Abstract
William Shakespeare’s King Lear illustrates the importance of Christian ideals in Early Modern England by portraying a pagan kingdom in which those ideals do not exist. Heavily influenced by Christian scriptures (notably the Book of Acts), Shakespeare’s first audiences understood King Lear as an exploration of a godless world which must eventually become dysfunctional. The play can be approached as a study in “negative irony,” the device through which something (in this case, Christian morality) is celebrated through a portrayal of its antithesis (Hunt 30). The system of communal living, common ownership, and personal com-monality described in Acts is not something that Shakespeare portrays as tenable in a non-Christian context. Through this lens, we see that King Lear juxtaposes the highly religious culture of Early Modern England with the imagined tragedy of a culture devoid of the same religion.
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