In much of Shakespeare's King Lear, the hero is mad; otherwise, he is deluded. In his splendid speech in V.iii.8-26, Lear displays a newfound and optimistic vision of his future with Cordelia moments before Edmund orders her death. Lear's discovery of his own humanity and weakness in the storm brought him closer to Cordelia and freed him from his pride; having lost his kingdom, two of his daughters, and much of his sanity, he thinks that nothing can hurt him, because he has nothing left to lose. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Indeed, Lear has one thing and loses that: Cordelia. Lear can't wait to go to prison; he sees it as a refuge, where he and his daughter will be safe. "Come, let us go to prison; / We two alone will sing like caged birds" (V.iii.8-9), he tells her. A "cage" was also used to indicate a prison for petty criminals, adding to the appropriateness of Lear's simile. Caged birds often signify the imprisonment of a free spirit, but Lear transforms them into an image of beauty and joy, just as he transforms the grim prospect of prison into a glorious future. Such reversals are the order of the drama; not only is the social order upended, with a king frozen in the storm and a father subservient to his children, but the very notions of good and evil are upended when Gloucester becomes a traitor and Edmund a noble lord. Lear's offer to "kneel and ask forgiveness of [Cordelia]" when she "asks him for blessing" (V.iii.10-11) contains many of these changes: a father kneels before his daughter, a king to a subject, a lord to a supplicant. The most significant distortion, however, lies in Lear's personality. When Cordelia suggests "see these daughters and these sisters" (V.iii.7), Lear insists: "No, no, no, no" (V.iii.8), repetition and extra-metricity emphasize the his desire to be with Cordelia and avoid his sisters. In Ii, Lear, preferring his other daughters, wanted her to "avoid [his] sight" (Ii125), but now she is the only thing he wants to see. This vision of Cordelia's love is the direct result of another, more fundamental personality change. “Ask her for forgiveness? / Observe how this house becomes?” (II.ii.341-2) Lear asked when he felt like king, scoffing at the idea of ​​kneeling before Regan. Lear was not a particularly lovable person then, as evidenced by his treatment of Kent and Cordelia in II, but once humbled by his miseries, Lear is not ashamed to treat Cordelia as an equal and to accept her true love instead of fake affection. of his sisters that he previously desired. Just as his acceptance of Cordelia marks a radical shift in perspective, so does Lear's rejection of his sisters. He does not simply deny them, but the entire court; he intends to "laugh at the golden butterflies" (V.iii.13), a phrase that connotes joy and wonder. Lear is happy enough to forget his anger even towards his objects of disgust, considering them foolish toys. He and Cordelia "will listen to the poor thieves / They will talk of court news; and [they will] talk to them too" (V.iii.13-4). Lear's extreme simplicity of diction and syntax in this speech conveys his childish detachment, as does the cheerful and condescending paradox of the "poor scoundrels" at court. Likewise, the series of monosyllables and polysyndetones in Lear's plans to "live / And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh" (V.iii.12-13) emphasizes the simplicity of the life he intends. The only connection Lear will maintain with the court will be for his entertainment; he acquired the ability to laugh at himself. Tosome aspects of court life, however, Lear cannot escape. He says he will talk to the courtiers about "who loses and who wins, who is in, who is out" (V.iii.15), politics being part of what he gives up. But Lear cannot avoid the vagaries of fate that characterize court life; He has no kings or nobles to woo for favor now, but he has the gods. Whether the gods of King Lear actually exist is for this purpose a moot point, but the characters refer to the gods and fortune as shaping fate, punishing the wicked, or simply punishing the good out of spite; what is clear is that these people live in a world of unstable fortunes, both inside and outside the court. Lear has seen the arbitrary and unjust nature of human authority in IV.vi, where he asks Gloucester "see how that justice comes against that simple thief[...] all-rounder, what is justice, what is the thief?" (IV.vi.147-8), but he never seems to see luck as an entirely external and omnipotent force. This alone sets him apart from most characters and places him in the unlikely company of Regan, Goneril, and Cornwall. What differentiates his view of luck from theirs is that he has one; The thought of outside interference never occurs to these villains. Lear sees this presence, but interprets it as the result of human actions. He wants to "consume / In a walled prison, packs and groups of great / That ebb and flow near the moon" (V.iii.16-18), but does not think that the moon's influence could break through the walls. The most succinct explanation for this view is found in what appears to be the beginning of Lear's madness. Seeing Edgar disguised as poor Tom, Lear exclaims:[...]Nothing could have subjected nature to such baseness but her unkind daughters. Is it so that discarded fathers should have so little mercy on their flesh? Judicious punishment, this was the flesh begat those daughters of the pelican. (III.iv.69-74) Lear considers the wrongs he suffers at the hands of Regan and Goneril to be the result of his sexual misdeeds or his folly in giving up the kingdom, but for all his self-pity, he never sees himself as an innocent victim . After his rebirth as a self-styled sage once the storm has passed, he feels he has paid for whatever he might have done, deciding "they cannot touch me for coining; I am the king himself" (IV.vi.83 -4). This renunciation of the whims of fate includes Lear's identification with those beyond fate. He and Cordelia will "take upon [them] the mystery of things / As if [they] were spies of the gods" (V.iii.16-17), implying that they literally have special sight. Lear's statement that "on such sacrifices, my Cordelia, / The gods themselves cast incense" (V.iii.20-1) adds the sense of smell, thus culminating in the use of sight to describe worldly vision , mistaken for intuition and smell. truth. Although King Lear is a pagan work, the context of the first quote causes the reader and auditor to consider the "mystery" in the Christian sense. This, taken with Lear's request for forgiveness, the idea of ​​"sacrifices" anticipating Cordelia's sacrifice, and the biblical reference to Samson a few lines later, almost connotes that Lear has stumbled upon a possible answer to the question of evil . The concept of such isolated and strong Christian imagery in a play featuring Roman gods may seem strange, but from a broader perspective it makes perfect sense. King Lear is a play about evil, among other things, and why the world is unjust. Placing such a work in pre-Christian England avoids putting the author in theological or political trouble (furthermore, imagine writing such a work after the Act of Abuses of 1606,banning blasphemy on stage), but would normally prevent him from showing a Christian perspective. about evil. Without this speech by Lear and the death of Cordelia, it is all too easy to assume that King Lear refers only to a world without the guiding hand of the true God. These few lines and the shocking, incomprehensible ending suggest that King Lear's problems do not they can be solved by Christian charity. However, for Lear at this point, there are no more problems. He refuses to let Cordelia cry, telling her "dry your eyes" (V.iii.23), that there is nothing to fear, echoing his sentiment from IV.vii.72. He also insists that "he that will separate us will do so. Bring a brand from heaven / And burn us hence like foxes" (V.iii.22-3), implying that they will be as inseparable as the foxes whose tails Samson tied together and set firebrands to burn the crops of the Philistines; he also unconsciously anticipates their common destruction. The allusion facilitates the transition to the statement that "the good years will devour them, flesh and flesh, / Before they make us cry! / We shall see them starve first" (V.iii.23-6). There may be a pun on "fallen" in the sense of "evil", underlining Lear's view that the "good years" will prevail .no, of course. It doesn't take long for Lear to realize the desire of his statements "Why should a dog, a horse, a mouse have life / And you have no breath?" he asks his daughter. This is the supreme injustice of the play; it completely undermines Albany's statement that "all friends shall taste / The wages of their virtue" (V.iii.301-2) made moments earlier is of all incompatible; with any notion of divine justice or of the Gentile gods casting incense upon sacrifices, unless that sacrifice were Cordelia's own list of beasts, to which the play's villains are so often compared, elevates the injustice at a higher level may be dead, but evil is not, and although order has been restored to the realm, the universe is no better off for it. Cordelia herself, however, "[has] no, no, no life![...she'll come no more, / Never, never, never, never, never" (V.iii.306-7), leaving Lear to giving voice to the prevailing nihilistic theme of the work in a flow of negative aspects that echo those of the beginning work. Edmund's dying change of heart seemed like a temporized impulse to do good in his end now that good has prevailed, but it was to no avail. Death, without any hint of heaven or rebirth, has won; if "there is no life!" (IV.vi.198) is Lear's attitude before Cordelia's death, this is his now. The extraordinary beauty and simplicity of Lear's grief is interrupted by a prosaic note, more royal than poetic: "please undo this button" (V.iii.308), but it is a direction on which much ink has been spilled. Maybe Lear can't breathe, overwhelmed by pain, or maybe he wants to help Cordelia breathe; the latter would explain his "lips" (V.iii.309), as he thinks Cordelia is alive and breathing, and so dies in the same joyous disappointment as V.iii.8-26. Peter Brook and other directors took this concept a step further by having Lear point to Cordelia's spirit, hanging somewhere in the air. But this explanation is by no means the only valid one. Lear clearly sees something, as he asks "do you see this? Look at her: look, her lips / Look there, look there!" (V.iii.309-10), but whether he sees it clearly is another question. It is also possible that Lear sees Cordelia breathing and has until now been too caught up in the madness to notice, in the same way that it took a jolt for him to realize the true nature of his other two daughters. Maybe he's mourning Cordelia's shortness of breath. If Lear dies in a delirium of joy, of true happiness, of.