Helpful Assistant: Aiding With Information and Assistance
King Lear 11 :
Appearance and
reality.
Wednesday, 11 September 2024
Jonathan Peel JLS 2015
Setting
Night: time of deceit,
trickery and confusion
Artificial night:
Gloucester’s blindness
Castles: Entrapment and
rigid order. Physical
manifestation of their
owner’s character
Heath: seemingly all
around and in contact
with the castles.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2015
Character in this
world
Lear
Act1.1: wants an
illusion of love based on
adoration and flattery
and rejects pure, self-
effacing “love”
Cordelia
: genuine love
in all appearances –
confused and upset in
Act1; calmly forgiving in
Act 4…
Jonathan Peel JLS 2015
Goneril and Regan
Based on appearance:
flatterers trying to outdo
each other
Goneril order servants
to “put on weary
negligence” –
appearance to upset
Lear.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2015
G,R and EDMUND
3 deceivers at the heart of
the play.
Edmund
’s plot is based on
total fabrication
Gloucester
is fooled, as is
Lear, by a plausible deceit.
DECISION: You need to
decide the degree to
which G+R are “evil” and
have developed their plot
prior to the beginning of
the play.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2015
Appearance of
Evil
The biggest deceit is that there is
no outward sign of evil.
Albany
would wish to tear and
dislocate
Goneril
to make her
appearance match her behaviour
Lear
in 2.4 “Those wicked
creatures yet do look well-
favoured/When others are more
wicked
Lear wants to prevent
Goneril
ever
mothering and would “anatomize”
Regan
to search for the real “evil”
within.
Evil is a reality which does not
appear evident in any way.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2015
FOOL
Appearance is hiding reality
“Have more than thou
showest..” Bases instruction
on the need to hide reality
“Court holy water in a dry
house is better than this rain
out o’door”
Fool preaches a need to
compromise and accept the
known flattery as preferable
to “deep learning”
Lear develops beyond this
homespun philosophy
Jonathan Peel JLS 2015
Gloucester
Highly superstitious –
unlikely to recognise the
need to look beneath
appearance
Duped by Edmund with no
quarrel
His “suicide” is the
ultimate illusion which
leads him to recognise the
reality of the human
condition
Truth revealed will bring
about his death.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2015
Human Condition
The dichotomy between “social
man” and “man”
Lear: “Reason not the need…”
Lear recognises Edgar as
“unaccomodated man”
Rejects, eventually, the
requirements of social order
and accepts mankind at its most
basic.
Consider the implication of the
clothing change in Act 5 in this
light.
Can man survive without the
social element?
Jonathan Peel JLS 2015
Conclusion
Lear is mistaken one last
time before his death
Look on her, look, her
lips…”
Seems to believe
Cordelia to be alive as
he dies
Allowed some sense of
grace in death by this?
Does his heart “burst
smilingly” as well?
Jonathan Peel JLS 2015
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