In the following essay, Dodd attempts to bridge dramatic readings of King Lear with historical interpretations of the play in order to more fully understand Shakespeare's intent.
In the following essay, Wittreich suggests that King Lear is a veiled commentary on the actions of King James I, especially his attempt to unite England, Scotland, and Wales. The critic also emphasizes the influence of the New Testament's Book of Revelation on the play, particularly the idea of the Apocalypse.
In the essay that follows, Lowenthal reviews the setting, plot, language, characterization, and themes of King Lear, maintaining that in the last scene, the "perfections of king, father, and man" are fused together in Lear.
In the following excerpt, Holahan studies the treatment of literary character in King Lear, stressing the construction and function of Cordelia in relation to Lear.
In the following essay, Zak contrasts Shakespeare’s King Lear with the anonymously written The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and examines Lear’s self-destruction.
Below, Berger examines the relationship Lear has with his daughters by analyzing the psychological motivations for Lear's and his daughters' actions. Berger observes that the characters in the play tend to downplay their own contributions to their problems while intensifying the role of others.
In the following essay, Levin summarizes critical approaches to King Lear from 1960 to 1984, citing Marxist, feminist, and new historicist—as opposed to formalist—interpretations of the play.
In the following essay, Knowles examines Cordelia's unexplained return to England in King Lear, suggesting that Shakespeare purposefully left the matter ambiguous in order to enhance the play's dramatic impact.
In the following essay, Alfar challenges feminist interpretations of Goneril and Regan as evil, maintaining that the characters are merely a reflection of the violence in their patrilineal society.
In the following essay, Keefer describes the means by which God is represented in the human terms of King Lear, observing Lear's actions as “a synecdochic parody of Calvinist predestination and grace.”
In the following essay, Kirsch focuses on religious, specifically Christian, elements in the characters of King Lear. Kirsch concentrates on the figures of Lear and Cordelia, and examines their relation to motifs of love, suffering, and death.
In this essay, Millard examines Cordelia's part in the political elements of King Lear, noting that her rejection of her role as daughter in favor of one typically reserved for a son results in an internal struggle to attain her identity.
In the following essay, Viguers theorizes how the storm scene in King Lear would have been staged during Shakespeare's time and maintains that many modern presentations ignore important staging clues in the text.
In the following essay, originally presented at Princeton University in 1978/79, McFarland maintains that the play focuses not on King Lear's personal suffering, but on "the agony of the family." The play's tragic situation, the critic argues, stems from the tension between Lear's role as king and his role as father.
In the essay below, Nutys-Giornal traces references of the European Renaissance character Nobody to the character of Lear, and considers the relationship between verbal and visual communication in the play.
In the following essay, Leggatt focuses on Lear's death, contending that it is "the completion of life lived to the extreme," and examines the parallels in the experiences of Lear and Gloucester.
In the following essay, Rosen examines the unconventional dramatic form of King Lear, particularly the appearance of the climax early in the play instead of at the end, where it traditionally occurs.
In the following essay, Kirby analyzes the moment of Lear's death in terms of medieval Christian thought and Shakespeare's stagecraft, contending that even though providence does not preserve Lear and Cordelia in the temporal sense, the king dies suffused with joy and in a state of grace. Kirby also discusses the deaths of the villainous characters in the play, as well as those of Gloucester, Kent, and Cordelia.
Paul A. Cantor, University of Virginia What is the price of Experience do men buy it for a song Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No it is bought with the price Of all that a man hath his house his wife his children. —William Blake, The Four Zoas
In the following essay, Guilfoyle examines the theme of Christian redemption in King Lear and contends that several figures in the play assume Christ-like qualities.
In the following essay, Tippins offers a reading of King Lear that attempts to mediate between absurdist or pessimistic interpretations of the play and religious or redemptive ones.
In the following essay, originally presented in 1979, Craik reviews the final scene in King Lear together with scenes in other plays where Shakespeare treats life and death with dramatic ambiguity.
In the following essay, Edwards disagrees with critics who view King Lear as an expression of a godless existence, contending that the play is “an eminently Christian work” that dramatizes human imperfection and the possibility of redemption.
In the essay that follows, Abrams explores the hypothesis that in early productions of King Lear, the characters of Cordelia and Lear's Fool were played by the same actor. Abrams emphasizes the theatrical benefits of such "doubling," noting that Cordelia and the Fool both serve as Lear's "truth-tellers."
In the following essay, Kennedy contrasts the happy ending of The True Chronicle History of King Leir with Shakespeare's version of the play, arguing that Shakespeare’s ending is essential to establishing the theme of King Lear.
In the following essay, Kendall argues that the elaborate ceremony surrounding the trial by combat between Edgar and Edmund in Act V, scene iii of King Lear betrays the hollowness of the ritual and highlights the ineffectuality of all human constructs designed to establish legitimacy or affirm a natural order.
In the following excerpt, Felperin suggests that Shakespeare's King Lear defies both simple moral and absurdist readings—the two principal modes of mid-twentieth century critical interpretation of the drama.
Catherine S. Cox, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown Throughout King Lear, conventional interpretations of gender identity are challenged by ambiguously constructed female characters. The three women inhabiting Lear's world—his daughters Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan—supply the text with culturally and theoretically profound treatments of gender issues. The daughter figures, especially Cordelia, exhibit characteristics germane to Renaissance appropriations of early Christian and medie...
In the essay below, Videbœk explores the dimensions of the Fool's character and states that the Fool understands the "human condition" and pities the characters in the play who suffer under the harsh conditions of Lear's world. Furthermore, Videbœk contends that the function of Lear's Fool is extended further than that of the clowns in Shakespeare's other plays.
In the essay below, Spotswood challenges critical interpretations which maintain that the play represents a challenge to social structure, arguing that King Lear upholds class boundaries.
In the following essay, Frye examines the images of clothing in King Lear, noting the importance of clothing as an element of disguise in Shakespearean drama.
In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1971, Levenson contends that silence in King Lear is integral to the play's structure, characterization, and thematic development.
In the following essay, Heinemann argues that King Lear is a play as much concerned with government and politics as it is with personal, familial issues. The critic stresses that the play should be interpreted in terms of a personal loss of power and as the collapse of social and political structures. Additionally, Heinemann suggests ways in which the political implications of King Lear might be related to the politics of England under King James I.
In the following essay, originally published in 1983, Booth illustrates how the audience's original evaluations of the characters in King Lear are thrown into question by later events, a process that mirrors Lear's misjudgment of his daughters.
In the following excerpt, Davidson calls attention to the way symbolic associations underscore the motif of reversals and inversions of order in King Lear. He argues that although the first four acts may be read as a traditional Christian presentation of the operation of divine providence, the iconography of Act V appears to question the wisdom of relying on moral or religious certainties.
In the essay that follows, Green studies the references to both secular and divine law and judgement in King Lear, arguing that through such intimations, Shakespeare heightens the experiences of cruelty, hopelessness, and pain in the play as well as intensifies the force of the play's final tragic scene. Green examines in particular how Shakespeare's audiences may have perceived such dramatic events.
In the following essay, Rosinger notes the parallel development of Lear and Gloucester in King Lear, pointing out that both characters initially treat others as a means of achieving self-gratification, but are able to express compassion for others by the play's end.
In the essay below, Fortin asserts that a Christian reading of King Lear is as compatible with the “facts” of the play as a secular one, but that neither one is authoritative. Noting that the death of Cordelia is the principal impediment for Christian interpreters, he suggests that the play's ending, far from contradicting Christian doctrine, confirms the Catholic and Protestant notion of God's judgments as unknown and inexplicable.
In the following essay, originally published in 1984, Dollimore argues against Christian and humanist interpretations of King Lear, noting that “the play concludes with two events [the deaths of Cordelia and Lear which sabotage the prospect of both closure and recuperation.”]
In the following essay, Shickman maintains that Lear's Fool was most likely intended to carry a mirror on stage in order to reinforce such concepts as "folly, prudence, and self-knowledge," with which the play is concerned.
In the following essay, originally written in 1992, Berge maintains that the theme of dramatic irresolution is represented in the play first by Cordelia, then by the Fool, and finally by Lear himself Berge observes that Cordelia serves as Lear's model of truth and self-knowledge.
In the essay below, Spinrad analyzes the death of Lear, contending that this event resists explanation by dramatic or philosophical theories and fails to provide the audience with a sense of closure.
In the following essay, Hawkes focuses on verbal and non-verbal communication in King Lear, contending that the play reveals a significant change in Lear's character through his movement from understanding only “explicit verbal statement” at the play's beginning to his ability to note unspoken emotions and ideas in the play's final scene.
In the following review of Jonathan Kent's staging of King Lear at King's Cross for the Almeida Theatre, Stokes lauds the production's “high aesthetic” style and Oliver Ford Davies's Alzheimer's-informed Lear.
In the following review, Barrow contends that “of all the productions of King Lear done by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the 2000 production was the weakest.” In particular, the critic faults Barry Boys's performance as Lear, noting that the actor was “unable to communicate Lear's painful journey through madness to wisdom.”
In the following excerpt, Potter favorably reviews the 2001 staging of King Lear at the Globe Theatre, noting that the production “generally felt ‘right,’ both simple and to the point.”
In the following review of the 2002 Stratford Festival production of King Lear directed by Jonathan Miller, Brantley compliments the clarity, intimate tone, and quick pace of the production, but reserves his highest praise for Christopher Plummer's Lear.
In the following excerpted review of Barry Kyle's Globe Theatre production of King Lear, Garner observes that the Globe stage is not well-suited to the tragic elements of the drama, and cites a number of weak individual performances within the drama's main plot.
In the following review, Weber evaluates Jan Lauwers's 2001 experimental interpretation of King Lear, noting the production's deconstructive approach to language and summarizing individual performances.
In the following review, Hornby comments on Barry Kyle's 2001 staging of King Lear at the Globe, acknowledging its excellent use of design and blocking, as well as Julian Glover's dynamic Lear.
In the following review, Wolf finds Jonathan Kent's 2002 modernistic staging of King Lear at King's Cross generally well-realized, and praises the performance of Oliver Ford Davies as Lear.
In the following review of the 2002 Stratford Festival production of King Lear directed by Jonathan Miller, Bemrose contends that Christopher Plummer's portrayal of Lear was “the performance of his life.”
In the following review of Jonathan Kent's production of King Lear for the Almeida Theatre, Duncan-Jones praises the combined performances—including Oliver Ford Davies's Lear and those of the supporting cast—but laments weaknesses in setting and design.
In the following review of director Barry Kyle's King Lear at the Globe, Neil admires the “clarity” of the staging and highlights themes of family and political disintegration in the production.
