Measuring love / Love Test
Lear insists upon the untenable proposition that love can be measured.
Authority without crown
Lear is unable to recognize that a king can be a king without his crown.
Formal vs genuine love
The love he seeks is the sort that can be offered in a formal and subordinate expression, therefore rejects the love of Cordelia and Kent.
Power slipping with age
His intent is to retain power at any cost; personal power he feels are slipping away with advancing years.
Loss of worth → madness
It is the loss of worth coupled with the frustrating experience of being unable to do nothing about it that drives Lear to the brink of madness.
Flattery vs reality
He is wholly taken in by the meaningless abstractions and hyperboles of Goneril and Regan.
Lear’s responsibility for tragedy
Lear invites tragedy.
Insight through suffering (general tragedy)
The old men themselves come to insight through suffering.
Knowledge through pain
lear suffers from knowledge and learns from suffering
audience alignment
it is with lear that we suffer
gloucester blind paradox
gloucester gains full insight as he is blinded, punished by his one moment of high affirmation.
gloucester as a victim
Gloucester is the object of manipulation and he too easily falls under it
the fool
the fool is a fractured mirror of lear himself
mo moral restoration
there is no convincing reassertion of moral and social order at the end of
cordelia’s death and cosmic order
cordelia’s death denies the necessity of a natural order
storm
the storm acts as a symbol of the last judgement and contains Doomsday connotations that a christian audience would understand
inferiority = ambition
the characters compensate for feelings of inferiority by launching criminal campaigns to attain power
loyalty
kent only exists to serve the king
kent voice
kent fills up cordelia’s silence
kent/fool
the kent and fool act as surrogates as they condemn the sisters behaviours when cordelia can’t
lead has no soliliquy
Lear has no soliloquy; the Fool provides the means for Lear to use a more intimate voice.
sanity with chaos
A trickle of sanity running through the play: the Fool.
Moral guardian
Albany functions as a fully developed guardian of order.
moral growth through inaction
from a man that does nothing to strength and integrity
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Act 1 Scene 122
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Act 1 Scene 212
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Act 1 Scene 37
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Act 1Scene 416
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Act 1 Scene 56
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Act 2 Scene 110
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Act 2 Scene 29
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Act 2 Scene 34
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Act 2 Scene 411
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Act 3 Scene 14
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Act 3 scene 25
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Act 3 scene 34
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Act 3 Scene 411
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Act 3 Scene 54
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Act 3 scene 68
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Act 3 Scene 710
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Act 4 Scene 111
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Act 4 Scene 211
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Act 4 Scene 34
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Act 4 Scene 46
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Act 4 scene 54
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Act 4 scene 69
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act 4 scene 79
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Act 5 Scene 14
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Act 5 Scene 21
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Act 5 Scene 311
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Fathers, Children and Siblings5
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Critic Quotes24
