He knows his father is going to be tortured but does nothing. Even though Edmund is illegitimate the audience would expect him to react by defending his father. However he does not and this provides a contrast to what is expected to emphasise the importance of this evil.
After Gloucester arrives some barbaric things happen. However, the audience also know that Edmond has set up his brother in a plot to become the heir to Gloucester, which may be why he does nothing.
Fellows hold the chair. This implies that Cornwall intends to make it so that Gloucester cannot see by taking out his eyes and crushing them with his foot. Also this gruesome action would have been acted live on stage and not just described by another character, which makes the action of the play tenser. For this to happen in such a short amount of time shows that Shakespeare has set out with an evil intent, when writing this play, and is showing the audience the atmosphere of the play.
In the first scene Lears anger grows, building up tension that is then sustained in the second scene by Edmonds deceit. The situation with the two families then follows the same path again. In act 2 scene 4 Lear is rejected by his daughters when he goes to stay with them with his men. Gloucester is thrown from his home by Cornwall and then both the men wander around with servants loyal to them.
Shakespeare has included these two mimic stories to emphasize his point of evil shown by the families rejecting the eldest and most powerful member. Within the play some characters are obsessed with the process of inheritance.
Regan and Goneril answer their fathers question with glib and over-blown statements so they can have his kingdom and some power. This is comparable to the way in which Edmond plays off his brother. In Shakespearean times there was a very organised hierarchy system with God at the top then the king and pope to barrens and bishops the knights then yeomen, farmers and finally slaves, and servants.
In each section the women are seen as lower than men. Also since god was regarded as highest he is to decide who is to be king. Shakespeare completely breaks that code in King Lear, as there are to be 3 women rulers, ruling a country split into 3 decided by the King and not God. This would have been seen as wrong and as if the Chain of Being had been twisted. Act 3 scene 7 ends with the servants talking. For the lesser characters to take the main parts and be the only ones on stage is different and gives a contrast to the main characters dominating.
This is evidence of how Shakespeare used the upside down Chain of Being to create a tenser atmosphere in the audience because the people who watched his plays were of higher class themselves and wanted to see the more powerful characters dominating to show their superiority.
Throughout the play the characters refer to blindness and how blind they have been. This feeling of not knowing what is going on because families are turning to enemies and people are being banished is continued in Act 3 Scene 7 when Gloucester is blinded. Dramatic irony helps twist the story and characters into believing things that are not true.
The true blank of thine eye. Shakespeare has made the theme of blindness very important in King Lear with several references to it in each act to show how some characters are blinded from the truth and believe what they want.
Regan then pampers Cornwall with no remorse for what they have just done to Gloucester. This contrasts what the audience expect as the more needing of the two characters deserves the attention, which is Gloucester, but he gets none. This shows evil because there is no pity shown by Regan towards Gloucester. The audience know this is a staged letter but the characters do not except Edmond. Shakespeare makes this deceit very clear to the audience by having Edmond explain the plot and then lie to his father.
This again shows close family tension because Edgar is lying and because as soon as Gloucester sees the letter he turns against Edgar without investigating any further. In my opinion this play was written to show the audience how bad events can turn out because at the beginning the daughters express their love for their farther and by the end they have tormented him so much that he goes mad.
Then all three daughters die along with Lear and Edmond. It would thrill an audience because it has a range of fierce emotions and violence. Shakespeare works the play well because in sections where extreme violence is shown the audience have to watch and cannot escape. For example one of the more central themes of King Lear, as with all the tragedies, is death. Death as a theme can be said to have starkly contrasting meaning and therefore perhaps relevance for a modern audience as compared to a Shakespearean one.
Today death is a rare and terrible tragedy of momentous importance in the life of an individual, in 16th century England with its plagues, starvation, infant. When it comes time to divide his kingdom, he puts his daughters through a test to prove how much they love him. The two older daughters, Goneril and Regan, give King Lear flattering answers and therefore receive great amounts of finer land.
The third and youngest daughter, Cordilia, says that she has no words to describe how much she loves her father. King Lear becomes enraged with. King Lear and Jay Gatsby are both influential and wealthy men consumed by obsession and lose everything in their desperate pursuit of love.
This is their tragic flaw; and one that ultimately leads to their demise. These flaws are a commonality between these two characters. Although these flaws are standard for many characters among many genres,. A tragedy is a genre typically defined as a play that deals with a series of events that lead to the downfall of the hero. The play centres on Lear, an aging king who, in his retirement, decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters while retaining the title and privileges of being king.
The hero and main protagonist, King Lear, is an influential, highborn character. Oedipus after he gouges out his own eyes. Compare his fate to Gloucester's in King Lear. All tragedies involve some sort of tragic fall of the tragic hero: at crises or climaxes in the play, the tragic hero falls from the height of his power or stature in the world, and the fall is usually fast and deep.
The moment of the tragic fall—when the tragic hero actually falls from his height—can be interpreted in many ways. In many tragedies, particularly ancient Greek plays, the tragic hero experiences a sort of final, complete fall, right after he experiences recognition, a moment in which he comes to clear, sudden awareness of his tragic position in life. For instance, Oedipus comes to his fall when he realizes unequivocally that he had killed his father and slept with his mother.
Most of the time, the tragic hero falls as a result of harmatia , or what has come to be known as a tragic flaw. The notion of a tragic flaw, however, has been rather misunderstood by students over time, who have come to believe that it means the tragic hero has some sort of singular fault—an Achilles heel, so to speak—that is responsible for his downfall.
It is not as simple as that. The idea behind a tragic flaw is really wrapped up in a more existential notion of human frailties or weaknesses that we all might share, and become that which prods the tragic hero into disaster. Such circumstance has often been called fate. Often there is a great deal of debate between how much of the tragic outcome in a play is a result of fate and how much is the result of the control, the free-will, of the tragic hero and the other characters. In Christian literature, such a vision can often be apocalyptic, depicting some vision or foreshadowing of the end of the world.
The apolcalypse is often depicted as mayhem, destruction, divorce, death. What exactly catharsis means has been one of the biggest debates amongst literary critics—books upon books have been written on the subject.
Generally, it seems to indicate the means that tragedy exacerbates our feelings of pity, terror and despair , which is then followed by a sense of purgation , or relief from those very extreme emotions, leaving us more balanced whether emotionally, morally or socially is often debated.
We come out of tragedy feeling cleansed and perhaps relieved of the extreme emotions that the play incited. Often, as we will see, the ultimate tragic ending will be preceded by peripetia , or what we have come to know as the plot twist. Just as the plot seems to be on the verge of resolving in one way, usually happily or satisfactorily, something happens that twists the plot into an ultimate and unexpectedly tragic ending.
The plot twist can terribly exacerbate the tragedy. From the very beginning of the play, Shakespeare challenges our understanding of the tragic hero. First of all , he is not likeable in Act 1. As a matter of fact, we generally despise King Lear at the opening of the play. If we have sympathy and empathy for any of the characters in Act 1, they would lay with Cordelia.
Yet, the play focuses upon King Lear and his actions. One of the greatest challenges of the play is that Shakespeare forces you to confront a tragic hero who you cannot stand, and, as the play progresses past Act 2, you grow to love. Secondly , King Lear seems to have experienced some sort of tragic fall before the play has even begun.
This is one of the most fascinating aspects of the play and several other by Shakespeare for me. At some point before the beginning of the play, it is evident that King Lear has had some sort of downfall that has led him to act in such rash and bizarre ways. My assertion as that Shakespeare depicts a Christian world in his concept of tragedy: humans are already fallen, in Christian doctrine, the moment they are born.
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