A short summary sheet including concise quotes from critics on various themes and characters in, and various contextual factors that influenced Shakespeare's 'King Lear'. Useful for making flashcards out of, for writing essays, or reading over closer to the exam.
'King Lear' Essay Plans for Edexcel A Level English
Grade A essay on “family relationships” in Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’
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A/AS Level
PEARSON (PEARSON)
English Literature 2015
Unit 1 - Drama
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Critical Opinions
Auden: Lear is more tragic because he wills his suffering, while Gloucester is more pathetic because he avoids it.
Adelman: Lear deliberately puts himself in a position of infantile need, relying on Cordelia’s ‘kind nursery’.
Barish & Waingrow: Kent = touchstone for service / transcended his status in the act of upholding it.
Barish & Waingrow: Failure to serve is closely linked with failure to rule.
Bogdanov: Words have a numerical value.
Burns: Goneril and Regan are not simply demonic opposites of their saintly younger sister / they are formidable, not evil.
Donnelly: With no male character does Lear have a positive relationship. His relationship with his daughters is one of
latent incestuous orientation.
Foakes: Kent is a model of loyalty.
Foakes: Saying what one feels may be just as damaging as what one ought to say.
Foakes: It is unsparing in its depiction of human cruelty and misery, but also rich in its portrayals of goodness, devotion,
loyalty and self-sacrifice.
Fraser: Cordelia is a deeply disquieting figure.
Holland: The court performance on Dec 26 underlined Shakespeare’s contributions to the Lear story. It offered a
memento mori to monarchy itself.
Knight: Lear’ purgatory is a purgatory of the mind.
Larkin: It is beautiful, but very painful.
Maclean: Kent = confidant and voice of reason, Oswald’s antithesis, timeless virtues
McLuskie: An anti-feminine play…the feminine must either be made to submit or be destroyed.
Orwell: ‘King Lear’ contains a great deal of veiled social criticism, but it is all uttered by the Fool and Edgar. In his sane
moments Lear hardly utters an intelligent remark.
Ribner: ‘King Lear’ is an affirmation of justice in the world, of a harmonious system ruled by a God who in his ultimate
purposes is benevolent.
Roche: ‘King Lear’ is a Christian play that depicts the plight of man before the Christian era.
Salgado: Lear at the beginning of the play is a King, a father, a master, and a man. As the action develops, the first three
roles are stripped from him and he is forced to consider what the last of them means.
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