King Lear critics: AO5 Flashcards
Paul Delany
MARXIST CRITICISM
Paul Delany offers a Marxist approach to King Lear in his essay ‘King Lear and the Decline of Feudalism’ . He suggests that the tragedy is that of a traditional feudal society (represented by Lear and his subjects, who put great store in their beliefs and ceremonies) being challenged by a more modern outlook that is rational and individualistic and has no respect for their values (represented by Edmund, Goneril and Regan). In a sense this social change represents progress, but it also entails the destruction of much that is valuable.
Samuel Coleridge on Kent
Complete works of Samuel Coleridge
“Kent is, perhaps, the nearest to perfect goodness in all Shakespeare’s character’s, and yet the most individualised” - he is loyal and selfless
“His passionate affection for and fidelity to Lear act on our feelings in Lear’s own favour: virtue itself seems to be in company with him”
Arnoid Kettle on Kent
“Kent has an ultimate failure to cope with the situation - he is unable to hole Lear within the bound of sanity”
Martha Burns on Goneril and Regan
“It is all too easy to dismiss Regan and Goneril as mere emblems of female evil… when women are just as obsessed with power as with men, they are called evil rather than formidable. Regan and Goneril are formidable.
George Orwell on social criticism
“(King Lear), contains a great deal of veiled social criticism. It is all uttered either by the Fool, by Edgar when he is pretending to be mad, or by Lear during his bouts of madness.”
Swinburne on pity and mercy in King Lear
‘Pity and mercy are words without meaning’
Arnold Kettle in general
“In king Lear Shakespeare reveals, from the very start, a society in turmoil”
“Lear is a world in which the old order is decadent and the new people unprincipled”
he sums up King Lear a conflict between “those who accept the old order (Lear, Gloucester, Kent, Albany)” and “the new people, the individualists (Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Cornwall)
Nahum Tate in general
In 1681 felt the ending was too gloomy and so devised a happier ending where Lear does not die and there is romance between Edgar and Cordelia.
Joseph Wharton in general
Objected to the Gloucester subplot as being unlikely and distracting and felt Gloucester’s blinding was too horrid to be exhibited on stage. He also found Goneril and Regan’s savagery too diabolical to be credited.
Samuel Johnson on Gloucester eyes
“The extrusion of Gloucester’s eyes… seems an act too horrid to be endured in dramatic exhibition, and such as must always compel the mind to relieve it’s distress by incredulity.”
D.J. Enright in general
“The principle characters are not those who act, but those who suffer”
LC Knights in general
“the play is a microcosm of the human race”
Harold Bloom on “unaccommodated man”
Believed the “decent from Monarch to ‘unaccommodated man’ thus conveys most potently man’s fragility, fallibility and fatality”
The phrase ‘unaccommodated man’ of which this was its first recorded use in the English language, is also evidence of Lear’s madness, for he speaks in prose of the unaccommodated man “the unaccommodated man like a bare, forked animal that thou art”, and therefore a contrast to his earlier speech in blank verse and iambic pentameter. Lear thus, is no longer “every inch a king”.
Cunningham in general
there is hope Gloucester will find “insight through blindness” and Lear “wisdom through madness in the play’s twinned key moral provocations.”
Elton on Cordelia’s death and Gloucester’s blindness
Elton says that Cordelia’s death and Gloucester’s blindness “are the actions of an upside-down providence in an apparently deranged universe”
William R Elton on the last act
“the last act shatters the foundations of faith itself”
Leo Tolstoy on the subject of the play
“the subject of the play is renunciation” (the rejecting of something)
Jan Kolt on the play in general
“King Lear is about the disintegration of the world”
J Harrison on “nothing will come of nothing”
“Lear replies “Nothing will come of nothing.” He is wrong - from this one word “nothing” begins the whole devastating tragedy”
George Brandes on Tragedy
though Cordelia was ‘the living emblem of womanly dignity’ and that the play as a whole was ‘the titanic tragedy of human life.’
Samuel Johnson on tragedy
‘a play in which the wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry’ is a ‘just a representation of the common events of human life’.
Arnold Kettle on tragedy
“Shakespeare was a realistic writer who presents us with actual situations (…) based on particular observations and insight.”
Jonathan Dollimore on power
says ‘what makes Lear the person he is - or rather was - is not kingly essence, but, among other things, his authority and his family’ - he loses his mind when he loses his social status. He believes the play is about ‘power, property and inheritance’.
Coppelia Kahn on feminism
sees a more feminist aspect’ she suggests the play is about ‘male anxiety’. She says “Lear goes mad because he is unable to accept his dependence on the feminine, his daughters”
Kathleen Mccluskie on feminism
feels it is an ‘anti-feminine’ play as it ‘presents women as the source of the primal sin of lust’. The play forces us to sympathise with the patriarchs. She continues to say ‘family relations in this play are seen as fixed and determined, and any movement within them is portrayed as a destructive reversal of the rightful order.’ “The feminine must be made to submit (Cordelia) or destroyed (Goneril and Regan).”
BK Stuart on Lear
“Lear would rather flattery than the truth”
William Hazlitt on Lear
(Shakespearean Scholar) says it is Lear’s “blindness to everything but the dictates of his passions or affections, that produces all his misfortunes”
Frank Kermode on Lear
“the love he seeks is not the sort that can be offered in formal or subservient expressions”
Hal Holbrook on Lear
“boisterous, demanding, arrogant. He expects absolute obedience.” He is “not a man of conscious intellect”
“Lear slips into madness… a direct result of Lear’s refusal to face the awful truth that has exploded in his mind”
“The paranoia of age is stalking him”
“Lear is not a man of conscious intellect”
“He has clung steadfastly to the conviction that he is a loving father, despite all evidence of the contrary.”
Arnold Kettle on Lear
“Lear is a hero”
“Lear’s madness is not so much a breakdown as a breakthrough. It is necessary.”
“It is through his madness (…) that Lear comes to a new outlook on life”
“his incapacity to deal with the inhumanity of the new people is what drives him into a solidarity and later, an identification with the poor.”
Jan Kott on Lear
“He does not see or understand anything… Lear is ridiculous, naïve and stupid.”
Nicolas Brooke on Lear
“Pride is not just humbled, it is reduced from supreme autocratic power to utter penury and insanity”
Leo Tolstoy on the fool
hated ‘king Lear’ and especially hated the character of the Fool arguing he has no purpose in the play he said about the Fool; “there upon begins a prolonged conversation between the Fool and the King, utterly unsuited to the position and serving no purpose.”
Welford on the Fool
the Fools “tactless jokes and snatches of song spring do evidently from genuine grief”
Goldsmith on the Fool
The Fool is “Lear’s alter ego, his externalized conscience”
J. Benneton the Fool
The Fools “bitter jests counter and balance Lear’s bitter thoughts. Where Lear blames his daughter, the Fool blames Lear”
Videbaek on the Fool
the Fools jesting “shows deep compassion and understanding of the human condition”
Kitteridge on the Fool
“The Fool spouts a piece of nonsense to distract attention from too keen a piece of satire”
Complete works of Samuel Coleridge
"”Kent is, perhaps, the nearest to perfect goodness in all Shakespeare’s characters, and yet the most individualised.” - he is loyal and selfless.
“His passionate affection for and fidelity to Lear act on our feelings in Lear’s own favour: virtue itself seems to be in company with him”
Arnold Kettle on Kent
Kent has an “ultimate failure to cope with the situation - he is unable to hole Lear within the bounds of sanity.”
Thorndike on Goneril and Regan
Thorndike calls them “inhumane sisters”
Hudson on Goneril and Regan
Hudson calls then “personifications of ingratitude”
Arnold Kettle on Gloucester
“Gloucester himself is a conventional and blind old man.” He is “hideously punished for his moral laxity”
Arnold Kettle on Edmund
Edmund “is intelligent, active and ruthless. His immediate personal motive is simple” he wants power.
Dr Samual Johnson on Cordelia
“I was many years ago shocked by Cordelia’s death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read it again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor.”
Arnold Kettle on Cordelia
“It is Cordelia who, at the beginning of the story, is the heroic one”
Mariyln French on Cordelia
“She does not feed Lear’s delusion of control.”
Duthie on Cordelia
“Surely her affection for her father might have led her to pardon his error, and to humour him a little”
Arnold Kettle on nature
“To Lear, Nature is essentially a benignant traditional order (..) in which human and divine society are at one.”
