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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 7 page paper which examines the relationship between the human side and the authority side of Lear’s character, and evaluates the contradictions that propel the play’s tragedy. Bibliography lists 5 sources.
Page Count:
7 pages (~225 words per page)
File: TG15_TGlearcon.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
80-year-old Lear is entering the twilight of his life, and is used to his word being law. He is the quintessential divine monarch who believes completely in his own
infallibility. Lear is a warrior king and is accustomed to using threats and intimidation to get what he wants. To him, foreign nations are nothing more than potential
conquests and people are expendable property. So steadfast is Lears belief in his absolute authority that he refuses to tolerate any opinions contrary to his. Even his own
country is treated as nothing more than a parcel of land to be divided among his three daughters upon his retirement. Throughout the course of the play, situations force
Lear to directly confront the atrocities his rule was responsible for creating, which allow something resembling humanity to eventually shine through. His contradictory nature leads to his downfall, but
was it the king himself who was tragic or was it his power that was most tragic? In his revered collection of early twentieth-century essays entitled Shakespearean Tragedy, A.C. Bradley
describes Lear as having enjoyed "a long life of absolute power, in which he has been flattered to the top of his bent, has produced in him that blindness to
human limitations, and that presumptuous self-will" (282). It becomes readily apparent that Lear relates to his daughters Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia as subjects who must flatter and serve him
to remain in his good graces. Lear cares little about the repercussions of his tyranny that have rendered many of his subjects impoverished and homeless; he is concerned only
with preserving what he regards as his legacy of good works. He is all pomp and pomposity, and when he enters a room, his arrival is introduced by a
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