English Literature Essays Shakespeares King Lear

English Literature Essays Shakespeares King LearSelect either two or three major speeches from the play King Lear (Shakespeare) and demonstrate, by close analysis, their relevance to issues in the play as a wholeThe two speeches I devour selected from the play to conduct close analysis on are Lears speech in figure I diorama I (Lines 121 139) and Cordelias speech of Act V Scene VII (Lines 31-43). These two speeches are reflective of some of the strongest themes of the play familial love, anger, wrath and, most of completely perhaps, pride.The first speech is placed at the very beginning of the play just after Cordelia has refused to praise her father in the same over-effusive manner as her sisters, and Shakespeare conveys in a few trivial lines the almost uncontrollable anger of LearLear Peace kentCome not between the dragon and his wrath.I love her most, and though to set my restOn her cast nurseryWe can note here the evocation of the dragon which, as Harold Bloom (1987 90) tells us, is not only symbolic of the male, paternal anger but of the monarchy itself and recalls the Englishness of St. George. As if metonymic with the entire play, this symbol of royal wrath and anger is twinned with an image of childish reliance the nursery. The next lines however reverse this image juxtaposition as the aggressor, in the form Lear the dragon, is painted as the victimHence, and avoid my sightSo be my grave my peace, as here I moderateHer fathers heart from her.The knot of guilt and innocence is one that recurs throughout the entire play but it is first purported in this speech for instance in the lines skirt Burgundy, Cornwall and Albany,With my two daughters dowers digest this thirdLet pride, which she calls plainness marry her.We witness here what Freud called projection (1991 213) or the imbuing of an emotion or character trait onto another(prenominal) person it is Lears pride that we really see here, and Lears anger that dominates the entire first section of the play but the character himself deflects that onto the figure of his youngest daughter.Linguistically, the speech is suffused with exclamations (especially the first half-dozen lines) and the rhythms and lines themselves are short and staccato. There is also an alliterative use of harsh consonant sounds, for instance in the line my two daughters dowers digest this third (Act I, Scene I, Line 128) or The sway, revenue, execution of the rest (Act I, Scene I, Line 137). This sets Lears character as one that is unbending and proud an important facet of the plays later level where his harmartia (to use Aristotles (1965) term) in the form of his paternal pride, is revealed and reversed.The speech ends with a foreshadowing of the narrative of the whole playBeloved sons, be yours which to confirm,This coronet part betwixt you.Here, Lear unconsciously evokes the rending apart of territory as he sets in motion the fissures and fractures in the fabric of the monarchy that the play exa mines.The speech by Codelia in Act V in legion(predicate) ways represents the reverse of Lears. It is here that Shakespeare underlines the notion of familial loyalty, of constancy and of love and comes after Cordelia has reiterated her dedication for her father.Had you not been their father, these white flakesHad challenged pity on them. Was this faceTo be opposed against the warring windsStraight away we can notice the change in tone here, the repetition of Ds, Vs and Rs in Lears speech has been changed to Fs and Ws, creating a more sonorous timbre evocative of Cordelias gentle nature and the spirit of reconciliation that runs throughout her speech. The imagery Shakespeare uses here is reflective of the mimetic use of record throughout the rest of the play Cordelia mentions the winds, the dread-bolted thunder (Act I, Scene VII, Line 34), and the quick, cross lightening (Act I, Scene VII, Line 36) all of which reminds us of Lears exile on the moors and the innuendo that this repr esents, for Shakespeare, the uncontrollable forces of fate.As Jay Halio (2001 37-38) suggests, the loss of control that is symbolically evoked by the image of Nature, is a result of the splitting of the Kingdom, that we arrest already looked with the Lear speech of Act I and only resolves itself at this precise point in the play.The latter parts of the speech hint at Cordelias role as a invigorating force she literally makes her father human again after the treatment he is given by her sistersMine enemys dog,Though he had bit me, should establish stood that nightAgainst my fire and wast thou fain, poor father,To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn,In short and musty straw?Here Shakespeare layers image upon image of baseness and animality to suggest not only how far the King has been reduced but also how true and loyal Cordelia is.In the two speeches we have looked at here, we have seen many of the themes of King Lear and also some the plays complexity. The play is, at once we could assert, concerned with both pride and constancy, anger and gentleness, wrath and restoration and the two speeches I have selected show this in microcosm. Each one also represents important points in the character development of Lear himself his initial rebuke of his daughter evoking the false pride of the all too powerful monarch and Cordelias speech prompting his character reversal.A close analysis of these two speeches reveals just how Shakespeare weaves grand themes and narratives into the very fabric, the very minutiae of his text, evoking in an audience an almost subconscious appreciation of philosophical and thematic intents.Works CitedAristotle (1965), The Poetics, London PenguinBloom, Harold (1987), William Shakespeares King Lear, New York Random HouseFreud, Sigmund (1991), The Essentials of Psychoanalysis, (London PenguinHalio, Jay (2001), King Lear A flow to the Play, London Greenwood PressShakespeare, William (1982), King Lear, published in The Tragedies, London Aurora pp.218-239