BOOK REVIEW - WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE – KING LEAR.
Shakespeare’s bleakest, darkest vision, Lear is based on a minor story in Geoffrey Of Monnmouth’s History Of The Kings Of England. Lear, in his dotage, plans to retire from service and offers an equal share of his Kingdom to each of his three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordeliia, in return for a statement from each of their love for him. While Goneril & Regan sing his praises and grab their shares, Cordeliia declines to take a third of his kingdom at all, arguing that she has no wish to leave his side. She wishes only to be his dutiful adoring daughter. She has no desire to take independent power from him. Lear mistakes her wisdom and love for insolence and defiance. He banishes her and gives her share of the Kingdom to the other daughters. No sooner have they seized their lands, Goneril & Regan begin o outdo one another in acts of evil. They are aided and abetted by Edmond, an illegitimate son of The Duke Of Gloucester, who resents the fact that his young brother, Edgar, through legitimacy, will inherit his father’s estates. Edmond makes a defiant speech to the Gods (in Shakespeare’s most pagan play) and vows to secure his own power. It is a surprisingly strong case against the unfairness with which illegitimate sons fail to gain equal rights with sons born in wedlock for the time in which it was written. Edmond has some sympathy despite his evil nature. He tries to frame Edgar as a criminal, and Edgar is forced to flee, taking the disguise as a Bedlam lunatic as he roams the countryside. Lear is driven insane by the cruelties of his two unbanished heartless daughters, and gains consoling wisdom from his fool, and a strange madman, actually Edgar, feigning madness. The juxtaposition of real madness, the fool’s wisdom, and Edgar’s pretend insanity in a howling tempest, is one of Shakespeare’s most startling powerful scenes of all. Meanwhile, Edmond captures and blinds his father, who is cast out alone and helpless. He decides to kill himself by throwing himself from a cliff. Edgar, in disguise and unseen, leads Gloucester to a small harmless drop but tells him that it is a steep one. Gloucester jumps, and Edgar convinces him that his survival was a miracle. They now rush to assist Lear in a growing war against his own daughters. They are too late. Though Lear’s forces win the battle, Cordeliia, a prisoner, has been murdered. The evil sisters and Edmond are killed, but Lear is driven to despair by Cornelia’s senseless death. He dies of a broken heart. The story is an epic tale of misguided love and misunderstood intentions. Unlike many tragedies, it could have ended positively. Lear could have been written to win the day and save the one good daughter. The brutal pessimism of the ending shocks. Some later Christians were prepared to rewrite the story for such a happy ending in which Cordeliia lives and Gloucester is not blinded, but the unmolested text is tremendous reading.
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Arthur Chappell
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