English 201-1
Paper 2: King
Lear and The Tempest
Due March 15
The second paper
requires a comparative approach. All of
the topics except the first require you to talk about both plays. When you talk about both plays in a
comparative way, the topic itself becomes especially important. Most of the topics below specify the
subjects you should write about, but the last three suggest you compare characters
from the two plays. These are, in a
sense, harder papers to write because you have to analyze the characters in
order to discover the significant issues that connect them. In none of the paper topics will a summary
or simple character description result in a good paper.
1. Close Reading.
Analyze a passage of about 25 lines from either play. The passage may be a soliloquy or a dialogue
between several characters, but it should be from one scene, and it should be a
passage you find significant. The
purpose of the analysis is to say as much as you possibly can about what the
passage means, about what it shows about the character who speaks it and the
context in which it is spoken and about why you find it significant. Do not mere summarize or paraphrase the
passage.
2. Ideas of Monarchy. Lear
sought to “retire” from being king; Prospero lost his position as Duke. What do these plays imply about the nature
of power and authority and about their loss?
When Lear describes himself to Gloucester as “every inch a king.” what
does he mean? Do Lear and Prospero
forfeit their rights to their political position? Indeed, can they forfeit them?
What is the meaning of kingship (or a dukedom) in these plays?
3. Parents and Children. “He
childed as I fathered,” Edgar says of Lear (and Gloucester). Beyond the simple truths that we know–that
parents are supposed to care for their children and that children are supposed
to return that care–what are the essential elements of the parent-child
relationship that come into play in Lear and Tempest? Is there a sense of family resemblance among
parents and children in the plays? What
are the relationships among the family as love, the family as authority, and
the family as inheritance?
4. Generations.
Beyond the simple questions of parents and children lies the larger
question of the relationship of generations.
Does the older generation pass down wisdom to the young, or does the
younger generation merely reject the outworn pieties of the old? Can the young lead active and independent
lives before the old step aside and let them?
“The oldest hath borne most,” Edgar observes at the end of Lear. “We that are young / Shall never see so
much, nor live so long.” Discuss the
plays in terms of the passing (of status, knowledge, and authority) from one
generation to another.
5. Doubling Characters. One
noticeable feature of both plays is the presence of characters who are quite
similar to each other. In Tempest,
for example, both the Duke of Milan and the King of Naples (themselves
comparable characters) have quite nice children but not-so-nice brothers. In Lear it seems reasonable to ask
why Lear had to deal with two bad daughters (as if one were not enough), and
the plot of Lear and his daughters parallels the plot of Gloucester and his
sons. What are the functions of this
pattern of doubling?
6. Faithful and Faithless Servants.
Both plays contain some servants (or subjects) who are faithful to their
masters and some who betray them in one way or another. Analyze several of these faithful and
faithless servants, in both plays. What
leads them to behave the way they do?
What are the values that lead some to be faithful? What are the considerations that lead others
to be faithless? How is the
characteristic of faithfulness connected to other issues of the plays?
7. Lies and Disguises. Both
good and bad characters in both plays tell lies and disguise themselves. (In Lear, for example, Edmund’s lies
force Edgar to disguise himself; in Tempest Ariel is a master of
disguise at the command of Prospero, who is himself a master of deceit.) Discuss the relation of lies to truth and of
disguise to identity in both plays.
(You may want to focus on several characters who seem to you to
exemplify the issues.)
8. Varieties of Evil. If
you look at the evil characters in both plays, can you distinguish among the
various kinds of evil behavior that Shakespeare portrays? For example, Caliban, we learn in Act 1 of Tempest,
had tried to rape Miranda, but none of the other characters of either play, no
matter how bad, raped or attempted to rape another character. What does this suggest about the nature of
Caliban’s evil (if we want to see him as evil)? Can you make similar distinctions about other characters? Are there particular kinds of action that set
them apart as evildoers? What does this
range of evil behaviors suggest about Shakespeare’s view of evil?
9. Magic and Madness. In Tempest
we see Prospero’s magic causing a variety of characters to misperceive the
nature of reality itself. In Lear
we find various forms of madness–the real (if temporary) madness of Lear, the
false madness of Edgar, the strange consciousness of the Fool. What magic and madness seem to have in
common is their distortion or falsification of reality. Why is this unreality an important element
in both plays? What can characters with
altered consciousness see that others cannot?
10. Lear and Prospero. Lear
and Prospero seem similar as former rulers and as fathers. Compare the two. What makes Prospero successful where Lear (at least apparently)
is not? What seem to be the most
important similarities of the two, and what do their similarities and
differences suggest about the central ideas of the plays? Why is Lear tragic and Prospero comic?
11. Cordelia and
Miranda. Cordelia and Miranda are the good daughters
of the plays in which they appear. What
is the nature of their goodness, and how does it differ in the two characters? Are they simple characters, or do they have
some depth and complexity? Do they
change or develop in the course of the plays, and if so, how? Compare their characters and their functions
in the two plays.
12. Edgar and Ferdinand.
Similarly, both Edgar and Ferdinand are good sons in their plays, and
one can ask similar questions about them: what is the nature of their goodness,
what are their similarities and differences, are they simple or complex, do
they change? By the end of each play,
the “good son” seems ready to enter into a position of authority and
inheritance. How has the action of the
play prepared them for this role?