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King Lear 22569 Views
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Description:
Good thing this guy never wrote a parenting book.
Transcript
- 00:04
King Lear, a la Shmoop. You may be young, but we're sure you've already
- 00:10
experienced the pain of heartbreak.
- 00:14
Like when your pet goldfish "Swimmy" died.
- 00:15
The agony of loss, no matter the specifics, can be almost unbearable.
- 00:23
You might feel like you're going to die.
Full Transcript
- 00:26
But... can you imagine actually, physically dying?
- 00:30
Did Swimmy really mean that much to you? In Shakespeare's play, the title character,
- 00:37
King Lear, dies at the end...
- 00:40
...simply because his heart had a boo-boo. Considering how cold, callous and calculating
- 00:47
he had been the entire rest of the play...
- 00:49
...is this too hard a sell?
- 00:51
Can Lear possibly have died from a broken heart? Assuming he even had one?
- 00:58
The final straw for Lear is seeing his daughter, Cordelia (cor-dee-lee-uh), dead in his arms.
- 01:06
But closer to the beginning of the story, he had disowned her and refused to give her
- 01:10
a dowry...
- 01:10
...because he had mistakenly interpreted her actions as an expression of disdain toward
- 01:15
him.
- 01:16
So... seems like his love came with some conditions.
- 01:21
If he could so quickly and heartlessly cut her out of his life like that...
- 01:25
...could their bond really have been so strong that his ticker would stop ticking when hers
- 01:28
did? Then there's the question of whether Lear
- 01:33
was even capable of love at all.
- 01:35
The guy was kind of a monster. No offense to Godzilla.
- 01:41
He pitted his daughters against each other...
- 01:43
...disowned one of them...
- 01:45
...and banished his right-hand man, Kent, for no good reason.
- 01:49
If a guy like that had a broken heart, would he even feel it?
- 01:53
Depends on whether or not you believe people can fundamentally change.
- 01:57
Much of this play is about the transformation that takes place in Lear's head and heart.
- 02:02
He gradually comes to regret wronging those who cared about him most...
- 02:07
...and starts to see people in a different light than ever before... like when he takes
- 02:12
pity on Poor Tom, the beggar.
- 02:14
So while Lear wasn't in the running for any humanitarian awards early in the play...
- 02:19
...did he soften up enough toward the end to make the "death by sadness" storyline plausible?
- 02:24
So why did King Lear die?
- 02:30
Was his 180 with Cordelia too radical a swing?
- 02:34
Was he a heartless monster?
- 02:36
Or was he a monster... who grew a heart? Shmoop amongst yourselves.
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