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why is king lear a tragedy? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter kangarulz
- Start date
frankyd
starlight woo!
Well there is hardly a "besides the fact that everyone dies"... that's usually pretty tragic 
It's also important to realise that a Shakespearean tragedy is contextually very different to what we percieve as "tragic".
This website has a good explanation of what Shakespearean tragedies are (http://www.davidchandler.com/writings/Tragedy.htm)
Basically, you'll find that the tragedy reveals the Paradox of life (in my reading of the play I focused upon the tragedy of the play linking to power - order and chaos are both only states of power which forms this paradox).
But really it's only a tragedy if YOU percieve it to be so. It is a tragedy under several discourses... ie. Aristotelian... but that doesn't mean you need to read it as so.
It's also important to realise that a Shakespearean tragedy is contextually very different to what we percieve as "tragic".
This website has a good explanation of what Shakespearean tragedies are (http://www.davidchandler.com/writings/Tragedy.htm)
Basically, you'll find that the tragedy reveals the Paradox of life (in my reading of the play I focused upon the tragedy of the play linking to power - order and chaos are both only states of power which forms this paradox).
But really it's only a tragedy if YOU percieve it to be so. It is a tragedy under several discourses... ie. Aristotelian... but that doesn't mean you need to read it as so.
DoubleX
New Member
Lear has two of his daughters turn on him and strip him of everything he held dear, and also ended up going insane before dying in the end. Cordelia, the true one of the three daughters, ends up getting royally screwed, getting none of her father's kingdom and her husband's forces get spanked in the war at the end of the play. Then Cordelia and everyone else dies.
Then there's Gloucester and his family. Edmund, his bastard son, manipulates his brother Edgar, a legitimate heir, into running off, leaving Edmund to get Gloucester's kingdom. Due to various circumstances, including Edmund's power-hunger, Gloucester gets his eyes plucked out, and he dies too IIRC.
How's that for tragic? All the good people get owned and all the bad people get everything. Then they die (of course; it wouldn't be a Shakespeare tragedy if you didn't have everybody dying).
Then there's Gloucester and his family. Edmund, his bastard son, manipulates his brother Edgar, a legitimate heir, into running off, leaving Edmund to get Gloucester's kingdom. Due to various circumstances, including Edmund's power-hunger, Gloucester gets his eyes plucked out, and he dies too IIRC.
How's that for tragic? All the good people get owned and all the bad people get everything. Then they die (of course; it wouldn't be a Shakespeare tragedy if you didn't have everybody dying).
Last edited:
uberschveinen
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The most cripplingly tragic element of the play, though, isn't in the characters or the plot, but in us. Each and every time more bad things happen, we see a glimmer of hope for the future, which grows into a bright spark, only to be blasted back into oblivion. The way Shakespeare plays on hope, the essence of humanity, only to shatter it at each and every turn, and ending the play before anything good happens, is what makes this appalingly tragic.
ane_st
Member
What a stupid question.