King Lear is a play dominated by the contrast between wisdom and foolishness. In what ways does your reading of the first three acts incline you to agree or disagree with this view?

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Sam Ansloos                                                                             Semtember 2012

‘King Lear is a play dominated by the contrast between wisdom and foolishness’. In what ways does your reading of the first three acts incline you to agree or disagree with this view?

There are many ways in which one would agree with this statement, in that there is an evident contrast between wisdom and foolishness. We see this through The Fool, where he is rather blunt with Lear; also, with Lear we get a strong sense of his irrationality and madness which is ironic because this results in this contrast of foolishness and wisdom from The Fool. Edgar plays many roles in this play which perform such a wide array of functions. Again, we get a sense of this fool like dominance throughout the play through Edgar, as Shakespeare doesn’t spend much time establishing Edgar’s virtues before having him disguise himself as Poor Tom. Again, Edgar is forced to assume the garb of a madman to preserve his life. Whereas, there are indeed ways in which we can disagree with this statement, in the sense that the play opens at Lear’s court. Kent and Gloucester discuss the division of the Kingdom. There are rumours about King Lear’s intentions towards his two sons-in-law, the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall. Therefore, one can argue that the play is dominated with this idea of power and the giving of the Kingdom.  

Throughout the play there is a strong sense of foolishness and madness which is primarily presented through King Lear. Right from the outset we get this sense that Lear is a complex tragic hero, who excites a variety of responses. The first reference to his foolishness is his absurd actions of Act One where he plans to divide his Kingdom between Cordelia, Goneril and Regan. The fact that he plans to do this by making them profess their love for him which will equate how much of the land they get is rather absurd, especially for the Jacobean audience, who would remember how the taxing question of the succession has loomed during the large reign of Elizabeth I. For example, take when he says to Cordelia, ‘Nothing can come of nothing’ at the start of Act One. Here Lear gives us the indication that if Cordelia doesn’t profess her love for the King, then she will get ‘nothing’. Her refusal to participate in the love-test sets Lear onto a disastrous rage when she says ‘Nothing, my Lord’. Again, these rash actions of Lear could hint at this political insanity and potential foolishness, which arguably dominates the play. When he goes onto say in Act One, ‘O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!’ Lear is comparing his madness to the torments of hell and struggles frantically to retain his wits.

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As a result, this sense of irrationality and foolishness dominates the start of the play. From the Feminist point of view, John Knox who was writing during Shakespeare time in his ‘First Blast of the Scottish Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women’ in 1558, said, ‘Women are weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish’. Again, a feminist would oppose to this maleness of traditional criticism of women; however, this is representative of the views of women during Shakespeare’s time. How this ties into the contrast of foolishness and wisdom, is that some feminists may argue that Lear’s actions in Act ...

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