Act Three Flashcards
(3 cards)
How is Act 3 structurally presented and why?
Act 3 occurs in short scenes to allow us to see Lears swift and dramatic descent from rationality.
What happens to both characters by the end of Act 3?
Lear and his mirror image Gloucester both spiral downwards by the end of the act which culminates in Gloucester’s brutal and appalling blinding.
Lear and Gloucester become heroic and tragic figure by Act 3.
Both their stories side by side reinforce our sense of a world torn apart by suffering.
How does the description of Lear on the heath establish the violence of the storm?
Kent’s: “Where’s the king?” At the start of act 3 scene 1 is followed by, Gentleman: “Contending with the fretful elements.”
- This simple exchange underscores Lear’s complete disconnection from royal protection or even shelter—he is literally outside, both physically and socially.
The Gentleman in Act 3, Scene 1 further describe Lear to be:
“Contending with the fretful elements;
Bids the winds blow the earth into the sea,
Or swell the curled waters ’bove the main,
That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,
Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,
Catch in their fury, and make nothing of;
Strives in his little world of man to outscorn
The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.”
- This vividly shows Lear exposed to the storm, tearing at his hair, as nature and madness overwhelm him. The phrase “little world of man” refers to Lear’s internal state and his loss of power and order.
The description also establishes the violence of the storm which symbolises the destructive power Lear has unleashed across his family and nation as well as on himself.
Ultimately, Shakespeares belief of a correspondence between how nature was ordered on both the Earth and the heavens allowed him draws upon the ideas of how significant events in the world of individuals, the microcosm, is mirrored in the natural world, the macrocosm.
In king Lear this idea is shown after the division of Lears kingdom is mirrored through the immense breakdown of the weather. Simultaneously, we also see it in the breakdown of his and Gloucesters family but also in his mind.
