King Lear key interpretations

Question 1

German poet Goethe (humans)

Answer 1

“every old man is a King Lear”
- suggests that the play explores common human experiences

Question 2

Many critics argue that…

Answer 2

King Lear is Shakespeare’s most profound tragedy

Question 3

The Fool’s disappearance

Answer 3

Adrian Noble’s 1982 production - Lear stabs the Fool whilst delirious
Trevor Nunn’s 2007 - the Fool is hanged by Cornwall’s men

Question 4

Peter Brook’s 1962 production

Answer 4

Unlike previous productions where Gloucester faces away from the audience, Brook’s allows the audience to see Gloucester’s eyes gouged out

Question 5

Bloom (humans)

Answer 5

“the descent from Monarch to “unaccommodated man” thus conveys most potently man’s fragility, fallibility and fatality”
links to Lear saying “unaccomodated man is no more but such poor, bare, forked animal as thou art”

Question 6

Cunningham (general)

Answer 6

there is hope that Gloucester will find “insight through blindness” and Lear “wisdom through madness”

Question 7

Johnson (tragedy)

Answer 7

“a play in which the wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry” and it is a “just representation of the common events of human life”

Question 8

McLuskie (feminism)

Answer 8

“The feminine must be made to submit (Cordelia) or destroyed (Goneril and Regan)”
contrasts with 19th century critic Brandes who believed Cordelia was the “living emblem of womanly dignity”

Question 9

Holdbrook (Lear)

Answer 9

“He has clung steadfastly to the conviction that he is a loving father, despite all evidence of the contrary”

Question 10

Marxist literary critic Kettle (Lear)

Answer 10

“Lear’s madness is not so much of a breakdown as a breakthrough” which drives him into an “identification with the poor”

Question 11

Goldsmith (the Fool)

Answer 11

The Fool is Lear’s “externalized conscience”

Question 12

Bennet (The Fool)

Answer 12

“bitter jests counter and balance Lear’s bitter thoughts”

Question 13

19th century critic Coleridge

Answer 13

Kent is “the nearest to perfect goodness in all Shakespeare’s characters”

Question 14

Hudson (Goneril and Regan)

Answer 14

they are “personifcations of ingratitude”

Question 15

Dollymore (Edmund)

Answer 15

He is a “stock villain”

Question 16

Clement, founder of the Munich Shakespeare Library (Lear)

Answer 16

Lear is “engaged in a constant monologue and questioning of his identity”

Question 17

Woods (humanity)

Answer 17

“through Lear’s madness and Edgar’s pretence of madness the tragedy insists on a common humanity”

Question 18

Thorpe (tragedy)

Answer 18

“the ravages of the plague are the true source of the dark sorrow driving Shakespeare’s later work”
- the Bard lost numerous siblings during outbreaks and possibly his son too.

Question 19

Kittredge (Edmund)

Answer 19

Edmund says “base” and “legitimate” in a monotone ‘in order to prove they are meaningless terms’