University of Nis Faculty of Philosophy English Department

Shakespeare Course

Paper

The analysis of Shakespeares plays King Lear and The Tempest

Professor Advisor: Prof. Dr. Ljiljana Bogoeva Sedlar

Student: Ana Mladenovic (2690)

Nis, September 2009

King Lear

Shakespeare was a great artist whose greatness was not in the number of plays he wrote, but in his ability to analyze the time he lived in and to write about it. He recognized that something was terribly wrong with the world- the world which possessed no permanent set of values- and he decided to write a number of plays in order to make people see and understand the horror of all the social evils. Like a true critic of his time, he closely observed the ways of the people and then he placed a severe criticism on everything he did not approve of. In other words, he did everything a true artist could do to cleanse our doors of perception. King Lear is a story of an elderly king, who foolishly disregards truth, embraces falsity of words and gives away his kingdom to those who are ready to flatter him. Being old enough, king Lear wants to retire and to share his kingdom among his daughters. As he is resolved to do this, he wants to know how much his daughters love him. Goneril and Regan, his elder daughters are more than ready to flatter him and tell him how dearly they love him, even though these feelings are far from being true. His youngest daughter, Cordelia, however, is the one who has the true love for her father, and she refuses to speak in the same fashion as her sisters because she is afraid it would sound insincerely. She chooses to Love and be silent.1 She willingly chooses to say nothing, to which her father replies: Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.2 Cordelia is obliged to say something; she is either to exaggerate her love towards her father, or to tell the truth that she loves him according to her bond, as a daughter should love a father. Among the two, she chooses the truth. This true words do not trill the old king, and he warns her: How, how, Cordelia! Mend your speech a little, lest it may mar your fortunes.3 Lear does not want to embrace the truth and recognize the true love. In stead, he threatens his daughter that she will lose the right to his lands if she does not flatter him. All of a sudden, he no longer sees her as a daughter he so much loved and cherished. He even accuses her of being intender: LEAR: So young and so untender? CORDELIA: So young, my lord, and true.
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King Lear

LEAR: Let it be so, - thy truth, then, be thy dower. In his folly, he makes a decision to give his kingdom to Goneril and Regan, and to leave Cordelia empty-handed, without her dower. The earl of Kent is trying to reason Lear and to make him come to senses by telling him that it is a mistake that he must be mad not to see who his real and true friends are. Even though the king refuses to listen to him, Kent is persistent: KENT: Thinkst thou that duty shall have dread to speak, When power to flattery bows? To plainness honors bound When majesty falls to folly. Not even when the king tells him to go out of his sight, does Kent give up telling him how wrong he is, by saying: Look better Lear, which means that the king should see better and understand who is being truthful and who is false. The king refuses to embrace the truth, so he banishes Kent for trying to come between the kings sentence and the kings power. Kents banishment was a result of his honesty, and honesty offended Lear. Cordelia, now dowerless, is left at the mercy of the Duke of Burgundy and the king of France. It is up to them to decide which one of them will marry her, now when her price has fallen. Since the duke does not want her anymore the king of France is more than ready to have her because to him she is herself a dowry. KING OF FRANCE: Be it lawful I take up whats cast away. France is ready to embrace truth, it knows how to value it, unlike the old king. Lear is not the only father in the play who deprives himself of true love and loyalty of his child. There is also the earl of Gloster who, poisoned with lies his bastard son Edmund presents to him, in anger banishes his lawful son Edgar and sentences him to death. Edmund resembles much to Goneril and Regan in his intention to get his fathers fortunes, whish does not lawfully belong to him. EDMUND: Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit. Edmunds lies afford Edgar, the banished son, an opportunity of being the saviour of his father later in the play. The ejected son becomes his blind fathers guide and good angel. Why is it that people resent truth, and are so easily misled by lies? Why are they more prepared to believe in beautiful lies that in common truth? And how do they pay for their wrong choice to believe the flatterers? These are the questions that Shakespeare tried to answer in this play. He also touched upon the issue of power and how it affects people. We see how far Goneril and Regan are ready to go to have more power. We see the unnatural

readiness to destroy their father mercilessly, to forget about their family ties and even to destroy each other. Where there should be love, there is hatred in stead and they take it to be natural. Lear has but few true friends left, once he has given up his power. One of them is Kent, back to serve him in disguise. The other one is the fool who in a seemingly entertaining manner, tells the king what a true fool he was to give up his land, his power and his authority: FOOL: That lord that counselld thee To give away thy land, Come place him here by meDo thou for him stand: The sweet and bitter fool Will presently appear; The one in motley here, The other found out there. LEAR: Dost thou call me fool, boy? FOOL: All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou was born with. He is being honest with the king, but also very careful not to make him angry. He constantly plays with words, and in making jokes all the time, he draws the kings attention to his bad decision to banish the only daughter that truly loved him, and to give everything he possessed to the daughters that will not honour and respect him and that never truly cared for him, but for his lands. The fool tells the king that he should have acted more wisely according to his old age and he opens the kings eyes with these words: FOOL: Thou hast little wit in thy bald crown When thou gavest thy golden one away. The king, however, still does not want to acknowledge that he has made a mistake. Only when his daughter Goneril shows her true self does he see that once he was a king whom everyone respected for his power, but now he is just an O without a figure. Even his fool is better that he is, for he is not even a fool; he is nothing. Lear the king is now turned into Lears shadow, and he had his head bit off by his young. She tells him he must dismiss his hundred knights and squires because they still give him some sort of power and she wants him completely powerless. That is when Lear begins to realize how dishonest his eldest daughter was when she told him she loved him. He gave her everything and now she is being ungrateful. Lear experiences on his own skin that it is sharper than a serpents tooth to have a thankless child.

When Lear leaves Gonerils house in hope to find a better welcome at Regans home, he is not aware that he will not find a friendly face and support there either. As Kent put it: KENT: Fathers that wear rags Do make their children blind; But fathers that wear bags Shall see their children kind. Meaning that Lears two elder daughters pretended to love their father when there was something they could take from him. Now, when he has less than nothing, they want to take away his dignity and to crush him completely. Lear hoped to be welcomed by his other daughter Regan, but that was not the case. When both of his daughters refused to take care of him, Lear goes out in the storm, in the middle of the night and addresses the elements of nature, telling them not to spare him because the nature owes him nothing. I never gave you kingdom, calld you children, says he, as a desperate cry. He obviously failed as a parent, since he could not raise his children properly, and teach them to feel honest love and gratitude towards the very person who is their father, who loved them and provided for them. He finally realizes that he made a mistake by sending away the only child that truly loved him. This truth is too much for him, and he slowly goes mad. He begins to realize how big a fool he was not to see the true nature of his children. But he realizes the truth too late. His son-in-law, the duke of Albany, is capable of condemning Goneril and Regans behaviour towards their father. He asks in disbelief: What have you done? Tigers, not daughters, what have you performd? When it was necessary, they flattered their father like a dog, exaggerated their love to such an extent that it was almost unbelievable how strong their feelings were, and yet when the time was right they both turned their backs to their old father and evicted him from their homes. Lear feels shame for being such a fool and for banishing Cordelia and truth from his court. He says in a manner of preaching: LEAR: When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools. To him it is only now clear enough that there is very little true love in this world, and that everyone who does not see it is a fool. And when he finally meets Cordelia, he asks her forgiveness and begs her not to cry for him, but to give him poison to drink: LEAR: If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me; for your sisters

Have, as I remember, done me wrong. You have some cause, they have not. Shakespeare chose to present to the readers not one but two fathers who misjudge their children, thus becoming the victims of their folly. Were Lear the only one to suffer because he had made a wrong decision, then it would be just one case of wrong judgment in parents and ingratitude in children. However, we see two fathers suffering immensely for their inability to recognize the truth. Shakespeares idea was to punish the wrong doers; the guilty ones destroy themselves in the play, because wickedness is destructive in its core and in destroying others it eventually destroys itself only because it has no healthy and firm foundation to last. That is why Goneril, Regan and Edmund have to die. Just before he will die, Edmund causes more evil. After winning the battle, he makes Lear and Cordelia his prisoners and orders their death. He tells his officer that he should follow his orders and this would do him only good. EDMUND: Know thou this, that men are as the time is. So, Edmund himself can not afford to behave differently if he wants to have more power. He must be timely and kill in order to succeed. He tells that to the officer as well, in a form of advice. He is killed by his brother, Goneril poisons Regan and then kills herself, Cordelia is being killed by the officers, and the only thing left for Lear to do is to die as well. Cordelia is dead, symbolically the truth is dead and he has nothing to live for anymore.

BARKERS SEVEN LEARS

Many artists were influenced by Shakespeares work, Howard Barker being one of them. More closely, Barker was influenced by King Lear and he decided to rewrite the play and discuss the same issues Shakespeare dealt with centuries earlier. This only shows that whatever troubled the world then has not gone still. It is still present in todays society in one form or the other. So, Barker felt he needed to make his contribution to the world and help opening peoples eyes. He rewrote the play and tried to show what made king Lear the way he was. At the beginning of the play Seven Lears, we see Lear as a child, playing with his elder brothers Arthur and Lud. Although only a child, Lear is perfectly capable of recognizing that something is wrong with the place where they are playing. His two elder brothers, future kings, act carelessly as if they are being prepared for their future profession and taught to ignore the problems. They only want to play football and fly kites. Lears education and

teaching how a future king should behave is neglected, because he is the youngest son. So he still possesses that innocent and honest world view and the ability to recognize that something bad is happening there. He can smell it in the air, that is how obvious it is, and he says: That smell is pain. He is capable of smelling other peoples suffering, which is a quality every king should possess and use it to detect his peoples suffering in order to lessen it. In other words, Lear is still not the victim of the bad pedagogy, whereas his brothers are. Being the youngest son, Lear did not have the same education as his brothers, who have been brainwashed and trained to think and talk as they are told to. Lear is capable of compassion whereas his brothers are already taught an axiom: if the Gaol are the enemies of their father then however bad his suffering is, it can not be bad enough; they deserve to die because they are the horrid, stinking criminals. Only Lear, uninfected by the poisonous pedagogy and still feeling compassion like a normal human being says that so much pain can not be normal and justified and that one day, if he ever becomes the king, he would stop the misery and suffering of those people. Of course at this point, it is not very likely that Lear would ever become a king, for he has two older brothers. But when his brothers commit suicide, Lear is forced to enter the system of becoming a king. He now has to go through completely different education. He has to abandon hope and his innate sense of justice and the day he stops noticing the injustice around him would be the final day of his education, for then he would be fit to be a king. In his education, Lear goes through stages, and every stage there is a different Lear, less human and more king. The Second Lear is a youth who already defines himself as thin, boastful, empty and shallow. He no longer recognizes himself as a man of quality and honesty. He asks Prudentia, his mistress to love him and his emptiness and not to run to men of quality, them being better men then he is now. He knows that he is not a worthy man but as every living creature, he needs love. That is why he tells Prudentia: Love thy thin bowl or its a massacre. Lear is learning to get what he wants. The bishop teaches him how to be cruel and indifferent because he is in danger from his own brilliance. He is not still fit to be the king, but he is slowly getting there. He has changed so much that the Gaol say: Lear! Ten years since your last intrusion and you are a bigger prince. This obviously means that the bad pedagogy has done its work. Lear is no longer an innocent and honest child; being less concerned with the suffering of others, he became a bigger prince. Once the gaol were the poor, wet things, but now they are ugly to him. Yet he still asks: But isnt this injustice? This word still exists in his vocabulary. And when his father dies, Lear is still not sure he is

ready to be a monarch. He says, almost desperately, as if looking for a way out: I wish I had a brother. His sense is that he will not perform the role of the king well. For one moment he releases his feelings, goes to his fathers body and begins to hug it and moan over it. Clarissa, Prudentias daughter, whom he chose to be his wife tells him: You should not do that. Whatever the feeling. You should not do that because in governors extremes of emotions are not liked. Gradually, Lears emotions must be hidden, until they completely cease to exist. Lear finally realizes that he must change . LEAR: I was born ancient, and I must discover infancy. I was born wise, and I must find ignorance. Or I will suffer. As he was getting older, he was a bigger fool, until he finally became a foolish old man Shakespeare presented in his play. As the play progresses, we see Lear leading his army into battle. He orders all the prisoners to be massacred, he shows no mercy whatsoever. He behaves like this until he sees the corpses he was responsible for. Dead mens eyes bother him and for a moment he gets emotional, which proves that he is not still fit to govern. He still had some goodness left in his heart, the thing he calls an error, the thing which no successor owns, a treasure. The only benefit Lear had from the bishops teaching was a chaos of the mind. We have Clarissa on one hand, who praises the truth and is always honest, and we get to see Lear on the other hand who is obliged to lie and discard truth for ever. We also see him trying really hard to be a good king and bragging about his victory and the destruction he causes to his enemies: LEAR: I burned five towns! I poisoned all the rivers! I dragged plaughs through their palaces. When his first child, Goneril, is being born, she gets stucked in her mothers belly. She, even though only a baby, feels there is something wrong with the world she is being born into. GONERIL: I sensed- out there- was vile. When he sees his first daughter, Lear is happy and says he is responsible for that beautiful thing. And he loved both of his daughters, at least he believes that. Later on he realizes that in loving them he only loved himself. At one point in the play, Lear as well as the whole mankind, is compared to a caterpillar whose manner of moving is being altered by a child, putting his finger in the caterpillars way. He is taught to behave the way he does. He has not learnt to appreciate the truth, simply because he himself never used it, or used it so long ago that he forgot what it looked like. When he wants to fly a plane, he says: Kiss me all those who love me, and the

rest, pretend. This shows how desperate he is to be loved and to make everybody behave as he instructs them, just like he in time was taught how to act and to think. Pretending not the truth is the thing Lear was taught to appreciate. He had a bad parent, a bad educator the bishop, who failed to teach him all the things that really mattered. Kent, Lears true advisor, kills the bishop and proves his honest feelings towards the king. That is how Barker tried to explain what made Lear end up like he did in the Shakespeares play. He first presented him as a kind boy, capable to feel compassion and justice, and then the bad pedagogy has turned him into what he is, an old fool who gave his kingdom away to his ungrateful daughters and banished the truth.