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Fate In King Lear - College Term Papers

Fate In King Lear

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we
will." These words from Hamlet are echoed, even more pessimistically, in
Shakespeare's later play, The Tragedy of King Lear where Gloucester says:
"Like flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, they kill us for their
sport". In Lear, the characters are subjected to the various tragedies of
life over and over again.

An abundance of cyclic imagery in Lear shows that good people are
abused and wronged regardless of their own noble deeds or intentions.
Strapped to a wheel of fire, humans suffer and endure, prosper and decline,
their very existence imaged as a voyage out and a return. The movement
from childhood to age ...

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a pattern they have no power to change. Lear sets the play in
motion in banishing Cordelia when he swears "by all the operation of the
orbs from whom we exist and cease to be" that his decision "shall not be
revoked". How like the scene in Julius Caesar wherein Caesar says "For I
am constant as the Northern star" Lear vows to be resolute but dies
regretting his decision at the hands of his daughters who claim love him
"more than word can wield" and are "alone felicitate" in his presence.

That Edmund disbelieves in the influence of the stars adds to the
play's recurring theme that part of our fate is our character; that we
choose our lot in life by how we choose to act. Similarly, in Lear
Gloucester's feelings predict what is to come when he says "These late
eclipses of the sun and moon portend no good..." And because of this
Gloucester begins to envision a world where "Love cools, friendship falls
off, brothers divide..." While his father misunderstands the ...

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goes as he plans "The base
shall top the legitimate, I grow, I prosper" . After Gloucester's speech
about the eclipses foretelling discord, Edmund twists his father's words
against Edgar when the bastard tells his brother "These eclipses portend ...
unnaturalness between child and parent, ...divisions in state...banishment
of friends ...and I know not what."

The first rise of fortune in the play is when Lear prepares to
divide his kingdom among his daughters. He puts them to the test, asking
them how much they love him. The first two daughters flatter the old king
but Cordelia whose "love is richer then [her] tongue" can only say that she
loves her father as much as is her duty, no ...

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Fate In King Lear. (2006, July 13). Retrieved November 30, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Fate-In-King-Lear/49077

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 7/13/2006 08:47:33 PM
Category: Arts
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 2068
Pages: 8

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