"There is a cliff whose head is high and curvedSay no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned " ? Get original essay It looks frightening in the confined depths. Take me but to the edge... From this place I will need no direction. "(IV.i.73) He is often It's hard to get into a work of such complete and dazzling genius as King Lear - reading Shakespeare can sometimes feel like trying to take a long look at the sun on a cloudless day. And yet, there are moments when we come across passages which, by the force of their lyrical and poetic beauty, spring from the pages and resonate so strongly in the mind that they become a sort of distillation of the whole piece. One can read this play again and again, and still be struck by Shakespeare's total mastery of language; there is surely no other writer who has had such a complete sense of the power of words and who has used the power of words for such ruthless purposes. In a genre that denies the novelist the luxury of narrative explanation, language in its simplest and purest form becomes Shakespeare's instrument of precision, and he uses it with a perpetually astonishing combination of force, subtlety and accuracy. their immediate textual environment forms for this reader the kind of distilled illumination suggested in the preceding paragraph. These are the words of Gloucester, blind and stumbling, as he begs a passing stranger (who, unknown to him, is the son he so late recognizes as faithful), to help him in his own death; by the end of the play, this passage becomes a central paradigm. Despite the obstacle mentioned above (an obstacle the overcoming of which provides so much pleasure and insight) to the reader's dealings with Shakespeare, one can often recognize and trace the logical devices he employed. in order to communicate its message more effectively and more precisely. The parallel plot of Gloucester and his two sons is one such device. This is a simplified, politicized, but explicitly corresponding interpretation of Lear's more spiritually fundamental story; by placing the two lines of the story, Gloucester's and Lear's, in such close juxtaposition, Shakespeare prepares the reader for a more immediate and complete understanding of the latter, while imparting to any moral drawn from the play the non-specificity necessary for the story. universal human relevance of truly great literary works. Having recognized this, the reader is free to enter into the heart of this transcendent tragedy. We discover Gloucester and its parallel plot before discovering Lear. In the first act, first scene, we find Gloucester professing the equal love he has for his two sons, one legitimate, the other "caught between illegal sheets." The moral code that informs King Lear dictates that illegitimacy, the “natural” son who is anything but, portends nothing other than harming the harmony of the intrinsic order; in the terms of the play, Gloucester's "even love" is a fatal lapse in judgment. The reader, by paying close attention to the language, is able to perceive Gloucester's unintentional error from Edmund's very first appearance; in a world where each character's individual vocabulary is a loaded expression of their position on the axis of good and evil, the reader cannot help but notice that "...I will study meritoriously... " (Ii30) by Edmunds is a presentiment of the duplicity and greed that will stain him throughout the play. Lear's introduction to the play is similar to that of Gloucester in that, through close analysis of the dialoguebetween the king and his daughters, the reader gains a terrible knowledge of unintentional arrogance and benevolence. an ignorance that will soon become his downfall (and ultimately his perverse, bittersweet salvation). From his first words, Lear settles into all his childish fateful pomposity. The drama of his first speech is excessive in every way – here, the reader discerns, is a man long accustomed to being listened to and indulged in every way. In a moral system transcribed from that of the ancients, this self-importance is Lear's impious pride, his pride before the fall. (The reader would, however, like to modify this "pride"; Lear's pride strangely does not seem to come from himself, but rather seems to be imposed on him by the behavior of those around him; he is in a sense the victim of 'years of blind and empty effort As Goneril and then Regan first make their declarations of love, the reader cringes at Lear's forgetfulness in the face of their blatant falsity. words cannot tell..." (Ii55) by Goneril, the reader wishes she could point out to Lear that if even this, his very first piece of dialogue, were true, then there could not be six lines of the the most hollow flattery; and there is a strange coldness in Regan's sentence "... In my true heart, I find that it names my act of love; only it is too short..." (Ii70) , when the reader glimpses the depth of these sisters' love, the evil is such that they will even get excited and try to surpass each other in the effort to achieve their sordid goals. Cordelia's textual introduction, especially in light of that of her older sisters, is equally ominous for the reader. To us, her relative reticence signifies the purity and honesty she embodies; that Lear interprets his humble responses as stubborn pride is his greatest transgression against truth and, by association, against nature. This moment is the first and foremost tragedy of the play: the reader realizes that the king is so conditioned by years of noisy sycophancy that he is completely immune to the quieter, truer tones of honest filial love . Its very identity is completely linked to "...all the great effects which gather together in majesty..." (Ii131); Part of the cutting irony of this play's title comes from the fact that Lear's fatal error is to identify himself as much by "King" as by "Lear." When he is suddenly stripped of the outward manifestations of his sovereignty by his monstrous daughters, the ground collapses beneath him; devoid of any sense of self, he descends into the “madness” that will ultimately be his redemption. turning to Gloucester for a more rational and complete understanding of its function in the play. While Lear is stripped of everything that represents his self-worth and identity, Gloucester is deprived of his sight. Having realized his grave error in judgment regarding his two sons, he wanders blind, paralyzed by miserable guilt and regret for his faithful son, hoping only for death. Without knowing it, he meets Edgar who, (like Cordelia, his counterpart in the main plot), remains steadfast in his adherence to love and filial duty, despite his unjustified and violent disavowal. In an act that resonates at the very heart of the play, Edgar tricks his father into believing that he has been brought to the edge of the "...cliff, whose high and leaning head looks fearful in the confined depths.. ." (IV.i.72) -- youth cheats old age in order to truly lead, away from self-murder and the "confined depths" of suffering and despair. Gloucester's stumbling passage across the moor is literal - Lear's is figurative. Devoid of the attributes of his majesty, he ».