A* level exemplar answer to the wjec past paper question, 'How far would you agree that ‘King Lear leaves its audience clearer about what is unjust than what is just'?
English Literature Essay - Assess the view that the villains in King Lear are just evil characters that cause the suffering of others as they seek to fulfil their own personal ambition
King Lear - Character Profiles
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English Literature
A2 Unit 4 - Shakespeare
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Qii. How far would you agree that ‘King Lear leaves its audience clearer about what is unjust
than what is just’?
The Aristotelian definition of justice is concerned with what is lawful and fair, with fairness
involving equitable distributions and the correction of what is inequitable. King Lear considers justice
thematically in the main plot and the sub plot, primarily through the redemptive characters of Edgar
and Cordelia. Eighteenth-century critic S. Johnson posited that Shakespeare ‘suffered the virtue of
Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and to the
faith of the chronicles’, suggesting that King Lear leaves its audience clearer about what is unjust than
what is just. Contra S. Johnson Christian reading of justice in the play, A.D Nuttall asserts that ‘King
Lear leaves us with a sharpened sense of the difference between good and evil’, arguing that King
Lear leaves its audience clear about justice and injustice in equal measure through distinction.
As S. Johnson affirms, Shakespeare ‘suffers the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause’. Her virtue
is persecuted very early on in the play due to Lear’s love test, due to her being incapable of the falsity
of her sisters. If justice is ‘equitable distribution’, then Lear is committing an injustice against Cecilia
in his decision to not to divide his land equally among his daughters, a show of hubris which, as the
inciting incident of the play, leads to Cordelia’s demise, corroborating S. Johnsons’ claim. Through
the absurdity of the later mock-trial that shares parallels with Lear’s love test, the audience sees the
folly of the love test, and thus the folly and injustice of Cordelia’s persecution, suggesting that King
Lear leaves its audience clearer about what is unjust as opposed to what is just. Furthermore, this
poetic injustice is never rectified, Cordelia is defined by her opposition to injustice, and yet is still met
with death in the play’s denouement. Many scholars have pointed to the biblical book of Job as one of
Shakespeare’s possible sources for King Lear, as both can be seen to demonstrate the importance of
being patient in suffering, i.e., the ability to tolerate suffering and the capacity to learn from it.
Despite the injustice of Lear’s persecution of Cordelia, there is justice in his achievement of a new
level of self-awareness and their reconciliation thereafter. However, Job was awarded for his patience
and suffering, and the characters of King Lear are not; ‘And my poor fool is hanged. No, no, no life?
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou 'lt come no more, Never,
never, never, never, never.’ The use of syndetic listing ‘a dog, a horse, a rat’ emphasises the
disjunctive injustice of the matter of who lives and who dies; many live, and yet it is the virtuous
Cordelia who must die. The use of epistrophe, in the repetition of ‘life’ serves to further highlight this
injustice, with the double use of anadiplosis in ‘No, no, no’ and ‘Never, never, never, never’
dramatizing this tragic scene. Crucially, he begins his diatribe of the injustices of death with ‘my poor
fool is hanged’. The dramatic function of the fool was to give Lear insight into the distinction of
appearance from reality, and, according to J. McRae helps Lear in his journey to self-awareness.
Following his disappearance, and now his death, it is a confirmation of Lear’s independent elevated
moral consciousness- his journey to self-awareness had come to an end. He had both tolerated and
learnt from his prior lapse in judgement and consequent suffering as Job had, and yet his and
Cordelia’s death was the product of it, further suggesting that S. Johnson was correct his view that
King Lear is ‘contrary to the ideas of justice’, primarily in Shakespeare’s persecution of the virtue of
Cordelia, indicating that the play does leave its audience clearer about what is unjust as opposed to
what is just. This can be attested through the 1681 revival of King Lear by Nahum Tate, that restored
Leir’s happy ending, in which Lear and Cordelia survive, and Edgar promises ‘Truth and justice shall
at last succeed.’ It was this version that ruled the stage from 1691 to 1938, implying that the injustice
of King Lear was readily apparent as the contemporary audience itself wanted to rectify the injustices
that the play did not.
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