It can be argued that the central concern of King Lear is the nature of a particular form of evil: anger. Aristotle defined anger as: ... an impulse

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 The central concern of tragedy has always been to explore the nature of evil in the world; both its existence and the nature of particular types of evil and their effect. If we are to find the meaning of Shakespeare's tragedies, we must examine how men looked at the problem of evil in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Much of the philosophy which under-pinned the English Renaissance can be traced to the ideas of Aristotle.It can be argued that the central concern of King Lear is the nature of a particular form of evil: anger. Aristotle defined anger as: ... an impulse, accompanied by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight directed without justification towards what concerns oneself or towards what concerns one's friends. Aristotle argued that anger always arises from injured self-esteem, from some slight inflicted upon the individual directly or indirectly, there being three kinds of slighting possible: contempt; spite; and insolence. Since a man expects to be respected by his inferiors, he expects those to respect him to whom he is superior in birth, capacity goodness or anything else. Furthermore, he expects those whom he has treated well, as well as those whom he is now treating well, to respect him. According to Aristotle, then, the man who is slighted by those who he thinks ought to respect him and feel grateful toward him is the more easily offended. Furthermore, Aristotle pointed out that the slight is most keenly felt if that aspect in which we think ourselves most worthy of consideration is treated slightingly. Anyone who shows, in speech or action, a tendency to slight rather than praise these qualities upon which we base our self-esteem, will be the recipient of our anger. However, we will be more angry with friends than with others, with those who have previously treated us deferentially and now change, and with those who do not adequately appreciate or return kindness. He also suggests that the feeble are more given to anger than the strong, and old men rather than the young. Other thinkers, contemporary with Shakespeare, such as Newton, emphasised also the pride that precedes anger and the shame that succeeds it. Newton also explained that while anger harms those against whom it is directed, it harms even more the person in whose heart the passion rises. He suggests that the mind must be reined by reason and curbed by temperance. There was, then, in Shakespeare's day an old and firmly founded philosophy of anger, based upon ancient philosophy and medieval reworkings of those ideas. According to
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this philosophy, pride or self-esteem is the condition in which anger takes its rise, vengeance becomes its immediate object, and some slight, real or imagined, is its cause. Anger is folly; shame its consequence. The sequence of passions is pride, anger, revenge, and, unless madness clouds the reason altogether, shame. Anger hurts him who feels it even more than it hurts the one on whom he seeks revenge. Its consequences are shame on the one hand and rage, fury, frenzy and madness on the other. It is the most destructive of passions; it has indeed something of the essence of ...

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