Critic quotes

Question 1

McLuskie on female characterisation

Answer 1

‘Insubordination from women characters results in chaos’

Question 2

McLuskie on female characterisation

Answer 2

Women with opinions frighten men

Question 3

Battenhouse on Cordelia

Answer 3

sees ‘Cordelia as Christian’

Question 4

Elton on female antagonists

Answer 4

‘Sees Goneril and Regan as pagan and machiavellian’

Question 5

Kahn on Lear’s characterisation

Answer 5

‘Reason for Lear’s failure… the need for a mother figure’

Question 6

Kennedy on female characterisation

Answer 6

‘Noisome and noxious odours of the play are linked with the polluted or polluting female body’

Question 7

Bradley on characters

Answer 7

The conflict in the play is primarily that of inner struggle within the characters

Question 8

Knight on Cordelia

Answer 8

‘Cordelia embodies the principle of ideal love, and Lear is redeemed through suffering’

Question 9

Everett on other interpretations

Answer 9

‘Criticised interpretations that attempted to turn the tragedy into an allegory or morality play’

Question 10

Everett on Shakespeare’s writing

Answer 10

‘Product of a christian world view but lacks doctrinal and allegorical christian dimensions’

Question 11

Knott on tragedy play

Answer 11

‘History rather than fate or the gods, is the cause of tragedy’

Question 12

Dusinberre on equality

Answer 12

‘Shakespeare saw men and woman as equal in a world which declared them as unequal’

Question 13

Dusinberre on patriarchy

Answer 13

‘King Lear invites dissent from misogyny and patriarchy’

Question 14

McLuskie on patriarchy

Answer 14

‘King Lear prevents a conventional and conservative male view of the world’

Question 15

McLuskie on female characterisation

Answer 15

Female characters are either sanctified or demonised

Question 16

Bruce on intergenerational conflict

Answer 16

‘King Lear is a tragedy about characters who are painfully caught between old and new ways of thinking’

Question 17

Bruce on Tragedy

Answer 17

‘Shakespeare’s tragedies stem from the tragic flaws of their protagonists’

Question 18

Bruce on social status

Answer 18

‘The play itself comes down on the side of aristocratic ideologies’

Question 19

O’Mahoney on female villains

Answer 19

‘Sycophantic, greedy, jealous, and cruel’

Question 20

Bruce on Suicide

Answer 20

Perceived as a sin of unparalleled evil, which held no hope of redemption

Question 21

Lamar on the point of the play

Answer 21

‘The education and purification of Lear’

Question 22

Goldberg on justice

Answer 22

‘There is no supernatural justice- only human natural justice’

Question 23

Knight on Edmund

Answer 23

‘Rejects custom civilisation and obeys natures law of selfishness’

Question 24

Kermode on characterisation

Answer 24

‘Under the fine clothes there is nothing but greed and lust’

Question 25

Johnson on justice

Answer 25

'The wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry'

Question 26

Asimov on the Fool

Answer 26

'The great secret of the success of the fool is that he is no fool at all'

Question 27

Muir on fate

Answer 27

'Human beings are entirely responsible for their own actions'