The Tragedy of King Lear Analysis Essay -- King Lear Shakespeare Essay

The Tragedy of King Lear AnalysisLear By Jupiter, I swear noKent By Juno, I swear ay. In The Tragedy of King Lear, particularly in the first half of the play, Lear continually swears to the gods. He invokes them for mercies and begs them for destruction he binds two his oaths and his curses with their names. The older charactersLear and Gloucestertend view their world as strictly within the moral framework of the pagan religion. As Lear expresses it, the central core of his religion lies in the idea of earthly justice. In II.4.14-15, Lear expresses his disbelief that Regan and Alb each would have put the disguised Kent, his messenger, in stocks. He at first attempts to deny the rather evident fact in front of him, objecting No twice before swearing it. By the time Lear invokes the king of the pagan gods, his refusal to believe has become willful and more or less absurd. Kent replies, not without sarcasm, by affixing the name of the queen of the gods to a contradictory state ment. The formula is turned into nonsense by its repetition. In contradicting Lears oath as healthy as the assertion with which it is coupled, Kent is subtly contend Lears conception of the universe as controlled by just gods. He is also and perhaps more importantly, challenging Lears relationship with the gods. It is Kent who most lucidly and repeatedly opposes the ideas put forth by Lear his actions as well as his statements undermine Lears hypotheses about heaven-sent order. Lear does not find his foil in youth but in middle age not in the opposite excess of his ownEdmunds calculation, saybut in Kents comparative moderation. Likewise the viable alternative to his relationship to divine justice is not shown by Edmund with his ... ...wo of them as gods spies (Lear, V.3.17). This is the first time that Lear refers to God rather than a god or gods. In this metaphor, he and Cordelia are Gods employees and dependents rather than a necessary part of a natural order. He doe s not form his divine reference as an oath he neither commands nor supplicates. It is a mellifluous vision and a sharp contrast to Lears earlier invocations of the gods. Were there some divine preceptor bent on teaching Lear an earthly lesson, he could safely say that it was learnt. But the play, of course, continues. What is important, finally, is not that Lear learns, but that we the audience learn. One of the most important aspects of this learning is anticipated by Kent, who first points out that any invocation of Jupiter can be countered by an opposite invocation of Juno to the same effect, which is to say none at all.