Auden once asserted that Shakespearean tragedy is necessarily parabolic, relating to the only myth that Christianity possesses: that of the "unrepentant thief." We, the spectators, are thus involved in the action since each of us “risks reliving [this story] in our own way”1. The hero's sufferings could be our own sufferings, whereas in Greek tragedy a notion is excluded precisely because a character's misfortunes can be attributed to the displeasure of the gods. Hippolyte is not a moral agent; Hamlet is. The aesthetic of Shakespearean tragedy is therefore dynamic, with an audience that, to some extent, is also a participant. Auden proposes a model of observation based on an Aristotelian conception of drama, which involves the spectator in an emotional relationship with the characters on stage. King Lear also offers the audience several very distinct paradigms of observation and action, and above all, it is on the varying success of these models that the tragedy depends. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay You don't have to look far in King Lear to find a figure that might fit Auden's mold. Kent surely embodies what Schlegel calls the "science of compassion" in the play.2 He is publicly denigrated and humiliated by Lear in Act I, scene 1, and yet, in the guise of Caius, he risks his life to serve his king again. Kent observes Lear's “hideous rashness” (Ii153) and is motivated to participate in his master's suffering: I have a journey, sir, to make soon; my master calls me; I don't have to say no. (V.iii.323-324) The simple rhyme, metrical balance, and monosyllabic simplicity of this couplet imbue the lines with a feeling of tenderness. Kent's elegiac final words are, like all of his words, free of hyperbole and emotionally raw. Throughout the play, his response to the action parallels that of the audience. Kent is the audience's spokesperson when he implores Lear to “see better” (Ii159), and his dismay at Cordelia's death: “Is this the promised end? (V.iii.264), says it all. However, this should not hide the fact that Kent as a character is ineffective. His last words do not embody an attempt at resolution or rectification, they are truly fatalistic. Kent is therefore the Aristotelian observer. He only participates in the action out of "pity" for Lear, and the result is that he shares his master's fate. His observations lead him to move the events, and just like Dr. Johnson, who found King Lear "too horrible to endure," he "sees with emotion."3 But King Lear is a play of antitheses, and we could find a second opposite model. of observation in the character of Edgar. In Act III, disguised as Poor Tom, he is confronted by his aberrant and rain-beaten godfather, and although he fears that his distress will betray his "counterfeit" (III.vi.59-60), he keep your cool. Likewise, in the next act, faced with the even more gruesome image of the blinded Gloucester, Edgar refrains from revealing his identity. Physically he's a chameleon, but emotionally he's steadfast: GLOUCESTER Do you know the way to Dover? EDGARB Both stile and gate, bridleway and pedestrian path. (IV.i.56-57) Edgar's matter-of-fact response contains six nouns in just nine words and it could hardly be further from Lear's visceral pronouncements on the heath. His reaction to his father here is indicative of his detached response to suffering in general. Edgar is able to observe without being emotionally involved in the situation. Heis the Brechtian spectator, the one who “instead of sharing an experience, attacks things”. Brecht's dramaturgy affirmed the belief that observation from a distance "awakens the capacity for action", and Shakespeare seems to offer something remarkably similar through Edgar.5 Unlike Kent, who wallows in his own misery, Edgar is brought to become aware of what he witnesses and is thus propelled into action. He is King Lear's primary redemptive force, as he frees his father from suicidal despair and defeats the inverted bastard hegemony of his brother Edmund. Through Edgar, the playwright encourages the audience to step back from the tragedy, to observe rather than feel and to "see better", so that they too are forced to ask themselves: "The man is that what it is? (III.iv.106). However, in the character of the Fool there remains another observer in King Lear. Its role is essentially that of a choir, and it is therefore immutable. Just as the multitude of Corinthian women are unable to respond to the cries of Jason's children when their mother kills them in Medea, so the Fool cannot, by definition, intervene in Lear's fate.6 Nevertheless, he is a considerably revised of this phenomenon. a classic device, to the extent that its function is not at all explanatory, as is the case with Euripides' Chorus, or even that of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. His words are, almost without exception, barbed: FOOL, give me an egg, uncle, and I'll give you two crowns. LEARWhat crowns will they be?FOOL Why, after cutting the egg in the middle and eating the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When you cut your crown in the middle and left the two parts, you placed your donkey on your back, above the earth. (I.iv.161-168) Coleridge spoke of the character's “inspired idiocy” and we can understand what he meant here7. The Fool plays with images of inversion and nothingness. The crown, a symbol of harmony, power and wealth, is reduced to a broken, hollow and worthless egg and, in turn, Lear's title is little more than a shell. The image of the "two crowns", a veiled prophecy of civil war, heightens the political implications of Lear's actions in the opening scene. Likewise, the absurd image of the man carrying a donkey mocks Lear as an idiot (note the parallel with Ovid's Midas), and yet, rooted in the role reversal is the notion of 'an inverted hierarchy: girls are mothers; kings are toddlers; the bastards are oligarchs. The language of the Fool is supremely economical, anti-poetic, but also fruitful. He evokes motifs that, on the one hand, are sardonic quips and, on the other, elucidate many of the play's pervasive themes. Although he is unable to act, his observations have a forensic precision intended to compel others, Lear in particular, to do what he cannot. In this sense, the Fool's words are active: they bring both the protagonist and, as Kiernan Ryan notes, the audience to a state of realization.8For Lear, this realization comes at the end of Act III , in the words: “Don’t make a noise, don’t make a noise.” ; draw the curtains; so, so, so. We will go to dinner tomorrow morning. So, then, then. (III.vi.83-85) Lear's unnecessary use of epizeuxis here seems a parody of rhetoric. He understands the destructive nature of the "casual and oily art" (Ii226) of words, hence his call for "no noise", and, importantly, he also shows that he is aware of his own hamartia – the backwards comment on supper in the morning. recognizes the inverted order that his actions helped shape. The function of the Fool is thus fulfilled, and after a finalhalf line: “And I will go to bed at noon” (III.vi.86), he disappears immediately. Lear, however, is changed by the epiphany, and this scene marks a period of transition for his character, from a blind spectator to an active observer, and in Act IV he becomes the Fool of Gloucester. break it; Arm him with rags, a pygmy's straw pierces him. (IV.vi.169-170) The king, as Edgar knows, speaks of “Reason in Madness” (IV.vi.179). Lear presents justice as socially protean. The rich and powerful, like Goneril and Regan, transcend the applicability of law and morality, an idea that is visually manifested on stage in the deluded figure of Gloucester. Nevertheless, for all of Lear's lucid observations, he remains essentially passive. Bradley defined him as "a hero who acts more than he acts" and, in this respect, he is almost unique among Shakespeare's tragic protagonists. Only Othello resembles Lear in his passivity, controlled by the main actor Iago. But even he is an agent of action and it is Othello, not Iago, who stifles Desdemona. Lear, however, only actively participates in his own story until the first scene and therefore cannot be considered a true model of action. So, if the eponymous hero is not such a model, who is in King Lear? Certainly not Cordelia. Auden notes that dramatically she is "boring" and that her character only appears in four of the play's twenty-six scenes and is given fewer than ninety lines out of three thousand three hundred.10 Cordelia and her “heavenly eyes” (IV .iii.31) fails to fulfill the redemptive role assigned to it by Kent and the Gentleman. Gloucester, parallel to Lear, is also inactive, while Burgundy is effectively a “milk-livered man” (IV.ii.50). There then remains a triumvirate, namely Goneril, Regan and Edmond, who can be considered as agents of action. When we consider the most striking images of King Lear Kent being pilloried, Lear on the heath, Gloucester blinded, and Cordelia's death, all are instigated by these three characters, either separately or in collusion. Regan's imperious and shocking and remorseless comment that Gloucester should "feel / Her way to Dover" (III.vii.94-95) encapsulates the relentless and emphatic way in which she and her sister act and speak throughout the piece. Yet as role models, they are undermined by their dependence on each other and by their self-destructive passion for Edmund. He alone is a truly effective paradigm of action: You, nature, are my goddess; to your lawMy services are linked. Therefore I should find myself in the scourge of custom, and allow the curiosity of nations to deprive me, (I.ii.1-5). Edmond's words are resoundingly forceful in both their content and tone, as well as their emphasis on dental plosives in words such as "art", "stand", "permit" and “curiosity,” implies that the speech can be spat out rather than spoken. Edmund's focus is firmly on himself and his language is unequivocally subversive: custom and law are a "scourge" and he must form a morality based on his own nature to succeed. He is the existentialist anti-hero who roams freely through the room, dependent on no one and reveling in the role of lover, without ever truly loving. His self-mutilation in Act II, scene 1, shows that he is as brilliant an improviser as he is a planner: Fly, brother. Torches, torches! So farewell, blood spilled on me would give rise to an opinion (he wounds his arm) on my most ferocious effort. (II.i.34-36) Edmund is the ultimate opportunist, constantly aware of what is happening around him. His brother, Edgar, procrastinates, but.181