Critical Opinions
Auden: Lear is more tragic because he wills his suffering, while Gloucester is more pathetic because he avoids it.
Adelman: Lear deliberately puts himself in a position of infantile need, relying on Cordelia’s ‘kind nursery’.
Barish & Waingrow: Kent = touchstone for service / transcended his status in the act of upholding it.
Barish & Waingrow: Failure to serve is closely linked with failure to rule.
Bogdanov: Words have a numerical value.
Burns: Goneril and Regan are not simply demonic opposites of their saintly younger sister / they are formidable, not evil.
Donnelly: With no male character does Lear have a positive relationship. His relationship with his daughters is one of
latent incestuous orientation.
Foakes: Kent is a model of loyalty.
Foakes: Saying what one feels may be just as damaging as what one ought to say.
Foakes: It is unsparing in its depiction of human cruelty and misery, but also rich in its portrayals of goodness, devotion,
loyalty and self-sacrifice.
Fraser: Cordelia is a deeply disquieting figure.
Holland: The court performance on Dec 26 underlined Shakespeare’s contributions to the Lear story. It offered a
memento mori to monarchy itself.
Knight: Lear’ purgatory is a purgatory of the mind.
Larkin: It is beautiful, but very painful.
Maclean: Kent = confidant and voice of reason, Oswald’s antithesis, timeless virtues
McLuskie: An anti-feminine play…the feminine must either be made to submit or be destroyed.
Orwell: ‘King Lear’ contains a great deal of veiled social criticism, but it is all uttered by the Fool and Edgar. In his sane
moments Lear hardly utters an intelligent remark.
Ribner: ‘King Lear’ is an affirmation of justice in the world, of a harmonious system ruled by a God who in his ultimate
purposes is benevolent.
Roche: ‘King Lear’ is a Christian play that depicts the plight of man before the Christian era.
Salgado: Lear at the beginning of the play is a King, a father, a master, and a man. As the action develops, the first three
roles are stripped from him and he is forced to consider what the last of them means.
Auden: Lear is more tragic because he wills his suffering, while Gloucester is more pathetic because he avoids it.
Adelman: Lear deliberately puts himself in a position of infantile need, relying on Cordelia’s ‘kind nursery’.
Barish & Waingrow: Kent = touchstone for service / transcended his status in the act of upholding it.
Barish & Waingrow: Failure to serve is closely linked with failure to rule.
Bogdanov: Words have a numerical value.
Burns: Goneril and Regan are not simply demonic opposites of their saintly younger sister / they are formidable, not evil.
Donnelly: With no male character does Lear have a positive relationship. His relationship with his daughters is one of
latent incestuous orientation.
Foakes: Kent is a model of loyalty.
Foakes: Saying what one feels may be just as damaging as what one ought to say.
Foakes: It is unsparing in its depiction of human cruelty and misery, but also rich in its portrayals of goodness, devotion,
loyalty and self-sacrifice.
Fraser: Cordelia is a deeply disquieting figure.
Holland: The court performance on Dec 26 underlined Shakespeare’s contributions to the Lear story. It offered a
memento mori to monarchy itself.
Knight: Lear’ purgatory is a purgatory of the mind.
Larkin: It is beautiful, but very painful.
Maclean: Kent = confidant and voice of reason, Oswald’s antithesis, timeless virtues
McLuskie: An anti-feminine play…the feminine must either be made to submit or be destroyed.
Orwell: ‘King Lear’ contains a great deal of veiled social criticism, but it is all uttered by the Fool and Edgar. In his sane
moments Lear hardly utters an intelligent remark.
Ribner: ‘King Lear’ is an affirmation of justice in the world, of a harmonious system ruled by a God who in his ultimate
purposes is benevolent.
Roche: ‘King Lear’ is a Christian play that depicts the plight of man before the Christian era.
Salgado: Lear at the beginning of the play is a King, a father, a master, and a man. As the action develops, the first three
roles are stripped from him and he is forced to consider what the last of them means.
