KING LEAR CRITICS

Dirty Rotten Bastards – Edmund, Class and King LeareMagazine ‘It offers us enduringly pertinent perspectives on the fundamental challenges of our human condition’
Dirty Rotten Bastards – Edmund, Class and King LeareMagazine ‘In the end, the play itself comes down on the side of the aristocratic ideology’
Lynda Boose ‘primarily ‘about’ family relationships and only secondarily about the body politic’
Lynda Boose ‘it is the wilful action of the king and father … that is fully responsible for the explosion of this chaos.’
Identity in King Lear – vle ‘King Lear is as much an exploration of personal identity as it is of universal suffering’
Identity in King Lear – vle Shakespeare ‘immediately establishes the theme of deception and performance that underpins the event of the play’
Identity in King Lear – vle ‘by drawing attention to the fabrication of identity in the play itself, Shakespeare makes the audience more aware of the fictional world to which they are exposed’. e.g metatheatre: Lear’s metaphor of the world as a “great stage of fools”
Identity in King Lear – vle ‘The inability to see through disguise, both internal and external, is arguably the primary source of tragedy in the play’
Identity in King Lear – vle ‘Throughout the play there is a conflict between the notion that identity is dictated by heredity and the idea that our lives are our own to create’
Identity in King Lear – vle ‘Identity is presented as something pliable’ (pliable = flexible/easily twisted)
Identity in King Lear – vle ‘A generational divide regarding the origin of identity exists in the play, with the older characters valuing the importance of family heritage and the younger characters the importance of the individual’
Identity in King Lear – vle ‘There is, therefore, nothing that can protect identity from its inherent sense of fragility’.
July 22, 2019