- Explain how Shakespeare uses language in his plays. Be sure to include wordplay and the use of puns.
Puns - where a word can mean more than one thing in any given context
Used to illustrate the distance between what’s on the surface and what meanings lie beneath
Used iambic pentameter (five stressed syllables)
- Discuss the role of women in Shakespeare’s time, as well as the role of women in King Lear.
Legal status below men
Primogeniture - the first MALE child inherited ALL the family’s wealth; women did not (generally) inherit things
the three female characters in King Lear possess power despite two of them (Goneril and Regan) being married; women lost all legal power (if they had any) after marriage
Hierarchy - women existed below men (God, angels, men than women)
- How was staging a play different in Shakespeare’s time than it is today? What specific challenges does King Lear pose in staging the play?
Performances typically did not employ scenery, making it difficult since King Lear required a royal court, an earl’s castle, a storm-ridden heath, a courtyard, a hut, a farmhouse, French and British military equipment, and the cliffs of Dover%%
- Discuss the social classes (primarily two) in Shakespeare's time, as well as what (if any) social movement between classes occurred.
Classes: aristocrats and everyone else
Movement: %%social mobility%% was starting to occur thanks to the growth of trade and skilled professions
- Discuss the theatre of Shakespeare’s time. What were performances and performance spaces like?
Performance spaces were open-air, relied on natural light and good weather
Pit for poorer people and covered tiers for the wealthy
A trapdoor in the middle of the stage operates as a grave
Theatres were out of the city, typically near sites of %%dog fighting, bear and bull-baiting, and prostitution%%
- Discuss the intellectual context of the time in which Shakespeare wrote. How did ideas like cosmology and universal hierarchy impact how people of the day viewed the universe, the human body, and science?
Universal Hierarchy: God, angels, men, women, animals, plants
- What is believed to be the source of King Lear? How is King Lear “original with Shakespeare”?
Primary tale sourced from “The First Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland” by Raphael Holinshed
Gloucester’s story stems from two poems: Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney and The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
- What are a few of the important themes in King Lear? Discuss their relevance to the play.
Conflict Between Good and Evil - half of the twelve characters are bad and unjust and the other half are just and good
Power (who has it, how one obtains it, and how one defines it) - consider age, gender, treatment of the elderly by their offspring, and the power placement of women
Nature - respect for one’s parents, loyalty to one’s king, and the “natural” impulse to better oneself at the expense of others