King Lear - Critics Flashcards
Context: Elizabeth 1
Strong, single woman
Illegitimate in the eyes of Catholics
Reigned for nearly 60 years
Created peace
Flourishing of the arts
Never married
Wouldn’t name her heir, creating much speculation
James 6th of Scotland was heir
Key things to remember:
Context
Critics
Language Analysis
Critics: How does Kastan view King Lear in terms of a ‘Shakespearean tragedy’?
Kastan sees Shakespeare’s tragedy as intense treatments of age-old questions about whether the cause of suffering lie in human weakness, divine retribution, or arbitrary fate.
Critics: Nutall - The Pleasures of Tragedy
Nutall considers the tension between pleasure and pain in tragic drama
Critics: Bradley - The Shakespearean tragic hero
Bradley argues that Shakespearean tragedy necessarily centres on a character of high rank and exceptional qualities who undergoes a reversal of fortune that leads to his own death and to a more general calamity
Critics: Mack - Tragedy and Madness
Mack notes how frequently Shakespearean tragic heroes suffer madness or are associated with it
Mack argues that art and madness both allow freedom of speech, but that their insights may be dismissed as merely fiction or nonsense
Critics: Rutter - Language and Female Power in King Lear
Rutter argues that the play explores deep anxieties about female power in relation to language, hence the comparison of women’s tongues to the eels mentioned by the Fool in Act 2, Scene 4: they would not stay down to the paste to be eaten alive. Lear’s daughters will similarly not be silenced.
Meanwhile, Lear himself is made to seem womanish by his tears and cursing. Rutter suggests that, at the time, these were associated with woman, who wept or cursed because they had no real power.
Critics: Kermode - Ways of speaking in King Lear
In Kermode’s view this play, so full of pain and injustice, wrestles with human suffering and evil on a universal, apocalyptic scale. Its use of language form an integral part of the way it explores good and evil.
The power of Cordelia’s ‘nothing’, when she refuses to join her flattering sisters, needs to be seen in the context of the play in which language strains to find words to express the pain of being.
Critics: O’Toole - The Morality of King Lear
O’Toole describes how King Lear upsets any comfortable moral assumptions on the part of the audience. In order to show this he focusses on the ending of the play, which seems to undermine the lessons that the play has set out to teach.
List of Characters: The Royal House of Britain
Lear - King of Britain
Gonerill - His eldest daughter
Reagan - His second daughter
Cordelia - His youngest daughter
The Duke of Albany - Married to Gonerill
The Duke of Cornwall - Married to Reagan
List of Characters: The Gloucester Family
The Earl of Gloucester
Edgar - His eldest son and heir
Edmond - His illegitimate son
Other characters in the play:
Fool
The Earl of Kent - later disguised
The King of France
The Duke of Burgundy
Oswald - Gonerills steward
Themes in King Lear:
Manipulative characters
Torture
War/Violence
Death
Nothing
Suffering
Madness
What is ‘Kastan’s’ Critical Essay?
‘Shakespearean tragedy’
What is ‘Nutall’s’ Critical Essay?
‘The Pleasures of Tragedy’
