Motif in King Lear Motif An element that

Motif in King Lear

Motif • An element that recurs in a narrative or drama that has symbolic significance • Can be an image, phrase, act, word, sound or idea • A work can have more than one motif • Motifs tend to be concrete, while theme tends to be abstract

Repetition, often with slight variation is Key…

King Lear Motifs: • • • Blindness and Insight Clothing and Nakedness Betrayal Old Age Madness The Gods Nothingness Nature Fortune

Blindness and Insight • Figurative and literal blindness • Lear and Gloucester misjudge their children • Show lack of insight into the characters and situations around them • Lear shows lack of insight in dividing kingdom

Blindness highlights the inner vision needed to tell substance from the superficial • “All that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men; and there’s not a nose among twenty but can smell him that’s stinking. ” II, iv (Fool) • “I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw. ” IV, I (Gloucester) • “A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears. ” IV, vi (Lear) • “Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvey politician, seem/ To see things thou dost not” IV, vi (Lear)

Clothing and Nakedness • Play has several references to clothing and disguise: – Kent as Caius, – Edgar as Poor Tom – Lear associates Goneril and Regan’s fine clothing with their duplicity – Clothing becomes a symbol of the desire for power and status that corrupts

Clothing: • The fool offers his coxcomb to Kent • Kent to Oswald – “a tailor made thee…” II, ii • “thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man…” III, iv • Lear wears a crown of wild flowers, a symbol of his lost sanity as well as his lost power. Then he is later given fresh garments at Cordelia’s order.

Clothing and nakedness support the idea of appearance versus reality, shallowness versus substance… • “Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are, …” III, iv (Lear) • “I do not like the fashion of your garments” III, vi (Lear)…”And bring some covering for this naked soul” IV, I (Gloucester) • “Robes and furr’d gowns hide all” IV, vi

Treason and Betrayal • The disruption of the chain of being - body politic and the family • Betrayal of King, country against country, brother against brother, children against parents… • Treason and betrayal are both cause and consequence of the breaking of natural laws

Betrayal is both cause and consequence • “In palaces, treason; and the bond crack’d twixt son and father” I, ii (Gloucester) • “Machinations, hollowness, treachery…follow us quietly to our graves” I, ii (Gloucester) • “If it be you that stirs these daughters’ hearts/ Against their father…” II, iv (Lear) • Edmund is arrested for treason

Old Age • Lear tries to free himself of the burden or rule “crawl unburdened toward death” • Regan and Goneril make much of Lear’s age: “O, sir, you are old…you should be led by some discretion…”

The play causes us to question our attitudes and assumptions about old age… • The play also suggests that old age should command respect. • Regan and Goneril’s abuse of their father for being old makes their cruelty all the worse. • Cornwall and Regan’s cruelty to Gloucester is also heightened by his age (Regan plucks his white beard)

• “…the oppression of aged tyranny, …” I, ii (Edmund’s forged letter) • “tis the infirmity of his age…” I, I (Regan) • “…the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them” (Goneril) • “Idle old man…Old fools are babes again, and must be us’d With checks as flatteries…”I, iii (Goneril)

• “my old heart is crack’d, it’s crack’d” II, I (Gloucester) • “O heavens, If you do love old men, …if yourselves are old, Make it your cause…” II, iv (Lear) • “here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man. ” III, ii (Lear) • “The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long. ” I, iii (Edgar)