by Naomi Smith
It can be argued that King Lear is the most unendurable of all Shakespeare’s plays, in Act V, in particular, the sheer number of deaths on stage is deeply uncomfortable. Moreover, the tragedy of the characters deaths are made even more unendurable by the fact that Gloucester and Lear experience a mental lift just before their deaths, the audience is granted a glimmer of hope which is quickly torn away. Finally, the relatability of King Lear in comparison to Shakespeare’s other tragedies such as Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet is greater now as the play still holds great universal relevance for a 21st-century audience, thus making the tragedy more uncomfortably familiar to a modern audience.
Firstly, the great death-ridden scene in the final act of the play is deeply unsettling and difficult for an audience to watch. Whilst the death of one or two protagonists is commonplace in a typical tragedy such as is the case with Romeo and Juliet in the final scene, in King Lear, the audience is heavily burdened with mass death and the deeply uncomfortable image of the stage littered with five bodies. Shakespeare leaves us exhausted, saddened, questioning why this has happened and what the true moral lesson of the play is.
As Aristotle addressed in Poetics, a tragedy arouses pity and fear, for an emotional release, and that at the climax of the play the audience is granted a ‘catharsis’ of these emotions, and is left with a moral lesson. However, despite the death at the end of many tragedies arguably granting a satisfying release, the overwhelming image of death in Act V Scene 3 is startling and invokes deep melancholy amongst the audience. In addition, the lexical field of death is emphasised by the final stage direction, ‘Exuant with a dead march’. The ‘dead march’ is a sound effect of music, suitable for a funeral. The image of death with the music of a funeral further reinforces the atmosphere of complete sadness and overwhelming unendurability. Moreover, the tragic frame of ‘LEAR with CORDELIA in his arms’ enhances the unendurability of the scene, the image invokes a deep sense of pathos amongst the audience at the sight of a father holding his dead daughter.
This is a further example of the recurring theme, that there is an inversion or order within King Lear; it is unsettling that the young Cordelia has passed before her elderly, ill father. This tragic event has occurred in the wrong order, death has taken place unnaturally and the knowledge of this makes the sight not only of mass death but the frame of Lear holding Cordelia deeply unendurable. The natural injustice is highlighted by the line, ‘my poor fool is hanged’. The adjective ‘poor’ is pitiful, invoking sorrow whilst ‘fool’ acts as a term of endearment as well as connoting youth, therefore, furthering the sense of pathos that Cordelia has died too young. Moreover, it also reminds the audience of Lear’s other ‘child’, the Fool. The double reference implies that the Fool too has died, particularly as he has not been on stage since Act III, Scene 6. It can be argued that the fool’s line, ‘I’ll go to bed at noon’ (3.6) marks his death in the play with going to ‘bed’ as a metaphor for sleep, ultimately a far more romanticised presentation of death than the gruesome depiction in Act V Scene 3. The shift from a romantic to the gruesome presentation of death in the final scene signifies Aristotle’s tragic ‘fall’ in Lear’s tragedy, how death becomes ugly and commonplace. Ultimately, Lear’s fatherhood is ripped from him with not only all of his daughters dying but arguably the figure he acted mostly as a father towards throughout the play, the Fool. He has lost both his kingship in the public sphere and his fatherhood in the private. However, it is also likely that Lear simply refers to Cordelia as a ‘fool’ out of love and in reality, is no reference to the character of the Fool. It is argued that at Shakespeare’s time of writing both the Fool and Cordelia would have been played by the same actor, a young boy, and therefore cannot be on stage at the same time. This would explain why the Fool does not appear in Acts four or five, rather than having died.
In many ways what makes King Lear the most unendurable of all Shakespeare’s plays is how the mass violence eerily resembles the modern 20th/21st century climate. In the Jacobean era, Hamlet may have been considered the greatest tragedy, with King Lear, viewed as an overly violent and unrelatable dark play. However, in a modern context a western audience has witnessed, in recent history, two world wars which sparked mass death, deep inhumane tragedies such as the Holocaust and many terror attacks with modern weapons killing many instantly, something which a Jacobean audience would have been blind too. Its relatability and familiarity in a modern post-war context are what makes King Lear Shakespeare’s most unendurable play. R. A. Foakes in his book Hamlet Versus Lear, 1993 says that we are likely to see King Lear as Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy as it chimes with the anxiety and pessimism which world events have made common over the last century. A Christian reading may argue that whilst Lear’s suffering throughout the play is long and arduous his death in the final scene is fairly quick and painless. In Shakespeare’s time a quick and painless death was seen as a reward for a life lived virtuously, with long and painful deaths being granted to sinners. Perhaps his earlier madness led him to a wisdom and understanding that brought him peace in death, experiencing ‘reason in madness’. This may have comforted a Jacobean audience and made Lear’s death scene less unendurable, in the knowledge that he should be entering heaven where, as a king, he belongs. According to the Jacobean theory of the divine right of kings, as he has been chosen and selected by God, Lear deserves to lie in heaven’s resting grounds. Ultimately, however, despite there perhaps being an element of comfort in Shakespeare’s death scene there is knowledge that perhaps Lear enters heaven Act V Scene 3, is deeply unendurable due to the gruesome mass death depiction.
In addition, it can be argued that King Lear is the most unendurable of all of Shakespeare’s plays due to the visible fall with a later lift in protagonist Lear and within the subplot, Gloucester. Both characters arguably reach a breaking point in madness and reduction, for Lear this takes place on the heath. The deterioration in his character is visible, having fallen from King to, ‘Here I stand your slave,/ A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man’. The asyndetic list adds pace and heightened
tension to his statement whilst the metaphor of a slave demonstrates Lear’s shift in society; he once ruled over nature and now is ruled by nature. As a slave, Lear has not only lost all freedom, wealth and role in society but also stripped of any identity. Similarly, Gloucester reaches his state in madness when he loses his eyes and is left suicidal. Drawing upon a metaphor of a smouldering candle end, hating his own force ‘my snuff and loathed part of nature should/ Burn itself out’. Contextually, Gloucester’s suicidal inclination in Shakespeare’s time would simply have been dismissed as mad irrational thoughts. However, perhaps his thoughts may be viewed as even more unendurable and hold greater potency with a modern audience who have mental health awareness, in particular awareness of the common problem which is male suicide.
Again, King Lear, unlike many of Shakespeare’s other plays, becomes more and more relevant as time progresses. As Knott suggests, ‘this tragedy is above all others, the Shakespearean play of our time’ a modern audience relates to King Lear immensely which allows the story line to ring true and makes the play as a whole more unendurable than ever before. The use of metaphors in both Gloucester and Lear’s speeches demonstrates the blur of reality and imagination, the sense of madness is invoked by the confusion of the audience at times as to whether the character is taking a literal interpretation of their own speech. Contextually, a Jaocbean audience believed in the ‘wheel of fortune’, that we are carried up in society and inevitably down to the bottom. This is directly referenced twice in King Lear, secondly by Edmund in Act V Scene 3, ‘The wheel is come full circle, I am here.’ Ultimately, we see Lear and Gloucester lifted from their maddened state, with an overriding desire to preserve their lives and acknowledgment of their mistakes. Thus, it is deeply unendurable to see the characters experience a minor lift up the ‘wheel’ yet ultimately, and irregularly dragged back down again unto death.
Alternatively, perhaps Lear never recovers from his maddened state and is not carried back up with the ‘wheel’. As Edgar paradoxically states, there is ‘reason in madness’. Perhaps, Lear’s wisdom presented is part of mad thought, he in fact never recovers and therefore does not experience a lift in mental stature. For example, in the final scene Lear’s inconsistency is unsettling, he flickers between thoughts that Cordelia is dead at one moment and alive at another, this emotional turbulence is in fact what makes the play so unendurable. The imperative, ‘Look her lips. Look there, look there!’ is exaggerated with repetition and the exclamation mark, reflecting his despair and arguably madness. Critic AC Bradley argues that this is evidence that Lear thinks Cordelia is alive. Not only are lips associated with breath and life but earlier in the play Cordelia’s ‘ripe lip’ is associated with healing, thus leading many to believe that Lear thinks Cordelia is alive just as he dies.
Contextually, whilst Gloucester’s male attempted suicide holds great potency with a modern audience as does Lear’s ‘madness’. Whilst this gives a sense of frustration to the audience, that Lear is maddened, confused and Cordelia’s unjust death isn’t fully mourned it also seems comforting that Lear dies at peace, in his own mad thought. Simon Callow states that ‘Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear’’, Lear is not mad but confused and suffering from dementia syndrome. Shakespeare creates a lexical field of old-age confusion throughout the play where Lear is addressed as ‘old man’ and himself accepts his cognitive impairment, ‘I am a very foolish fond old man (...) I fear I am not in my perfect mind.’ The issue of confusion in dementia is an unendurable reality for many, according to the Alzheimer's society ‘70 per cent of people in care homes have dementia or severe memory problems.’ An audience who has knowledge of dementia would know that Lear cannot be lifted up the ‘wheel’ from his mental state, instead the audience's relatability to his illness may have been the most unendurable feature of Lear’s madness.
In conclusion, King Lear is the most unendurable of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Ultimately the audience is granted a glimmer of hope with Gloucester and Lear’s traces of mental recovery and it is deeply unendurable to see the hope tragically destroyed at the end of the play. Equally, the sheer vastness of the final death scene leaves an audience in despair and overwhelmed at the burden of mass death. King Lear has become an even greater tragedy as centuries have passed, the play has become more relatable to a modern audience with its themes of mass death and mental health crisis’. The play as a whole can be unbearable for an audience to cope with which is what makes it Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy of all time.
Firstly, the great death-ridden scene in the final act of the play is deeply unsettling and difficult for an audience to watch. Whilst the death of one or two protagonists is commonplace in a typical tragedy such as is the case with Romeo and Juliet in the final scene, in King Lear, the audience is heavily burdened with mass death and the deeply uncomfortable image of the stage littered with five bodies. Shakespeare leaves us exhausted, saddened, questioning why this has happened and what the true moral lesson of the play is.
As Aristotle addressed in Poetics, a tragedy arouses pity and fear, for an emotional release, and that at the climax of the play the audience is granted a ‘catharsis’ of these emotions, and is left with a moral lesson. However, despite the death at the end of many tragedies arguably granting a satisfying release, the overwhelming image of death in Act V Scene 3 is startling and invokes deep melancholy amongst the audience. In addition, the lexical field of death is emphasised by the final stage direction, ‘Exuant with a dead march’. The ‘dead march’ is a sound effect of music, suitable for a funeral. The image of death with the music of a funeral further reinforces the atmosphere of complete sadness and overwhelming unendurability. Moreover, the tragic frame of ‘LEAR with CORDELIA in his arms’ enhances the unendurability of the scene, the image invokes a deep sense of pathos amongst the audience at the sight of a father holding his dead daughter.
This is a further example of the recurring theme, that there is an inversion or order within King Lear; it is unsettling that the young Cordelia has passed before her elderly, ill father. This tragic event has occurred in the wrong order, death has taken place unnaturally and the knowledge of this makes the sight not only of mass death but the frame of Lear holding Cordelia deeply unendurable. The natural injustice is highlighted by the line, ‘my poor fool is hanged’. The adjective ‘poor’ is pitiful, invoking sorrow whilst ‘fool’ acts as a term of endearment as well as connoting youth, therefore, furthering the sense of pathos that Cordelia has died too young. Moreover, it also reminds the audience of Lear’s other ‘child’, the Fool. The double reference implies that the Fool too has died, particularly as he has not been on stage since Act III, Scene 6. It can be argued that the fool’s line, ‘I’ll go to bed at noon’ (3.6) marks his death in the play with going to ‘bed’ as a metaphor for sleep, ultimately a far more romanticised presentation of death than the gruesome depiction in Act V Scene 3. The shift from a romantic to the gruesome presentation of death in the final scene signifies Aristotle’s tragic ‘fall’ in Lear’s tragedy, how death becomes ugly and commonplace. Ultimately, Lear’s fatherhood is ripped from him with not only all of his daughters dying but arguably the figure he acted mostly as a father towards throughout the play, the Fool. He has lost both his kingship in the public sphere and his fatherhood in the private. However, it is also likely that Lear simply refers to Cordelia as a ‘fool’ out of love and in reality, is no reference to the character of the Fool. It is argued that at Shakespeare’s time of writing both the Fool and Cordelia would have been played by the same actor, a young boy, and therefore cannot be on stage at the same time. This would explain why the Fool does not appear in Acts four or five, rather than having died.
In many ways what makes King Lear the most unendurable of all Shakespeare’s plays is how the mass violence eerily resembles the modern 20th/21st century climate. In the Jacobean era, Hamlet may have been considered the greatest tragedy, with King Lear, viewed as an overly violent and unrelatable dark play. However, in a modern context a western audience has witnessed, in recent history, two world wars which sparked mass death, deep inhumane tragedies such as the Holocaust and many terror attacks with modern weapons killing many instantly, something which a Jacobean audience would have been blind too. Its relatability and familiarity in a modern post-war context are what makes King Lear Shakespeare’s most unendurable play. R. A. Foakes in his book Hamlet Versus Lear, 1993 says that we are likely to see King Lear as Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy as it chimes with the anxiety and pessimism which world events have made common over the last century. A Christian reading may argue that whilst Lear’s suffering throughout the play is long and arduous his death in the final scene is fairly quick and painless. In Shakespeare’s time a quick and painless death was seen as a reward for a life lived virtuously, with long and painful deaths being granted to sinners. Perhaps his earlier madness led him to a wisdom and understanding that brought him peace in death, experiencing ‘reason in madness’. This may have comforted a Jacobean audience and made Lear’s death scene less unendurable, in the knowledge that he should be entering heaven where, as a king, he belongs. According to the Jacobean theory of the divine right of kings, as he has been chosen and selected by God, Lear deserves to lie in heaven’s resting grounds. Ultimately, however, despite there perhaps being an element of comfort in Shakespeare’s death scene there is knowledge that perhaps Lear enters heaven Act V Scene 3, is deeply unendurable due to the gruesome mass death depiction.
In addition, it can be argued that King Lear is the most unendurable of all of Shakespeare’s plays due to the visible fall with a later lift in protagonist Lear and within the subplot, Gloucester. Both characters arguably reach a breaking point in madness and reduction, for Lear this takes place on the heath. The deterioration in his character is visible, having fallen from King to, ‘Here I stand your slave,/ A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man’. The asyndetic list adds pace and heightened
tension to his statement whilst the metaphor of a slave demonstrates Lear’s shift in society; he once ruled over nature and now is ruled by nature. As a slave, Lear has not only lost all freedom, wealth and role in society but also stripped of any identity. Similarly, Gloucester reaches his state in madness when he loses his eyes and is left suicidal. Drawing upon a metaphor of a smouldering candle end, hating his own force ‘my snuff and loathed part of nature should/ Burn itself out’. Contextually, Gloucester’s suicidal inclination in Shakespeare’s time would simply have been dismissed as mad irrational thoughts. However, perhaps his thoughts may be viewed as even more unendurable and hold greater potency with a modern audience who have mental health awareness, in particular awareness of the common problem which is male suicide.
Again, King Lear, unlike many of Shakespeare’s other plays, becomes more and more relevant as time progresses. As Knott suggests, ‘this tragedy is above all others, the Shakespearean play of our time’ a modern audience relates to King Lear immensely which allows the story line to ring true and makes the play as a whole more unendurable than ever before. The use of metaphors in both Gloucester and Lear’s speeches demonstrates the blur of reality and imagination, the sense of madness is invoked by the confusion of the audience at times as to whether the character is taking a literal interpretation of their own speech. Contextually, a Jaocbean audience believed in the ‘wheel of fortune’, that we are carried up in society and inevitably down to the bottom. This is directly referenced twice in King Lear, secondly by Edmund in Act V Scene 3, ‘The wheel is come full circle, I am here.’ Ultimately, we see Lear and Gloucester lifted from their maddened state, with an overriding desire to preserve their lives and acknowledgment of their mistakes. Thus, it is deeply unendurable to see the characters experience a minor lift up the ‘wheel’ yet ultimately, and irregularly dragged back down again unto death.
Alternatively, perhaps Lear never recovers from his maddened state and is not carried back up with the ‘wheel’. As Edgar paradoxically states, there is ‘reason in madness’. Perhaps, Lear’s wisdom presented is part of mad thought, he in fact never recovers and therefore does not experience a lift in mental stature. For example, in the final scene Lear’s inconsistency is unsettling, he flickers between thoughts that Cordelia is dead at one moment and alive at another, this emotional turbulence is in fact what makes the play so unendurable. The imperative, ‘Look her lips. Look there, look there!’ is exaggerated with repetition and the exclamation mark, reflecting his despair and arguably madness. Critic AC Bradley argues that this is evidence that Lear thinks Cordelia is alive. Not only are lips associated with breath and life but earlier in the play Cordelia’s ‘ripe lip’ is associated with healing, thus leading many to believe that Lear thinks Cordelia is alive just as he dies.
Contextually, whilst Gloucester’s male attempted suicide holds great potency with a modern audience as does Lear’s ‘madness’. Whilst this gives a sense of frustration to the audience, that Lear is maddened, confused and Cordelia’s unjust death isn’t fully mourned it also seems comforting that Lear dies at peace, in his own mad thought. Simon Callow states that ‘Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear’’, Lear is not mad but confused and suffering from dementia syndrome. Shakespeare creates a lexical field of old-age confusion throughout the play where Lear is addressed as ‘old man’ and himself accepts his cognitive impairment, ‘I am a very foolish fond old man (...) I fear I am not in my perfect mind.’ The issue of confusion in dementia is an unendurable reality for many, according to the Alzheimer's society ‘70 per cent of people in care homes have dementia or severe memory problems.’ An audience who has knowledge of dementia would know that Lear cannot be lifted up the ‘wheel’ from his mental state, instead the audience's relatability to his illness may have been the most unendurable feature of Lear’s madness.
In conclusion, King Lear is the most unendurable of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Ultimately the audience is granted a glimmer of hope with Gloucester and Lear’s traces of mental recovery and it is deeply unendurable to see the hope tragically destroyed at the end of the play. Equally, the sheer vastness of the final death scene leaves an audience in despair and overwhelmed at the burden of mass death. King Lear has become an even greater tragedy as centuries have passed, the play has become more relatable to a modern audience with its themes of mass death and mental health crisis’. The play as a whole can be unbearable for an audience to cope with which is what makes it Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy of all time.
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