King Lear Essay

KING LEAR ESSAY

Question: “The genius of King Lear lies in the universality of the themes and issues it portrays.” Discuss.

Answer: The brilliance of the play, King Lear, by William Shakespeare, is a universally acknowledged play because of the unanimously known themes and issues it portrays and it uniqueness of it as opposed to other tragedies Shakespeare has written in the past. Many of the themes and values present in the novel are known worldwide such as family values, patriarchal society and hence, the roles of women in this type of society, power, hierarchy and self-respect, love, and deceit of others. All these values and themes play a very important role in shaping King Lear as a play, and also show what a remarkable story it is as a whole.

Critical views of King Lear are used to show how these values and themes are incorporated into the play in different ways. One view that presents these ideas is viewing the play as an Aristotelian Tragedy. The universal theme present in this text in relation to this reading is the power over others and the downfall of Lear as it’s mainly about the power structure in a patriarchal system and the disturbances caused when it is challenged. This view looks at the play as a sole tragedy where the main character/hero has a fatal flaw. This in this play, obviously, is Lear himself. An Aristotelian Tragedy has the characteristics of unhappy endings, going from harmony to disharmony and an aspect which arouses fear, pity and a catastrophe. It centers on a hero who is good and noble but is eventually undone by a character defect by some source of destiny or fate. A production where this critical reading is seen is in the 2005 Harlos Productions which focuses on Lear’s major downfall. At the beginning, in the actual play, when Lear demands his daughters to declare their love for him, everyone in set in a circle. Yet, in the Harlos Production, all are standing a straight line, symbolising equality between everyone until...