King Lear Critics and Context
- Created by: bethg
- Created on: 11-05-16 14:23
King Lear AO’s
AO4 Facts - Context
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Stories of 'King Lear' existed for over four hundred years before Shakespeare's time
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In all of the previous versions of 'King Lear', Cordelia commits suicide, but Shakespeare replaces her suicide with execution (more injustice, a palpable sense of needlessness)
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Elizabethan England an extremely patriarchal society, and respect was demanded not only to the wealthy and powerful, but parents and elders.
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The Jacobean age was a time of social and religious change, wherefore assumptions about gender and class were being questioned.
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Elizabethan women had to be subservient and were expected to obey men, disobedience was seen as a crime against their religion.
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King Lear was written during a time of uncertainty. London had been decimated by the Plague which shut the theatres and Guy Fawkes struck in 1605.
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In 1603 Crowns of England and Scotland shared the kingship of James I but not united, a milestone nonetheless.
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James I attempted to unite England and Scotland properly with an Act of Union 1606, 2 months before King Lear was performed at Court, but he was unsuccessful as parliament repeatedly thwarted his plans.
AO3 Critical Quotes
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"A play in which the wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry" - Johnson
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“Cordelia is an opposition to Lear's authority. She uses Silence, the only possible way of subversion for women of the middle ages” - Rubio
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"King Lear is a play about the disintegration of…
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