Explore the ways in which Shakespeare presents attitudes to power in this passage. In your answer you must consider how the playwright uses literary, linguistic and rhetorical devices and conventions to create specific dramatic effects. The theme of power is explored extensively in the play and in this first scene the theme is already established. This scene takes place after Kent and Gloucester’s conversation about […]

In Shakespeare’s King Lear there is a definite element of the grotesque as seen in Lear’s own personality, and the other main characters in how they treat Lear.  Thus the grotesque in Shakespeare’s play is manifested through power.  The grotesque theme of Shakespeare’s play will be examined in this essay as it pertains to King Lear’s hate of his daughters, and the way in which […]

Is King Lear nihilistic or hopeful? Satisfying, hopeful, and redemptive: some critics would say that these adjectives belong nowhere near a description of King Lear. One critic, Thomas Roche, even states that the play’s ending is “as bleak and unrewarding as man can reach outside the gates of hell” (164). Certainly, Roche’s pessimistic interpretation has merit; after all, Lear has seen nearly everyone he once […]

How does Shakespeare’s King Lear hold its appeal to a modern audience? King Lear, a play by William Shakespeare has held its appeal for modern audiences as it explores the universal ideas and timeless themes of Power and Loyalty communicated through characterisation, language techniques and representations that parallel the context of the time in which they are produced. In the opening scene of the ‘love […]

Although a similar vision of justice is encompassed within King Lear and The Tempest, both protagonists receive fate strikingly dissimilar from one another; as a direct result of the relationship shared between their respective daughters, which ultimately distinguishes the plays from the similar concepts (compassion, nature, monarchy, and usurping) found within them. In King Lear, the nature of mercy and redemption are unobtainable elements, as […]

Good Morning Class. Today I will be talking about Shakespeare’s play “King Lear”, and how it successfully relates to the modern world, family relationships and the forcefulness of love, and most importantly the themes of madness and blindness to reinforce the concepts of appearance and reality. The play King Lear examines the concept of appearance and reality. The issues of madness and blindness become powerful […]

It is man’s path to struggle with his destiny and writers have long written about such a battle in a man’s inner soul. In the works of Alexandre Dumas and William Shakespeare such a battle is best described in their comparable works, “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “King Lear”. It is the purpose of this paper to present either novel, and the main male […]

In terms of power, Lear becomes the complete opposite of what he is in Act One by the end of Act Two. The fool says, “Now thou art an O without/ a figure. I am better than thou art now: I am a Fool, thou/ art nothing” (I. iv. 197-199). As the play progresses, the Fool points out that King Lear has become nothing. Misjudgment, […]

We’ve all seen shapeshifters through different storylines, some of them important, and some not. They may start off as evil, vile characters that we all dislike but love in the end, or a lovable character that twists from favorable to malicious with a snap. The tragedy, King Lear, written by William Shakespeare, is about a king, struck with two malicious daughters and one good one, […]

Eastern and Western Perspectives on Loyalty Loyalty is a strong feeling of support and allegiance in which it is reflected upon two proclaimed movies with different setting and subplots, but possesses a similar understanding to what the writer was trying to convey. By watching Olivier’s “King Lear”, and Kurosawa’s “Ran”, the audience finds there are many themes that are portrayed throughout each movie, but the […]