| Dr Johnson (Georgian editor of Shakespeare’s plays) | every scene ‘agitates our passions and interests our curiosity’. Gloucester’s blinding was an ‘act too horrid to be endured in dramatick [sic] exhibition’.(Preface to King Lear, 1765) |
| Theatregoers in 18th century would have preferred | Nahum Tate’s 1681 adaptation of King Lear: Omitted the fool, romantic ending (Lear alive, Cordelia as Edgar’s happy bride). Shakespeare’s text was gradually restored. |
| Frank Kermode (King Lear, 2000) | Gloucester is ‘credulous and venal’ (meaning gullible and easily corrupted)Lear is ‘can be seen as imperious and selfish’ |
| Gillian Woods | “King Lear stages a total breakdown in civilisation” |
| Gillian Woods on the Fool | ‘His unexplained absence is apt since he exists outside the proper order of things’ |
| Harold Bloom : Lear’s fall | the descent from Monarch to ‘unaccommodated man’ conveys most potently man’s fragility, fallibility and fatality’ |
| Schlegel on Kent | ‘the closest thing to perfect goodness in one of Shakespeare’s characters’ |
| Tolstoy | Lear’s madness has no relationship to the play’s major themesJeered at the play’s unnaturalness and improbability”Shakespeare does notsatisfy the most elementary demands of artrecognised by all.” |
| G.K. Hunter on Trial Scene | III.6 weaves ‘the obsessive themes of betrayal, demoniac possession and injustice into the most complex lyric structure in modern drama’ |
| A.C Bradley | Shakespeare has too vast a material to usewith complete dramatic effectiveness. |
| Stephen Booth | King Lear is “preoccupied with ends” |
| Harold Bloom : Fatherhood | Lear as a “terrible emblem of fatherhood itself” |
| Reading: All old men as deplorable patriarchs (Bc of similarity of sub-plot) | A case of Everyman in old age |
| Even the start is preoccupied with endings | Lear gives up his kingdom so he can ‘unburdened crawl towards death’ |
| Christian preoccupations | Last day of Judgement. Prophesied in Biblical narratives |
| Valentine Cunningham – Christian themes | although ‘the Biblical Grand narrative of redemption is alluded to… it is not whole heartedly performed’ |
| Valentine Cunningham – Suffering | ‘A play full of horror stories, lessons in negativity’ |
| Kent captures the apocalyptic feeling | ‘Is this the promised end?’ |
| Contemporary play on tragedy | “When the bad bleed, then is the tragedy good” Vindice from Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy (1607) |
| Reading: All old men as deplorable patriarchs (Bc of similarity of sub-plot) | … |
| George Orwell in his “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool” essay | ‘morality of Shakespeare’s later tragedies is not religious in the ordinary sense, and certainly is not Christian’ |
| Harold Bloom: characters | Edgar is more important than Cordelia |
| Interpretations | ‘King Lear subsists in change, by being patient of interpretation’ (Timeless, the way the play addresses the human condition makes it always relevant) |
| Christian interpretation of Cordelia’s trajectory | Roy W. Battenhouse: Christian analysis of the play. Cordelia is initially selfish, but her later experiences of love inspire her to cast off her former preoccupation with the self |
| The play’s central concern is Lear’s selfishness | Stephen Greenblatt : ‘Lear wishes to be the object…. even the sole recipient of his child’s love’ |
| Overlap between familial and state politics: Traditional feminist analysis: emerging female power leads to a world of chaos | Kathleen McLuskie ”insubordination’ by female characters results in chaos, as it threatens the balance of power within the family: women with opinions frighten men.’ |
| Maxist reading | Marxist critic Terry Eagleton sees the play as a proto-Marxist tract, making the audience dissatisfied with the way society is constructed and seeking social change |
| ‘King Lear’ as a poem | Germaine Greer calls ‘King Lear’ the ‘greatest metaphysical poem in the English language’ (the importance of the play lies in its symbolism and use of language) |
| Speech in Lear | ‘Failure of speech is intimately linked to strong emotion’ Andrew Green |
| Daughters | ‘King Lear is not the play of the king but of the daughters’ |
| Maternal presence | Coppélia Kahn ‘Lear’s madness is his rage at being deprived of the maternal presence’ |
| Absence of Cordelia | Cordelia is the ‘lacuna of the text’ Dympna Callaghan |
| Female dialogue | ‘Female speech is constructed as untruth’ Dympna Callaghan |
| suffering | ‘The principle characters are not those who act, but those who suffer’ D.J. Enright |
Critics King Lear
July 13, 2019