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
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•
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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 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.
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, worstedstocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glassgazing, 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