Shakespeare's Presentation Of Death In King Lear

his daughter, Gonerill and Regan, progressively strip him of his power, represented by Shakespeare with the decreasing of his knights Lear begins with “his hundred knights,” Regan cuts it down to “fifty,” and then to “five and twenty” and Gonerill strips the power away further suggesting “ten? Or five?” until Regan completely tears away any power Lear had by asking him “what need one?” This digression of knights shows that if he no longer has them he will lose his control over everything, a complete reversal of his fortune. Through the loss of his knights, Lear also suffers in realising that his two eldest daughters do not care for him, leaving his heart broken “into a hundred thousand flaws” and he rages out into the storm. The loss of his …show more content…
Shakespeare presents the deaths of both Gloucester and Lear in two entirely different lights. The Earl of Gloucester death is not shown on the stage and is revealed to the audience when Edgar announces that he was “too weak the conflict to support,” Shakespeare presented the death in a way that makes the importance of the dialogue not on the actual death but more so on the revenge of Edgar, the death is typically presented in a far more dramatic way for a tragic figure in greek tragedies. Contrastingly, Shakespeare gives King Lear a death dramatically fitting for a tragic figure. His death is presented on the stage and is also the ending of the story, making it seemingly far more important. Lear enters like the Virgin Mary with his dead daughter in his arms and even gets to end his journey with one final dramatic speech asking“why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou not breath at all?” The death is shown to have far more immediate impact on the characters as well with Kent saying “I have a journey, sir, shortly to go. My master calls me; I must not say no,” implying that Kent is going to end his life now that the King has passed. When it comes to having an impactful death Lear has Gloucester beat. Lear's death is not just more impactful and dramatic than Gloucester’s but also more tragic. Gloucester dies with a “flawed heart [that] burst smilingly,” Shakespeare shows that …show more content…
In some senses Gloucester suffering compared to the flaws that bring about it make him
Equally, if not more, of a tragic figure than his King. However, in the end Lear fits the model of the Greek tragic figure far better than his Earl, Lear and his story is the focus of the play, he is a King with ‘God-like’ authority and through suffering and death has a far greater impact on his nation than Gloucester ever would. The story of Gloucester is meant to ‘humanise’ the King and in doing so Shakespeare pulls him further away from being regarded as a tragic figure, and so that is why I believe, overall, Gloucester is less of a tragic figure than his