Dec 23, 2009

King Lear | Textual and Contextual Analysis of the Opening Scene in Shakespeare's King Lear

In this essay, R. Moore examines in-depth the opening scene of King Lear, one which has been the subject of extensive literary interpretation and critical debate.

Since the early seventeenth century, the opening scene of King Lear has been the subject of extensive literary interpretation and the object of intense critical debate. This is, of course, the scene in Lear in which the aged monarch's youngest daughter, Cordelia, refuses to follow her older siblings' suit by professing an unbounded love to Lear, and as such, it is both the wellspring of the plot and the herald of its thematic contents. As William Martin (1987) has recently stated, critical opinion remains sharply divided on the salient matter of whether Shakespeare's...