King Lear Reader's Response

The content explored within William Shakespeare's play King Lear is riveting at the very least, and retrospectively an inherent influence on most (if not, all) modern dramatic story-lines that I have minded. One needn't even consider the time-period in which Shakespeare created the entanglement of moods and matters found within his characters to appreciate the clarity of each one's personality, even in just reading the lines of his work as a story-book (though the consideration of such makes it all the more astounding). As the Elizabethan dialect used in all of Shakespeare's works can often be misunderstood to someone who is not familiar with this form of the English language, making sense of the deeper significance within certain characters' lines was often very challenging. Exhaustive critical assessment of King Lear yields many displays of symbolism and imagery behind several of the lines throughout, but even considering the content at a relative face-value demonstrates the complexity of the characters' thoughts and feelings. Every character seems to play an important role in adding to a collective group of emotions, each one's actions based off of their own and influencing the other(s); a domino effect. In particular, Lear's character is easily the most influenced by the emotions and actions of those surrounding him. This influence can be attributed by his position throughout the plot: being someone who is elderly, Lear could have more of a “fragile” mind; because of his surrender of kingship and its results, he understandably develops feelings of isolation and of being forsaken, although this is not entirely rightfully so. Interestingly, Lear's descent into madness is partly a product of his own stubborn nature and misinterpretation of his circumstances, as even those who express their honest intentions out of concern are rejected by him. Aside from being hung up on some vocabulary in Shakespeare's writing, I really enjoyed King Lear, particularly Lear's