內容介紹 | |
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出版社:BANTAM BOOKS
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ISBN:0553212974
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作者:William Shakespeare著
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頁數:182
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出版日期:2004-03-29
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印刷日期:1988-01-01
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包裝:平裝
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版次:5
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印次:1
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A king foolishly divides his kingdom between his scheming two oldest daughters and estranges himself from the daughter who loves him. So begins this profoundly moving and disturbing tragedy that, perhaps more than any other work in literature, challenges the notion of a coherent and .just universe. The king and other's pay dearly for their shortcomings--as madness,murder, and the anguish of insight and forgiveness that arrive too late combine to make this an all-embracing tragedy of evil and suffering.
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In King Lear, Shakespeare pushes to its limit the hypothesis
of a malign or at least indifferent universe in which human life
is meaningless and brutal. Few plays other than Hamlet and Macbeth
approach King Lear in evoking the wretchedness of human existence,
and even they cannot match the devastating spectacle of the Earl
of Gloucester blinded or Cordelia dead in Lear's arms. The
responses of the chief characters are correspondingly searing. "Is
man no more than this?" rages Lear."Unaccommodated man is no more
but such a poor, bare,forked animal as thou art" (3.4.101-7). Life
he calls a "great stage of fools," an endless torment: "the first
time that we smell the air / We wawl and cry" (4.6.179-83).
Gloucester's despair takes the form of accusing the gods of
gleeful malice toward humanity: "As flies to wanton boys are we to
th' gods; / They kill us for their sport" (4.1.36-7). Gloucester's
ministering son Edgar can offer him no greater consolation than
stoic resolve:"Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their
coming hither; / Ripeness is all" (5.2.8-10). These statements
need not be read as choric expressions of meaning for the play as
a whole, but they do attest to the depth of suffering. In no other
Shakespearean play does injustice appear to triumph so
ferociously, for so long, and with such impunity. Will the heavens
countenance this reign of injustice on earth? Retribution is late
in coming and is not certainly the work of the heavens themselves.
For, at the last, we must confront the wanton death of the
innocent Cordelia--a death no longer willed even by the villain
who arranged her execution. "Is this the promised end?"(5.3.268)
asks the Earl of Kent, stressing the unparalleled horror of the
catastrophe.
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Introduction King Lear on Stage King Lear on Film The Playhouse KING LEAR Date and Text Textual Notes Shakespeare's Sources Further Reading Memorable Lines
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