Kathleen McCluskie | ‘the feminine must either be made to submit or destroyed’Believes the play presents women as the ‘source of primal sin of lust’ |
Georges Brandes | Saw Cordelia as the ‘living emblem of womanly dignity’ |
Coleridge | Believes Shakespeare allows us to admire Edmund through his bastardy and humiliation |
R. A. Foakes – Edmund | Believed that to demonize Edmund as merely evil ignores his ‘energy, humour and self-command’ Recognises Edmund’s courage as a positive. |
Nahum Tate in 1681 | Felt the ending was far too gloomy and went on to write his own version that allowed Lear to survive and that connected Edgar and Cordelia romantically. |
Samuel Johnson | Accepts the fact that ‘the wicked prosper’ and the ‘virtuous miscarry’ as simply a representation of common events in human life. However, he rejected the original ending that featured Cordelia’s death on the grounds that it displayed a complete lack of justice. |
A. C. Bradley – cordelia | ‘it is not even satisfactorily motivated’ |
Wilson Knight | “mankind is, as it were, deliberately or comically tormented by the gods” |
York Notes on ‘King Lear’ | ‘The suffering presented in King Lear is pointless and extreme’ |
R. A. Foakes – paradox | Suggested the idea of ‘virtuous disobedience’ and ‘improper loyalty’ |
Jonathon Dollimore – themes | The play is really about ‘power, property and inheritance’ |
Jonathon Dollimore – Lear | Lear’s identity is no kingly essence, but his authority and his family. |
R. A. Foakes – good and bad in King Lear | ‘unsparing in its depiction of human cruelty and misery, but also rich in its portrayals of goodness, devotion, loyalty and self-sacrifice’. |
A. Kettle – Lear | ‘Not so much a breakdown as a breakthrough’ |
Wharton – Goneril and Regan | ‘Their behaviour is too diabolical to be credible’ |
Elton – Cordelia | She is a Christ-like figure so her downfall suggests a God-less society. |
Isaac Asamov – the Fool | ‘great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all’ |
Cheri Halvoson – the Fool | The Fool, being deemed lowly, destabilises conventional wisdom, divine gift as a ‘seer’ |
George Orwell – Edgar | ‘A superfluous character’ |
Jonothon Bate | the play is a dramatisation of not just one man’s error but of a whole civilisation – ‘we are on the brink of an apocalypse’ |
York Notes on ‘King Lear’ – Cordelia’s hanging | Proof of a ‘deranged universe’ |
R. A. Foakes – social range | ‘In its social range it encompasses a whole society, from king to beggar’ |
A. C. Bradley – setting | ‘the warm castle is a room in hell, the storm swept heath a sanctuary’ |
Professor Brandl | The Fool is a representation of Cordelia |
King Lear critics
July 9, 2019