Gimnazija Gradiska

Rok: maj-juni 2009. GodinePREDMET: Engleski jezik

TEMATRAGEDIE OF KING LEAR by WILLIAM SHAKSPEAR

UCENIK: MENTOR:Dragana Dakic Mira Budimcic

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A) KOMISIJA ZA PREGLED I OCJENU PISMENOG DIJELA ISPITA IZ SRPSKOG JEZIKA I KNJIZEVNOSTI1. Dijana Milenkovic2. Milana Glamocak3. Amarela Stanic

B)KOMISIJA ZA ODBRANU MATURSKOG RADA I USMENOG DIJELA ISPITA

1. Mira Budimcic2. Davor Smolic3. Biljana Mataruga

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INTRODUCTION

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606, and is considered one of his greatest works. The play is based on the legend of King Leir of Britain. It has been widely adapted for stage and screen, with the part of Lear being played by many of the world's most accomplished actors. Shakespeare's play is based on various accounts of the semi-legendary Celtic mythological figure Lear. Shakespeare's most important source is thought to be the second edition of The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande by Raphael Holinshed, published in 1587. Holinshed himself found the story in the earlier Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which was written in the 12th century. Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, published 1590, also contains a character named Cordelia, who also dies from hanging, as in King Lear.

Other possible sources are A Mirror for Magistrates (1574), by John Higgins; The Malcontent (1604), by John Marston; The London Prodigal (1605); Arcadia (1580-1590), by Sir Philip Sidney, from which Shakespeare took the main outline of the Gloucester subplot; Montaigne's Essays, which were translated into English by John Florio in 1603; An Historical Description of Iland of Britaine, by William Harrison; Remaines Concerning Britaine, by William Camden (1606); Albion's England, by William Warner, (1589); and A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures, by Samuel Harsnett (1603), which provided some of the language used by Edgar while he feigns madness. King Lear is also a literary variant of a common

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fairy tale, in which a father rejects his youngest daughter for a statement of her love that does not please him.

The source of the subplot involving Gloucester, Edgar, and Edmund is a tale in Philip Sidney's Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, with a blind Paphlagonian king and his two sons, Leonatus and Plexitrus.

Besides the subplot involving the Earl of Gloucester and his sons, the principal innovation Shakespeare made to this story was the death of Cordelia and Lear at the end. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this tragic ending was much criticised, and alternative versions were written and performed, in which the leading characters survived and Edgar and Cordelia were married.

Facsimile of the first page of King Lear from the First Folio, published in 1623

(The First Folio is the name given by modern scholars to the first published collection of William Shakespeare's plays; its actual title is Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies )

The traditional legend and all adaptations preceding Shakespeare's have it that

after Lear is restored to the throne, he remains there until

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"made ripe for death" (Edmund Spenser). Cordelia, her sisters also dead, takes the throne as rightful heir, but after a few years is overthrown and imprisoned by nephews, leading to her suicide. Shakespeare shocks his audience by bringing the worn and haggard Lear onto the stage, carrying his dead youngest daughter. He taunts them with the possibility that she may live yet with Lear saying, "This feather stirs; she lives!" But Cordelia's death is soon confirmed. This was indeed too bleak for some to take, even many years later. King Lear was at first unsuccessful on the Restoration stage, and it was only with Nahum Tate's happy-ending version of 1681 that it became part of the repertory. Tate's Lear, where Lear survives and triumphs, and Edgar and Cordelia get married, has always retired with victory and felicity.

PILOT AND CHARACTERS

DRAMATIS PERSONAE (Persons Represented):Lear, King of Britain.King of France.Duke of Burgundy.Duke of Cornwall.

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Duke of Albany.Earl of Kent.Earl of Gloucester.Edgar, Son to Gloucester.Edmund, Bastard Son to Gloucester.Curan, a Courtier.Old Man, Tenant to Gloucester.Physician.Fool.Oswald, steward to Goneril.An Officer employed by Edmund.Gentleman, attendant on Cordelia.A Herald.Servants to Cornwall.Goneril, daughter to Lear.Regan, daughter to Lear.Cordelia, daughter to Lear.Knights attending on the King, Officers, Messengers, Soldiers, and Attendants.Scene: Britain.

Goneril and Regan from King Lear

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Goneril

Lear's eldest daughter. In reply to Lear's question, 'which of you shall we say doth love us most?' Goneril replies that she loves her father 'more than word can wield the matter.' Given her large share of the kingdom, Goneril later reveals her true intentions to get rid of Lear to her sister Regan, with the chilling conclusion 'We must do something, and i'the'heat'. She is wife to the Duke of Albany, who disapproves of her treatment of her father. Volatile and vicious, she humiliates her father in front of his retinue, refusing him shelter. When Albany calls her barbarous, Goneril despises her husband for what she perceives of as weakness. She plans to kill Albany and lusts after Edmund, but becomes jealous when she finds out Regan wants Edmund for herself. After poisoning her sister Regan, Goneril stabs herself and dies.

Regan

Lear's middle daughter. In the division of the kingdom Regan decrees that her only joy in life is to love her father. Wife to the Duke of Cornwall, she is cruel and superior, prefering to stay in the background when Goneril is around. Regan initially refuses to see her father when he visits and joins with Goneril in humiliating him. When Goneril berates Lear for needing 50 knights, Regan supports her sister and pointedly asks 'What need one?', sending Lear off without shelter into the stormy night. She urges on her husband to pluck out Gloucester's eyes, then lusts after Edmund when Cornwall dies. When she threatens to tell Albany of Goneril's plan to kill him, Regan is poisoned by her sister and dies. So many of critcks will tell that Regan and Gonril look a like. Well,no,

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they don’t. Regan is a copy-cat who is less intelligent than Goneril and seemingly full of anger and rage (both words are in her name). These feelings come from the fact that Regan has never been Lear's favorite: first there was Goneril, and then later, Cordelia. So Regan feels left out. Moreover, each of the two older daughters makes opposite choices in a husband: Goneril chooses a Casper Milktoast, Albany, while Regan chooses a rough, ultra-masculine, Lear-like Cornwall. Both, of course, fall in love with Edgar, whose overwhelming masculinity appears to remind them of Lear when they (and he) were younger.

William Frederick Yeames, Cordelia (1888)

Cordelia

Lear's youngest daughter, she is pure of love and honourable, even to the point of accepting terrible hardship in order to keep her integrity. Cordelia refuses to answer Lear's demand for a public demonstration of her love - 'Nothing, my lord'. Lear, expecting Cordelia to

speak more opulently, berates her 'Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.' Cordelia then replies that if she were truly honest, she loves her father as much as she can and when wed, she will share her love for her father

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with love for her husband. Furious, Lear sends her away with nothing - 'Thy truth then be thy dower!' and dismissively offers her to the King of France or the Duke of Burgundy to take away - 'Better thou hadst not been born than not t'have pleased me better.' France sees her virtue and offers to marry her without a dowry. Banished after the division of the kingdom, she returns with a French Army to fight for her father, and although reunited with him, in the end Cordelia pays the ultimate price for her father's moral blindness, murdered in prison. It seems that of the three daughter’s Cordelia has become most like her father. She certainly seems to have inherited his stubborn streak. Despite her eventual defeat, Cordelia is truly the moral hero of the play, sacrificing all and transcending the traditional female role for the sake of loyalty, love, and truth.

King Lear and Fool

Equally loyal to King Lear, but in contrast to Cordelia, the Fool berates the King for his own foolishness. Lear asks 'Dost thou call me fool?', to

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which he replies 'All thy other titles thou has given away.' He doesn't appear until Act One Scene Four, when Lear enquires why he has not seen the Fool lately and is told 'since my young lady's going to France, sir, the Fool hath pined away...' Haunting and astute, the Fool stays with Lear, throughout his wanderings, acting as a chorus, talking in witty riddles, questions and answers. Only the rationally foolish Fool and the pretend-mad Edgar are with Lear in his descent into real madness. He at times acts like the child that Lear needs, but without the Fool to humanise him, the audience would not feel as linked to Lear. The Fool fades from the play when he is no longer needed. Sometime on the road to Dover, never recovering from the loss of Cordelia, the Fool hangs himself in grief. His only epitaph is spoken by Lear 'and my poor fool is hanged.' He’s the only guy that Lear allows to criticize him. As in many of Shakespeare’s plays, the fool is actually really smart – and the only person who’s telling it like it is. Along with Kent, the Fool braves the elements (which at times consist of rain, thunder, and lightning) with his master.

Gloucester

A parallel to Lear, Gloucester also doesn't recognise the true nature of his children. He is deceived by Edmund into banishing Edgar and pays a heavy price for his failings. Cruelly blinded by Cornwall and Regan, he wanders hopelessly until found by his son Edgar, who he fails to recognise and believes to be Poor Tom. Led to Dover, where he hopes to jump from the cliff, Edgar deceives him into believing he has jumped and survived miraculously. He is briefly reunited with Lear and the present state of both the mad Lear and the blind Gloucester graphically depicts how far they both have

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fallen. Gloucester finds out the truth of Edmund's treachery, but it is too late and he dies, like Lear, 'twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief...' He is a powerful lord in Lear’s court, Gloucester is part of Lear’s generation – one of the old guards. Gloucester and Lear both reject a child who truly loves them in favor of children who suck up to them. Metaphorically, both Gloucester and Lear are blind to both of their respective "good" children, Edgar and Cordelia, and the wickedness of their "bad" children, Edmund, Goneril, and Regan.

Edgar 

Elder legitimate son of Gloucester, light and honest, he is tricked by his jealous brother Edmund into running away and disguises himself as Poor Tom of Bedlam. This enables him to reinvent himself, staying close to Lear, Kent and the Fool. A parallel to Cordelia, Edgar is innocent, yet stubborn, but goes further by drawing himself into the lowest form of human existence - a madman and fool. He stumbles upon his father, blinded by Cornwall and seeking help. Taking pity, Edgar cares for Gloucester, leading him as requested to Dover, but tricking him into believing he has fallen from the high cliff. He is about to kill Edmund in single combat but is stopped by Albany. At the end of the play, he is asked to co-rule the kingdom with Albany. Having debased himself in order to recover his humanity, it is fitting that Edgar delivers the last lines of the play, offering a shaft of hope amongst the devastation- 'The weight of this sad time we must obey...The oldest hath borne most; we that are young shall never see so much nor live so long.'

Edmund    

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The bastard son of Gloucester, he 'came saucily to the world' when his father begat him with his mother. Dark and brooding, he is like the anti-Hamlet in his soliloquies. 'Wherefore should I stand in the plague of custom and permit the curiosity of nations to deprive me...Why bastard? Wherefore base?' He conspires to turn his father against Edgar by falsifying a letter and planting ideas of a plot to remove his father. Edmund then tricks Edgar into running away, and compounds the view in Gloucester's mind that Edgar is guilty. Basking in the renewed love of his father, Edmund enjoys the approval of Cornwall and Regan for exposing Edgar's supposed treason. But then worried that his father's support for Lear will deprive him of his newly acquired status, Edmund betrays his father. Lusted after by both Goneril and Regan, Edmund's ambition grows, and he plots to kill Albany and assume the throne. When Albany plans to grant amnesty for Lear and Cordelia, Edmund captures the king and his daughter in the battle and orders them to be murdered. Exposed of his treachery and wounded in combat with the returned Edgar, Edmund briefly repents of his evil, moved by his brother's telling of Gloucester's death. He dies from his stab wounds, joining Regan and Goneril 'all three now marry in an instant'. His drive helps him to be incredibly successful – rising in a matter of days from an outcast child to his father’s favorite son, then taking over his father’s position as Earl of Gloucester, and at last coming within reach of ruling the entire kingdom. Edmund is so charming and so good at what he does, it’s sometimes hard not to root for him – even though he betrays his family members, seduces two sisters at the same time, and condemns innocent people to death. Shakespeare has gone out of his way to make that evil plausible, to give us a reason to sympathize with the villain. That

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sympathy makes it possible to imagine ourselves in his place, and it makes his choices and his eventual downfall all the more moving and disturbing. He makes an eleventh hour attempt to save Cordelia and Lear before they’re murdered by one of his soldiers. Edmund admits that this decision is totally out of character. "Some good I mean to do, despite of my own nature," he declares.

Kent

The second longest part, the Earl of Kent delivers the first line of the play and through to the end is present in most of the scenes.  Fiercely loyal to King Lear, he is unable to watch the King's treatment of Cordelia without speaking out. Subsequently banished for his intervention, Kent returns almost immediately to serve his king in disguise as 'Caius'. His quarrel with Oswald lands him in the stocks and Gloucester's freeing of him, leads to Gloucester's torment and Lear being thrown out of the castle into the storm. Kent stays with the King in the hovel, the only sane voice amongst the mad Lear, the Fool, and Poor Tom.  Communicating with Cordelia by letter, Kent keeps her informed of Lear's situation and orchestrates their reunion. After Lear's death, Albany asks Kent to help rule the kingdom, but Kent refuses, loyal to end to King Lear - 'I have a journey, sir, shortly to go. My master calls me, I must not say no.' Despite this horrible let down, Kent hints that he’s going to follow Lear into death, which is tragic but also not too surprising.

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Conclusion

Although, I prefer the happy endings, this tragedy has suprised me. There are so many things that I did not expect. Shakespear realy make me wonder what will happen next. I loved how Edmund, after all things that he did aganst Lear and Cordelia, tried to help them by admiting that he ordered to kill them. He give as hope for heppy ending, and then he take it away with Cordila`s death. In a story with happy ending, characters who are `bad`, do not have reasons to be like that, but Shakespeare give his characters like that a chance to be understood. By doing that he does not make `good` characters `bad` ones.

I do not like how Lear let down Kent and do not aknowledge his effort to help him, it is the most disappointing moment in the tragedie for me. Still I did not think that Kent could try to hurt Lear, but I also did not aspect that he will be loyal to him till he dies. It is too unrealistic for this tragedie, who was supposed to be real as possible, as I anderstood.

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Every criticts wrote that this is a story about children who disappointed they parents, but didn`t these parents first disappoint theire children!? And that is, what I think, that the Shakespear`s story is so special and so interesting for critics. I don`t approve Lear`s and Gloucester `s blindnes, because they took theire children for fools and for granted. They did not love theyr children equally. Beside all things that make these characters special, the one that make them similar are the bad one.

I can not undrestand why the public did not like to see this play on a scene, I would be more than glad to see it. There are so many moments that are heart-breaking, and you can realy feel theire emotions by reading. I can only imagine how it would be to see the real play.

LITERATURA:

www.kinglear.com

www.wikipedia.com

www.google.com

Stvaralastvo Viljema Sekspira by Veselin Kostic

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