Imprisonment in Shakespeares King Lear Essay -- King Lear essays

Imprisonment in major power Lear In the play world-beater Lear, by William Shakespeare, the idea of imprisonment is fundamental to the plot and central ideas. alone characters are imprisoned, whether it is physically, socially or psychologically. Each character suffers imprisonment in roughly form. King Lear is one of the more caged characters of the play, he suffers both social and psychological incarceration and this is one the chief reasons for his descent into mental hell and unavoidable downfall. Lear is imprisoned by the role he must play in society and by his own internal shackles. The abdication of the throne initiates the natural process in the play, finished the consequent chain of events. However this indicates that Lear is imprisoned by his responsibility to society, a social harness binds him. He renounces the throne to pass off the rest of his life in pleasure and in doing so he disrupts the Great Chain of Being, he challenges the position that he has been given and then his family and indeed the entire nation, descend into disorder and chaos. The storm is symbolic of this happening the weather imitates the state of men. One minded like the weather, the gentle man recognizes the disquiet and unrest of the storm, as a manifestation of the turbulence in Society at the time. He is non only responsible for the congruity of a nation, it is also his duty to maintain harmony in his house. This he does with little success when bribes his daughters to fuel his own ego. Which of you shall we say doth love us most,/That we our largest bounty extend, Lear is requesting his daughters to compete in a game of words, he does not really wish to know who loves him the most, he simply wishes to be flattered, through this he is rashly aba... ... Bevington, David, Introduction to King Lear. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. newly York HarperCollins, 1992. Elton, William R. King Lear and the Gods. San Marino, California The Huntington Lib rary, 1966. Halio, Jay. King Lears Imprisonment. Shakespeare Quarterly 67 (1999) 221-3. Hoover, Claudette. Women, Centaurs, and Devils in King Lear. Womens Studies 16 (1989) 349-59. Jackson, Ken. Review of Judy Kronenfeld, King Lear and the Naked Truth. Early Modern literary Studies 6.2 (September, 2000) 10.1-5 <URL http//purl.oclc.org/emls/06-2/jackrev.htm>. Leggattt, Alexander. King Lear. Boston Twayne Publishers, 1988. Shakespeare, William. King Lear. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Ed. David Bevington. red-hot York HarperCollins, 1999