Themes Flashcards
Echoing Lear’s exchange with Cordelia on ‘nothing’, what exchange between the fool and Lear in Act 1 discusses nothing?
“Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?”
“Why no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing”
What quote does Edgar use that echoes the theme of nothing?
Act 2
“Edgar I nothing am”
What quote from Albany in Act 5 is also about nothing?
“thou art in nothing less / Than I have here proclaimed thee”
How many times does the word “nothing” or “naught” occur in the play?
34 times
Showing that Shakespeare is concerned with exploring the idea of nihilism
How do Regan and Gonerill work within nothing?
They promise much in the beginning, but after whittling down the number of Lear’s retainers, they wave him with nothing
In the end their “natural” affection comes to nothing as well”
His life comes to mean nothing to them as they plot his murder
How does Lear work within nothing?
He is progressively brought to nothing, stripped of everything:
Kingdom, knights, dignity, sanity, clothes, his last loving daughter, finally life itself
How is the growing anarchy of Lear’s world demonstrated?
In the reduction go nothing of familial and regal bonds
1) Lear exiles Cordelia and Kent, implying they mean nothing to him
2) Cordelia’s dowry is reduced to nothing
3) Gloucester believed Edmund, and disinherits Edgar, leaving him with nothing
YET Cordelia, Kent and Edgar, along with the Fool (number zero in the tarot) remain loyal
How do the people that have “all” Act?
Goneril, Regan, Cornwall and to an extent Edmund
Ignore their duties so that wilful greed and self-interest seem to rule the world of the play
“Nothing” except self-aggrandisement and blatant self-interest is of value to the evil characters, and the good characters’ happiness is reduced to nothing
What happens when the good characters are reduced to nothing?
Lear, Edgar and Gloucester all learn to see the world more clearly and become wiser
Lear sees this in terms of opposites:
“They told me I was everything” IV
Now he knows better and has become wise by learning that “nothing” can grow to something
Part of the tragedy is that the chaos is too anarchic to be resolved for L C G. At the end, nothing can save them and all is “ch,da,dedly”
How many times does the word nature or it’s associates occur in the play
51
Why is Quarto 1 interesting in respect to nature?
It italicises the word in I.4:
“It may be so my Lord, harke Nature, heare deere God-desse, suspect thy purpose” (Leir)
It was the habit of the compositor of Q1 to italicise names: one of King Lear’s very first readers regarded nature almost as a character
What is the name of the author of “Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature” and what does he argue within it?
1949
C. F. Danby
Shakespeare presents us with two different versions of nature:
Traditional view- Nature is rational, beneficent, divinely ordered
Rationalist view- man is governed by selfishness and “appetite”
How many references are there to sight, eyes, looking and blindness?
It’s ASTONISHING
What are the references often used for?
135
Metaphors for the necessity of seeing potential consequences before embarking on a course of action.
How does Gloucester offer a more graphical presentation of the idea of the necessity of sensing potential consequences before embarking on a course of action?
His blinding and then
“I stumbled when I saw” IV. 2.
How does the idea of sight being used a as metaphor for the necessity of sensing potential consequences before embarking on a course of action originally appear in Lear’s first scene?
Goneril declares that to her Lear is “dearer than eyesight”
Enraged to fury by Kent’s intervention, Lear cries “Out of my sight!”, only to be reproached by “See better, Lear, and let me still remain / The true blank of thine eye”
What does Gloucester’s physical blindness symbolise?
The metaphorical blindness that afflicts Gloucester and Lear as fathers
Both have loyal and disloyal children, both are blind to the truth, both end up banishing loyal children and making wicked ones their heirs
Only when Gloucester has lost his eyes and Lear has gone mad does each realise his catastrophic error
Although Lear can physically see, he is blind in that
He lacks insight.
Kent, the Fool, Cordelia show the audience Lear is more than nothing by serving faithfully, speaking bluntly, and loving rationally and according to bond
Which characters are the least blind in that they have insight?
Kent (see through lies of Goneril and Regan and see Cordelia truly loves Lear)
The Fool (sees with all the eyes of a savant)
What happens when Lear sees better?
Reunited with Cordelia, but a brief respite.
No matter how clearly he sees his earlier moral blindness has set off a chain of consequences that must end with his own destruction.
What is the significance of natural philosophy to the theme of sight?
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction: every human action has a consequence
What does Edgar say of his father that is reminiscent of natural philosophy?
“The dark and vicious place where thee he got / Cost him his eyes” V.
The audience understand Edgar is not a sententious moraliser but revealing a bigger, bigger truth about not seeing the future dire consequences of what we do today.
