Themes In Shakespeare's King Lear

Shakespeare is one of the greatest literary minds to come across history. A huge contribution to his success was his use of themes in his plays and how they transcended amongst his other works while to relating to people’s lives. What exactly is a theme? The theme of a play is the underpinning issue or idea that propels and sustains the play. They can also be known as underlying motifs that give shape, pattern and significance to a play. This can be achieved in one of a few ways. First is through language. The theme is conveyed most powerfully through language. Individual words that are uttered repetitiously throughout a play such as ‘blood’, ‘honest’ or ‘nothing’ or through the use of a particular language devices such as antithesis or oxymoron,

Several suggest that the play does not fully work in performance but that it is the overwhelming winner intellectually and poetically. They argue this because, unlike other plays with a main plot and one or more subplots, Lear has two major plots, and for that reason, neither can fully engage the audience, whose attention and involvement is fragmented. That may be so but, on the other hand, it is probably Shakespeare’s most integrated play, with the characters, the action, the ideas and the imagery all working in harmony as a single unit. Conflict is at the heart of the drama. In this play the various battles are unified and multi-layered. On the surface King Lear is a domestic, family story – the story of two connected families while the central conflict is generational. The clash between Lear and his daughters in the one story and between Gloucester and his sons in the other. So what we have here, beyond the personal, is the more universal generational conflict – the older versus the younger generation. But it goes deeper. King Lear is a Renaissance play, written at a time when the mediaeval world and the new spirit of humanism were in artistic, religious, political, cultural and artistic conflict. The old world had become old fashioned and the new spirit was sweeping through

I grow; I prosper:

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

(Act 1. Scene 2. Lines1-23) the other world view presented in this play contains no notion of equality. Animal behavior is seen as unnatural whereas the medieval values of legitimacy, a stratified social order, obedience, and so on, are natural. Also during the story, Lear is compared to an animal which shows his current state of sanity. At the very beginning a dragon is referenced, explaining his power and position as king. He was a legendary and glorious ruler. However the at the end, Lear fulfills his prophecy that he predicted in this quote. […] and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburdened crawl toward death. (1.1.40-43)

When Lear’s daughters regard him as a foolish old man and fail to treat him with the respect that he feels is due to him as their father he calls them ‘unnatural hags’. These two irreconcilable views provide the deeper tension of the play. Throughout the play there is conflict between the brothers and conflict between the sisters. Added to that, they are at war with the King of France, who is the husband of Lear’s youngest daughter. Gloucester is conflicted by his attempts to understand the world as it has become. His one son is disguised as a beggar and the other is secretly plotting against him. Lear’s mind is in turmoil – it is a tempest of conflict