Shakespeare
Paper details:
Shakespeare Paper Guidelines
The basics:
4 pages this time
TNR, size 12, one inch margins, double spaced, etc
MLA format
The task:
You are to utilize the close reading skills you practiced in your fiction paper, but this time, you’re to create a specific, focused, nuanced, and compelling argument about King Lear, using your close reading skills to pick and integrate textual evidence in order to support your claim.
The prompts:
As I said in class, you’re more than welcome to write about what you want to–just send me an email to hash it out first. If you’d rather, here are a few potential prompts to get you started.
1. In Shakespeare’s day, the use of madness in theater was largely a comic effect. Shakespeare, though, appears to be serious in his portrayal of King Lear’s own madness. Compare and contrast differing types of madness, either within KL or between KL and another Shakespeare play, and what it means for Lear to be mad.
2. Among other things, the play is a tragedy of what it means to be a king. Consider the power relations present in the play and the possible message about the complicated nature of kingship that Shakespeare may have been trying to convey.
3. The female characters in the play are often seen as aggressive and powerful figures who are sometimes more ruthless than the male characters. Discuss how different the role of women is in this play compared to Shakespeare’s other works, or compared to historical norms of the time.
4. Discuss how law and order break down in the play, as well as who–or what–or a combination of multiple “whos” and multiple “whats”–you think is responsible for this breakdown.
5. Lear calls himself “a man more sinned against than sinning” (3.2.59-60). Is this true? Is Lear an innocent victim of his daughters’ cruelty? Or are some of the terrible things that happen to Lear his own fault?
6. Does King Lear ultimately suggest that the gods are cruel—or that they don’t actually exist? Which side of this argument do you think the play falls on?
7. According to Colin Redgrave, who played King Lear in a 2004 Royal Shakespeare Company production of the play, “Lear is frightened of going mad, because madness is the passport to self-knowledge, self-knowledge being something denied to him all his life.” Analyze this quote and its relationship to the character development of Lear in the play.
