William Shakespeare's 'King Lear' is one of his four great tragedies and one of his most acclaimed plays. His greatest tragedies come from his second and third periods. Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet come under the second period whereas the third period includes Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony, and Cleopatra. Self-delusion is the tragic flaw of the tragic protagonist in this play. Recent criticisms of King Lear were alert to how Lear's status as a king and as...
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Tragic heroes are characters of nobility; they are held in a higher status but suffer a reversal of fortune through their own flaws. Even the most noblemen can succumb to their flaws and suffer the consequences, as illustrated in 'King Lear'. King Lear’s tragic flaw is his blindness, which eventually leads to his own demise. In Act 1, Lear ineffectively divides his kingdom among his three daughters. Goneril and Regan persuade him through flattery, and Cordelia remains truthful and tells...
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Introduction Appearing in many of Shakespeare's plays, the clown or fool figure is one of the most intriguing stage characters in the Shakespearean oeuvre and continues to capture the interest of modern-day critics and contemporary audiences. Although unique to each play, the character of the Shakespearean fool can generally be divided into two categories: the clown and the jester. The term 'clown' didn't emerge until the sixteenth century, and it was formerly intended to designate an ignorant and fairly uneducated...
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In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, King Lear, and Hamlet, there is a theme of loyalty between a central character and another. This loyalty transcends what the other characters belief; they help them no matter the burden it bears on them. It also reveals itself in many different forms, through love, service, and friendship. As seen throughout countless Shakespeare plays, women are typically depicted as disloyal, but characters such as Viola and Cordelia stick out amongst the rest because of the loyalty...
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“How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the man that’s wise” (Sophocles, line 316, “Oedipus Rex”). People often mistake blind people, or people labeled as somehow flawed, for being ignorant. Whether the blindness is literal, like Teiresias in Sophocles’ Teiresais in “Oedipus Rex,” or blindness as transparency, like the Fool in Shakespeare’s’ King Lear, both of these tragedies contain a persona of a fool, someone whom people think cannot see at all, or cannot see things clearly....
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Thomas Edison, an American inventor, and businessman, once said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time” (brainyquote.com). In Shakespeare's King Lear, Lear is guilty of being quick to give up on others, one of them being his daughter, Cordelia. In a similar fashion, Gloucester acts upon pride through his feelings of embarrassment toward his son, Edmund. Like all heroes in tragic stories, these characters have one...
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To introduce all the elements, it is important to understand the hamartia of the main character. According to Aristotle, hamartia falls under three categories; to make a mistake, to offend morally, and error of judgment resulting from ignorance or arrogance. In King Lear, Shakespeare portrays a king, whose supreme arrogance, superiority, and great animosity bring King Lear’s tragic downfall. King Lear’s suffering and calamity cause chaos in Lear’s life, eventually leading to his demise which achieves catharsis in the literary...
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This essay aims to take a look into the play ‘King Lear’ authored by William Shakespeare, using both the feminist and psychoanalytical critical approach. Like most of Shakespeare’s tragedies, King Lear can be identified on various levels and from a diversity of critical perspectives, due to its complexity. The result of the play not having one particular meaning, it leaves the readers vulnerable to feel stunned by the intricacies of the storyline. The typical conflict of good vs. evil is...
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Part 1 Reading Responses Week 5. Describe the character of Lanval’s lady and the character of Queen Guinevere in Lanval by Marie de France. Compare and contrast them, commenting on their different characteristics, social standing, relationships with other characters, and roles/functions in the unfolding of the narrative. Gender role is at the heart of Marie’s lay Lanval. The two most bold and powerful characters are women. Although Lanval’s lady and Guinevere are strikingly different, they both challenge the stereotypical function...
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Within the world kindness is a symbol of love and compassion. The values and thoughts individuals may have might differ and contrast with another, but the feeling and joy of bring kindness into one’s heart is an undeniable sensation that can be appreciated by all around the world. When one is stripped or denied these feelings of kindness it can cause one to change for the worst and become an entirely different person with different moral standards. In William Shakespeare’s...
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The desire to gather power and to control what one wants to encourage their greed can be a dangerous quality. King Lear, written in 1608, by William Shakespeare, is a tragedy that represents the horrible impacts of abusing power and leads to his death. The abuse of power plays an immense role all throughout the character's lives in this play which in turn leads to their demise. They utlilize their position to exile anybody with no clear reason, abusing the...
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Would you ever want to get revenge on society, because of how it treated you? In the play King Lear, there were many social injustices going on. Characters were treated unfairly, and it drove them to get revenge. The shadow, Edmund, was Gloucester’s illegitimate son. He wanted to get back at society for labeling him a bastard. Goneril and Regan however, behaved that way because of how they were treated, and they wanted to get back at their father. They...
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Do you ever read a book and question why the author is delivering the moral? I believe your answer is “NO”. As viewers, we tend to forget that the main role of a narrative is to draw its audience into exploring and questioning key aspects of its context. Today let’s consider if this statement, “a narrative’s main function is to question aspects of our world” is true by discussing, “in what what does Shakespeare question aspects of his context and...
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Through all the suffering, there is still hope in the world. Shakespeare introduces a society in his play King Lear in which no one can emerge victorious. The fact that tragedy makes no distinction between good and evil is evinced at the end of the play as although King Lear’s daughters are continuously contrasted, they are all lead to their deaths in the end. Suffering is a recurring concept in the play, symbolized by graphic violence to illustrate physical suffering...
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William Shakespeare’s King Lear follows the philosophy, that ultimately we all control our own destinies. All through life, one will in general experience changes dependent on choices they make that lead them to how they came to be. A poor judgement of character refers to the inability to tell whether an individual is genuine, solely based on a characters opinion. The character fails to own their wrongdoings, never feeling responsible. The definition of blindness usually refers to a literal or...
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King Lear is a play written by William Shakespeare, dating back to Elizabethan times. This play follows the stories of two royal families and the dysfunction within it. The parents and children from the families all possess qualities and attributes that prove them to be inhumane. As much as we do not see it, children exhibit some of our greatest traits and show remarkable a resemblance to ourselves, but in many cases, they portray the negative traits too. Both of...
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In his works, the famous William Shakespeare made it a habit to raise numerous important topics. And his play 'King Lear' was no exception. In it, next to such themes as suffering, appearance versus reality, family relationships, the value of nothingness, and how much 'nothing' can represent is of great importance. In the first scene, Lear banishes Cordelia, which as a result reduces her to nothing. While Cordelia is deemed worthless, the King of France still takes her as his...
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The Values of Tragedy At the climax of every storyline, a hero emerges to settle the conflict and bring issues to light. This hero will oftentimes endure pain and suffering for the greater good. In the case of characters within “King Lear” the term “Tragic Hero” is portrayed through the king himself. Through analyzing the uprise of a character, certain conflicts that may arise, and the choices one makes through selfish remarks, it is evident that one's downfall is a...
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A narrative’s main objective is to question aspects of the world around it to engage its audience with the plot of the story and also to change their perspective of the world. William Shakespeare questions the nature of power and madness during the Elizabethan era through his play ‘King Lear’ (1606). Similarly, this is mirrored by the famous Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, as he questions the nature of power and madness in Japan during the 1980s through his film ‘Ran’...
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Blindness is a physical state or condition of being unable to see, however, it can also be described mentally as a lack of perception, lack of awareness, or ignorance in judgment. In Shakespearean terms regarding this play, blindness is deemed as a mental flaw rather than a physical impairment. The most prominent theme in this play is the theme of blindness as it is the main cause of the downfall of prominent characters. King Lear, Albany, and Gloucester are the...
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Edmund, one of the main characters in William Shakespeare's 'King Lear' is complex. To some, he seems immoral, like a man missing his moral compass. To others, he seems clever, like a man set on finding success through illegitimate means. But in my eyes, I see him as a desperate man looking for closure through means of climbing the hierarchical ladder while simultaneously destroying it. Many label him as the antagonist of the play, many may also follow the book’s...
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In addition to the theme of the continuous decline of King Lear in William Shakespeare's play of the same name and his personal growth as the titular character, the theme of family relationships and their destruction is equally important. It is due to King Lear's initial misjudgment of Cordelia that the play catalysts towards tragedy. It could be argued that the drama of King Lear revolves around the destruction of family relationships. Tragedy ultimately emerges from the broken bonds of...
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In ‘King Lear’, Shakespeare’s playwright offers a vivid yet negative portrayal of Lear himself. The audience confronts a hero king whose hamartia brings about not only his downfall but also the destruction of his surroundings and more devastatingly upon innocent people. Lear is portrayed as an arrogant king with an innate sense of superiority, great wrath, and error of judgment. When Shakespeare introduces to his audience a king who is susceptible to the servile of his daughters and other acquaintances,...
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