Lear IV and V

Here is a link to the PBS "Great Performances" page, where you can watch the play, watch an interview with Ian McKellen (recommended), and explore other Lear-related material.

1. King Lear can be called a play of extremes. Suffering and cruelty are on every page, but so are examples of self-sacrifice and loyalty. At the macro level, the play reaches into the heavens and considers grand, sweeping themes (look at 1.2 lines 98-108, 4.1 lines 36-7, 4.3 lines 31-4, etc.), but on the micro level, the play manages to demonstrate intimate details of human emotion and experience. In your view, how do these elements work together to inform each other? It's a pretty big job to marry the universe and the individual human soul. How does Shakespeare pull it off? Use examples.

2. In every other version of the King Lear story, Lear and Cordelia are restored to power and happiness. These stories all fulfill what Samuel Johnson called "the natural ideas of justice and the hope of the readers." Shakespeare is alone in not fulfilling this desire in us. I should also point out that in these other versions, Lear does not go mad, there is no Fool, and the parallel Gloucester plot does not exist. In other words, Shakespeare's play is much more complex and, ultimately, quite a different story altogether. How would the play be different if it had a happy ending? Could it have a happy ending and still be great?

3. Do you think there is any forgiveness and reconciliation between Cordelia and Lear? Or is (part of) the tragedy of the play the fact that no reconciliation is made? Their reunion is brief, and the next time Lear sees her, she is dead. Examine their reunion at the end of Act IV and decide whether this scene is at all hopeful, or if it reinforces the tragedy.

4. This question is a bit open, but what, ultimately, is King Lear about for you? Or rather, when you think of the play in the future, what will you think of? What will stay with you as the "meaning" of the play?