The Earth Centered Theme of Shakespeares King Lear Essay -- King Lear

The Earth Centered Theme of Shakespeares fag LearKing Lear is a complicated, significative play with parallel plots, moral ambiguity, and a messy ending. The plays events were politically supercharged and historically informed when they were performed in seventeenth century England, as they exsert to be to today. Whatever his intentions, Shakespeare has given us several universal truths to consider. adept I like to consider is how beneath all the sinister and temerarious machinations of man lies the gentle earth, from which we, and all life, spring. Some critics note that Shakespeare was skeptical more or less God and the role of religion in ones life. I believe King Lear is the product of a writer with a solid cosmogeny, but one centered in earth and humanity. I hesitate to label Shakespeare a pagan, or anything other than brilliant. Yet there is evidence enough in the text for me to argue an earth-centric thesis. A close reading reveals those who employ popular wording or down-to-earth speech as embodiments of goodness, whereas characters that insist on the perfectly controlled, artificial utterances of the feudal court are corrupt at best, if not evil. The gods above are shown to be fickle and uncaring, if not bloodthirsty. Shakespeare too weaves in certain utopian visions into the fabric of King Lear, earth-based ideals, not save pre-Christian like the plays setting, but pre-historic thus supporting the argument for an earthen cosmology and humanistic political consciousness, freely exhibited and often applied in the work. touched EdmundEdmund rejects the very idea of baseness, or what we might think of as earthiness. He is skillfully used in the play to oppose to all that is leafy vegetable and good. His famous soliloquy in Act 1, Sc... ... manifest values of in-person humility, caring, and wise stewardship of the land. Works CitedElliot, Michael. King Lear by William Shakespeare. Princeton Films for the Humanities. 1988. Starring Laurence Olivier and John Hurt. Oates, Joyce Carol. Is This the Promised close? The Tragedy of King Lear. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. (Fall 1974) URL http//www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/southerr/lear.html. Schneider, Ben Ross, jr. King Lear in Its Own Time The Difference that Death Makes. early(a) Modern Literary Studies 1.1 (1995) 3.1-49 URL http//www.humanities.ualberta.ca/emls/01-1/schnlear.html. Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Edited by David Bevington. newly York Bantam. 1980. Smiley, Jane. A Thousand Acres. sassy York Fawcett Columbine. 1991. Toole, John Kennedy. A Confederacy of Dunces. New York Grove Weidenfeld. 1980.