Tragic consequences with foolish behaviour Flashcards
Paragraph themes:
One - Lear’s blindness
Two - Edmund’s tragedy
Three- The end scene
Paragraph one:
1) King Lear begins with separation in Lear’s search for order
“Nothing can come of nothing”
-echoes Leibniz ‘ex nihlo nihil fit’ reflects the creation stories. Lear tries to find purpose and meaning.
2) Ironically tragic as Lear becomes “nothing” and reflects the Fool’s dictum “thou art nothing.”
3) Descent into madness as contravenes the Great Chain of Being
4) Kermode states that “Under the Fine clothes, there is nothing but greed and lust,”
5) Rejects Cordelia’s “love” of her “bond” family love (storage) and gluttony for sycophantic hyperboles “space time and liberty”
6) Mathew 25 – wealth is not a measure of worth
Paragraph 2 - Edmund
1)Bagliacca “the true victim of the play is Edmund”
2) If Gloucester had been kinder to Edmund then Edmund may not have needed to be so deceitful
3) Edmund second born so would not have inherited under laws of primogeniture even if he was legitimate yet
4)With semantic satiation ‘legitimate’, or more appropriately the plosive reiteration of ‘base’ to convey his disgust at the title and render concept meaningless
5) No fatherly love only “sport” in his making and described as a “whoreson”
Prose form – Jacobean audience would be able to ‘hear’ bawdiness of interaction
6) Edmund becomes a victim of a prejudice, in which he internalises into self-loathing and calls a “great foppery of the world” as he denies traditional convention
Paragraph three - end
1) Johnson states that Shakespeare “violates the hope of the reader” – Performed St Stephens day dark lighting would have exacerbated this oblique atmosphere
2) “why should a dog have life and thou no breath at all”
-Questions the human condition – what differentiates us from animals
3) “Never” reiteration – Paganistic spiritual chant
Lear’s death despite being tragic = justice
4) Poetical that the last lines spoken in the play is Edgar – eldest born legitimate.
5) “We must obey” “Nor live so long”
6) “The stars above us govern our conditions” inevitability of fate
7) Attitudes towards the homeless/ poor = Respect the old biblical laws of Mathew 25 as all are equal in the end = money is not a measure of worth
Paragraph three - end
1) Johnson states that Shakespeare “violates the hope of the reader” – Performed St Stephens day dark lighting would have exacerbated this oblique atmosphere
2) “why should a dog have life and thou no breath at all”
-Questions the human condition – what differentiates us from animals
3) “Never” reiteration – Paganistic spiritual chant
Lear’s death despite being tragic = justice
4) Poetical that the last lines spoken in the play is Edgar – eldest born legitimate.
5) “We must obey” “Nor live so long”
6) “The stars above us govern our conditions” inevitability of fate
7) Attitudes towards the homeless/ poor = Respect the old biblical laws of Mathew 25 as all are equal in the end = money is not a measure of worth
Critics
1) Kermode states that “Under the Fine clothes, there is nothing but greed and lust,”
2) Bagliacca “the true victim of the play is Edmund”
3) Johnson states that Shakespeare “violates the hope of the reader”
