An_Introduction_of_King_Lear

Introduction Tragedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, performed in 1605–1606 and published in a quarto edition in 1608, from an inadequate transcript of foul papers, with use made of a reported version. The First Folio version was prepared from the quarto collated with a promptbook of a shortened version. One of Shakespeare's finest tragedies, the work displays a pessimism and nihilism that make it a modern favorite. As one of the Four Great Tragedies in Shakespeare’s dramas, King Lear tells a story that a king decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, allotting each a portion in proportion to the eloquence of her declaration of love. The hypocritical Goneril and Regan make grand pronouncements and are rewarded; Cordelia, the youngest daughter, who truly loves Lear, refuses to make an insincere speech to prove her love. And the king foolishly divides his kingdom between his scheming two oldest daughters but estranges himself from the daughter who truly loves him. So begins this profoundly moving and disturbing tragedy that, perhaps more than any other work in literature, challenges the notion of a coherent and just universe. The two older sisters mock Lear and renege on their promise to support him. Cast out, the king slips into madness and wanders about accompanied by his faithful Fool. Then he is aided by the Earl of Kent, who, though banished from the kingdom for having supported Cordelia, has remained in Britain disguised as a peasant, Kent eventually brings Lear to Cordelia, who cares for him and helps him regain his reason. The subplot concerns the Earl of Gloucester, who likewise spurns his honest son, Edgar, and believes his conniving illegitimate son, Edmund. Edmund allies himself with Regan and Goneril to defend Britain against the French army mobilized by Cordelia. He turns his father over to Cornwall—who gouges out Gloucester's eyes—then imprisons Cordelia and Lear, but he is defeated in battle by Edgar. Jealous of Edmund's romantic attentions to Regan, Goneril poisons her and commits suicide. Cordelia is hanged. Lear, broken, dies with her body in his arms. The king and others pay dearly for their shortcomings–as madness, murder, and the anguish of insight and forgiveness that arrives too late combine to make this an all-embracing tragedy of evil and suffering. Shakespeare's contemporaries believed Lear to have been a historical monarch. For Shakespeare, however, although he gave the play something of a chronicle structure, the interest lay not in political events but in the personal character of Lear. The main theme of the play is put into the mouth of the evil Regan, speaking to the pitiful Gloucester: O, sir, to wilful men The injuries that they themselves procure Must be their schoolmasters. The various stages of Lear's spiritual progress (a kind of “conversion”) are carefully marked. He learns the value of patience and the worth of “unaccommodated man.” He begins to realize his own faults as a king and almost understands his failure as a father. He begins to feel for the “poor naked wretches” and confesses, “O, I have ta'en / Too little care of this.” Hisinstability of mind, almost a predisposition to madness, is shown from the beginning. His terrible rages and curses, first upon Cordelia and later upon Goneril and Regan, and his ranting and tyrannical language all foreshadow his breakdown. His faithful counselor is plain with him: “Be Kent unmannerly / When Lear is mad”; and his daughters shrewdly judge him: “he hath ever but slenderly known himself.” He is painfully conscious of approaching madness, but gradually the bombast of his sanity gives place to a remarkable kind of eloquence, flowing easily and never incoherent. His “ravings” are intelligible to the audience,however perturbing they may seem to the other characters on the stage. They express a pointof view that, had he understood it earlier, would have saved him from many errors of judgment. The mode of speech of the mad king contrasts strongly with the congenital inconsequentiality of his Fool and the assumed madness of Edgar as “Poor Tom.” King Lear's subplot focuses on the fortunes of Gloucester—another father suffering from “filial ingratitude” and from his false judgment of the characters of his children. This subplot is introduced in the opening scene, in some detail, as if it were of as much importance as the main plot. The stages by which Gloucester similarly learns by suffering are clearly indicated.He begins by being the cheerful sinner, but gradually his sense of pity and duty become stronger, and he reveals himself to Edmund: “If I die for 't, as no less is threatened me, / the King my old master must be relieved.” This revelation of his good intentions to the treacherous Edmund leads directly to his downfall and to his being blinded. Two of the “good” characters, Edgar and Albany (Goneril's husband), also grow in moral stature and strength in the course of the play. At first, Edgar seems rather ineffectual, quite unable to cope with the villainy of his half brother Edmund; but eventually he emerges as a strong character, confirmed by suffering and by compassion, able to fight and overcome Edmund in the ordeal at arms; and eventually, as one of the survivors, he is entrusted, along with Albany, with the future of the kingdom. Albany, too, is gradually built up, from being the weaker partner in his marriage to being the spokesman of virtue and justice, with an authority able to cope with the force of Edmund's malignant energy. Yet the representatives of goodness and of hope in King Lear do not emerge dynamically, and it has been difficult for champions of Shakespeare's moral and religious orthodoxy to combat the play's great pessimism. A true reflection of the period of primitive accumulation of British social unrest, King Lear is also standing for the author’s criticism to autocratic monarchy and praise of humanity. The process, which the old King turned from a bossy tyrannical and putin-assertive ruler to a wandering king just like a beggar because of his cunning daughter and the brutal son-in-law, specifically reflects the decaying history of the feudal class during the late Renaissance. Fool, a kind of special figure, can cause uncommon effect in Shakespeare’s dramas. And there are some differences between Fool and Clowns in his plays. Clowns usually sing and shout to win applause from the audience with wittiness, banters, puns and so on. Fool has a unique task, he not only makes people laugh but inspires them, even sets them thinking and drives them to tears. In Elizabethan times, there used to be one or two fools, or court jesters in the servants to the nobility. Their role was to professionally entertain or amuse their master, specifically the king with jokes or ridiculous stories. In essence, fools were paid to make mistakes. Many of the fool's quips and riddles were made at the expense of the king. Although the “all-licensed” fool was able to get away with this due to his position and had a privilege over servants to speak without reservation before the master, there was also a limitation. Say, if he drove too far, he could not avoid punishment either. Such a character could already be sometimes seen on the British stages at the time. But, Shakespeare’s FOOL in KING LEAR is of specific characteristics. In this play, Shakespeare pushes to its limit the hypothesis of a malign or at least indifferent universe in which human life is meaningless and brutal. Few plays other than Hamlet and Macbeth approach King Lear in evoking the wretchedness of human existence, and even they cannot match the devastating spectacle of the Earl of Gloucester blinded or Cordelia dead in Lear’s arms. The responses of the chief characters are correspondingly searing. "Is man no more than this'" rages Lear. "Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art"(3.4.101-7). Life he calls a "great stage of fools," an endless torment: "the first time that we smell the air / We wawl and cry" (4.6.179-83). Gloucester’s despair takes the form of accusing the gods of gleeful malice toward humanity: "As flies to wanton boys are we to th’s gods; / They kill us for their sport" (4.1.36-7). Gloucester’s ministering son Edgar can offer him no greater consolation than stoic resolve:"Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither; / Ripeness is all" (5.2.8-10). These statements need not be read as choric expressions of meaning for the play as a whole, but they do attest to the depth of suffering. In no other Shakespearean play does injustice appear to triumph so ferociously, for so long, and with such impunity. Will the heavens countenance this reign of injustice on earth' Retribution is late in coming and is not certainly the work of the heavens themselves. For, at the last, we must confront the wanton death of the innocent Cordelia--a death no longer willed even by the villain who arranged her execution. "Is this the promised end'"(5.3.268) asks the Earl of Kent, stressing the unparalleled horror of the catastrophe.