King Lear Appearance And Reality

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Discuss the importance of appearance and reality in King Lear. The battle between appearance and reality runs throughout the play of King Lear. Lear’s ignorance and lack of interest of reality, and the obsession of his appearance, lead him to his downfall as it causes him to put all of his power in the hands of the two daughters that do not care about him. August Wilhelm Schlegal claimed that appearance and ‘humanity is stripped of all external and internal advantages and given up prey to naked helplessness’, in order for lear to come to terms with humanity and its reality. Lear is not necessarily blind to reality, the fact is that he just chooses to ignore it. The usual interpretation is that he is just simply blind to reality, however, this is not completely true. This is shown by the clear fact that he is closer to Cordelia than his daughters, and therefore that in turn loves her more, demonstrated by the fact that he ‘thought to set [his] on her kind nursery’, the noun ‘nursery’ implying the natural care shown between him and his daughter, this is supported by the adjective ‘kind’. Lear would not plan to stay with Cordelia if he was blind to the fact that she loved him, thus proving that he chooses to ignore reality. S.L Goldberg argues however that ‘ it is not so much about what Lear comes to see as it is about what he can acknowledge’, implying that he doesn’t choose to ignore it, but that he can’t understand it. Jackson claims that King Lear has ‘not a desire to learn the truth but a desire to hear what he wants to hear.’ This can be shown by the ‘love test’ that Lear hosts between his three daughters. He already knows how they feel for him and has already ‘divided in three our kingdom’, he merely wants to boost his ego and appearance by making his daughters publicly announce that they love him so others can hear. It is also very clear that the way Lear

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