Though this seems to be a recurring theme for most of the blog posts today, I really feel I need to say that I did not fully expect that ending for King Lear. I'd become accustomed to viewing history plays as a mixture of comedy and tragedy, and even though King Lear has been referred to as a tragedy as well as a history, I still wasn't expecting the usual tragic sort of ending where almost everyone important dies. I was expecting a lot of death, of course, even on the part of King Lear, who just seemed (to me at least) to have reached his breaking point, and wouldn't be long for this world. Goneril and Regan probably had to die as well, as conspirators and traitors, not only to the crown but to their family ties, and no villain such as these can have anything but a messy ending in Shakespeare. Gloucester's death was a tad more surprising, but not by much, considering how much he'd been going on and on about how life wasn't worth living, trying to kill himself, and asking Edgar to 'please leave him alone so he can DIE now'.
The death that really struck a heavy blow for me was that of Cordelia. She was the purity of the play, the redeeming angel come back to rescue her father from the villainy of her two sisters, redeeming her own bloodline in the process. Moreover, she was the Queen of France, a woman of power independent of her father's. Her death truly shocked me--she seemed too strong to be laid up and cut off like a sacrificial lamb. Yes, her faith and purity fit the part, but she had a strength of character that didn't lend itself to that sort of sacrificial image--the pure virgin, the vision of innocent charity--when she had a kingdom, a husband, and a power all her own. And she does not even get to die swiftly: there's a whole segment of that final scene in which the King, now going mad, swings back and forth between wailing that she's dead, and frantically discovering that she yet lives, if only someone could heal her. At the end of the play, I wasn't even 100% sure she was dead--was Lear imagining the signs of life, or the signs of death? Either seemed entirely possible. But they both fade away, leaving us with Kent and Edgar, and so I was forced to conclude that she was, either from the beginning or just now, deceased.
Still, that ending scene gives me pause, and makes me wonder what her true significance in the play was. Has her death truly redeemed anything? Is there enough even left of the kingdom or bloodline to be redeemed in the first place? Or is it simply meant to strike you as senseless, a last stab of Edmund's at a world that he sees as always out to get him? Is it only to lend to the tragic sense of the final act, or is there more to it than that? I don't believe I'll be getting answers to these questions, at least, anytime soon.
5 comments:
I too feel like Cordelia's death was unwarranted. For someone who played such a large role in the beginning, i really expected to see more of her in the play, or at least something more grand at the end. At least it was Kent and Edgar left standing, though. If it weren't, that world would be in a load of trouble...
I too was shocked by the end of this play! For some reason in the beginning of reading King Lear, I thought it was going to be more of a history, not a tragedy. I also wasn't expecting everybody to die, especially not Cordelia. I had never read the play before and thought that Cordelia was going to come in and save the day, especially since she was banished. In my head the banished virtuous, once favorite child of the King, was going to come in and fix the end of the play. Alhtough, as we learned in class today, we do get that, in other "happy" versions of King Lear.
I must say, I wasn't all that surprised by Cordelia's death. I was shocked by the injustice, but not surprised because of all the precedents the play sets for physical and psychological violence. What surprised me was Lear's very abrupt passing just as it seems he's getting back to his senses.
I agree with Brooke: I was more surprised at the lack of Cordelia's participation in the play itself than I was at her death. I was expecting her to die because she is the sacrificial/virtuous archetype kind of character. What surprised me about her death was that it was intended to be staged as a suicide. I know that in other versions of the play she kills herself after she has ruled over the realm for some time, but I am wondering if Shakespeare made this decision because the play is set before Christian times. I think Edmund was seen as even more "evil" by Shakespeare's original audience because England at that time was so religious.
Death, death, death. I think that the number of deaths in tragedies is sort of amusing, because four hundred years later and not much has changed! Our society craves chaos, death, betrayl, etc. How many traffic jams are due to "rubber necking" where people slow down to get a good look at a car wreck? I expected Cordelia to die, because she's well liked, if not loved, and the dramatic aspect likes to pull on the heart strings a bit. If we cry, do we like it more?
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