Shakespeare's King Lear
King Lear, the aging king of Britain, tests his daughters on who loves him the most and who should inherit his throne (Crowther 2003). His two older daughters, Goneril and Regan, flatter him with their answers, but the honesty of the youngest, Cordelia, throws the king into a rage. He disowns her. Cordelia accepts the proposal of the king of France, a suitor, without her father's blessings. As Goneril and Regan quickly display their hypocrisy, King Lear's insanity slowly develops. He eventually leaves his older daughters' houses to wander on a heath during a great thunderstorm where he unleashes his madness. The disguised Edgar soon joins him at the heath in eluding the manhunt by his father, the nobleman Gloucester. Gloucester has been tricked by an illegitimate son, Edmund, into believing that Edgar is trying to kill him. Meantime, Cordelia leads a French army in an effort at saving her father. Edmund gets romantically entangled with both Goneril and Regan. In a duel, Edgar kills Edmund. Gloucester dies. Goneril poisons Regan out of jealousy over Edmund and then kills herself when her treachery is uncovered. Cordelia is captured and executed through Edmund's betrayal. With Cordelia's death, the king turns completely mad and even
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children. I have full cause of weeping, but this heart shal break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere I'll weep - O fool, I shall go mad!"l (2: 4. Allow not nature more than nature needs. You owe me no subscription: then let fall your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, a poor, infirm, weak and despis'd old man - yet I call you servile ministers, that will with two pernicious daughters join your high-engendr'd battles 'gainst a head so old and white as this! O! O! 'tis foul!"( 3: 2. 270-275) His curse upon the murderers of Cordelia is also meant and made upon other traitors, namely his older daughters, whom he deems as largely responsible for the chain of disasters and deaths. He wants to be publicly flattered with words. 256-260) At Cordelia's death, the King's madness reaches its peak. While in the heath during the thunderstorm, he pours his own wrath and grief towards the way he has been treated by his own daughters: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanes, spout till you have drenched our steeples, drown'd the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, vaunt couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, all germents spill at once! That make ungrateful man!"(3: 2. Thou perjur'd and thou similar man of virtue that art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake that under covert and convenient seeming hast practis'd on man's life: close pent-up guilts,rive your concealing continents, and cry these dreadful summonoers grace - I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning.
Common topics in this essay:
Rage Blow,
King Lear,
King Lear's,
Cordelia Stay,
Goneril Regan,
Edmund Gloucester,
Meantime Cordelia,
Gloucester Gloucester,
goneril regan,
king lear,
cordelia's death,
lack respect,
i'll weep,
man's life,
heath thunderstorm,
leaves daughters',
king lear's,
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Acceptance Essays
