on the character of King Lear) Means of modifying Lear's character. Fool's allegiances of the Lear. Fool's functionality in the play. The compassionate trait in the play. Trickery and motivation: Detailed analysis. The history of the Lear's old age.
King Lear Essays
King Lear. This essay concentrates on Act 111, Scene 4 of Shakespeare's King Lear, a tragic and powerful scene in which we witness Lear's mind tragically giving way to the menace of madness, which has relentlessly pursued him throughout the play. However,...
King Lear
"His [Lear's] story, put in the simplest terms, is the story of his progress from being a king to being a man, neither more nor less." From Arnold Kettle, Literature and Liberation: Selected Essays 1988 "Do not laugh at me, For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia." 4.7.67-69. Nicholas R Evans. Lear Quotations "We have ...
King Lear
King Lear, tragedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written in 1605-06 and published in a quarto edition in 1608, evidently based on Shakespeare's unrevised working papers.The text of the First Folio of 1623 often differs markedly from the quarto text and seemingly represents a theatrical revision done by the author with some cuts designed for shortened performance.
King Lear Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas
31 essay samples found. King Lear is one of William Shakespeare's tragedies, exploring themes of power, loyalty, madness, and the human condition. Essays on "King Lear" might delve into the character analysis, the motifs of sight and blindness, or the socio-political commentary within the narrative. This play also allows for exploration ...
'King Lear' A Level Essay Plans (WJEC)
docx, 36.11 KB. This is a bundle of character and theme essay plans for the WJEC A Level English Language and Literature exam on 'King Lear'. The notes are very detailed and could be applied to other exam boards studying this text. There are 12 essay plans on the main themes and characters in the play. I created these essay plans to prepare ...
King Lear
King Lear, George Frederick Bensell. King Lear is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare.It is loosely based on the mythological Leir of Britain.King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between his daughters Goneril and Regan, who pay homage to gain favour, feigning love.The King's third daughter, Cordelia, is offered a third of his kingdom also, but refuses to ...
≡Essays on King Lear. Free Examples of Research Paper Topics, Titles
2 pages / 988 words. King Lear is a play written by William Shakespeare, telling the tale of a king who bestows his power and land by dividing his realm amongst his three daughters, Cordelia, Regan, and Goneril. In the subplot of the play, a nobleman loyal to King Lear... King Lear Literary Devices William Shakespeare.
A* A Level King Lear Essays
Our customer service team will review your report and will be in touch. In this bundle are two A* essays on King Lear! Title: Explore the role of madness in King Lear. You must include relevant contextual factors. Title: Explore the role.

96 King Lear Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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King Lear Essays

Sight and Consciousness: An Interpretive Study in King Lear Sonny Elizondo

An Examination of the Inverse Tropes of Sight and Blindness in King Lear Lesley Pallathumadom

Gender, Power, and Economics in King Lear Sonia Buck

Cordelia's Confidence: The Impact of King Lear's Youngest Daughter's Self-Assurance Rebecca Rendell

Models of Action and Observation in King Lear David Taylor

'All's Cheerless, Dark and Deadly' David Taylor

Authority: Kent as a Model of Loyalty in King Lear Nadia Berenstein

Language in King Lear Anonymous

King Lear's Three Deaths: Triumph, Nihilism, and Revision David Sauvage

Women, Sex, and Lust in Shakespeare's King Lear David Sauvage

"When Regiment is Gone": Close Readings of King Lear, V.iii.8-26 and V.iii.305-9 Alex Hoffer

Power vs. Intelligence Cindy Pang

Order, Chaos, and Climax In King Lear Jeremy Zorn

Everybody Plays the Fool: A Comparison of King Lear's Fool and Don Quixote's Squire Jessica Hindman

Recognizing Through the Self: The Power of Insight in King Lear Natasha Rosow

The Three Forms of Madness in King Lear Lesley Paterson

Equity and Fairness as Presented Through the Villains of King Lear Beth Herskovits

Lear as a Victim of Circumstance Gareth Owen

Recognizing Humanity In William Shakespeare's King Lear Noura Badawi

The Use of Paradox as Related to the Theme of Truth in King Lear Theresa Kennedy

A King's World: Thirst for Acceptance Katherine Hughes

The Madness of King Lear Nick Summers

Patterns of Reversal, Paradox and Irony in King Lear Chris Hadfield

King Lear - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

Animal Imagery in King Lear

The Concept of Nothing in King Lear

Shakespeare Uses Nature, both Literally and Figuratively

The Nature of King Lear

King Lear, by William Shakespeare, is a Tragic Play

Patriarchy and the Shakespearean Woman

Shakespeare’s Madness Within Hamlet and King Lear

Seeing Love: a Reflection on King Lear

The Tempest Summary and Analysis

Struggles and Decisions of King Lear

The Role of Women in King Lear

Sympathetic Character in Stories and Plays

King Lear: Critique between Power, Trespass and Forgiveness

Navigating the Complexities of Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’

Reading Response: King Lear Act 4

King Lear is a Tragedy Written by William Shakespeare

The Theme of Familial and Social Identity

King Lear is Speaking to Kent about the Storm

King Lear Vs. Job: what about Fate?

Shakespeare’s “King Lear”

William Shakespeare’s Lessons in King Lear

Insanity Within the Plays of William Shakespeare

The Famous Play ‘King Lear’ by Shakespeare

Edgar in King Lear

Blindness and Sight as a Contributor to the Tragic Life’s of Parallel Characters

Observation 9 Tempest

Slings and Arrows Canadian Television Series

Tensions and Conflicts have had Adverse Ramifications – the Rising Action

Shakespeare’s Villains