critics

• Argument and quotes for Kastan: Part 1

  • Wether human suffering lies in “human weakness, devine retribution or arbitrary fate”- the absence of a direct answer is the key to shakesperean tragedy​
  • Tragedy as the “fall from prosperity to wretchedness” ​
  • answers to questions such as “ why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life and thou no breath at all” lie in the “incalculable murderousness of the world”​
  • Tragedy for Shakespeare is the genre of “uncompensated suffering” 
  • Is the tragic motor “human error or capricious fate… “arbitrary destiny or malignity of the heavens”
• Argument and quotes for Kastan: Part 2

  • The uncertainty is the point for Shakespeare- the ending leaves us with a seemingly good ending but after so much tragedy it is impossible for the audience to be happy- the ending is in itself a tragedy as the rightful ruler and all his heirs are no longer there – “reconstruct a coherent world view from the ruins of the old”- makes audience question, is there resolution or was the suffering just for nothing​
  • Tragedy for Shakespeare is the genre of “uncompensated suffering” ​
• Argument and quotes for Nuttall:

  • Nuttall believes that the audience can gain pleasure from tragedy
  • “grief and fear become in their turn a matter for enjoyment”- if in reading we derive pleasure from his suffering we are aligning ourselves with evil ​
  • “the pleasure of tragedy”​
  • New generation of theatre to “despise the pleasurable and to value the disturbing” ​
  • Pleasure of enjoyment is stripped away in KL as the suffering engulfs us​
• Argument and quotes for Bradley:

  • Argues Shakespearean tragedy focuses on a high-standing individual who undergoes a reversal of fortune leading to his own death​
  • The suffering is contrasted with “previous happiness or glory”​
  • Appeals strongly to “human sympathy”- also ignited fear in a higher power – “a power which appears to smile on him… then on a sudden strikes him down in his pride” ​
  • The falling of someone noble emphasises the “powerlessness of man, and of the omnipotence- perhaps the caprice- of fortune or fate, which no tale or private life can possible rival”
• Argument and quotes for Mack:

  • Mack argues that madness is both a divine punishment but also a vessel for Shakespeare to speak the truth
  • “madness has further dimensions” Lear sees clearly only when hes mad- finds his truth in madness​
  • “priviledged in madness to say things”- Shakespeare uses Lear as a voice to criticise Jacobean society ​
  • Madness as a vessel in which the truth can be told- Shakespeare uses madness to express his own opinions on the societal state of being ​
• Argument and quotes for Rutter: Part 1

  • Argues the play explores deep anxieties about female power in relation to language- Lear made to seem womanish by his tears and cursing​
  • “patriarchal anxieties about effeminization”​
  • “series of disturbed images of the feminine”​
  • Absence of Edmunds mother “whoreson”​
  • Lear carrying Cordelias dead body on stage as Mary carries christ in the Pieta- Cordelia takes this powerful role where as christ she has brought lear to redemption through her own sacrifice- “maternal is revived” through Cordelia forgiving lear​
• Argument and quotes for Rutter: Part 2

  • “cordlias refusal to mother his boyhood”- unmanning himself even before his weeping​
  • “Cursing is the language of political exclusion”- language of women where they could not act so they cursed ​
  • “Lears elder daughters neither weep nor curse”- “they now assume the male voice” ​
  • “between speech and silence that the play always constructs as an opposition between mouth and heart”- Cordelia and nihilism, her silence shows true love vs the false words- “the two who speak are monsters the one who does not is monstered”​
• Argument and quotes for Kermode: Part 1

  • Wrestles with human suffering and evil on a universal scale ​
  • “suffering is the consequence of a human tendency to evil”​
  • “reduce humanity to a beastial condition”, “they will prey upon themselves like animals, having lost the protection of social restraint”- seen through G+R and EDM​
  • “the voices of the good are distorted by pain”- seen through Gloucester and his disbelief in humanity in the end​
  • “the apparent unreason of the fool”, “wild linguistic excursions”- the fool speaks truth in folly possibly foreshadowing lear speaking truth in madness​
• Argument and quotes for Kermode: Part 2

  • “self-gratifying charade”- so hubristic attempts to quantify love
  • “Gloucester treats Edmunds birth as an occasion for bawdy joking”
  • “the folly of Gloucester and the ingenious unregenerate wickedness of Edmund”- critique of primogeniture
  • “manifestly insincere”, “rhetorical falsity” talks ab Goneril and Regan and their speech
  • “far from passively yielding” ab Cordelia and her integrity​
  • “the love he seeks is the sort that can be offered in formal and subversient expressions” – court flattery, King James 1st
• Argument and quotes for O'Toole:

  • focuses on end of play which seems to undermine the lessons the play was set out to teach ​
  • “there is no convincing re-assertion of the moral and social order at the end”
  • “Edgar draws the handy moral of the story”
  • “the man we thought was dead is back on stage looking for Lear”- unbreakable loyalty​
  • “the overwhelming sense of injustice breaks through the even balancing of good and evil”- not the usual tragedy ending- there is no resolution it is all profoundly unfair​
  • “what is virtue and what is vice”- Aristotilian​
  • Kent is the figure of “faithful service”​