Edward Bond’s ‘Lear’ offers an alternative perspective on a celebrated Shakespearean play as an interaction between the complex mechanisms of social forces and power relations in a highly politicized and contemporary version of “King Lear”. As a product of the post-Second World War era, Bond’s warfront experiences and his exposure to the monstrosity of state sponsored violence, played a pivotal role in the shaping of his political mind. Lear in Bond’s play is essentially a despot. The supreme authority over a people; controlling the forces of life, livelihood and labour. Unlike its Shakespearean counterpart, Bond’s remodelled version of the original focuses …show more content…
While Foucault is of the opinion that ‘Biopolitics’ is essentially about good governance, Giorgio Agamben disagrees and shows how ‘Biopolitics’ can lead to ‘Thanatopolitics’ or the power of deciding who should live or who should die in a given society. This article also explores the same through a reading of …show more content…
It introduces us to his thoughts on humanity and the need to keep changing for the better so as to create a sound society. The idea of humanness or the notion of being a sensible human being is at the heart of his philosophy of life. We are living in a time and an age when these very notions of humanness and humanity have become problematic. Whether it is political, social, technological or nuclear warfare, men in our society are living under its shadow. Therefore, the boundaries separating altruism and animalism, good and evil, life and death have blurred. It is a life-in-death scenario.Thus, Bond in his preface to “Lear” opines,In the modern nation states, these threats have undoubtedly attained mammoth proportions. Advanced scientific and technical knowledge has rendered them all the more powerful. Every nation state istrying to attain a ‘superpower’ status. All they are after is more territorial, political and military power. They are implementing elaborate strategies to obtain optimum services from its people, thus rendering man’s existence as living, breathing human beings perilous. These are some of the issues that are relevant to Bond’s play. He dexterously situates Lear into his modern narrative as a dictator like figure
The play of "King Lear" is about a search for personal identity. In the historical period in which this play is set, the social structure was set in order of things closest to Heaven. Therefore, on Earth, the king was at the top, followed by his noblemen and going all the way down to the basest of objects such as rocks and dirt. This structure was set up by the people, and by going by the premise that anything that is man made is imperfect, this system cannot exist for long without conflict.
The political philosophy presented in King Lear, in my opinion, is a more on the deception of successors. I believe that Shakespeare is attempting to suggest that just because you have the blood of royals, should you really be given the title that comes with it. Shakespeare seems to be suggesting to the royals that the successor should not be who is lucky enough to receive the crown, but possibly someone who will know and understand how to rule properly. It seems Shakespeare might have been in more favor of a democratic government than the royal courts.
At the edge of the modern era, the concept of biopolitics places the natural, biological life of the individual man as the sentient, driving force behind collective State power. Michel Foucault originally defined this term in The History of Sexuality: “For millennia,” he writes, “man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with additional capacity for political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics calls his existence as a living being into question.” (p. 188) It is this political concept of the sacredness of bare life that Savigny uses when he says that law’s essence lies in the very life of men. Only in the recent 20th century has there been a profound divergence from this concept; the respect for human existence for the sake of continued human existence has been called into question on a global scale through mass instances of repetitive genocide.
In King Lear, Shakespeare portrays a society whose emphasis on social class results in a strict social hierarchy fueled by the unceasing desire to improve one’s social status. It is this desire for improved social status that led to the unintentional deterioration of the social hierarchy in King Lear. This desire becomes so great that Edmund, Goneril, Reagan and Cornwall were willing to act contrary to the authority of the social hierarchy for the betterment of their own position within it. As the plot unfolds, the actions of the aforementioned characters get progressively more desperate and destructive as they realize their lack of success in attaining their personal goals. The goals vary, however the selfish motivation does not. With Edmund, Goneril, Reagan and Cornwall as examples, Shakespeare portrays the social hierarchy as a self-defeating system because it fosters desires in its members that motivate them to act against the authority of the hierarchy to benefit themselves. A consideration of each characters actions in chronological order and the reasons behind such actions reveals a common theme among the goals for which morality is abandoned.
William Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, the concept of justice a theme that many characters struggle with. Unforgiving justice results to serious punishments, in result of an individual’s immoral acts committed during the play. Furthermore, loyal is very hard to find among individuals in the play. It is shown to King Lear in both positive and negative perspectives. Loyalty plays off at the end of the play, when King Lear discovers who has been loyal to him all along. The greed of power is vividly shown in the Fool’s and King Leers point of view. After retiring his kingdom Lear discovers the loss of his power, and authority. Overall, justice, loyalty, and power are some struggling themes that progress the play,
Absolute in every child’s mind is the belief that they are right, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Until children grow up to raise children own their own, a parent’s disputation only inflates that desire to prove. Part and parcel to this, as one may find out through personal experience or by extension, cruelty towards parents is a reflection of a child’s own inadequacy (whether in large or small scale). In this sense, King Lear is a story of children with a desire to break past their hierarchal status. Whether it is the belief that a woman shall take a husband, and with that guard her inherited land, or what role bastards truly deserves in a society that preemptively condemns them. Cruelty at the hands of children accounts for almost
King Lear is at once the most highly praised and intensely criticized of all Shakespeare's works. Samuel Johnson said it is "deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare" yet at the same time he supported the changes made in the text by Tate in which Cordelia is allowed to retire with victory and felicity. "Shakespeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and, what is yet more strange, to the faith of chronicles."1 A.C. Bradley's judgement is that King Lear is "Shakespare's greatest work, but it is not...the best of his plays."2 He would wish that "the deaths of Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Gloucester should be followed by the escape of Lear and Cordelia from death," and even goes so far as to say: "I believe Shakespeare would have ended his play thus had he taken the subject in hand a few years later...."3
In Shakespeare's “King Lear”, the tragic hero is brought down, like all tragic heroes, by one fatal flaw; in this case it is pride, as well as foolishness. It is the King's arrogant demand for absolute love and, what's more, protestations of such from the daughter who truly loves him the most, that sets the stage for his downfall. Cordelia, can be seen as Lear’s one true love, and her love and loyalty go not only beyond that of her sisters but beyond words, thus enraging the proud King Lear whose response is: "Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her". Here, Lear's pride is emphasized as he indulges in the common trend of despising in others what one is most embarrassed of oneself.
Although King Lear is an estimable monarch, as revealed by the devotion of men such as Kent, he has serious character flaws. His power as king has encouraged him to be proud and impulsive, and his oldest daughters Regan and Goneril reflect that "The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash..." and that "he hath ever but slenderly known himself" (1.1.297-298, 295-296). When Lear decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan in order to have less responsibility in his old age, he creates a situation in which his eldest daughters gain authority over him and mistreat him. Lear is unable to cope with his loss of power and descends into madness. While the circumstances in which Lear finds himself are instrumental in the unfolding of this tragedy, it is ultimately not the circumstances themselves, but King Lear's rash reactions to them that lead to his downfall. In this downfall, Lear is forced to come to terms with himself as a mortal man.
The human condition can ultimately be defined as the positive and negative traits and characteristics that frame the complexity of human nature. This concept has been widely incorporated into many pieces of English literature throughout time, especially in William Shakespeare’s Jacobean tragedy, King Lear (hereafter Lear). More specifically, Shakespeare’s portrayal of the human condition in Lear depicts the suppression of one’s morality and/or rationality, triggering one’s downfall, as being due to unrestrained pride, gullibility and strong ambitions. Moreover, through studying the extract from the love scene/ Edmund’s soliloquy, I have gained a deepened understanding of Shakespeare’s representation of the human condition.
King Lear, the protagonist of the play, is a truly tragic figure. He is driven by greed and arrogance and is known for his stubbornness and imperious temper, he often acts upon emotions and whims. He values appearances above reality. He wants to be treated as a king and to enjoy the title, but he doesn’t want to fulfill a king’s obligations of governing for the good of his subjects.
Shakespeare, William, Barbara A. Mowat, and Paul Werstine. The Tragedy of King Lear. New York: Washington Square, 1993. Print.
Literature often provides an avenue for instruction on the human condition, and King Lear is no different. Perhaps the most important take away from King Lear, is the concept of recognizing true loyalty. The downfall of the play’s protagonists stems from the inability of leaders to recognize loyalty, and to be fooled by flattery. King Lear’s sin of preferring sweet lies is one that begins the entire play, with his inability to reconcile his favorite daughter’s refusal to flatter him. It is made clear that Cordelia does indeed love her father, but she refuses to exaggerate that love: “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave/my heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty/ according to my bond, no more nor less” (2.2.100-102). Cordelia’s declaration is an honest one, but doesn’t venture into the realm of exaggeration. However, it is made clear that King Lear desires flattery not truth, as demonstrated by his demand that Cordelia “mend her speech a little” (1.1.103). Gloucester parallels King Lear in placing his faith in the wrong child. Thus, a common motif of blindness to truth emerges. The truth is something one should seek for themselves, and to recklessly doubt those who are loved without hearing them out is foolish. This idea expressed in King Lear is timeless, and thus is relevant even in the modern
King Lear gives the reader a bleak and lonely impression. People suffer unjustly and are killed by heartbreak. Albany points out that if left alone by the gods, "Humanity must perforce prey on itself / like monsters of the deep," expressing that justice and humanity do not house comfortably together. And how can there be meaning or purpose in life if there is no justice? Lear himself alludes poetically to this when upon Cordelia's death he asks, "Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?" He also realizes that "I am a man more sinned against than sinning" when it is made obvious that the punishment for his mistake in scene one is harsher than it should be, making it unjust...
Shakespeare, William, and Russell A. Fraser. King Lear. New York: New American Library, 1998. Print.