The Rise of Evil in King Lear Essay -- King Lear essays

King Lear The Rise of Evil King Lear, the principal mention in Shakespeares play of the same name, is a dominating compulsive king. Though he takes initiative to disinherit his youngest daughter and exile his cheeseparing friend, there is not in him the capacity for conscious and intentioned evil that is prevalent in his two elder daughters as well as in Cornwall, Edmund and Oswald. Nevertheless, there is a force in Lear that releases a movement of demolition in which evil does rise and momentarily take hold on the course of events. When Lear decides to renounce power in favor of emotions, the vital self-conceit in him which thrives on power rises up and asserts itself against the movement. It is the drive for power, attention, recognition, vengeance the vesture of assertion, anger, rage the traits of pride and vanity that take hold of him and initiate a downward movement of destruction in opposition to the upward movement of the heart. The course of events that follows is an inevitable working out of these opposing movements. The vital self-confidence in Lear is a dominating force which permits the existence and expression merely of itself and its own will. Whatever submits and satisfies survives, the rest must vanish unnoticed or remain unexpressed. Such an atmosphere is stifling to the natural growth of other(a) personalities which require freedom for self-expression in order that they may outgrow what is earthy and childish in favour of what is mature and cultured. These psychological circumstances intimately inevitably result in suppression and repression rather than growth. Instead of beingness expressed and out-grown the capacities for selfishness, cruelty and perversity in man get arrange beneath the sur... ...ing. The evil in Goneril is organised in a positive mind, it is more self-conscious and more absolute. The undeveloped vibration of evil in Regan attracts a mate who can bring out its further using while the mature evil in Go neril attracts a mate to unload it. Life supports every vibration until it reaches its full stature and then provides the necessity circumstances for its destruction or transformation. Bibliography Casebook King Lear, Edited by Frank Kermode, Macmillan & Co., 1969 Shakespearean Tragedy, A.C. Bradley, Macmillan & Co., 1965, Prefaces to Shakespeare Vol. II, Granville-Barker, B.T. Batsford Ltd., London, 1963 Shakespearean Tragedy, A.C. Bradley, Macmillan & Co., 1965 Casebook King Lear, Edited by Frank Kermode, Macmillan & Co., 1969, p. 175. Shakespearean Tragedy, A.C. Bradley, Macmillan & Co., 1965, p. 231.