ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
British Literature Videos 176 videos
Meet Charles Darnay, the nobleman who spends more time on trial and in prison than attending balls and drinking expensive wine. Don't feel too bad...
Written in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, Beowulf is an epic poem that reflects the early medieval warri...
Brave New World is supposed be an exciting book about a negative utopia and the corrupt powers of authority. So where’s the big car chase? What's...
King Lear 22570 Views
Share It!
Description:
Good thing this guy never wrote a parenting book.
Transcript
- 00:04
King Lear, a la Shmoop. You may be young, but we're sure you've already
- 00:10
experienced the pain of heartbreak.
- 00:14
Like when your pet goldfish "Swimmy" died.
- 00:15
The agony of loss, no matter the specifics, can be almost unbearable.
- 00:23
You might feel like you're going to die.
Full Transcript
- 00:26
But... can you imagine actually, physically dying?
- 00:30
Did Swimmy really mean that much to you? In Shakespeare's play, the title character,
- 00:37
King Lear, dies at the end...
- 00:40
...simply because his heart had a boo-boo. Considering how cold, callous and calculating
- 00:47
he had been the entire rest of the play...
- 00:49
...is this too hard a sell?
- 00:51
Can Lear possibly have died from a broken heart? Assuming he even had one?
- 00:58
The final straw for Lear is seeing his daughter, Cordelia (cor-dee-lee-uh), dead in his arms.
- 01:06
But closer to the beginning of the story, he had disowned her and refused to give her
- 01:10
a dowry...
- 01:10
...because he had mistakenly interpreted her actions as an expression of disdain toward
- 01:15
him.
- 01:16
So... seems like his love came with some conditions.
- 01:21
If he could so quickly and heartlessly cut her out of his life like that...
- 01:25
...could their bond really have been so strong that his ticker would stop ticking when hers
- 01:28
did? Then there's the question of whether Lear
- 01:33
was even capable of love at all.
- 01:35
The guy was kind of a monster. No offense to Godzilla.
- 01:41
He pitted his daughters against each other...
- 01:43
...disowned one of them...
- 01:45
...and banished his right-hand man, Kent, for no good reason.
- 01:49
If a guy like that had a broken heart, would he even feel it?
- 01:53
Depends on whether or not you believe people can fundamentally change.
- 01:57
Much of this play is about the transformation that takes place in Lear's head and heart.
- 02:02
He gradually comes to regret wronging those who cared about him most...
- 02:07
...and starts to see people in a different light than ever before... like when he takes
- 02:12
pity on Poor Tom, the beggar.
- 02:14
So while Lear wasn't in the running for any humanitarian awards early in the play...
- 02:19
...did he soften up enough toward the end to make the "death by sadness" storyline plausible?
- 02:24
So why did King Lear die?
- 02:30
Was his 180 with Cordelia too radical a swing?
- 02:34
Was he a heartless monster?
- 02:36
Or was he a monster... who grew a heart? Shmoop amongst yourselves.
Related Videos
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.
Do not go gentle into that good night. In fact, if it's past your curfew, don't go at all into that good night. You just stay in your good bed and...
