Careful crafting of language leads to the successful communication of ideas.

Authors must make their texts interesting to captivate their audience and the way they expertly utilise aspects of the English language is essential in achieving this. Through the particular arrangement and selection of their words and sentences, authors can have a clear commanding voice which allows people to understand important ideas. In the tragic play ‘King Lear’, William Shakespeare crafts each line of dialogue with care and purpose. Each passage is carefully crafted by Shakespeare to engage his large audience with the ideas and messages presented in ‘Lear’. The play centres around the negative consequences faced by King Lear following the gifting of his kingdom to his two evil daughters. Lear loses his power, status, identity and sanity in his journey from a well-respected king to a homeless peasant. I believe that Shakespeare’s use of sight as a motif, the shift from verse to prose and the reoccurring animal imagery is used to successfully communicate the ideas: ‘appearance versus reality’, ‘human nature’ and ‘justice’.

Sight is one of the five senses and is essential to allowing humans to perceive the world around them. In ‘Lear’, Shakespeare utilises this human ability to communicate the idea of ‘appearance vs reality’ by using sight as a motif to represent the ability to see the truth. In the opening of ‘Lear’, the sight motif is used multiple times to communicate how blind or ignorant Lear is whilst making the foolish to banish Cordelia and Kent. Afterwards, Kent states “See better, Lear, and let me still remain / The true blank of thine eye”. Lear is very ignorant and blind to the grave mistake he is making and Kent advises him to be more aware of reality (Cordelia truly loves him despite not speaking) as opposed to judging on the surface level (Regan and Goneril’s flattery). Just like how the white centre of one’s eye allows someone to see clearly, Kent acts as a potential guide to allow Lear to see the reality of the situation. However, Lear remains blind because of his hubris and is unable to distinguish between appearance and reality through listening to Kent. It is only until Lear experiences peripeteia and begins to take less value in materialistic possessions (crowns and clothing) and false flattery that he begins to see beyond what things appear to be. Lear understands the value of love, human connection and compassion in the world. After reuniting with an eyeless Gloucester, he states “…Your eyes are in / a heavy case, your purse in a light; yet you see how this world goes.” After Gloucester has his eyes gouged, he is stripped of his pride and dignity and only after losing his sight, he is able to see the truth or reality of how the world goes. Lear understands this after experiencing a similar downfall and this further establishes the idea that when our purses are empty and we no longer judge by appearance, we are more likely to understand the harsh realities of the world. By using the sight motif, Shakespeare teaches us that when we distinguish between appearance and reality, we realise that people are cruel, injustice is common and status and materialistic possessions are ultimately worthless.

Shakespeare’s careful crafting of the structure of each line within a passage communicates the idea of ‘human nature’ and its limits. Sanity is something valued by many because of how terrifying the idea of becoming mad is presented by society. Lear experiences ‘madness’ as a result of his descent from power and high status and his limits are pushed to the edge. In act one, Lear is perfectly sane and is able to speak quite eloquently while announcing that he will pass his power down to his daughters. Lear states “which of you shall we say doth love us most? / That we our largest bounty may extent” in verse meaning that it demonstrates that iambic pentameter is being followed (stressed syllable, unstressed syllable then stressed again). Shakespeare uses verse to highlight that Shakespeare still has a high status and is at the height of fortune. However, this position drastically changes as the play progresses. Lear is continuously rejected by his daughters and is stripped of everything he had in act one. This pushes him past his limit and he is driven to madness. When sheltering in a hovel with his fellow companions, Shakespeare clearly communicates that Lear has reached rock bottom. Lear states in prose “Arraign her first; ’tis Goneril. I here take my oath/ before this honourable assembly…” before the ‘mock’ trial commences. In this scene, Lear shifts between verse and prose and through this inconsistency Shakespeare communicates that Lear has gone insane. He hallucinates Goneril and believes that he will receive ‘justice’ for how his daughters treated him by arranging a fake trial. This large contrast in Lear’s situation and mental state is highlighted by Shakespeare to communicate that we all can be forced into insanity if the right buttons are pushed. Our mental states as humans are fragile and easily damaged and he teaches us that even the most powerful and wealthy people have the same mental limits as any common human. Just look at Mary Tudor or Vlad the Impaler, both of these rulers are famous for losing the plot and murdering others in insane manners. Shakespeare shatters this false perception that only the poor and uneducated are madmen and enforces that no human is safe from being driven over the edge.

The great chain of being was an Elizabethan view of the world’s order which sees god and king among the highest status and animals and plants at the opposite end. Lear experiences peripeteia and drastically falls down this ‘great chain’s order’ as the play progresses. Lear’s drastic transition from ‘king status’ to ‘animal status’ is communicated by Shakespeare through the use of animal imagery. Through this, Shakespeare highlights the idea of justice. Early in the play, Lear states “O Regan, she hath tied / Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture, here”. Shakespeare compares Regan to a vicious vulture who has tied Lear down and brutally torn his heart apart like prey. This animal imagery is used to show that Lear is on the lower end of animal status in the ‘great chain’ because he is now dominated by a ‘carnivorous predator’ and has his heart torn out. Lear is an old, fragile and helpless man whose heart is torn apart by his own daughter after she strips him of his power and cast him away. This communicates the idea of justice because Lear loved and nurtured Regan to become the strong and powerful woman she has become and is treated so brutally by her in return. Through carefully crafting the animal imagery which illustrates Lear’s daughters as vicious predators, the audience is inclined to detest them and sympathise with Lear. Later in the play, Lear states in prose that “unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, / forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings!” before stripping his clothes. This clearly indicates that Lear has transitioned from commoner to animal status in the ‘great chain’. Lear strips off his clothes to become the naked and homeless beast that he perceives himself to be. Through this drastic downfall from his status as king in act one, Shakespeare communicates to the audience that Lear has suffered more than he deserves, further developing this strong sense of injustice. From Kent and Gloucester’s treatment towards Lear, we understand that he was once a well-respected, genuinely good king who inspired loyalty in others. This causes us to realise the imbalance in the world. Relatively good people like Lear and his companions all suffer and never recieve justice against those who’ve wronged them. On the other hand, evil people like Regan, for the most part, end up getting away with causing this injustice. It is the same in our society, where good innocent people achieve great things but suffer at the hands of corrupt – typically ‘upper class’ – people. Shakespeare therefore comments on a major issue of human societies, the constant cycle of injustice which continues to roll over the innocent from his time to ours.

To conclude, I strongly believe that Shakespeare has carefully and deliberately crafted the language within ‘King Lear’ to communicate three key ideas. He uses the sight motif, the change from verse to prose and animal imagery to communicate the ideas ‘appearance vs reality’, ‘the limits of human nature’ and ‘justice’. Through Lear’s journey, we broaden our understanding of the world and how dangerous the imperfections of our human nature can become. Shakespeare wishes to educate his audience, so we can better ourselves by reflecting on how these ideas are upheld in our lives. Through commenting on this persistent nature of our race, Shakespeare and his texts have transcended time and will continue to be relevant for generations to come.

• side note I typed out like two paragraphs then the blog failed to update and reset so I had to retype it again. May not be the best.