King Lear

Composition of the play 1605-1606

Sources:Geoffrey of Monmouths Historia Britonum .
Spencers The Fairie Queene.
An anonymous play called The True Chronical
History of King Lear.
Sir Philip Sidneys Arcadia.


Themes of the play
Reason in madness and madness in reason
The double plot
The unhappy ending
Improbabilities in the play
Character portrayal


The fool and his function
Dramatic and melodramatic situations
A typical tragedy
Dramatic irony
As a stage play
A dramatization of a moral problem


Cordelias blunt and unvarnished statement
Lears vanity and impulsiveness
Hypocrisy of Goneril and Regan
Edmunds grievance against society
Theme of Renunciation

King Lear

Lears basic flaw at the beginning of the play is that he values

appearances above reality. He wants to be treated as a king and
to enjoy the title, but he doesnt want to fulfill a kings
obligations of governing for the good of his subjects. Similarly,
his test of his daughters demonstrates that he values a flattering
public display of love over real love. He doesnt ask which of
you doth love us most, but rather, which of you shall we say
doth love us most? (1.1.49). Most readers conclude that Lear is
simply blind to the truth, but Cordelia is already his favorite
daughter at the beginning of the play, so presumably he knows
that she loves him the most. Nevertheless, Lear values Goneril
and Regans fawning over Cordelias sincere sense of filial
duty.

An important question to ask is whether Lear develops as

a characterwhether he learns from his mistakes and
becomes a better and more insightful human being. In
some ways the answer is no: he doesnt completely
recover his sanity and emerge as a better king. But his
values do change over the course of the play. As he
realizes his weakness and insignificance in comparison to
the awesome forces of the natural world, he becomes a
humble and caring individual. He comes to cherish
Cordelia above everything else and to place his own love
for Cordelia above every other consideration, to the point
that he would rather live in prison with her than rule as a
king again.

Cordelia

Cordelias chief characteristics are devotion, kindness,

beauty, and honestyhonesty to a fault, perhaps. She is
contrasted throughout the play with Goneril and Regan,
who are neither honest nor loving, and who manipulate
their father for their own ends. By refusing to take part in
Lears love test at the beginning of the play, Cordelia
establishes herself as a repository of virtue, and the
obvious authenticity of her love for Lear makes clear the
extent of the kings error in banishing her. For most of the
middle section of the play, she is offstage, but as we
observe the depredations of Goneril and Regan and watch
Lears descent into madness,

Cordelia is never far from the audiences thoughts, and

her beauty is venerably described in religious terms.
Indeed, rumors of her return to Britain begin to surface
almost immediately, and once she lands at Dover, the
action of the play begins to move toward her, as all the
characters converge on the coast. Cordelias reunion with
Lear marks the apparent restoration of order in the
kingdom and the triumph of love and forgiveness over
hatred and spite. This fleeting moment of familial
happiness makes the devastating finale of King Lear that
much more cruel, as Cordelia, the personification of
kindness and virtue, becomes a literal sacrifice to the
heartlessness of an apparently unjust world.

Edmund

Of all of the plays villains, Edmund is the most complex and

sympathetic. He is a consummate schemer, a Machiavellian
character eager to seize any opportunity and willing to do
anything to achieve his goals. However, his ambition is
interesting insofar as it reflects not only a thirst for land and
power but also a desire for the recognition denied to him by his
status as a bastard. His serial treachery is not merely selfinterested; it is a conscious rebellion against the social order
that has denied him the same status as Gloucesters legitimate
son, Edgar. Now, gods, stand up for bastards, Edmund
commands, but in fact he depends not on divine aid but on his
own initiative (1.2.22). He is the ultimate self-made man, and he
is such a cold and capable villain that it is entertaining to watch
him work, much as the audience can appreciate the clever
wickedness of Iago in Othello.


Only at the close of the play does Edmund show a flicker
of weakness. Mortally wounded, he sees that both Goneril
and Regan have died for him, and whispers, Yet
Edmund was beloved (5.3.238). After this ambiguous
statement, he seems to repent of his villainy and admits to
having ordered Cordelias death. His peculiar change of
heart, rare among Shakespearean villains, is enough to
make the audience wonder, amid the carnage, whether
Edmunds villainy sprang not from some innate cruelty
but simply from a thwarted, misdirected desire for the
familial love that he witnessed around him.

Goneril&Regan

There is little good to be said for Lears older daughters,

who are largely indistinguishable in their villainy and
spite. Goneril and Regan are cleveror at least clever
enough to flatter their father in the plays opening scene
and, early in the play, their bad behavior toward Lear
seems matched by his own pride and temper. But any
sympathy that the audience can muster for them
evaporates quickly, first when they turn their father out
into the storm at the end of Act 2 and then when they
viciously put out Gloucesters eyes in Act 3.


Goneril and Regan are, in a sense, personifications of
evilthey have no conscience, only appetite. It is
this greedy ambition that enables them to crush all
opposition and make themselves mistresses of
Britain. Ultimately, however, this same appetite
brings about their undoing. Their desire for power is
satisfied, but both harbor sexual desire for Edmund,
which destroys their alliance and eventually leads
them to destroy each other. Evil, the play suggests,
inevitably turns in on itself.

Themes Motifs
&Symbols

Themes are the fundamental and often universal

ideas explored in a literary work.

Justice

King Lear is a brutal play, filled with human cruelty and

awful, seemingly meaningless disasters. The plays
succession of terrible events raises an obvious question
for the charactersnamely, whether there is any
possibility of justice in the world, or whether the world is
fundamentally indifferent or even hostile to humankind.
Various characters offer their opinions: As flies to
wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their
sport, Gloucester muses, realizing it foolish for
humankind to assume that the natural world works in
parallel with socially or morally convenient notions of
justice (4.1.3738).


Edgar, on the other hand, insists that the gods are
just, believing that individuals get what they
deserve (5.3.169). But, in the end, we are left with
only a terrifying uncertaintyalthough the wicked
die, the good die along with them, culminating in the
awful image of Lear cradling Cordelias body in his
arms. There is goodness in the world of the play, but
there is also madness and death, and it is difficult to
tell which triumphs in the end.

Authority Versus Chaos

King Lear is about political authority as much as it is

about family dynamics. Lear is not only a father but also a
king, and when he gives away his authority to the
unworthy and evil Goneril and Regan, he delivers not
only himself and his family but all of Britain into chaos
and cruelty. As the two wicked sisters indulge their
appetite for power and Edmund begins his own
ascension, the kingdom descends into civil strife, and we
realize that Lear has destroyed not only his own authority
but all authority in Britain. The stable, hierarchal order
that Lear initially represents falls apart and disorder
engulfs the realm.


The failure of authority in the face of chaos recurs in
Lears wanderings on the heath during the storm.
Witnessing the powerful forces of the natural world,
Lear comes to understand that he, like the rest of
humankind, is insignificant in the world. This
realization proves much more important than the
realization of his loss of political control, as it
compels him to re-prioritize his values and become
humble and caring. With this newfound
understanding of himself, Lear hopes to be able to
confront the chaos in the political realm as well.

Reconciliation

Darkness and unhappiness pervade King Lear, and the

devastating Act 5 represents one of the most tragic
endings in all of literature. Nevertheless, the play presents
the central relationshipthat between Lear and
Cordeliaas a dramatic embodiment of true, selfsacrificing love. Rather than despising Lear for banishing
her, Cordelia remains devoted, even from afar, and
eventually brings an army from a foreign country to
rescue him from his tormentors. Lear, meanwhile, learns a
tremendously cruel lesson in humility and eventually
reaches the point where he can reunite joyfully with
Cordelia and experience the balm of her forgiving love.


Lears recognition of the error of his ways is an
ingredient vital to reconciliation with Cordelia, not
because Cordelia feels wronged by him but because
he has understood the sincerity and depth of her
love for him. His maturation enables him to bring
Cordelia back into his good graces, a testament to
loves ability to flourish, even if only fleetingly, amid
the horror and chaos that engulf the rest of the play.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and

literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the texts major themes.

Madness

Insanity occupies a central place in the play and is

associated with both disorder and hidden wisdom. The
Fool, who offers Lear insight in the early sections of the
play, offers his counsel in a seemingly mad babble. Later,
when Lear himself goes mad, the turmoil in his mind
mirrors the chaos that has descended upon his kingdom.
At the same time, however, it also provides him with
important wisdom by reducing him to his bare humanity,
stripped of all royal pretensions.


Lear thus learns humility. He is joined in his real
madness by Edgars feigned insanity, which also
contains nuggets of wisdom for the king to mine.
Meanwhile, Edgars time as a supposedly insane
beggar hardens him and prepares him to defeat
Edmund at the close of the play.

Betrayal

Betrayals play a critical role in the play and show the

workings of wickedness in both the familial and
political realmshere, brothers betray brothers and
children betray fathers. Goneril and Regans betrayal
of Lear raises them to power in Britain, where
Edmund, who has betrayed both Edgar and
Gloucester, joins them. However, the play suggests
that betrayers inevitably turn on one another,


showing how Goneril and Regan fall out when they
both become attracted to Edmund, and how their
jealousies of one another ultimately lead to mutual
destruction. Additionally, it is important to
remember that the entire play is set in motion by
Lears blind, foolish betrayal of Cordelias love for
him, which reinforces that at the heart of every
betrayal lies a skewed set of values.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors

used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Storm

As Lear wanders about a desolate heath in Act 3, a

terrible storm, strongly but ambiguously symbolic, rages
overhead. In part, the storm echoes Lears inner turmoil
and mounting madness: it is a physical, turbulent natural
reflection of Lears internal confusion. At the same time,
the storm embodies the awesome power of nature, which
forces the powerless king to recognize his own mortality
and human frailty and to cultivate a sense of humility for
the first time.


The storm may also symbolize some kind of divine
justice, as if nature itself is angry about the events in
the play. Finally, the meteorological chaos also
symbolizes the political disarray that has engulfed
Lears Britain.

Blindness

Gloucesters physical blindness symbolizes the

metaphorical blindness that grips both Gloucester and the
plays other father figure, Lear. The parallels between the
two men are clear: both have loyal children and disloyal
children, both are blind to the truth, and both end up
banishing the loyal children and making the wicked
one(s) their heir(s). Only when Gloucester has lost the use
of his eyes and Lear has gone mad does each realize his
tremendous error. It is appropriate that the play brings
them together near Dover in Act 4 to commiserate about
how their blindness to the truth about their children has
cost them dearly.

Hamlet

Hamlet has fascinated audiences and readers for

centuries, and the first thing to point out about him is that
he is enigmatic. There is always more to him than the
other characters in the play can figure out; even the most
careful and clever readers come away with the sense that
they dont know everything there is to know about this
character. Hamlet actually tells other characters that there
is more to him than meets the eyenotably, his mother,
and Rosencrantz and Guildensternbut his fascination
involves much more than this.


When he speaks, he sounds as if theres something
important hes not saying, maybe something even he
is not aware of. The ability to write soliloquies and
dialogues that create this effect is one of
Shakespeares most impressive achievements.


A university student whose studies are interrupted
by his fathers death, Hamlet is extremely
philosophical and contemplative. He is particularly
drawn to difficult questions or questions that cannot
be answered with any certainty. Faced with evidence
that his uncle murdered his father, evidence that any
other character in a play would believe, Hamlet
becomes obsessed with proving his uncles guilt
before trying to act.


The standard of beyond a reasonable doubt is
simply unacceptable to him. He is equally plagued
with questions about the afterlife, about the wisdom
of suicide, about what happens to bodies after they
diethe list is extensive.


But even though he is thoughtful to the point of
obsession, Hamlet also behaves rashly and
impulsively. When he does act, it is with surprising
swiftness and little or no premeditation, as when he
stabs Polonius through a curtain without even
checking to see who he is. He seems to step very
easily into the role of a madman, behaving erratically
and upsetting the other characters with his wild
speech and pointed innuendos.


It is also important to note that Hamlet is extremely
melancholy and discontented with the state of affairs
in Denmark and in his own familyindeed, in the
world at large. He is extremely disappointed with
his mother for marrying his uncle so quickly, and he
repudiates Ophelia, a woman he once claimed to
love, in the harshest terms. His words often indicate
his disgust with and distrust of women in general.
At a number of points in the play, he contemplates
his own death and even the option of suicide.


But, despite all of the things with which Hamlet
professes dissatisfaction, it is remarkable that the
prince and heir apparent of Denmark should think
about these problems only in personal and
philosophical terms. He spends relatively little time
thinking about the threats to Denmarks national
security from without or the threats to its stability
from within (some of which he helps to create
through his own carelessness).

Claudius

Hamlets major antagonist is a shrewd, lustful,

conniving king who contrasts sharply with the other
male characters in the play. Whereas most of the
other important men in Hamlet are preoccupied with
ideas of justice, revenge, and moral balance,
Claudius is bent upon maintaining his own power.
The old King Hamlet was apparently a stern warrior,
but Claudius is a corrupt politician whose main
weapon is his ability to manipulate others through
his skillful use of language.


Claudiuss speech is compared to poison being
poured in the earthe method he used to murder
Hamlets father. Claudiuss love for Gertrude may be
sincere, but it also seems likely that he married her as
a strategic move, to help him win the throne away
from Hamlet after the death of the king. As the play
progresses,


Claudiuss mounting fear of Hamlets insanity leads
him to ever greater self-preoccupation; when
Gertrude tells him that Hamlet has killed Polonius,
Claudius does not remark that Gertrude might have
been in danger, but only that he would have been in
danger had he been in the room. He tells Laertes the
same thing as he attempts to soothe the young mans
anger after his fathers death. Claudius is ultimately
too crafty for his own good.


In Act V, scene ii, rather than allowing Laertes only
two methods of killing Hamlet, the sharpened sword
and the poison on the blade, Claudius insists on a
third, the poisoned goblet. When Gertrude
inadvertently drinks the poison and dies, Hamlet is
at last able to bring himself to kill Claudius, and the
king is felled by his own cowardly machination.

Gertrude

Few Shakespearean characters have caused as much uncertainty as

Gertrude, the beautiful Queen of Denmark. The play seems to raise
more questions about Gertrude than it answers, including: Was she
involved with Claudius before the death of her husband? Did she
love her husband? Did she know about Claudiuss plan to commit
the murder? Did she love Claudius, or did she marry him simply
to keep her high station in Denmark? Does she believe Hamlet
when he insists that he is not mad, or does she pretend to believe
him simply to protect herself? Does she intentionally betray
Hamlet to Claudius, or does she believe that she is protecting her
sons secret?


These questions can be answered in numerous ways,
depending upon ones reading of the play. The
Gertrude who does emerge clearly in Hamlet is a
woman defined by her desire for station and
affection, as well as by her tendency to use men to
fulfill her instinct for self-preservationwhich, of
course, makes her extremely dependent upon the
men in her life. Hamlets most famous comment
about Gertrude is his furious condemnation of
women in general: Frailty, thy name is woman!
(I.ii.146).


This comment is as much indicative of Hamlets agonized
state of mind as of anything else, but to a great extent
Gertrude does seem morally frail. She never exhibits the
ability to think critically about her situation, but seems
merely to move instinctively toward seemingly safe
choices, as when she immediately runs to Claudius after
her confrontation with Hamlet. She is at her best in social
situations (I.ii and V.ii), when her natural grace and
charm seem to indicate a rich, rounded personality. At
times it seems that her grace and charm are her only
characteristics, and her reliance on men appears to be her
sole way of capitalizing on her abilities.

Themes ,Motifs
&Symbols

Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal
ideas explored in a literary work.

The Impossibility of
Certinity

What separates Hamlet from other revenge plays (and

maybe from every play written before it) is that the action
we expect to see, particularly from Hamlet himself, is
continually postponed while Hamlet tries to obtain more
certain knowledge about what he is doing. This play
poses many questions that other plays would simply take
for granted. Can we have certain knowledge about
ghosts? Is the ghost what it appears to be, or is it really a
misleading fiend? Does the ghost have reliable knowledge
about its own death, or is the ghost itself deluded?


Moving to more earthly matters: How can we know for
certain the facts about a crime that has no witnesses? Can
Hamlet know the state of Claudiuss soul by watching his
behavior? If so, can he know the facts of what Claudius
did by observing the state of his soul? Can Claudius (or
the audience) know the state of Hamlets mind by
observing his behavior and listening to his speech? Can
we know whether our actions will have the consequences
we want them to have? Can we know anything about the
afterlife?


Many people have seen Hamlet as a play about
indecisiveness, and thus about Hamlets failure to act
appropriately. It might be more interesting to
consider that the play shows us how many
uncertainties our lives are built upon, how many
unknown quantities are taken for granted when
people act or when they evaluate one anothers
actions.

The Complexity of
Action

Directly related to the theme of certainty is the theme

of action. How is it possible to take reasonable,
effective, purposeful action? In Hamlet, the question
of how to act is affected not only by rational
considerations, such as the need for certainty, but
also by emotional, ethical, and psychological factors.
Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that its
even possible to act in a controlled, purposeful way.
When he does act, he prefers to do it blindly,
recklessly, and violently.

The other characters obviously think much less about

action in the abstract than Hamlet does, and are
therefore less troubled about the possibility of acting
effectively. They simply act as they feel is appropriate.
But in some sense they prove that Hamlet is right,
because all of their actions miscarry. Claudius possesses
himself of queen and crown through bold action, but his
conscience torments him, and he is beset by threats to his
authority (and, of course, he dies). Laertes resolves that
nothing will distract him from acting out his revenge, but
he is easily influenced and manipulated into serving
Claudiuss ends, and his poisoned rapier is turned back
upon himself.

The Mystery of Death

In the aftermath of his fathers murder, Hamlet is

obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of
the play he considers death from a great many
perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of
death, embodied in the ghost, and the physical
remainders of the dead, such as by Yoricks skull and the
decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout, the idea of
death is closely tied to the themes of spirituality, truth,
and uncertainty in that death may bring the answers to
Hamlets deepest questions, ending once and for all the
problem of trying to determine truth in an ambiguous
world


. And, since death is both the cause and the
consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the
theme of revenge and justiceClaudiuss murder of
King Hamlet initiates Hamlets quest for revenge,
and Claudiuss death is the end of that quest.

The question of his own death plagues Hamlet as well, as

he repeatedly contemplates whether or not suicide is a
morally legitimate action in an unbearably painful world.
Hamlets grief and misery is such that he frequently longs
for death to end his suffering, but he fears that if he
commits suicide, he will be consigned to eternal suffering
in hell because of the Christian religions prohibition of
suicide. In his famous To be or not to be soliloquy (III.i),
Hamlet philosophically concludes that no one would
choose to endure the pain of life if he or she were not
afraid of what will come after death, and that it is this fear
which causes complex moral considerations to interfere
with the capacity for action.

The Nation as a
Diseased Body

Everything is connected in Hamlet, including the welfare

of the royal family and the health of the state as a whole.
The plays early scenes explore the sense of anxiety and
dread that surrounds the transfer of power from one ruler
to the next. Throughout the play, characters draw explicit
connections between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and
the health of the nation. Denmark is frequently described
as a physical body made ill by the moral corruption of
Claudius and Gertrude, and many observers interpret the
presence of the ghost as a supernatural omen indicating
that [s]omething is rotten in the state of Denmark
(I.iv.67).


The dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong,
forthright ruler under whose guard the state was in
good health, while Claudius, a wicked politician, has
corrupted and compromised Denmark to satisfy his
own appetites. At the end of the play, the rise to
power of the upright Fortinbras suggests that
Denmark will be strengthened once again.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and

literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the texts major themes.

Incest and incestuous

Desires

The motif of incest runs throughout the play and is

frequently alluded to by Hamlet and the ghost, most
obviously in conversations about Gertrude and Claudius,
the former brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are now
married. A subtle motif of incestuous desire can be found
in the relationship of Laertes and Ophelia, as Laertes
sometimes speaks to his sister in suggestively sexual
terms and, at her funeral, leaps into her grave to hold her
in his arms. However, the strongest overtones of
incestuous desire arise in the relationship of Hamlet and
Gertrude, in Hamlets fixation on Gertrudes sex life with
Claudius and his preoccupation with her in general.

Misogyny

Shattered by his mothers decision to marry Claudius so

soon after her husbands death, Hamlet becomes cynical
about women in general, showing a particular obsession
with what he perceives to be a connection between female
sexuality and moral corruption. This motif of misogyny,
or hatred of women, occurs sporadically throughout the
play, but it is an important inhibiting factor in Hamlets
relationships with Ophelia and Gertrude. He urges
Ophelia to go to a nunnery rather than experience the
corruptions of sexuality and exclaims of Gertrude,
Frailty, thy name is woman (I.ii.146).

Ears and Hearings

One facet of Hamlets exploration of the difficulty of

attaining true knowledge is slipperiness of language.
Words are used to communicate ideas, but they can
also be used to distort the truth, manipulate other
people, and serve as tools in corrupt quests for
power. Claudius, the shrewd politician, is the most
obvious example of a man who manipulates words
to enhance his own power.


The sinister uses of words are represented by images
of ears and hearing, from Claudiuss murder of the
king by pouring poison into his ear to Hamlets
claim to Horatio that I have words to speak in thine
ear will make thee dumb (IV.vi.21). The poison
poured in the kings ear by Claudius is used by the
ghost to symbolize the corrosive effect of Claudiuss
dishonesty on the health of Denmark. Declaring that
the story that he was killed by a snake is a lie, he
says that the whole ear of Denmark is Rankly
abused. . . . (I.v.3638).

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors

used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Yoricks Skull

In Hamlet, physical objects are rarely used to represent

thematic ideas. One important exception is Yoricks skull,
which Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene
of Act V. As Hamlet speaks to the skull and about the
skull of the kings former jester, he fixates on deaths
inevitability and the disintegration of the body. He urges
the skull to get you to my ladys chamber, and tell her,
let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come
no one can avoid death (V.i.178179). He traces the skulls
mouth and says, Here hung those lips that I have kissed
I know not how oft, indicating his fascination with the
physical consequences of death (V.i.174175).


This latter idea is an important motif throughout the
play, as Hamlet frequently makes comments
referring to every human bodys eventual decay,
noting that Polonius will be eaten by worms, that
even kings are eaten by worms, and that dust from
the decayed body of Alexander the Great might be
used to stop a hole in a beer barrel.

University Questions

Reference to the context of any play.

Character is destiny, how far is this applicable to
King Lear?
Do you think that, with all his faults ,Lear is every
inch a king?
What is the dramatic purpose of King Lears
madness.


Critically examine Hamlet as a Shakespearian
tragedy .Is character or destiny responsible for the
tragedy of Hamlet.?
Write a note on Shakespearian tragedy with special
reference to Hamlet?
How would you read Hamlet as a tragedy or a
problem play?
Hamlet is not a tragedy of reflection but a tragedy of
diseased thoughts. Discuss?
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