Critical views Flashcards
Hazlitt - madness
The giddy anarchy and whirling tumult of the thoughts
Lamb - madness
The explosions of passion are as terrible as a volcano
Swinburne - Nature
Nature herself is revealed as unnatural
Bradley - pride
A childish scheme to gratify his love of absolute power and his hunger for assurances of devotion
Johnson - good vs evil
Villainy is never at a stop, crimes lead to crimes, and at last terminate in ruin
Johnson - good vs evil/justice
A play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry
Hudson - good vs evil
Edmund is the only person in the play who is wicked enough and energetic enough in his wickedness
Dollimore - power/property
King Lear is above all a play about power, property and inheritance
Draper - power/property
A play that showed the audience the miseries that such a division brought to the king, to the dynasty and so to the whole nation
Sagar - women
Lear can see nothing but the face of’ Goneril which he projects onto all women
Greenfield - truth/disguise
Nudity usually “represented something bad, such as poverty or shamelessness. However, it was also associated with truth”
Campbell - gods
Lear is converted to a state of mind which is a mixture of stoic insight and Christian humility
Elton - Justice
King Lear is a play about “annihilation of faith in poetic justice…and annihilation of faith in divine justice”
Coleridge - loyalty
The desperate fidelity of Kent
Goddard - identity
King Lear is an account of how a king became a man
