King Lear

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Summary: Shakespeare's play for all humanity
Review: King Lear, in my opinion, is Shakespeare's most human play. It is about the dramatic relationship between father and child. Shakespeare also writes about this topic in Hamlet and other famous plays. But King Lear is about more than just that, it is about the effects of power, judgement, and truth. From Cordelia's banishment, to her death, Lear unwinds to be a torn, depresed man, and Shakespeare's best character.

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Summary: Good and Evil at Their Most Intense
Review: Like "The Comedy of Errors," "Hamlet," and "Richard III," this is a phenomenal masterpiece beyond expectations. Goneril, Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund are the most frightening and demonic characters in Shakespeare's writing. (Only his King Richard III compares). I can not overemphasize Shakespeare's mastery of writing in how he gradually unfolds the evil of these characters. While we may not know what to think of them at first, we soon learn that they would do Satan proud. Lear is handled well. First we don't know what to think of him, but then we are moved into VERY DEEP AND INTENSE pity for him. Cordelia, Kent, and Edgar are three of the most Christ like characters in Shakespeare's writings. The virtuous Albany also displays Shakespeare's best skills. First we hardly see him, but other characters express Albany's contempt for the diabolical Cornwall several times. In 4.2, his fury at his demonic wife shows us that he is planning a bold countermove. By 5.3, Albany actually takes on all 3 of the remaining monstrously evil characters. Shakespeare also offers us powerful dramatic irony with the fool. He also offers us powerful (and very terrifying) images. There are also several moving passages in this play. (Especially Edgar's soliloquy 3.6.111-125). Somehow, Shakespeare even managed to squeeze some welcome comical touches in.

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Summary: Has the world understood it?
Review: No

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Summary: Shakespeare's tale of trust gone bad...
Review: One of literature's classic dysfunctional families shows itself in <i>King Lear</i> by William Shakespeare. King Lear implicity trusts his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, but when the third wishes to marry for love rather than money, he banishes her. The two elder ones never felt Lear as a father; they simply did his bidding in an attempt to win his favor to get the kingdom upon his death. Cordelia, on the other hand, always cared for him, but tried to be honest, doing what she felt was right. As Lear realizes this through one betrayal after another, he loses his kingdom -- and what's more, his sanity...

The New Folger Library edition has to be among the best representations of Shakespeare I've seen. The text is printed as it should be on the right page of each two-page set, while footnotes, translations, and explanations are on the left page. Also, many drawings and illustrations from other period books help the reader to understand exactly what is meant with each word and hidden between each line.

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Summary: Shakespeare's tale of trust gone bad...
Review: One of literature's classic dysfunctional families shows itself in King Lear by William Shakespeare. King Lear implicity trusts his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, but when the third wishes to marry for love rather than money, he banishes her. The two elder ones never felt Lear as a father; they simply did his bidding in an attempt to win his favor to get the kingdom upon his death. Cordelia, on the other hand, always cared for him, but tried to be honest, doing what she felt was right. As Lear realizes this through one betrayal after another, he loses his kingdom -- and what's more, his sanity...

The New Folger Library edition has to be among the best representations of Shakespeare I've seen. The text is printed as it should be on the right page of each two-page set, while footnotes, translations, and explanations are on the left page. Also, many drawings and illustrations from other period books help the reader to understand exactly what is meant with each word and hidden between each line.

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Summary: but what's it all mean ?
Review: One of the things you can assume when you write about Shakespeare--given the hundreds of thousands of pages that have already been written about him in countless books, essays, theses and term papers--is that whatever you say will have been said before, and then denounced, defended , revised and denounced again, ad infinitum. So I'm certain I'm not breaking any new ground here. King Lear, though many, including David Denby (see Orrin's review of Great Books) and Harold Bloom consider it the pinnacle of English Literature, has just never done much for me. I appreciate the power of the basic plot--an aging King divides his realm among his ungrateful children with disastrous results--which has resurfaced in works as varied as Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres (see Orrin's review), and Akira Kurosawa's last great film, Ran. But I've always found the play to be too busy, the characters to be too unsympathetic, the speeches to be unmemorable and the tragedy to be too shallow. By shallow, I mean that by the time we meet Lear he is already a petulant old man, we have to accept his greatness from the word of others. Then his first action in the play, the division of the kingdom, is so boneheaded and his reaction to Cordelia so selfishly blind, that we're unwilling to credit their word.

Then there's the fact that Shakespeare essentially uses the action of the play as a springboard for an examination of madness. The play was written during the period when Shakespeare was experimenting with obscure meanings anyway; add in the demented babble of several of the central characters, including Lear, and you've got a drama whose language is just about impossible to follow. Plus you've got seemingly random occurrences like the disappearance of the Fool and Edgar's pretending to help his father commit suicide. I am as enamored of the Bard as anyone, but it's just too much work for an author to ask of his audience trying to figure out what the heck they are all saying and what their actions are supposed to convey. So I long ago gave up trying to decipher the whole thing and I simply group it with the series of non-tragic tragedies (along with MacBeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar), which I think taken together can be considered to make a unified political statement about the importance of the regular transfer of power in a state. Think about it for a moment; there's no real tragedy in what happens to Caesar, MacBeth, Hamlet or Lear; they've all proven themselves unfit for rule. Nor are the fates of those who usurp power from Caesar, Hamlet and Lear at all tragic, with the possible exception of Brutus, they pretty much get what they have coming to them. Instead, the real tragedy lies in the bloody chain of events that each illegitimate claiming of power unleashes. The implied message of these works, when considered as a unified whole, is that deviance from the orderly transfer of power leads to disaster for all concerned. (Of particular significance to this analysis in regards to King Lear is the fact that it was written in 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot.)

In fact, looking at Lear from this perspective offers some potential insight into several aspects of the play that have always bothered me. For instance, take the rapidity with which Lear slides into insanity. This transition has never made much sense to me. But now suppose that Lear is insane before the action of the play begins and that the clearest expression of his loss of reason is his decision to shatter his own kingdom. Seen in this light, there is no precipitous decline into madness; the very act of splitting up the central authority of his throne, of transferring power improperly, is shown to be a sign of craziness.

Next, consider the significance of Edgar's pretense of insanity and of Lear's genuine dementia. What is the possible meaning of their wanderings and their reduction to the status of common fools, stripped of luxury and station? And what does it tell us that it is after they are so reduced that Lear's reason (i.e. his fitness to rule) is restored and that Edgar ultimately takes the throne. It is probably too much to impute this meaning to Shakespeare, but the text will certainly bear the interpretation that they are made fit to rule by gaining an understanding of the lives of common folk. This is too democratic a reading for the time, but I like it, and it is emblematic of Shakespeare's genius that his plays will withstand even such idiosyncratic interpretations.

To me, the real saving grace of the play lies not in the portrayal of the fathers, Lear and Gloucester, nor of the daughters, but rather in that of the sons. First, Edmund, who ranks with Richard III and Iago in sheer joyous malevolence. Second, Edgar, whose ultimate ascent to the throne makes all that has gone before worthwhile. He strikes me as one of the truly heroic characters in all of Shakespeare, as exemplified by his loyalty to his father and to the King. I've said I don't consider the play to be particularly tragic; in good part this is because it seems the nation is better off with Edgar on the throne than with Lear or one of his vile daughters.

Even a disappointing, and often bewildering, tragedy by Shakespeare is better than the best of many other authors (though I'd not say the same of his comedies.) So of course I recommend it, but I don't think as highly of it as do many of the critics.

GRADE : B-

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Summary: King Lear was an annoying character
Review: Quite frankly, I can't understand why many people today consider 'King Lear' to be Shakespeare's greatest Tragedy. I found the play to be somewhat interesting and somewhat entertaining, especially when the Fool constantly called Lear 'Nuncle', but for the most part I found the play to be rather annoying. How Lear divided his kingdom among his daughters was very foolish. Lear acted like a senile, immature, mentally-disturbed, foolish old man throughout the entire play. Lear would have been much more of a truly tragic figure like Coriolanus if Lear was purely brought down by the treachery of others, but I think Lear's stupidity and foolishness mostly caused his own downfall.

"Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise" is a quote from the Fool to Lear, which basically sums up the entire play. Don't get me wrong. This play was well-written, it has many good quotes, and I recommend it, but the annoying nature of Lear forces me to rank it among the middle tier of Shakespeare's Tragedies.

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Summary: Top Writing
Review: Shakespeare historian A.L. Rowse, authors of the Readers Companion to World Literature, and others explain that the author of King Lear combined two already existing stories and created something greater than the sum of its parts. Apparently, at the time it was written King Lear was perceived as a tale might be perceived today if a writer combined the old fable about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree with the story of the sinking of the Titanic and wove a familiar but new and surprising tragedy.

Most critics agree that Shakespeare's King Lear is great writing; Isaac Asimov said that King Lear was the best thing ever written. I am glad that more than twenty years ago I was required to read it in college. It took time to capture me but I have revisited King Lear several times since. Although written for actors on the stage it is top reading that is well worth working through language difficulties for the value of the emotional experience and intellectual contemplation.

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Summary: Fate and Shakespearean Tragedy
Review: So I'm not exactly a Shakespeare scholar, but I still loved this tragedy. I think it's one of the best one, and it's a pity so few are put on live action show (the recent Hamlet,Henry V,Richard III,Midsummer Night's Dream, and other movies were great!). Unfortunately, some complain that it is not an official "tragedy" because, according to A.C. Bradley, who's supposed to be some real genius, requires that Fate have little to do with any good tragedy...Yet King Lear DOES include Fate (cf. Gloucester's laments about the gods playing with human lives). So much of it that I think it's one of the main themes of the play. Unlike Bradley, I think this inevitability only INTENSES the depressing mood of the play, and to people suffering from chronic depression (like myself), the play really speaks out. Generational gaps and treatment of seniors are very relevant to our society, yet the question of Fate and the great tragedy that life can sometimes end up to be cannot be ignored in this one of Shakespeare's greatest plays. I mean, it IS a tragedy right?

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Summary: What is nature?
Review: This book is a profound study of nature. Characters such as Lear, Gloucester, and Edmund voice their opinions and questions on the subject of fate, the gods, human nature, and relationships between parents and children. I personally love Edgar, and think that he made this play great. He's as loyal to his father and Lear as Kent and Cordelia, but more creative and effective in his action. I believe that he was Shakespeare's favorite character too, because of his talent as an actor (as evidenced by his mad act and the cliff scene) and because he survives in the end! Shakespeare poses many questions of human, parental, and divine nature in this play, and some are resolved, but not all. Are we to the gods or nature as flies to wanton boys? We must all decide which opinion is right.