King Lear, by William Shakespeare: My experience of reading Shakespeare

Résumé du document

Reading in Original version a Shakespeare play was in my mind a kind of challenge. I read quite a few of Shakespeare's plays in the past, but they were translated in French. I had heard so much about Shakespeare's wonderful style, the beautiful English language he used that I wanted to read it. I chose King Lear because I did not want to discover in English a play I had already read, and also because I was told that King Lear might be the most "powerful", the darkest but also the one in which the human behaviors were depicted in the most astonishing way. I wanted to discover in which way King Lear was this exceptional. I chose to read an original version of the text and I was quite surprise, I did not find it so difficult to read, to adapt to the syntax; actually, English syntax from the 17th century seems to me not so different from nowadays' one as expected; once you have assimilated some words and found their modern equivalent (above all the "-th-" words and the past tense), it is quite easy to understand the way the sentence is built.

Extraits

[...] I believe that this disastrous Act V is one of the most tragic endings in literature. The chaos is everywhere. The Chaos is certainly the most striking theme of the play, and Shakespeare gives its cause : the lack of authority : it is because the King is not strong enough to do what he has to do that the stable world is slowly becoming destroyed, not only in the question of political power, but also in family relationships or love. [...]

[...] The psychological deepness of Shakespeare's characters and the cruel irreversibility of the choices made are really exceptional. Lear, the King, is the suffering character of the play but he is more than that: he is a symbol for the status of old people in the society, the madness of old age and the manner how children and parents treat each other. The scene during the tempest in the night speaks for his madness, his impotence and his destitution. The tragedy begins with Lear's fatal misjudgment about his daughters, misjudgment becoming disastrous because of his madness and his fit of anger, but also because of the behavior of the two ambitious daughters, who understand the foolishness of their father and despised him once he gives up his royal powers. [...]

[...] There is another plot, involving Earl Gloucester and his two sons, Edgar, legitimate son, and Edmund, illegitimate son. Edmund, despised by his father, concocts false stories about his legitimate half-brother, pretending that he wants to murder his father and Edgar is forced into exile, affecting lunacy. These two plots are linked because Edmund engages in liaison with Regan and Goneril and because he denounces the loyalty of his father to Lear. Gloucester is blinded by Regan's husband (who is killed in return by one of Gloucester's servants), but is saved by Edgar, his legitimate son. [...]

[...] King Lear, by William Shakespeare: My experience of reading Shakespeare Why did I choose to read King Lear? Reading in Original version a Shakespeare play was in my mind a kind of challenge. I read quite a few of Shakespeare's plays in the past, but they were translated in French. I had heard so much about Shakespeare's wonderful style, the beautiful English language he used that I wanted to read it. I chose King Lear because I did not want to discover in English a play I had already read, and also because I was told that King Lear might be the most “powerful”, the darkest but also the one in which the human behaviors were depicted in the most astonishing way. [...]

[...] Shakespeare's English writing seems to bring life to the words, creating a kind of symphony accompanying the words, a symphony changing with each character, and that turns more and more dark as the tragedy of the play appears. The poetic quality of his play blend with the incredible picture of the human behavior. In spite of the difficulty to understand some parts of the play, I am happy to have overcome it and to have managed to catch the pleasure of reading Shakespeare in his own words. King Lear, a kind of magic A legend, a genius, a controversy King Lear was written in 1605 and is now considered as one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. [...]