"King Lear, as I see it, confronts
the perplexity and mystery of human
action."
(Shakespeare's Middle Tragedies, 169)
As the previous quotation
from the
scriptures of Maynard Mack implies, King Lear is a very complex
and intricate
play which happens to be surrounded by a lot of debate. "The
folio of 1623,
which was, as is well known, edited by two of Shakespeare's
fellow
actors" (Notes and Essays on Shakespeare, 242), contains not only
historical
errors, but errors which pertain to certain characters speaking other
characters
lines. Amidst all the controversy one
fact can be settled upon by
all; King Lear is one of Shakespeare's best
tragedies. While being a great
play, the bulk of
the plot in King Lear comes mainly from the first two scenes
where most of the
key events happen. Along with the plot
there is also
extensive amounts
of setup that occur within the dialogue which key the
audience in on
the morals and values of the characters.
Marilyn French is
completely
accurate when she states that "Everything about the play hangs on
the first two
scenes not just the plot but the values as well" (Shakespeare's
Division of
Experience, 226).
The opening scenes of King Lear do an
immaculate job of setting up
the plot and
forming the basis for all the events which occur in the later
scenes of the
play. "The elements of that opening
scene are worth pausing
over, because
they seem to have been selected to bring before us precisely
such an
impression of unpredictable effects lying coiled and waiting in an
apparently
innocuous posture of affairs." (Shakespeare's Middle Tragedies,
170) Not only do the opening scenes impress upon
us what events could
happen in the
future, they seem to give us the whole plot in a neatly wrapped
package. After the first two scenes are over the
audience is basically just
along for the
ride, waiting to see how the events given to us in the opening
scenes
unfold. "As we look back over the
first scene, we may wonder
whether the gist
of the whole matter has not been placed before us, in the
play's own
emblematic terms, by Gloucester, Kent, and Edmund in that brief
conversation with
which the tragedy begins." (Shakespeare's Middle
Tragedies,
171) In the first scene Lear, having
realized that death is closing
in on him,
decides to divide his land between his daughters. This is one of
the most pivotal
points in the play as the effects of this action are enormous.
Lear ends up
casting aside Cordelia, who is the only daughter he has who
truly loves him,
and gives all his land to his other two, power hungry,
daughters. The other pivotal point in the first scene
which has a huge affect
on the rest of
the play is the inclusion of the talk about Edmund. Edmund
realizes that,
due to his illegitimacy, he can never amount to anything. "The
first action
alluded to is the old king's action in dividing his kingdom, the dire
effects of which
we are almost instantly to see. The
other action is
Gloucester's
action in begetting a bastard son, and the dire effects of this will
also speedily be
known." (Shakespeare's Middle Tragedies, 171) The
consequences of
these two actions are what the whole play revolves around.
The division of
Lear's kingdom causes Reagan and Goneril to realize that
"Lear had
lived long, but he had not learned wisdom." (Notes and Essays on
Shakespeare,
262) As they begin to realize just how
easy they can take
advantage of him,
Lear begins to see this as well and is furious, at first, then
his madness
starts to set in. Gloucester's bastard
son, Edmund, plays a very
important role in
the plot of the play as well. His
struggle for power and
notoriety causes
much havoc throughout the play. He
deceives both his
brother and his
father just so that he can advance his title.
While the extreme
outcomes of the
two actions noted are not known until after the first two
scenes of the
play, they are the two most important
pieces of plot information
that are given
throughout the length of the play. The
fact that the two most
important pieces
of plot information are structuralized in the two opening
scenes of the
play add a profound amount of credit towards Marilyn French's
opinion that
everything about the play hangs on the first two scenes.
The plot of King Lear is not the only part
of the play that rests on the
first two
scenes. An enormous amount of the
dialogue is specifically used to
reveal the values
and morals of each character. It is very
important to know
the values that
each character has in order to have a greater understanding of
why the play
unfolds the way it does. For example, it
would be hard to
believe that
Goneril and Reagan could be so contemptible to their own father,
without the
incident in the first scene where both Goneril and Reagan show
that they are
morally corrupt, by making exaggerated claims of love and
devotion to their
father. The first scene plays a huge
role in disclosing the
views of Lear,
Goneril, Reagan, and Cordelia while the second scene exposes
Edmund for what
he really is. The views of King Lear
himself are more
apparent in the
first scene than the views of any other character. When the
play starts out,
Lear is very much in control of his kingdom "but the very first
scene gives us a
hint of how Lear is going to lose contact with his natural
relation to his
environment." (The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery,
134) Armed with the foreknowledge that Lear is
self-destructing it becomes
easier to
understand why he would make such obviously rash decisions.
Along with his
rashness, it is shown that Lear asks questions, only willing to
receive the
response he wants. When Lear asks
Cordelia "what can you say
to draw / A third
more opulent than your sisters?" and she replies "Nothing,
my
lord." He inevitably becomes
enraged and disowns her simply because
her answer to his
question was far from what he had expected to hear. "Lear
determines in
advance the answers he will receive; he fails to adapt himself to
the person with
whom he is speaking. Hence his complete
and almost
incomprehensible
misunderstanding of Cordelia." (The
Development of
Shakespeare's
Imagery, 134) Lear's values permit him
only to see one side
of every
situation, which is his side. This trait
of Lear's is what causes the
onset of his
madness and is thus a very important part of his psyche to
consider. Since Lear feels that he has to be in control
of every situation,
when the time
finally comes that he realizes he no longer has control of
anything, he
snaps. "More and more Lear loses
contact with the outside
world; words
become for him less a means of communication with others
than a means of
expression of what goes on within himself." (The
development of
Shakespeare's Imagery, 134) While it can
be shown that
Lear's values are
what eventually drive him to the verge insanity and beyond,
the first scene
does more than outline Lear's values. As
discussed earlier, the
first scene also
brings to light the underlying values and immorality in both
Reagan's and
Goneril's personality. Another important
set of values that is
expressed in the
first scene is that of Cordelia's. By
not trying to outdo her
sisters
outlandish proclamations of love she shows that she truly loves her
father and that
she values her love for her father more than anything. This
value that is
expressed in the first scene of play becomes very important when
she accepts her
father without condition at the end of the play regardless of
the fact that he
was so uncaring towards her.
Shakespeare has, without a doubt, written
some of the most powerful
plays ever to
grace the stage of a theatre. King Lear
is no exception. At first
glance, the play
seems to be completely ridiculous, in that no human beings
would possibly
act the way the characters in King Lear act but there is more
to be offered by
the collection of eclectic characters than can be seen at first
glance. The first two scenes offer a great insight
into the characters
behaviour by
revealing their values through carefully crafted dialogue. Aside
from showing the
true colors of the characters, the opening scenes serve to
create an
atmosphere for the plot to be outlined in great detail without giving
away how it will
unfold. The first two scenes of King
Lear are pivotal in
influencing every
aspect of the play including the plot, and the values of the
characters
contained within the plot.
Works Cited
Clemen, Wolfgang.
The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery. New York,
NY, USA: Methuen
& Co. 1977.
French, Marilyn.
Shakespeare's Division of Experience. New York: Summit
Books. 1981.
Hales, John.
Notes and Essays on Shakespeare. New York, NY, USA: AMS
Press. 1973.
Lerner, Laurence.
Shakespeare's Tragedies. Middlesex, England: Penguin
Books Ltd. 1964.
Shakespeare,
William. King Lear. As reprinted in
Elements of Literature.
Toronto: Oxford University Press. 1990.
Young, David.
Shakespeare's Middle Tragedies - A Collection of Critical
Essays. Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey, USA: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1993.
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