King Lear

Man Reduced to Essentials

Lear’s Transformation

From Arrogance and Ignorance To Humility and Awareness

Act One

• Lear is an egotistical, arrogant, selfish, and foolish old man, whose 80 years of kingship have given him an incorrect view of himself and others.

• He thinks he can relinquish responsibility and yet retain the prerogatives of power.

• Foolishly, he thinks that love can be measured. • Folly is his tragic flaw, the cause of the misfortunes

that ensue.

Act Two• Lear’s ill-treatment at the hands of his daughters and his

misgivings about his treatment of Cordelia begin to erode his foolish pride and sense of identity.

• Self-questioning: “This is not Lear: Does Lear walk thus, speak thus? Ha! Waking? ‘tis not so. Who is it that can tell me who is am.”

• Resistance to the truth of his decline: “No.” “No, I say.” “No, no, they would not.” “By Jupiter, I swear no.” “They durst not do it. They could not, would not . . .”

• Reduction of Lear in full progress.

Act Three

• With Fool and Mad Tom in attendance, Lear suffers acute mental anguish symbolized by the storm.

• Having lost all, the suffering King Lear begins to take a more compassionate view of his fellowman. He is humanized by suffering.

• Near border of insanity, Lear’s anguish takes on the dimension of nightmare as in mock trial of Goneril and Regan.

• Lear has been reduced to nothing.

Act Four

• Lear realizes that he is a mortal man, subject to the laws of nature.

• His compassion tempers his sense of justice, authority, and the human condition.

• After waking in Cordelia’s care: “You do me wrong to take me out of the grave. Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.”

• Lear now knows who he is. “You must bear with me. Pray you now, forget and forgive. I am old and foolish.”

Act Five

• Lear is content to be old and with his daughter even if they are in prison. “Come, let’s away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds in the cage . . . So we’ll live and pray and sing and tell old tales and laugh at gilded butterflies . . .”

• The worst possible thing happens. Cordelia is hanged, adding to Lear’s anguish, stretching him out on the rack of this tough world.

• King Lear dies, humbled by the cruelties of life yet aware of who he is and who loved him.

Lear’s Transformation

• Act one – Egotistical, arrogant, foolish, selfish• Act two– Thwarted, self-questioning, angry • Act three –Anguished, empathic, reduced• Act four – Humble, self aware, polite• Act five– Content, bereft, wise

Lear’s Prayer[To the Fool] In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty—Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,Your looped and window’s raggedness, defend youFrom 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 themAnd show the Heavens more just.

Nothing• Lear: What can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak! Cordelia: Nothing. Lear: Nothing? Cordelia: Nothing. Lear: Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.• Glouscester: What paper were you reading? Edgar: Nothing, my lord.• Kent: This is nothing, Fool. Fool: Then ‘tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer; you Gave me nothing for it. Can you make no use of nothing, Nuncle? Lear: Why no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.

A Shakespearean Insult

Oswald: What dost thou know me for?Kent: A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I wll beat into clamorous whining if thou deni’st the least syllable of thy addition.

Animal Imagery

1. . . . That she may feel How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child 2. Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar? . . .

and the creature run from the cur? There thou might’st behold the great image of Authority: A dog’s obeyed in office.

3. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the Gods; They kill us for their sport.

Cuckoo Bird

For you know, Nuncle, the

hedge sparrow fed the

cuckoo so long it has its

head bit off by it young.

Clothing Imagery

1. . . . Thou art a lady; If only to go warm were gorgeous, Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’t, Which scarcely keeps thee warm.2. Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold. And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it.

Eyesight

1. Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter; Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty . . .

2. Lest it see more prevent it. Out, vile jelly, Where is thy luster now?3. I have no way and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw . . . Oh, dear son Edgar . . . Might I but live to see thee in my touch, I’d say I had eyes again.

More Eyesight

Lear: Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light: yet you see how this world goes.

Glouscester: I see it feelingly.Lear: What! Art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears . . . Get thee glass eyes; And, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.

Paul Scofield as King Lear

Universality of Lear

Lear’s Anguish

Fool

Cordelia

Edgar and Edmund

Theme of King Lear

In a world of lust, cruelty, and greed, with extremes of wealth and poverty, man reduced to essentials needs not wealth, nor power, nor even physical freedom, but rather patience, mutual forgiveness, the exchange of charity, and those sacrifices on which the gods, if there are any gods, throw incense. Kenneth Muir

Laurence Olivier as King Lear

Paul Scofield as King Lear