King Lear Blog

This is the second time I’ve read this play by Shakespeare. I did not particularly like it the first time but I think that was more due to the fact that I was high school. This second time through I can appreciate it more and I did just that. Shakespeare never was one of my favorites growing up and even now there are still plays of his that I just can’t read; A Midsummer’s Night Dream and Hamlet to name two. But before I get condemned for a heretic, I better move on.

Now before I go any further, I must put a disclaimer here: The next thing that I say is purely an observation. It does not mean that I believe what I said, merely that I’m putting it to words. This whole play was one based on the deceitfulness and evil of women. Again I say that personally don’t I believe that myself but for someone who lived back in the time of Shakespeare and would have sat through this play, it would have been common thinking among the men of the world.

Kahn’s argument for the femininity of King Lear is a strong one. She makes good points that she backs up with examples from the play itself. One thing that has helped me to understand what Kahn is talking about is that I took a critical theory class and in that class one of the theories that we talked about was feminist theory and how it applied to men. I know that it isn’t in the same context, but that class helped me to better understand what Kahn was talking about.

One thing from the play that I thought worked really well for her comparisons and she mentioned it in the passages we read was Lear’s newfound ability to shed tears. This amount of detail that was devoted to this topic was more than enough to allow someone such as Kahn to formulate a theory of some kind. The fact that the play is based in the seventeenth century, where the masculinity ruled, has major role in Kahn’s theory. I think that because of the location of the play, both place and time, Kahn’s theory works well but if we were to apply it to another time or place it might not work as well.

So now if you go back to what I said earlier about the evil and corruptness of women, it would seem to that me that by allowing a little of his feminine side to take over, Lear in his self is becoming corrupt. But the one thing that redeems him in the story is his daughter Cordelia. Unlike her sisters, Cordelia is the epitome of womanly virtues and I believe that Lear isn’t becoming like his Goneril or Regan but more like Cordelia.

Overall, this is not one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays but it definitely not my least favorite. The transformation that Lear undergoes and the subplots of all of the other characters make for a overall enjoyable if not confusing read.