1. Detailed discussion of language and dramatic effects

2. Language and dramatic effect Verse form and metre Dramatic effects Juxtaposition of language styles Irony Visual and verbal Staging Structure Cognitive metaphor Objective correlative

3. Verse form and metre Blank verse Free verse Iambic pentameter Word order Iambic stress Weak/feminine ending (unstressed) OR strong/masculine ending (stressed) Syntax End-stopping Enjambment – extend the flow Caesura- break the flow

4. Examples – act 1, sc 1 - Lear To thee and thine hereditary ever Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom; No less in space, validity, and pleasure, Than that conferr'd on Goneril. Now, our joy, Although the last, not least; to whose young love The vines of France and milk of Burgundy Strive to be interess'd; what can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak. Sense of ceremony present; flowing blank verse of Lear and lack of cadence suggests rehearsed performance. Symmetrical lines and parallel images suggest this further: ‘with shadowy forests…with plenteous rivers…’ Elevated, lofty speech (often visually represented by looking down at the map) suggest his dominion over the kingdom Verse form suggests he is not a single private individual (amplification of landscape/ imagery of boundless landscape supports further)

5. Examples, Act 4, sc7 – Lear ‘Pray, do not mock me: I am a very foolish, fond old man, And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.’ -Word order is conventional, mono-syllabic, plain speaking and almost child-like; not the cadence (or natural end) at the end of each line. -Edmund Blunden suggests linguistic ‘lendings’ have been cast off and there is a return to native language (opposed to French and Latin etymology in first scene).

6. Examples – act 5, sc 2, Lear King Lear's anguished protest against the murder of Cordelia (and perhaps of the Fool as well) reverses the rhythmic order of the syllables as Lear's world itself has been incomprehensibly upended: /. /. /. /. /. KING LEAR Never, never, never, never, never. In addition to the repetition of 'never,' the emphasis on the first syllables of each foot suggests a blocking, a refusal to accept the unacceptable. The unstressed syllable ending each foot communicates a sense of hopelessness – this is called trochee (reversed iambic pentameter). It’s also an example of a feminine ending.

7. Examples, Edmund, act 1, sc 2 Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound. Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom, and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous, and my shape as true, As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops, Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate! Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for bastards! Your turn – trying to focus simply on metre/ verse, what you can you find?

8. Examples, Edmund, act 1, sc 2 Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound. Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom, and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous, and my shape as true, As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops, Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate! Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for bastards! Pounding alliteration, plosive b, almost shatters the metre Line break forces syllabic emphasis onto ‘top’, potentially a pun on ‘tup, finished with a crude sexual metaphor about growth. Your turn – trying to focus simply on metre/ verse, what you can you find?

9. Dramatic effects Within the play, multiple scenes of ‘playacting’ and theatrical scenes – combination of parody, artifice and horror – Staged love test (proved by Gloucester and Kent opening discussion) – Edgar playing the role of Poor Tom – Mock court-room trial where madmen sit in judgement of the apparently sane – Staged suicide attempt and mock exorcism of Gloucester – Gloucester’s eyes being gouged out – Final tableau of a kingdom ruined; a reverse of the pieta

10. Juxtaposition of language styles Language used to conceal and reveal the truth -styles set against each other, arguably revealing an overall truth. For example – Taciturnity of Cordelia V hypocritical rhetorical excesses of Goneril and Regan – Blunt speech assumed by the courtier, Kent, in his role as a servant V Fool’s wise nonsense – both forms of truth – Lear’s controlled purposeful verse in first scene V linguistic emptiness of ‘Howl, howl, howl.’ Arguably, he regains some form of linguistic truth with the blank verse line (although reversed), ‘Never, never, never...’ – Edgar’s linguistic play: madman, dialect of a Somerset peasant and speech of a countryman. He reflects the chaos but his ability to adapt to the landscape also stabilises the chaos via localisation with the landscape. V Edmund’s fixed utterances and reliance on a stable universe (where ‘gods stand up for bastards’) which jar with the increasing chaos that surrounds him. – Edmund’s forged letter V Goneril and Regan’s deceptive words; both fool their fathers

11. Irony Key feature of tragedy Irony continually present at plot level: what happens in the reverse of what is expected Irony also operates at the deeper level of meaning: Lear does not understand himself, his daughters and the condition of his subjects until he is stripped of status, power, clothing, shelter and even reason. Gloucester does not ‘see’ the truth about his sons until he is blinded. These paradoxes are tempered by the seemingly boundless compassion and forgiveness of Cordelia and Edgar. > TO WHAT EXTENT IS THE BITTER IRONY OF THE PLAY OVERCOME BY ITS MOMENTS OF COMPASSION?

12. Visual and verbal Symbols and imagery used to reinforce the dialogue Visual and verbal combine to create a unified emotional landscape? Links to the idea of seeing the world ‘feelingly’; unification of experience perhaps? Correlation of visual and verbal allows the ‘re-visioning’ of the world, particularly for Lear and Gloucester, to become even more evident to the audience (e.g. Lear’s childish ‘fill in the gaps’ procedure in scene 1 reflected by the division of the kingdom itself)

13. Key verbal and visual correlation Abdication scene – speech patterns of threes and division Heath – symbolic setting; the visual ‘nothing’ Storm – the ‘tempest’ in Lear’s mind Injustice and punishment – Kent in the stocks, Gloucester’s blinding; physical and spiritual contrasted Clothes- Goneril and Regan ‘superfluous’ clothes mask evil within; Lear tearing off his ‘lendings’; Poor Tom; naked and representing common man Disguise- Edgar and Kent ‘Reason in madness’ – Lear decked in flowers; his apparent regeneration; Edgar’s challenge to Edmund

14. Key verbal and visual correlation Images of kindness- Fool as a visual reminder of Lear’s folly; the presence of Edgar and Kent Dover and Gloucester’s fall- reflects perceptions of reality Mock trials – Love test, Kent in the stocks, Lear’s trial, Gloucester; all mirror perversions of justice that occur throughout the play ‘Enter Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms’ – tableau effect; paradoxes and ironies of the play are brought together in this final scene; optimism and pessimism unite?

15. Staging – a troubled landscape? “We equipped expeditions which with varying skill and success mapped a few heaths, a river, a few shores, a mountain, forests. All the countries of the world equipped expeditions; sometimes we came across one another on our wanderings and established in despair that what was an inland lake yesterday had turned into a mountain today. We drew our maps, commented and described, but nothing fitted.” (Ingmar Bergman on directing and staging ‘King Lear’)

16. Dramatic structure Exposition: introduces characters and setting; provides basic information about relationships between characters and an initial conflict between them. Rising Action: suspense builds; "the plot thickens." Characters make decisions in response to the opening conflict; these decisions complicate the action. Opens up the plot, allowing for different possibilities of resolution. Turning Point: characters or circumstances change (for the worse or the better) due to an action upon which the main plot hinges. The central or focal point of the play, hence the main purpose of the action Falling Action: the unravelling of complications leads to the resolution of conflict. Conclusion: in comedies (and romances), celebration of a new order, new identities and a harmonious end to conflict, frequently expressed through marriage. In tragedies (and romances), the restoration of moral and social order. Evil people are dead or no longer in power. In tragedy, this restoration of order comes at great cost; in romance, seemingly due to divine providence, manifest through improbable supernatural occurrences.

17. Interesting to note that… Typically, we expect the movement toward a moment of tragic insight: as the hero reaches his point of defeat and demise, then (and only then) does he fully and clearly see the whole of his plight and his actions for what they are. He apprehends his tragic flaw and sees (with a piercing clarity) the manner in which it has undone him. It intensifies and en-nobles the tragedy, providing pathos via transcendence; death may be inescapable but catharsis provides is with an affirmation of the hero’s realisation – he learnt something after all. HOWEVER….

18. Interesting to note that… “Shakespeare, in Lear, is savage. He doesn't give us catharsis; he gives us entropy. And he rips the arse out of the moment of tragic insight.” (www.intellectualhooligan.com)www.intellectualhooligan.com Lear’s final speech, with its uncertainty (look upon her lips…), almost fools the audience – he dies with an almost pathetic error: no profundity, no moment of insight. What’s is the effect on the dramatic structure as whole? Is it consistent?

19. Conceptual or cognitive metaphor The Linguistic Society of America has argued that "the most recent linguistic approach to literature is that of cognitive metaphor, which claims that metaphor is not a mode of language, but a mode of thought.” A conceptual metaphor uses one idea and links it to another to better understand something These metaphors are prevalent in communication and we do not just use them in language; we actually perceive and act in accordance with the metaphors.

20. The effect of conceptual metaphors Conceptual metaphors shape not just our communication, but also shape the way we think and act. In George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work, Metaphors We Live By (1980), we see how everyday language is filled with metaphors we may not always notice. An example of one of the commonly used conceptual metaphors is "argument is war". This metaphor shapes our language in the way we view argument as war or as a battle to be won. It is not uncommon to hear someone say "He won that argument" or "I attacked every weak point in his argument". The very way argument is thought of is shaped by this metaphor of arguments being war and battles that must be won. Argument can be seen in many other ways other than a battle, but we use this concept to shape the way we think of argument and the way we go about arguing.

21. Schemata/ schema In psychology and cognitive science, a schema (plural schemata or schemas), describes an organized pattern of thought or behaviour. It can also be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information. Schemata influence attention and the absorption of new knowledge: people are more likely to notice things that fit into their schema, while re-interpreting contradictions to the schema as exceptions or distorting them to fit. Schemata have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information. Schemas can help in understanding the world. Most situations do not require effortful thought when using schema, since automatic thought is all that is required. People can organize new perceptions into schemas quickly. People use schemata to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future understanding. Examples of schemata include academic rubrics, social schemas, stereotypes, social roles, scripts, worldviews, and archetypes. In Piaget's theory of development, children adopt a series of schemata to understand the world.

22. Conceptual metaphor in ‘King Lear’ Donald Freeman applies the theory of conceptual metaphor in an analysis of King Lear's opening scene, and shows that the scene's figurative language depends upon metaphoric projection from the contradiction of two schemata: BALANCE (e.g. money, power, land, love) and CONNECTION (e.g. between family members, father and daughters, king and subject, between all humans) Filial love and family relationships (and therefore balance and connection) for Lear are defined within a financial/ accounting framework. Cordelia’s ideas directly oppose this: she recognises the ‘bond’ and the ‘duties’, but cannot ‘heave’ her ‘heart into (her) mouth’. The two frameworks are simply not compatible.

23. ‘Connection’ The metaphors arising from the connection schema, in particular, are organised into an interpretive framework of financial accounting. Lear understands his relationships with his daughters in terms of the debits and credits of fiscal accounts (e.g. A ‘third more opulent’/ ‘mar your fortunes’/ ‘property of blood’) Cordelia tries and fails to get Lear to 'recognise' parental love and filial duty beginning with language interpretable within both the balance and connection schemata: 'I love you according to my bond', where 'bond' is both a financial obligation and a linking medium.

24. Varying significance of ‘nothing’ "now thou art an O without a figure. I am better than thou art now; I'm a fool, thou art nothing" (1.4.17). The Fool identifies him as 'an 0 without a figure‘ or a ‘shelled peascod’, once he has lost the crown or power; he has been reduced to the ‘nothing’ he once derided. In part, Lear’s downfall stems from what he feels he has been reduced to: ‘nothing’. He cannot contemplate this occurrence as anything other than loss of balance and therefore power and connection.

25. Critical interpretation Beatriz Ródenas Tolosa argues that conflicting concepts of nature between characters, particularly between Lear, Gloucester and Edgar, cause much of the chaos in the play. Lear – nature as great chain of being Gloucester- nature and astrology; extended chain where heavens control the earth Edmund- nature as something animalistic, predatory and almost lustful

26. Key question If you change the schemata, can you change the world view? Do we see evidence of shifting schemata within ‘King Lear’? If so, where? If not, why?

27. Objective correlative “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” TS Eliot

28. TASK In what ways do the objects/ symbols/ language/ events correlate in ‘King Lear’? Is there an over-riding correlation?