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Dr. Ed Friedlander ("Pathguy") has incredibly witty and informative study guides to several Shakespeare plays, including King Lear.
Study Guide: King Lear
IMPORTANT: THE PARALLEL TEXTS —
Note that there are three versions of the play presented in your textbook. For our purposes, we will read the CONFLATED TEXT that begins on p. 2479 of your book. However, we will consider some of the revisions as presented in the transcriptions of Q1 and F.
READING SCHEDULE:
Tuesday, 4/4: Play introduction and pp. 65-72 in your text, which describes the composition and printing process for the plays, and Act 1 (start on p. 2479!
Thursday, 4/6: Acts 2-3
Tuesday, 4/11: Acts 4-5
Like Othello, King Lear presents
the problem of evil (theodicy). Even though the play takes place in a
pre-Christian setting, it weighs the values of each character against the
Christian values Shakespeare’s audience would have held. The play's
pre-Christian setting, in fact, throws even more emphasis on the importance of
ritual in human lives -- how does it govern crucial human activities like
birth, death, marriage, and rule? What happens when rituals are perverted
or broken?
Like Richard II and Richard III, King Lear addresses the problem of the “King’s Two Bodies” and of primogeniture, power, loyalty and corruption.
Like the romantic comedies, King Lear addresses the problem of distinguishing among different types of love.
Like Hamlet, King Lear expresses the human desire to know whether our existence has a greater purpose than mere physical living. As in Hamlet, these questions create much distress on the part of the characters who ask them.
And as in Hamlet and Measure for Measure, the world of Lear is in flux — power is shifting in unexpected and sometimes destructive ways, people are not what they seem, and family loyalties seem especially vulnerable to breakdown and chaos. The question of what is royal behavior comes up again, as does the problem of female sexuality. As in Richard II and Measure for Measure, anxieties about both the health of the state and about women are expressed in disease imagery.
Notice how in King Lear, the problematic events in the play are described by characters as conflicts between Authority (however this is defined) and Nature. Characters who begin the play basing their understanding of the world on “Nature” often end up on the other side by the end of the play, as do those who start out trusting or representing “Authority.” Which wins out in the end? Does the play offer a clear answer to this?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
Look carefully at Edmund’s soliloquy (1.2.1-22) on p. 2486-7 of our text. He implies that Nature (symbolized by blood ties, etc.) and Authority (law, custom) are two different bases on which to determine a person’s worth. Which does he prefer? Paraphrase his argument.
Look at pp. 2472 and 2473: notice that the Q1 text assigns the final speech (“The weight of this sad time . . .,” 5.3.329-332) to Albany rather than to Edgar as in F. To which character do you think the speech is more appropriate? Why?
