Critics

  • Lear ‘progresses towards acceptance of the woman in himself’ - Kahn

  • ‘an intense fear of the plague infiltrates Shakespeare’s imagination’ - Barbara Blenheim

  • ‘perhaps the most extraordinary blank verse in English poetry; the relentlessness of ‘no’ repeated 5 times beforehand is now matched by the repetition of ‘never’’ - Foakes on Cordelia and Lear’s death 5.3

  • Bradley argues that Lear dies in joy believing that Cordelia is alive 5.3

  • ‘the stage is empty throughout: there is nothing, except the cruel earth where man goes on his journey from the cradle to the grave’ on the play’s ending in 5.3

Family/women

  • ‘Lear’s madness exposes a patriarchal imagination terrified of women’s bodies’ - Carol Chillington Rutter

  • ‘Cordelia’s saving love… works… as an example of patriarchy restored’ - McCluskie

  • it is a play about ‘male anxiety’ - Coppelia Kahn

  • ‘a play about power, property and inheritance’ - Jonathan Dollimore

  • ‘Lear is unable to accept his dependence on the feminine, on his daughters and this contributes to his madness’ - Coppelia Kahn

  • ‘It will be a fatal error to present Cordelia as a meek saint. She has more than a touch of her father in her.’ -Harley Granville-Barker

  • Cordellia is an ‘entirely innocent victim of an unjust, tragic plot’ - Samuel Johnson

  • 'Some critics are convinced that Goneril and Regan can hardly be considered human because of the depravity of their deeds' - Stephen Reid

  • ‘[Lear] wants two mutually exclusive things at once: to have absolute control over those closest to him and too be absolutely dependent on them’ Coppelia Kahn

  • ‘In King Lear, all female resistance is defined by gender, sexuality, and position in the family” - Kathleen McLuskie

Power, kingship and authority

  • ‘The great secret of the successful fool, is that he is no fool at all’ - Isaac Asimov

  • “...as the play opens, [Lear], finds himself in the position of having to give them all more strenuously and conspicuously than usual.” - Berger

  • Ronald Cooley (2008) - JSTOR - Kent "supports...Lear's restoration, and the kingdom's reunification. [These] constitute the play's own oblique defence of primogeniture"

  • “Lear becomes more humane after his suffering/madness: the descent from monarch to unaccommodated man thus conveys most potently man’s fragility” Harold Bloom

  • ‘The distinction between human nature and animal nature is highlighted’ - Sarah Doncaster

  • ‘On stage, the actor’s naked flesh confronts the audience with the frailty of the human body’ - Gillian Woods

  • The Fool acts as a social commentator, which is supported by Robert Hillis Goldsmith’s description of him as a “wise fool” who differs from other traditional fools and jesters solely intended to provide entertainment.

  • Jan Knott argues that the Fool represents the theme of the entire play: “the decay and fall of the world”. This heightens the foreboding atmosphere the Fool’s statement has made.

  • Jan Kott vigorously argued that ‘the decay and fall of the world’ is a central theme of King Lear – a direct result of the misplaced power.

  • 'they are characterised as monstrous and increasingly identified as a source of evil, finally removed from the realm of human sympathy- as Edmund never is’ Janet Adelman

  • Bruce assesses sympathy with Edmund by justifying his climbing of the wheel of fortune as a higher sense of self-serving justice. Instead of villainizing, it complicates his character and adds sympathy to the Machiavellian archetype.

  • Holbrook: Views Lear as being ‘boisterous, demanding, arrogant [expecting] absolute obedience’

  • A.C Bradley – Lear's division of the kingdom is “the initial error which makes the catastrophe possible”

Tragedy features and suffering

  • “The play destabilises our theological and moral assurances” - C.J. Sisson

  • Thomas P. Roche: 'Shakespeare intended Lear to be a "total failure, in fact and in vision".

  • 'If we ask ourselves what the purpose of [Cordelia's death] is, the best answer we can come up with may be that the very pointlessness of Cordelia's death and Lear's suffering is the point.' - Gamini Salgado

  • “the madness merely highlights Lear’s self-centred wrathful nature: every gesture of his love is countered by an equal and opposite gesture of hatred”

    Thomas P Roche.

    In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio’s fatal injury leads him to curse “a plague on both your houses” because he blames both families for the incessant conflict and many deaths, including his own. Lear makes a similar statement, he blames those around him for the death of his daughter and therefore curses them.

  • ‘Too horrible, too comfortless to be enjoyed!’- Tate

  • For King Lear, modern psychiatrists have attempted to diagnose his "tempest" with contemporary terms like Lewy body dementia, bipolar disorder, or organic brain syndrome exacerbated by extreme stress.

  • ‘The catastrophic vulnerability of social order to misrule’ - Stephen Greenblatt

  • ‘He slips into madness … A direct result of Lear's refusal to face the truth that explodes his mind’ - Hal Holbrook

  • Dollimore’s argument that “Lear’s sense of self is created by his authority and family.” may explain why Lear is so angry and hurt at the betrayal of his family as it is a part of his identity, so losing control of both his authority and family would heighten his emotional state.

  • Harold Bloom suggests Lear’s statement can be seen as a moment of tragic anagnorisis, where suffering reveals the folly and limitations of humanity.

  • "The principal characters are not those who act, but those who suffer" D.J. Enright

  • ‘Through Lear’s madness and through Edgar’s pretence of madness the tragedy insists on a common humanity’ Gillian Woods