Lear essay plans

Justice and injustice - Intro

-In the world of Lear, the moral are punished and the immoral are rewarded

• Lear is an immoral leader

• The honest and loyal are punished

• The immoral rewarded

Justice and injustice - P1

Lear the immoral leader

• the division of the kingdom

• “Tis our fast intent to shake all acted and business from our age”

• Word choice shows self-indulgent reasoning

• Transgress the divine right of kings

Justice and injustice - P2

The punishment of the virtuous

• Cordelia’s banishment

• “So Young me Lord, and true”

• Contrast, the comma is used to emphasise true

• Cordelia is the moral centre of the play, Cordelia speaks the truth and is punished

• Pre-Christian, pagan setting - inherently corrupt

Justice and injustice - P3

The immoral rewarded

-Goneril’s insincerity

• “A love that makes breath poor and speech unable”

• Irony, hyperbole

• Goneril is a sycophant

• Goneril is not respecting filial piety

-Regan’s competitiveness

• “She names my very deed of love; only she comes too short”

• Flattery

• Playing into Lear’s competition

Lear is “wholly taken in by the meaningless abstractions and hyperboles of Goneril and Regan” - Heilman

Sanity - Intro

-Many characters make insane decisions but the same are punished

The world of Lear is and and very few are actually sane

• The punishment of the honest - sanity is punished

• Honesty disguised by sanity

• The plotting of mad characters

Sanity - P1

The punishment of the sane by the insane

-Cordelia’s banishment

• “Come not between the dragon and his wrath”

• Metaphor

• Lear is furious with Cordelia’s honesty

• Lear perceives Cordelia as insane

-Kent’s punishment

• “Check this hideous rashness”

• Lear is emotionally volatile

• Kent is challenging the divine right of kings

Sanity - P2

Honesty disguised as sanity

-The Fool’s advice and criticism of hidden behind humour

• “Give me an egg, and I’ll give thee two crowns”

• Symbolism of the egg

• The egg shows how easily Lear divided up the kingdom

• Devaluing the crown

• Fool’s were and official role in the court and had a licence to speak truth to power

• “Like a trickle of sanity running through the play” - Orwell

Sanity - P3

The plotting of mad characters

-Edmund’s plan to usurp his legitimate brother

• “Nature thou art my goddess”

• Apostrophe, soliloquy

• Transgression of Christian beliefs

• Scandalous

• Bastards were seen by a Jacobean audience as inherently sinful

• “No medieval devil ever bounced on stage with a more scandalous self-announcement” - Danby

Family bonds - intro

Lear is about the decay of the monarchy and the family structure

It is the destruction of familial bonds that causes Lear’s fall from power

• Lear’s desire for flattery and inciting a competition between his daughters

• The betrayal of filial piety

• Pity for virtuous family members

Family bonds - P1

Lear as a bad father

-The Love test

• “Which shall we say doth love us most”

• The royal we

• Lear invites a performative declaration of love

• He is either ignorant to the fakeness of doesn’t care

• Transgression of the divine right of kings

• “He insists upon the untenable proposition that love can be measured” - Heilman

Family bonds - P2

The betrayal of filial piety

-The daughters’ betrayal of Lear

• “The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo too long that it had its head bit of by its young”

• Metaphor

• Illustrates the relationship between Goneril and Lear

Family bonds - P3

Pity for the virtuous family members

-The disinheritance of Cordelia

• “So young my lord, and true”

• Contrast, emphasise on true

• Cordelia is the moral centre of the play

Lear curses Cordelia - pagan setting

Pity for old, poor and outcast - intro

Shakespeare uses the characters of King Lear to evoke sympathy in the audience towards those who are often disregarded by society

• Sympathy for outcasts

• No sympathy for outcasts bc evil

• Sympathy for the old

Pity for old, poor and outcast - P1

Sympathy for outcasts

-Edmund’s soliloquy

• “Why brand they us with base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base, base?”

• Rhetorical questions, repetition, soliloquy

• Edmund’s meditation on what it means to be a bastard

• Bastards were at the lowest on the GCoB

• “The speech has the the potential to be a rallying cry for justice” -Clayman-Pye - could be aimed at the third gallery

Pity for old, poor and outcast - P2

No sympathy for outcasts

Edmund

• “Nature thou art my goddess”

• Apostrophe, soliloquy

• Transgression of Christian beliefs

• Bastards are inherently sinful

• “No medieval devil ever bounced on stage with a more scandalous self-announcement” - Danby

Pity for old, poor and outcast - P3

Sympathy for the old

Lear

• “Unburthen’d crawl towards death”

• An undignified struggle

• Lear has to give up power

• Expectation of filial piety

• Transgression of DRoK