Abstract
The ending to Shakespeare’s Tragedy of King Lear has generated much debate. Performance history and critical interpretations of the conclusion of the Folio version of Lear have been pronouncedly divided into readings intimating the tragic hero’s redemption and readings averring his ultimately bleak condition, whether of delusion or despair. Recent attempts to describe Shakespeare’s use of scripture in this play have offered more nuance, acknowledging the play’s blending of pagan and Christian elements. While King Lear has extensively been compared to the book of Job and to apocalyptic passages in Revelation and Daniel, allusions to the gospel narratives and to Luke in particular raise the thorny question of Cordelia’s role as a Christ-figure. This essay argues that the ambiguous and suggestive nature of Lear’s final words (“Look there, look there!”) is both preserved and illuminated when read as an allusion to Jesus’ words in Luke 17:21. This previously unexplored allusion not only offers guidance for responding to Lear’s exhortation to “Look there” but also resonates within Shakespeare’s play through shared themes of apocalypse, kingdom, sight/insight, and the importance of the heart.
Highlights
The ending to Shakespeare’s Tragedy of King Lear has generated much debate
There are scholarly arguments for Q1 being based on Shakespeare’s foul papers, for many variations in Q1 being attributable to the inexperience of printer Nicholas Okes and his compositors in typesetting drama, and for some eliminations in the Folio resulting from cuts made to the play in performance
The varied performance history is matched by starkly opposed readings in the criticism; the play and readings of the play have been described as existentialist, absurdist, nihilist, Marxist, pagan, Christian, neo-Christian, and post-Christian—all terms unavailable to the eighth century B.C.E., the Bradley’s persistent influence is captured by Christopher Plummer, who had played Lear in Ontario’s Stratford Festival under Sir Jonathan Miller’s direction in 2002
Summary
The ending to Shakespeare’s Tragedy of King Lear has generated much debate. Performance history and critical interpretations of the conclusion of the Folio version of Lear have been pronouncedly divided into readings intimating the tragic hero’s redemption and readings averring his bleak condition, whether of delusion or despair. In any interpretation of Lear, much depends on what is done with Lear’s last words; much depends on what is made of the biblical allusions throughout the play, including but not limited to the passages suggesting Cordelia’s role as a Christ-figure.
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