Act 5 King Lear Slides

ACT FIVE

THE SUBPLOT

Gloucester died of surprise and joy in the form of a heart attack when Edgar (who had been posing as poor Tom) revealed the truth to him. While this isn’t shown in Act 5, the audience is told this by Edgar in the final scene when everyone seems to have been brought together. By explaining this through Edgar rather than having the audience sit through the action Shakespeare is able to hold the tension of our care for Gloucester and wondering what happened to him for a longer period time – resulting in a higher level of catharsis occurring within the audience. Not speeding up the plot in the play could also cause the play to drag on longer, resulting in the audience losing care for the characters and reducing the emotional effect of the climax. Edgar has proven to be an honest and ‘trustworthy’ character throughout the play, meaning the audience automatically trusts Edgar’s explanation of what happened to Gloucester. Having someone like Edmund explaining this would cause the audience to be more likely to question it as he has given us reasons not to trust him throughout the play.

Gloucester is a tragic hero due to his own rashness and ignorance in banishing and hunting for his son Edgar without first understanding the truth of the situation. This blindness and quick leap into action also hints towards Gloucester’s insecurities that someone will try and overthrow him and take over his position of authority. Although unlike Lear, we never actually saw Gloucester be unnecessarily mean and could always see motive behind his actions – he did not deserve to die from it. Gloucester’s ‘tragic hero’ circumstances mirrors Lear’s, although also provides almost like a stepping stone from our understanding of Gloucester’s rash decision making to Lear’s more intensely displayed rash motives. As the play went on the Edgar-Edmund-Gloucestor subplot mirrored and related to the main plot more; rising the stakes and allowing the audience to see that the tragic-hero demise isn’t an isolated incident and cause the audience to wonder what their own fatal flaws could be.

ANIMAL REFERENCES

Animal symbolism is used throughout the entire text to give an indication of status and personality traits of particular characters (as referenced in the rest of the acts). In this act these animal references are from Lear.

‘No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage.’ A5S3L8.
‘No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life and thou no breath at all? A5S3L305.

The idea of a dog, horse and a rat having life when a human is suffering can be connected to the Elizabethan Great Chain of Being. This is a hierarchy structure in which God and angels are at the top followed by humans, and then animals below going all the way down to minerals and elements. In order for the human to be treated worse than a dog they must usually be being punished for terrible sin, however this is where we are able to feel extremely sorry for Lear because his sins were not great enough to leave him dead – and lowest on the chain of being. The idea of singing like birds in a cage shows that if they stay together they will have the freedom of birds singing from being together, and will be able to remain singing (happy) even when in a cage/prison. As birds can fly, birds are higher on the chain of being than other animals and while not human-like it means that Lear and Cordelia would still be able to maintain dignity.

THE VILLAIN’S GREED

The seven deadly sins are: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth/acedia. Each of these sins are able to be applied to the fatal flaw or mistake of the tragic heroes. Across the whole play the majority of death can be attributed to one of these sins. Lear and Gloucester: Pride and wrath. Cordelia: Pride. Edmund: Lust.
While Goneril, Regan and Edmund start the play as sympathetic villains they do not remain this for the duration. Each of them at the start are the ‘unfavored’ children, and lead the audience to believe that they have in some way been neglected by each of our tragic heroes (Gloucester and Lear). This means that while they are each trying to overthrow and get back at their parents, we can understand their motives to do so. However as greed gets the better of them they come to treat their parents badly and continue to want more as the power gets to their head. No longer can the audience sympathise with their motives as they continue to cause havoc for no apparent reason other than their own personal gain. This lack of empathy for the unfavored children also turns our empathy toward Lear and Gloucester, because they have been tricked by their children and are receiving a worse punishment than would have been deserved from the wrath of their children. This wrath shown by Gloucester, Regan and Edmund is also a sign of their deadly sins.

LEARS END

Lear’s fate is worse than death as before his death he witnesses his entire family (including the two daughters who had tricked him) die. This means that everyone Lear has cared about throughout the play is dead, and he will leave no mark on the world in the form of kids and having his genes able to continue. This is then followed by the final act of his own death. A tragic hero must face a fate worse than they deserve, termed by Aristotle as a ‘nemesis.’ Lear suffering through the death of his whole family and everyone he cared about before dying himself can be termed as a true nemesis as despite his wrath and temper, this was much worse than what we would expect to be deserved as his punishment. This allows the audience to feel for the character and also see someone else who has it worse than they do in their own struggles.

As Lear dies Kent says: ‘Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass! He hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer.’ A5S3L12.
I believe that in this line Kent is expressing the way that Lear deserves death, as he has been through so much and finally deserves some rest from the storm that has been going on in his brain throughout nearly the entire length of the play. As all of his family and those he cares about are dead there is no point him remaining on the Earth, and he might as well die too to be released from his suffering. Kent empathises with Lear in his suffering and believes by keeping him alive for even another minute the world was just being cruel (as he doesn’t deserve the fate he’s come to).

A TRAGIC HEROINE

While even if Cordelia was not written as a tragic heroine I believe her fate mirrors that of Aristotle’s key aspects to what makes a tragic hero.

Requirements for a tragic hero:
Hamartia – a tragic flaw that causes the heroes downfall.
Hubris – excessive pride and disrespect for natural order.
Peripeteia – the reversal of the fate of the hero: falling from grace.
Anagnorisis – the moment of self realisation for the hero.
Nemesis – a punishment or fate the hero doesn’t deserve.
Catharsis – feelings of pity and fear felt by the audience.

Cordelia’s pride at the start of the play stopped her from having the ability to tell her dad how he loved him in order to impress him, which resulted in her being banished. As he was the King and her father (meaning he had authority over her), this also showed hubris as she was disrespecting the natural order in which she should blindly follow her fathers instructions. This then lead to her being banished, but hearing all of the struggles of her dad and having a moment of realisation that he really needed her and returning from France. She then went through the path of trying to fix her dad, however this resulted in her death – which was a fate she did not deserve for her pride in attempting to remain ‘good’ and not suck up to her dad. A quote that we can see this in Act 5 is her stating in Act 3 that: ‘When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,’ showing that she is willing to put aside her previous opinion and pride in order to help her dad, and also her trying to ‘ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live.’ The audience here is able to see that Cordelia has repented for abandoning her dad (despite being banished) and come back to save him to right her mistake. To most, this would show that Cordelia deserved forgiving and therefore like a tragic hero did not deserve the fate of death and knowledge that her dad would also die at the end of the play.

CATHARSIS

Catharsis is the release of emotions by extreme tension and anxiety/connection being formed with the characters in the play. This allows the emotions to be built up throughout the play and then released at the end, in a way of purging all emotions and allowing the audience to be more content within their own lives. At the end of King Lear the emotions of sympathy, suffering, loss, sadness, anger and unfairness should have been released.

Dramatic irony and foreshadowing throughout the text creates tension and frustration within the audience as they start to realise things that the characters themselves don’t know – the audience has knowledge that could save the characters however the characters aren’t aware of this. In the final act when the truth was finally revealed the audience was able to feel the relief that goes along with something such as telling an important secret or expressing emotions they had been holding in for a long period of time.

THE BIG MESSAGES

There are two lines in the end of the play that summarise the dark and despairing themes which are seen beforehand throughout the whole play.

‘All’s cheerless, dark and deadly.’ A5S3L290. This shows how all things in the play are ending in despair and there is no hope or goodness to be taken from it. This is important for the tone of the play as while there was a moment of hope there was no real positive outcomes.

‘The weight of this sad time we must obey, speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.’ This line is a warning of the text to the audience in saying the truth of your opinion and what you feel, pointing out wrongs in both others and yourself and not only speaking because you feel you should. This idea of honesty and standing up for yourself could completely avoid many of the miscommunications and hardships that were shown in this play – especially in the theme of communication within a family dynamic.