Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > English

Critical Approaches to Shakespeare’s Plays

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Gopa B. Caesar:
d. Marxism

How does the work reflect the economic and social conditions of its time?

How does it reflect the ideology of the times; that is, the ideas that support those who control the economy and society?

Feudal ideology = belief that ruling order was higher than commoners, whose reward would come in the afterlife.

Capitalist ideology= individuals can freely strive for success in an open society.

King Lear promotes aristocratic values as necessary for rule; denounces merchants and lawyers.

Yet, the play reflects the contradiction inherent in feudalism: the agricultural surplus made trade possible, allowing merchants to live in towns and emerge from under the  control of feudal landlords.

The feudal forms of social relations based on mutual loyalty and trust give way to early capitalist relations of ambition, disrespect for traditional notions of duty, and distrust.

Goneril and  Regan represent the new sensibility; Edmund represents the new individual merchant.
Edgar and Kent represents the old forms of knighthood.
The ideological work of the play consists of evoking disaster caused by capitalist values and then restoring aristocratic values.
Albany calls down lightning on evil Goneril, conflating society with the cosmos.

Edgar’s noble ascension is magical (indicating contradition in old feudal system).

Gopa B. Caesar:
e. Post-Structuralism

In contrast to structuralism, that looks for invariant rules of literature and society, post-structuralism realizes language generates multiple meanings.

Reason is not an instrument of understanding, but of discipline and social control.

Identities are contingent, meanings are undecidable.

Friedrick Nietzsche regarded everything from aesthetic beauty to  legal justice as projections of power.

King Lear, particularly in the mad scenes, exposes the pretences of normal behavior (we humans are really animals) and reveals the repressed underside of social life.

Gopa B. Caesar:
f. Deconstruction

Jacques Derrida claims that western philosophy, which claims to speak for reason, truth, and knowledge, does so by violent acts of opposition and hierarchization.

Good terms: speech, men, originality, truth (the idea as present in the mind), white, us

Bad terms: writing, women, repetition, representation (the idea presented in language), black, them

The crisis of madness in King Lear is a crisis of metaphysics, of the values that privilege identity over difference and truth over representation.

The moral ideals of virtue, fidelity, honesty, gratitude are inseparble from truth as an internal essence or ideal identity. For example, Cordelia identifies herself as an emblem of truth: “so young . . . so true.”

Because moral virtue transcends langauge, moral illegitimacy will be inseparable from representation. To  behave badly in the play will be to speak falsely.

The restoration of moral and philosophic order will thus be described by Edgar as a triumph of true speech over false: “Speak what we mean, not what we ought to say.”

Cordelia represents truth that stands outside of signification. She delays or defers her relation to meaning.

Writing is a betrayal of truth, just as letters betray Oswald and Goneril.

Gopa B. Caesar:
g. Feminism

How does the play address the (subordinate, marginalized) life experience of women?

Are women conceived as different? How?

How do women construct male identities?

Lear is an abusive patriarch, not a character whose virtues are vices.

Cordelia’s death is necessary to Lear’s tragic redemption.

The language of the play subtly defames women.

Gopa B. Caesar:
h. Gender Studies, Queer Theory

Does the work invite or condemn alternative sexual practices?
How is sexual identity constructed?
How does (male) heterosexuality maintain its dominance?
How does repressed homosexuality manifest itself?
Lear posits various punishments for unbridled sexuality.
Illegitimate Edmund is a bad person.
Goneril is dissatisfied in Albany’s bed; Regan is a lusty widow; both pay with their lives for their attraction to Edmund.
Lear sheds his clothes and joins Edgar in nakedness, the visual display of homosexuality, at the time associated with demonic possession and witches.
Edgar undergoes the experience of liquefaction that is effeminization; like the other men at the end of the play, he weeps. Men become like women--but the play radically suggests gender traits are contingent, not natural.

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