The originality of the work "King Lear" by W. Shakespeare. Tragedy "King Lear". What is the tragedy of Lear? Why King Lear Relinquished Power

None of Shakespeare's tragedy has such a cosmic scale as "King Lear". Otherworldly forces also appear in Hamlet, but there they form the background for the main thing - the emotional drama experienced by the hero. In King Lear, the tragedy of the hero is also at the center, but here, to a greater extent than in Hamlet, all the elements of nature participate in the fate of the destitute monarch. And here “there the hero is on the verge when his consciousness is threatened. But Hamlet, no matter how great his grief, is still kept within the boundaries of reason. The old king loses his mind for a while. However, his madness is not just mental confusion. It is the mad Lear who understands all the bitterness of life more than it was available to him when he was at the zenith of power and might. ( This material will help to write competently on the topic of the play King Lear. The summary does not make it possible to understand the whole meaning of the work, therefore this material will be useful for a deep understanding of the work of writers and poets, as well as their novels, short stories, stories, plays, poems.) As in Hamlet, the tragedy of King Lear consists in comprehending the evil that reigns in life. And here and there in the center - conflicts within the family. Let us add, the royal family, on which the fate of the entire state and people depend. In "Hamlet" the people themselves make known their discontent, easily revolting against the king. Here the people are resigned, but their plight is understood by the king, who has become equal in poverty with the poorest of his subjects.

None of Shakespeare's plays reveals with such clarity the difference between the "theatrical" Shakespeare and the "bookish" Shakespeare. At the beginning of the 19th century, the romantic critic Charles Lam declared that the theater was not at all capable of conveying the cosmic grandiosity of King Lear, and he was supported by none other than Goethe.

L. N. Tolstoy in his article “On Shakespeare and Drama” noted a number of absurdities in the tragedy. So already the first scene - the division of the kingdom and the questions of Lear, who demanded recognition from his daughters, how much they love him, caused fair bewilderment: did the king, who had lived in the world for eighty years and watched his daughters from their birth, did not know how they relate to him and needed their verbal reassurance? How could he, wise in life, fail to notice what every spectator can see, namely, that Goneril and Regan are lying? And how could he doubt Cordelia's love for him?

The second scene, introducing the family of the Earl of Gloucester, is full of similar oddities. Is Gloucester really so blind as to understand the character of his sons as badly as Lear - in the character of his daughters? How could he fall for Edmund's simple forgery - to believe a letter supposedly written by Edgar? And it's already completely ridiculous that a brother writes a letter to his brother, although they live in the same castle!

Later, however, there are fewer such incidents in the play, but it is enough that the plot of the tragedy is completely implausible.

The whole point is precisely that the "theatrical" Shakespeare does not always stand the test when his text is read slowly with pauses that leave time to comprehend what has been read. Shakespeare wrote for the theatre, counting on the stage effect, and in this business he was a great master. Sitting over the book and reading the text, one might think that Shakespeare showed an elementary ineptitude that any of our modern playwrights will avoid. But the theater and the arts in general, in Shakespeare's time, did not yet require such careful motivation as is now considered necessary in drama.

Anyone who has seen "King Lear" on stage knows that the tragedy begins with astonishing swiftness. Spectators barely have time to get acquainted with the situation, as two conflicts arise one after another - in the royal family and in the family of a freeman close to him. Further, it is no longer important how and where it all began. Lear, who gave the crown and lands to bad daughters, is expelled by both and finds himself deprived of a home. Saving his life, the slandered Edgar flees from under his father's roof, and then the cruel Edmund betrays his father to the king's enemies in order to seize his title and property.

Already at the very beginning, Gloucester very clearly expresses what the main trouble of the burden is: “Love is cooling, friendship is weakening, fratricidal strife is everywhere. There are riots in the cities, in the villages of discord, in the palaces of treason, and the family bond between parents and children is crumbling, Or it is a case, as with me, when a son rebels against his father. Or like a king. This is another example. Here the father goes against his own offspring. Our best time is past. Bitterness, betrayal, disastrous disorders will accompany us to the grave” (1,2).

Here, with the utmost clarity, the moral and social essence of the tragedy is defined - the collapse of all "natural", as it was then believed, ties. Of these, the family, clan connection was indeed such, but the vassal relations of feudal society were also considered natural: the subordination of peasants to knights and landlords, knights to barons and princes, and these latter to the king. On the lips of Gloucester there is a confession that the whole system of the feudal system has been shaken. Thus, a tragedy depicting two family conflicts turns out to be the tragedy of a whole dying social order.

The peculiarity of Shakespeare as an artist is funny in that, depicting great social conflicts, he is not limited to showing the general situation, but reveals historical processes in close connection with the fate of individual people, each of which is depicted with great truthfulness of life and almost always with psychological depth. Personal motives for the behavior of the characters are clearly identified by Shakespeare, although not every character is presented with exhaustive depth. In this tragedy, the spiritual drama of Lear is most fully revealed, while the experiences of other Characters are outlined, so to speak, with a dotted line. And least of all we know what goes on in the depths of the heart of the most attractive of the characters - Cordelia. But the fact that her spiritual world is almost hidden from us corresponds to the character of the girl who did not want to explain her unexpected answer to the king. Cordelia tends to express herself not so much in words as in deeds. However, the verbosity of her sisters also does not open their souls, but for a different reason: they are hypocrites and deceivers.

Lear becomes especially eloquent when he is subjected to insults and humiliation. About the most important thing - about the reason that prompted him to give up the crown and divide the kingdom, he is silent, limiting himself to the statement that he will now reveal his plan, unknown to anyone until now. What is his essence, he does not say.

Shakespeare used for his tragedy a plot of great antiquity, dating back to the most distant times of mankind. If we talk about the monuments of writing, then one of them - a book that Shakespeare read and reread endlessly - "Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland" by Raphael Holinshed (1577) attributed the unfortunate fate of the ancient British king Leir to the times preceding the birth of Christ. It has been retold many times and already before Shakespeare it was reworked into a play by an unknown playwright. The fate of the old king, who gave the kingdom to the evil daughters who drove him away, was so well known to the audience of the Shakespearean theater that it was necessary not to explain the plot. Shakespeare did just that, but if you think about the tragedy, you can understand what prompted Lear to commit an unreasonable act.

One of the best explanations was proposed by N. A. Dobrolyubov, who. wrote: “Lear has a really strong nature, and general servility to him only develops her in a one-sided way - not for great deeds of love and common good, but only for the satisfaction of her own, personal whims. This is perfectly understandable in a person who is accustomed to consider himself the source of all joy and sorrow, the beginning and end of all life in his kingdom. Here, with the external scope of actions, with the ease of fulfilling all desires, there is nothing to express his spiritual strength. But now his self-adoration goes beyond all limits of common sense: he transfers directly to his personality all that brilliance, all the respect that he enjoyed for his dignity, he decides to throw off power, confident that even after that people will not stop trembling before him. . This insane conviction makes him give his kingdom to his daughters and through that, from his barbaric senseless position, go into the simple title of an ordinary person to experience all the sorrows associated with human life.

This motive is indeed present in the tragedy: it shows a man who, possessing the highest power, loses power and finds himself in the position of the most disadvantaged people, and then he is aware of the injustice of the rulers, the terrifying plight of the people. Shakespeare expressed this side of the tragedy in the old king's monologue about "homeless, naked unfortunates", like him, suffering from bad weather.

The revolutionary democrat Dobrolyubov felt the social motives of the tragedy especially acutely, and there are many of them in this work. The most powerful in this respect is the scene of the meeting between the mad Lear and the blinded Gloucester (IV, 6). The former king, who knows the mechanics of power well, caustically describes what the court is like: the poor are always to blame for him, and the rich, for all their vices and crimes, go unpunished. How much sarcasm in Lear's advice to the blind Gloucester:

Buy yourself glass eyes

And pretend like a scoundrel politician

What you see is what you don't see. (IV, 6)

Indignation at inequality and social injustice permeates the entire tragedy and often resounds in the satirical poems and songs of the jester King Lear.

The social meaning of the tragedy is also found in something else. It sharply contrasts with each other those who are true to the age-old notions of the subordination of the younger to the elders, the subjects to the king, those for whom the old order is the most reasonable and just, and those who rebel against this system of life. Edmund expresses this denial of the old way of life most clearly. He has a personal reason for this: he is an illegitimate son of Gloucester and therefore not entitled to the inheritance that belongs to his brother Edgar, who was born in a legitimate marriage. At his first appearance on stage, Edmund speaks with deep conviction about the injustice of the law, which deprives him of the blessings of life.

He rejects the "curse of prejudice" and intends to achieve what the law has deprived him of. For this, he resorts to forgery and slander - he accuses his brother of planning to kill his father, and then he himself betrays his father, that is, he does exactly what he blamed his brother for. By doing so, he achieves that he becomes the Earl of Gloucester.

Edmund is a new type of person. He recognizes only himself, his desires, and for their sake he is ready to walk over the corpses of those who stand in his way to wealth and power. So are Lear's elder daughters, Goneril and Regan, and also Regan's husband, the Duke of Cornwall. Oswald stands out among the servants, a faithful servant, ready to fulfill any order of the masters, if only to earn their favor.

In contrast, Cordelia, Kent, Gloucester, the jester believe in the sanctity of family ties and in the subject's duty to the monarch. (Gloucester was angry with his son because he believed that he was plotting to kill his father.) Their moral virtues are shown in relation to the king. Cordelia and Kent retain their love and devotion to Lear, despite his injustice towards them.

At first glance, the division of characters into groups has a clear social and moral explanation. Lear's adherents, and even himself, can be considered simply supporters of the old feudal-patriarchal way of life; as for Edmund, Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall, they are clearly characterized by bourgeois incividuism, which was born just in that era. In fact, the social basis of tragedy is much more complex.

Edmund is different from other heroes, because he does not belong to the recognized members of the ruling feudal class. As a bastard, he is deprived of the privileges that his father and brother have. But he is full of a proud opinion of his human virtues, considers himself no worse, if not better, than others, and intends to fight to take a worthy place in society. He lives and acts in the conditions of a feudal-estate system, but by character and mores he is already an individualist of a bourgeois warehouse.

If Edmund's consciousness of his dignity takes on a purely egoistic character and for him there are only his personal interests, then Cordelia's self-esteem is free from selfishness. No matter how much she loves her father, she does not want to participate in the ridiculous and humiliating game he started when dividing the kingdom. This is the deep meaning of her behavior, which so surprises Lear, who, as Dobrolyubov accurately noted, in his self-adoration goes beyond common sense. He does not see other independent people. It seems to him that everyone should live only in his interests. Everyone exists only as his subjects and servants. This is readily agreed by the eldest daughters, who are waiting for the hour when the real power will pass to them. But Cordelia, Kent, and even the jester, loving Lear, do not give up themselves, their dignity. They speak the truth to the face of the king. This aroused Lear's anger, he did not heed Kent's attempt to reason with him. The only one who has always been allowed to say whatever he thinks is the jester. Such has long been the privilege of these jokers and wits in the courts of kings and high nobility. The jester is used by his right to express his opinion in an evil and mocking form about the stupid behavior of the king, who decided to divide the kingdom.

King Lear depicts a society that still lives according to feudal laws and customs, but at the same time, almost all the characters, to varying degrees and in various forms, have already awakened self-awareness of the individual and a sense of dignity. Historically, this was due to the beginning of capitalist development, accompanied by the emergence of bourgeois individualism. In that transitional era, little appeared in its pure form. Old and new intertwined. It is in this complex unity that Shakespeare draws his time. In his tragedy, he reveals not the sociology of the process of the emergence of new forms of society, but the shifts that take place in the minds of people under the influence of changing living conditions. The whole setting of the tragedy is still quite feudal, some particulars even indicate that the history of Lear dates back to pre-Christian times, and yet the characters think and feel like people of the Shakespearean era, already marked by significant elements of the bourgeois way of life. The disintegration of family ties, the awareness of each one as a separate person, having the right to his own opinion and to independent decisions on life issues, constitute the true basis of this society; although people in it are still divided. according to the old class signs, they live and act in a new way, more independently.

Shakespeare brings before us two types of self-consciousness of a person: one leads to Egoism, self-interest, cruelty (Edmund and others like him); the other is imbued with the spirit of true humanity, mercy, a disinterested desire to help the offended, suffering and destitute (Cordelia, Kent, partly Gloucester).

To which of these two camps does Lear belong?

At first, Lear clearly behaves like a person who places an excessively high value on his personality and at the same time despises the dignity and will of others. Misfortune makes him understand not so much the unreasonableness of his behavior during the division of the kingdom - the sighted Lear no longer needs either power or pomp - but the injustice that he committed. Gloucester, indeed, as a result of the misfortune that happened to him, realized that he had committed stupidity in trusting Edmund's slander. He made a mistake as a father. Lear was wrong both as a father and as a king.

Lear was also illuminated by the idea of ​​a free human being. This is the deepest meaning of his refusal of power, lands and the throne. He so believed in his human significance that he wanted to fully enjoy the consciousness of it. Then the thought ripened in his mind that he could abandon the external attributes of power, but at the same time retain the respect and love of all who bowed to him, flattering his personal virtues. . He has to make sure that those who most owe him their prosperity and power are the first to renounce him. And vice versa, those who had every reason to become hardened against him follow him, rush to help and do not reproach him with previous injustices.

The tragedy of Lear is not only a drama of ingratitude, although this theme is embodied with great expressiveness in the images of Goneril and Regan, it is also the tragedy of a person who realizes that she has no value in a society where the value of a person is determined by his social position, measure of power and wealth.

Another character will experience a similar drama. This is the slandered son of Gloucester, Edgar. The high position of his father opened up all the possibilities for him, and he imagined himself. He was, by his own admission, “proud and anemone. He fell asleep with thoughts of pleasures and woke up to deliver them to himself. He was deceitful at heart, light-hearted, cruel at hand, lazy like a pig, cunning like a fox, insatiable like a wolf, mad like a dog, greedy like a lion ”(III, 4) Even if Edgar exaggerates or erects on himself in slander, he gives a verbal portrait of any aristocratic secular idler. The play does not confirm how Edgar really was subject to the vices for which he blames himself. But that, being expelled from this society, he reveals responsiveness and kindness, dares to fight for justice, this can be seen with all clarity.

A question of great moral and philosophical significance runs through the whole tragedy: what does a person need for happiness?

Lear was at first firmly convinced that happiness lies in power, forcing everyone to bow before the one who has omnipotence. An external sign of this power was a large number of people who served Lear. Leaving the throne, he leaves a retinue of a hundred knights. At that time it was a whole army. When his daughters demand that he reduce his retinue, for Lear this turns out to be more than a detriment to his prestige, for he believes that he still remains king: “King, and to the end of his nails - king!” (IV, 6), he sees in this a belittling of his human dignity, for, without separating one from the other - the king and the man, he believes that the pedestal of his personal greatness is the number of close associates.

Because of this, Lear gets into an argument with Regan and raises the issue to a great philosophical height; When Regan declares that Lear doesn't need a single servant, he objects to her: “Don't refer to what is needed. The poor and those in need have something in abundance.” Lear expresses a profound truth:

Reduce to the needs of all life,

And man is equal to the animal. (II, 4)

And this is true, but with one significant amendment. Here Lear still defends purely external attributes. He still has to go through the most difficult trials, and then he will draw a completely opposite conclusion. During a storm, at night, in the steppe, Lear meets Edgar pretending to be insane, who appears almost naked in miserable rags. Looking at him, Lear wonders: “Is this, in fact, a man? .. Everything is on him, nothing is alien. No silk from a silkworm, no cowhide, no sheep's wool, no fragrant stream from a musky cat. We are all fake, but he is real. An unadorned man is precisely this poor, naked two-legged animal, and nothing more. Down, down with everything superfluous from yourself! (III, 4).

We should not be embarrassed that this speech is delivered by a mad Lear. It was in this state that he attained the highest understanding. Not without reason, listening to his speeches, Edgar exclaims: “What a mixture! Nonsense and meaning are all together” (IV, 6).

Lear, who could not imagine himself without a retinue of a hundred knights, now understands that not only this poor man, but he himself is nothing more than a naked two-legged creature. He no longer needs not only a detachment of escorts, even clothes seem superfluous to him - and until recently he defended "excess", everything that adorns life.

The next step in Lear's self-knowledge is a meeting with Cordelia. Her mercy, her forgiveness, her love - that's what finally heals - Lyra. When he and Cordelia are taken into custody and taken to prison, Lear readily goes there. The highest happiness is the love of one human being for another, conquering everything - resentment, fear, danger. He already sees his idyllic stay in prison with Cordelia, when they will "live, rejoice, sing songs" together (V, 3). There they will hide from general corruption, from the filth that fills life, especially the so-called higher circles:

There we will learn from the prisoners

About the news of the court and interpret,

Who took, who did not, who is in power, who is in disgrace ... (V, 3)

Now Lear understands the futility of these interests, it is clear to him that court vanity has nothing to do with real life, it is superficial, hiding from a person the true meaning of being and his own purpose. With a newfound understanding of the meaning of life, Lear triumphantly declares:

We will survive in a stone prison

All false teachings, all the greats of the world,

All change them, ebb and flow of them. (V, 3)

But Lear thinks in vain that in this world one can break away from him. And he and Cordelia are too much of a danger to those who have seized power. And Edmund, who has far-reaching plans - he already has little county, the crown looms in the distance, which he will share with one of Lear's eldest daughters - orders the death of the old king and Cordelia.

So it turns out that just when Lear comprehended the meaning of life - in friendship, love, mercy, mutual assistance - he is overtaken by the predatory bloody hand of the world of evil, self-interest and violence. Cordelia, a living and beautiful embodiment of all the best that can be in life, dies. This Lear cannot bear. He went through a lot, his trials were difficult, but nothing more terrible than the death of Cordelia can be imagined. Her death for him is the most terrible of all the catastrophes he has experienced. He is ready to die himself, but she must live; her death is the biggest injustice in the world.

"King Lear" is a tragic story of general discord. There is no peace in any of the families represented in the tragedy. Relations in Lear's family are torn: he himself exiles his daughter, Goneril and Regan betray him; moreover, both sisters do not love their husbands, and each hopes to unite with Edmund. The same discord is in the Gloucester family. The father casts out one son, and another betrays him; at the end of the tragedy, the sister poisons the sister, the brother kills the brother. True, in two cases the family principle is revived: Cordelia comes to the aid of her father, Edgar accompanies the blind Gloucester. But the restoration of family ties proves temporary: Gloucester dies, Cordelia is killed, and Lear does not survive her. The finale of the tragedy is as terrible and bloody as in Hamlet - the whole royal family dies out. The disaster is universal: everyone in the country suffers - from the king to the poor. General discord occurs not only in the earthly world. The universe is shaking.

Shakespeare, like his contemporaries, believed in the universal connection of things. Earthly life in his plays is always somehow connected with the life of all nature. Not without reason, when Gloucester speaks of the disruption of all connections, he begins with the fact that recently there have been solar and lunar eclipses (I, 2), in which he sees a harbinger of storms on earth.

When trouble befalls Lear and the old king is driven out by his daughters, nature responds with a storm. Every discord in heaven is reverberated in human life; misfortunes among men cause a shock to all nature. This is how it happens all the time in Shakespeare's tragedies.

There was a lot of naivete in such a view of the relationship between nature and society, but it was very poetic. The mighty cosmic poetry of Shakespeare's great tragedy is conditioned precisely by this view of the world.

"Kroll Lear" is a multi-faceted canvas, even by Shakespearean standards, which is distinguished by exceptional complexity and large-scale intensity of feelings and passions.

In King Lear, Shakespeare attempts to solve problems that were already raised in Timon of Athens. These problems include, first of all, the problem of the ethical plan - ingratitude towards a person who has lost power over people for one reason or another, and the problem of the social plan - the selfish aspirations of people as secret or obvious driving forces of actions, the ultimate goal of which is material prosperity. and satisfaction of ambitious plans. But the solution to these problems in the play is proposed in a form that allows us to say that Shakespeare the artist, creating a tragedy about the legendary British ruler, entered into a consistent and sharp polemic with Shakespeare, the author of Timon of Athens.

In search of a plot for a new tragedy, Shakespeare turned to Holinshed, whose chronicle contained a brief account of the fate of the ancient British ruler Leir. However, now the very approach of Shakespeare to the source turned out to be different in comparison with that which was characteristic of the first period of his work. In the 90s of the 16th century, Shakespeare chose in Holinshed's book such episodes from Russian history that, distinguished by their inherent drama, made it possible to create a play full of stage tension, while only minimally deviating from the presentation of reliably known facts. Now he was interested in a plot from a legendary story, which would give more freedom in the dramatic treatment of this episode.

The passage from Holinshed was not the only source for Shakespeare's work on King Lear. Through the efforts of Shakespeare scholars, it has been proved with a sufficient degree of persuasiveness that the text of "Lear" contains elements that testify to the playwright's acquaintance with a number of other works, the authors of which turned to the history of the ancient British king. In addition, individual plot and lexical details of Shakespeare's play allow us to assert that in the course of working on the tragedy, the playwright also used the works of his predecessors and contemporaries, which were not connected in plot with the legend of Lear. Professor Muir's research led him to the conclusion that King Lear reflects Shakespeare's familiarity with almost a dozen works, the main of which, in addition to Holinshed, was an anonymous play about King Leir, The Mirror of the Rulers, Spencer's The Fairy Queen, Arcadia Sidney, and published in 1603 by Samuel Harsnett, A Declaration of Egregious Papist Frauds. In these books, Shakespeare found both a description of the events that formed the basis of both plot lines of the tragedy, and rich material that entered the figurative system of the play. All this does not detract from the originality of the tragedy.

The play can also be called modern, because it was related to the reality by the fact that in London society the problem of ungrateful children in relation to their parents was very widely discussed.

One such high-profile case was the case of Sir William Allen dating back to 1588-1589: it turned out that this eminent merchant, who played an important role in the company of merchant adventurers, the former Lord Mayor of London, was, in fact, robbed by his children. Commenting on this case, C. Sisson notes: “We can reasonably assume that Shakespeare knew the story of Sir William and his daughters, since he was undoubtedly in London at the time when the whole city was talking about this story.” And, if the story was loud, it could leak out of London and become news for the whole country.

A similar trial took place at the beginning of the 17th century. Pointing to this lawsuit as a possible impetus that prompted Shakespeare to begin work on the tragedy of King Lear, Professor Muir writes: As Shakespeare began his play, it was stated that he was unable to independently dispose of his property. Two of his daughters tried to declare him insane in order to take possession of his property; however, the youngest daughter, whose name was Cordell, filed a complaint with Cecil, and when Annesley died, the court of the Lord Chancellor approved his will.

K. Muir, analyzing the coincidences between the story of Anesli and the content of Shakespeare's tragedy, very carefully comments on this fact: "It would still be dangerous to admit that this topical story became the source of the play." Such caution is understandable and fully justified. The story of a private individual, in whose relationship the Chancellor had to intervene with his daughters, contained clearly not enough material for a work to emerge from it, which is one of the world's peaks of philosophical tragedy.

But, at the same time, one should not neglect such an insightful observation of Professor C. Sisson, who drew attention to the following pattern: “There is something more than a coincidence,” writes Sisson, “that the story of Lear first appeared on the London stage shortly after the great excitement aroused in London by the story of Sir William Allen. The court of the Lord Chancellor dealt with his case for a long time - in 1588-1589, and the premiere of the play "The True History of King Leir", on which Shakespeare's great tragedy is to some extent based, took place, apparently, a year later. It should be added to Sisson's observation that in 1605, that is, shortly after the Annesley trial, this play was again entered into the register, published and staged. And the following year, the London public got acquainted with Shakespeare's tragedy.

Obviously, these chronological coincidences are based on a very complex chain of circumstances. The history of Lear and his ungrateful daughters was known to the English even before Holinshed. There is no doubt that the story of the legendary king of Britain is not so much based on historical events as it is a folklore story about grateful and ungrateful children transferred to the genre of historical legend; the happy ending, preserved in all pre-Shakespearean adaptations of this legend, the image of triumphant kindness, which wins the fight against evil, especially clearly betrays its connection with the folklore tradition.

The artistic excellence of King Lear has found its highest appreciation in the work of Professor Muir, who states: “I believe that no more expressive example of Shakespeare's skill as a playwright could be given. He combined a dramatic chronicle, two poems and a pastoral novel in such a way that there is no sense of incompatibility; and this is a magnificent skill even for Shakespeare. And the resulting play absorbed ideas and expressions from his own earlier writings, from Montaigne and from Samuel Harsnett."

But such a high appreciation of the artistic genius and perfection of "King Lear" is not shared by all scientists. In the works of many Shakespeare scholars, the opinion is expressed that "King Lear" is marked by features of compositional looseness and is full of internal contradictions and inconsistencies. Researchers who adhere to this point of view often try to attribute the appearance of such contradictions, at least in part, to the fact that, in search of material for his tragedy, Shakespeare turned to works belonging to the most diverse literary genres and often interpreting similar events in different ways. Even Bradley, questioning the quality of the dramatic texture of King Lear, wrote: “Reading King Lear, I have a double impression ... King Lear seems to me Shakespeare’s greatest achievement, but it seems to me not his best play” 8. In confirmation In his thought, Bradley gives a lengthy list of passages that, in his opinion, are "incredibles, inconsistencies, words and deeds that raise questions that can only be answered by conjecture", and supposedly prove that "in King Lear, Shakespeare is less than usual , cared about the dramatic qualities of the tragedy.

In modern Shakespeare studies, even more far-reaching attempts are sometimes made to explain the compositional originality of King Lear - attempts that, in essence, generally take this tragedy beyond the framework of realistic Renaissance dramaturgy and, moreover, bring it closer to the common genres of medieval literature. So, for example, M. Mack does this in his work, stating: “A play becomes understandable and significant if it is considered, taking into account literary types that are actually related to it, such as chivalric romance, morality and vision, and not psychological or realistic drama with which it has very little in common.

Researchers who criticize the imperfection of the composition of King Lear, by and large, reserve only a small right to question the regularity and sequence of only some episodes of the tragedy. Such ups and downs may include the circumstances of the death of Lear and Cordelia, which in turn casts doubt on the regularity of the finale as a whole. It is significant that the same Bradley mentions precisely the circumstances under which the death of the heroes occurs as one of the compositional shortcomings of King Lear: “But this catastrophe, unlike catastrophes in all other mature tragedies, does not at all seem inevitable. She's not even convincingly motivated. In reality, it is like a thunderbolt in the sky, cleared up after a storm has passed. And although from a broader point of view one can fully recognize the significance of such an effect and one can even reject with horror the desire for a “happy End”, this wider point of view, I am ready to say, is neither dramatic nor tragic in the strict sense of the word.

There is nothing to prove that Bradley's position objectively leads to the rehabilitation of the well-known vivisection performed on the text of "King Lear" by the 17th-century poet laureate Nahum Tate, who, to please the tastes prevailing in his time, composed his own happy ending to the tragedy, where Cordelia marries Edgar .

The composition of King Lear undoubtedly differs in a number of ways from the construction of other mature Shakespearean tragedies. However, the text of "King Lear" does not give any good reason to see inconsistency or illogicality in the composition of this play. "King Lear", unlike "Timon of Athens", is a work whose completeness cannot be doubted. It was written after "Othello" - a play that, according to many researchers, including Bradley, is distinguished by a remarkable mastery of composition; after "King Lear" was created "Macbeth" - a tragedy, strictly ordered in terms of composition and therefore earned Goethe's review as "Shakespeare's best theatrical play." And we hardly have the right to assume that at the time of the creation of King Lear, Shakespeare, for incomprehensible reasons, lost his wonderful mastery of dramatic technique.

Scholars who see the compositional features of King Lear as the result of miscalculations or carelessness of Shakespeare the playwright are simply unable to reconcile these features with the rationalistic schemes that dominate their aesthetic thinking. In fact, the specific characteristics of the play about King Lear should be considered as a set of artistic devices deliberately used by Shakespeare to influence the audience as intensely as possible.

The most significant compositional element that distinguishes "King Lear" from the rest of Shakespeare's tragedies is the presence in this play of a thoroughly developed parallel storyline depicting the story of Gloucester and his sons. Both the set of problems that arise when describing the fate of Gloucester, and the dramaturgical material of the parallel storyline itself is a very close analogy of the main storyline depicting the story of the King of Britain. Since the time of Schlegel, it has been noted that such a repetition performs an important ideological function, aggravating the feeling of the universality of the tragedy that befell King Lear. In addition, the parallel storyline allowed Shakespeare to deepen the distinction between the opposing camps and show that the source of evil is not only the impulsive impulses of individual actors, but also a thoughtful and consistent philosophy of selfishness.

Another compositional element, which plays a much greater role in King Lear than in the rest of Shakespeare's tragedies, is the close family connection between the main characters. Five of them are directly or indirectly related to Lear, two to Gloucester. If we also take into account that as the finale approaches, the prospect of connecting the clan of Gloucester and the clan of Lear becomes more and more real - in other words, the prospect of uniting the nine main characters by family ties is created - it is clear what a huge burden the depiction of consanguinity bears in this play. relations. They increased the degree of sympathy for the hero and the sharpness of the indignation generated by the spectacle of ingratitude of "relatives".

Of course, these remarks do not exhaust the question of the specifics of the composition of King Lear. Therefore, in the course of further analysis of the place occupied by "King Lear" among other tragedies of Shakespeare, we will have to repeatedly, in one form or another, turn to the question of the compositional features of the play.

In Shakespearean studies, it has been repeatedly and quite rightly noted that the dominant place in King Lear is occupied by the picture of the clash of two camps, sharply opposed to each other, primarily in terms of morality. Given the complexity of the relationship between the individual characters that make up each of the camps, the rapid evolution of some characters and the development of each of the camps as a whole, these groups of actors entering into an irreconcilable conflict can only be given a conventional name. If we take the central plot episode of the tragedy as the basis for the classification of these camps, we will have the right to talk about the collision of the camp of Lear and the camp of Regan - Goneril; if we characterize these camps according to the characters that most fully express the ideas that guide the representatives of each of them, it would be most correct to call them the camps of Cordelia and Edmund. But, perhaps, the most arbitrary division of the characters in the play into the camp of good and the camp of evil will be the most fair. The true meaning of this convention can be revealed only at the end of the whole study, when it becomes clear that Shakespeare, creating King Lear, did not think in abstract moral categories, but imagined the conflict between good and evil in all its historical concreteness.

The key problem of the whole tragedy lies precisely in the evolution of the camps that came into conflict with each other. Only with a correct interpretation of this evolution can one understand the ideological and artistic richness of the play, and, consequently, the worldview with which it is imbued. Therefore, the solution of the problem of the internal development of each of the camps should, in essence, be subordinated to the entire study of the conflict and the development of individual images.

There are three main stages in the evolution of the camps. The starting stage is the first scene of the tragedy. Based on this scene, it is still very difficult to imagine how the forces that are destined to become camps opposing each other in an irreconcilable conflict will be consolidated and polarized. From the material of the first scene, it can only be established that Cordelia and Kent are guided by the principle of truthfulness and honesty; on the other hand, the viewer has the right to suspect that the unbridled eloquence of Goneril and Regan is fraught with hypocrisy and pretense. But in order to predict in which of the camps the rest of the characters will later find themselves - such as, for example, Cornwall and Albany, and in the first place, Lear himself - the scene does not give precise indications.

The second stage covers the longest part of the tragedy; it begins with scene 2 of act 1 and lasts until the last scene of act 4, when the audience witnesses the final union of Lear and Cordelia. By the end of this period, there is essentially no character left who is not involved in any of the opposing factions; the principles that guide each of the camps become absolutely clear, and the patterns inherent in these camps begin to manifest themselves more and more tangibly.

Finally, in the fifth act of the tragedy, when the characterization of the camps has reached its final clarity, a decisive clash of opposing groupings takes place - a clash prepared by the entire previous dynamics of the development of each of the camps. Thus, the study of this dynamic is a necessary prerequisite for a correct interpretation of the finale of the tragedy of King Lear.

The camp of evil is consolidating most intensively. The unification of all its main representatives takes place, in essence, already in the 1st scene of Act II, when Cornwall, approving Edmund's "valor and obedience", makes him his first vassal. From this moment on, the evil camp seizes the initiative for a long time, while the good camp is still in the process of formation for a long time.

Each of the characters that make up the camp of evil remains a vividly individualized artistic image; this way of characterization gives the depiction of evil a special realistic persuasiveness. But despite this, in the behavior of individual actors, one can distinguish features that are indicative of the entire grouping of characters as a whole.

In this regard, the image of Oswald is of undoubted interest. The butler of Goneril throughout almost the entire play is deprived of the opportunity to act on his own initiative and only willingly carries out the orders of his masters. At this time, his behavior is distinguished by duplicity and arrogance, hypocrisy and deceit, which are a means to make a career for this dressed up and pomaded courtier. Straightforward Kent gives an exhaustive description of this character, who acts as his complete antipode: "... I would like to be a pimp out of obsequiousness, but in fact - a mixture of a swindler, a coward, a beggar and a pimp, the son and heir of a yard bitch" When, just before death Oswald for the first time has the opportunity to act on his own initiative, his characterization reveals a hitherto unknown combination of traits. We are referring to his behavior in the scene of the meeting with the blind Gloucester, where Oswald, driven by the desire to receive the rich reward promised for the earl's head, wants to kill the defenseless old man. As a result, it turns out that the image of Oswald - however, in a crushed form - combines deceit, hypocrisy, arrogance, self-interest and cruelty, that is, all the features that, to one degree or another, determine the face of each of the characters that make up the camp of evil.

The opposite technique is used by Shakespeare when depicting Cornwall. In this image, the playwright highlights the only leading character trait - the unbridled cruelty of the duke, who is ready to betray any of his opponents to the most painful execution. However, the role of Cornwall, like the role of Oswald, does not have a self-contained value and, in essence, performs a service function. The hideous, sadistic cruelty of Cornwall is not of interest in itself, but only as a way for Shakespeare to show that Regan, whose gentle nature Lear speaks of, is no less cruel than her husband. Therefore, compositional devices are quite natural and explainable, with the help of which Shakespeare eliminates Cornwall and Oswald from the stage long before the finale, leaving only the main carriers of evil - Goneril, Regan and Edmund - on the stage at the time of the decisive clash between the camps.

The starting point in the characterization of Regan and Goneril is the theme of ingratitude of children towards their fathers. The foregoing characterization of some of the events typical of London life in the early seventeenth century should have shown that cases of deviation from the old ethical norms, according to which the respectful gratitude of children towards their parents was a matter of course, became so frequent that the relationship of parents and heirs turned into a serious problem that worried the most diverse circles of the then English public.

In the course of revealing the theme of ingratitude, the main aspects of the moral character of Goneril and Regan are revealed - their cruelty, hypocrisy and deceit, covering up selfish aspirations that guide all the actions of these characters.

The methods chosen by Shakespeare to characterize Regan and Goneril are distinguished by a very remarkable originality. After Tamora from Titus Andronicus, the evil sisters of Cordelia are the first detailed female images of negative characters. But if the queen of the Goths was a true fiend in which revenge and cruelty were brought to superhuman proportions, then Goneril and Regan are women characterized by Shakespeare in a very restrained realistic manner. Assessing the impression made by the images of Goneril and Regan on the audience, D. Danby reasonably remarked: “However, they are not monsters. There is no melodrama in their portrayal. On the contrary, Shakespeare makes an effort to make them just normal people. They are normal in the sense that they do what we, unfortunately, expect people to do. They are normal in the sense that their behavior has gradually become the standard of behavior. But in reality Shakespeare goes beyond that. Goneril and Regan are remarkable not only for their normality. They are also remarkable for their respectability.”

As a rule, the negative characters of mature Shakespearean tragedies, always endowed with hypocrisy and duplicity, become frank only in monologues that cannot be heard by other characters; the rest of the time, such characters demonstrate an excellent ability to hide their true plans. But Regan and Goneril are never alone with the audience; therefore, they are forced to speak only in hints or brief remarks "aside" about the selfish intentions that guide their actions. These hints, however, become more and more transparent as the final approaches; in the initial part of the tragedy, the behavior of Regan and Goneril is capable of misleading the audience for some time.

At the first stage of revealing these images, the egoism of Regan and Goneril is quite clearly colored with selfish traits. The greed of the sisters is quite clearly manifested already in the first scene, when Regan and Goneril are trying to outdo each other in flattery in order not to lose when dividing the kingdom. In the future, the viewer learns from Kent's words that the conflict between the sisters, weakening Britain, has gone very far, and the Kuran's remark indicates that Goneril and Regan are preparing for war with each other. It is quite natural to assume at the same time that each of the sisters aims to extend its power to the whole country.

However, as soon as Edmund enters the field of view of Regan and Goneril, the young man becomes the main object of their desires. From this moment on, the main motive in the actions of the sisters is passion for Edmund, for the sake of satisfying which they are ready for any crime.

Considering this circumstance, some researchers quite decisively divide the bearers of evil, united in one camp, into different types. “The forces of evil,” writes D. Stumpfer, “take on a very large scale in King Lear, and there are two special variants of evil: evil as an animal principle, represented by Regan and Goneril, and evil as theoretically justified atheism, presented by Edmund. These varieties should not be mixed in any way.

Of course, it is impossible to accept unconditionally such a categorically formulated point of view. In an effort to get Edmund as a husband, each of the sisters thinks not only about satisfying her passion; to a certain extent, they are also guided by political considerations, for in the energetic and decisive Edmund they see a worthy candidate for the British throne. But, on the other hand, if Regan and Goneril had remained in the tragedy the only representatives of the evil inclination, it would hardly be possible to assert with certainty by their behavior that they are the bearers of selfish, selfish principles characteristic of the “new people”. This ambiguity is eliminated by the union of the sisters with Edmund. Thus, Shakespeare solves the problem of the image of selfishness and evil.

Speaking about the symbolism that the author uses in his play, one should first of all turn to the image of the storm. The symbolic nature of the picture of the raging elements, shaking nature at the moment when Lear's mind is troubled, is beyond doubt. This symbol is very capacious and ambiguous. On the one hand, it can be understood as an expression of the general nature of the catastrophic shifts taking place in the world. On the other hand, the picture of the indignant elements grows into a symbol of nature, indignant at the inhuman injustice of those people who at this particular time seem invincible.

The storm begins when both the requests and threats of Lear are shattered by the calm impudence of egoists, confident in their impunity; even in the first folio, the beginning of the storm is marked by a remark at the end of scene 4 of act II, before Lear leaves for the steppe. Therefore, some researchers consider a thunderstorm as a kind of symbol of order, which opposes perverted relations between people. D. Danby directly expresses this assumption: “Thunder, judging by Lear’s reaction to it, can be order, not chaos: order, in comparison with which our small orders are just broken fragments.”

Indeed, the fury of the elements and human malice in King Lear correlate approximately in the same way as in Othello a terrible storm at sea and Iago's cold hatred correlate with each other: the storm and treacherous pitfalls spare Desdemona and Othello, and the egoist Iago knows no pity .

It is necessary, however, to note the main difference between Shakespeare's "King Lear" and all previous adaptations of this plot and from subsequent distortions of Shakespeare's tragedy to please the prevailing aesthetic tastes is not the death of the king himself. It is the death of Cordelia that imparts to tragedy that severity which, in the eighteenth century, frightened away the visitors of the Drury Lane Royal Theater from the authentic Shakespeare, and which subsequently compelled and still compels Hegelian critics to look for "tragic guilt" in Cordelia herself, blaming the heroine for lack of compliance, pride, etc. d. Therefore, the answer to the question of what considerations Shakespeare was guided by, choosing the death of Cordelia as one of the components of the finale of the tragedy, is of the most immediate importance not only for understanding the image of the heroine, but also for comprehending the entire tragedy as an ideological and artistic unity.

The death of Cordelia is most closely connected with the treatment of the utopian theme in Shakespeare's tragedy. It is Shakespeare who has the indisputable merit as the author who first included this topic both in social and ethical aspects in the plot of the old legend about King Lear. And if, at the same time, Shakespeare followed his predecessors in the plot plan and depicted the triumph of Cordelia, his tragedy would inevitably turn from a realistic artistic canvas, in which the contradictions of his time were reflected with the utmost acuteness, into a utopian picture depicting the triumph of virtue and justice. It is quite possible that Shakespeare would have done just that if he had turned to the legend of King Lear in the early period of his work, when the victory of good over evil seemed to him a fait accompli. It is also possible that Shakespeare would have chosen a happy ending for his work if he had been working on King Lear at the same time as writing The Tempest. But at a time when Shakespeare's realism reached its highest peak, such a decision was unacceptable for the playwright.

The death of Cordelia most expressively proves Shakespeare's idea that on the way to the triumph of goodness and justice, mankind still has to endure a difficult, cruel and bloody struggle with the forces of evil, hatred and self-interest - a struggle in which the best of the best will have to sacrifice peace, happiness and even life. Therefore, the death of Cordelia organically brings us to the difficult question of the perspective that emerges at the end of the play, and, consequently, of the worldview that owned the poet during the years of the creation of King Lear.

The question of the final outcome, to which the development of the conflict in King Lear comes, is still debatable. Moreover, in recent years one can notice a revival of disputes regarding the nature of the attitude that permeates the tragedy of the legendary British king.

The starting point of the disputes that are being conducted on this issue by the Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century, to a large extent, is the concept set forth at the beginning of the century by E. Bradley. The position taken by Bradley is highly complex. It contains contradictory elements; their development can give rise to diametrically opposed views on the essence of the conclusions that Shakespeare makes in King Lear.

An important place in Bradley's concept is occupied by the idea of ​​contrasting the camps of good and evil. Analyzing the fate of the representatives of the latter camp, Bradley makes an absolutely accurate observation: “This evil only destroys: it does not create anything and, apparently, can only exist due to what is created by the opposite force. Moreover, it destroys itself; it sows enmity among those who represent it; they can hardly unite in the face of the immediate danger that threatens them all; and if this danger had been averted, they would immediately have seized each other's throats; the sisters don't even wait for danger to pass. After all, these creatures - all five of them - had already become dead weeks before we first saw them; at least three of them die young; the outbreak of their inherent evil turned out to be fatal for them.

Such a sound view of the evolution of the evil camp and the internal laws inherent in this camp allowed Bradley to sharply oppose the statements of his contemporaries about the pessimism of "King Lear", including against the opinion of Swinburne, who believed that in the play "there is not a dispute of forces, who came into conflict, nor a sentence pronounced even with the help of lots, ”and who accordingly called the tonality of the tragedy not light, but“ the darkness of divine revelation.

But, on the other hand, Bradley's purely idealistic view of the world and literature led the researcher to conclusions that objectively contradict his own denial of the pessimistic nature of King Lear. “The final and complete result, Bradley believes, is in how compassion and horror, brought, perhaps, to the extreme degree of art, are so mixed with a sense of law and beauty that in the end we feel not despondency and even less despair, but a consciousness of greatness in torment and the solemnity of talent, the depth of which we cannot measure.

The internal contradiction contained in the above words not only becomes even more obvious where the scholar analyzes the meaning of Cordelia's death, but also generates judgments that cannot be reconciled with Bradley's polemic against the pessimistic interpretation of Shakespeare's tragedy. Commenting on the circumstances of Cordelia's death, Bradley writes: “The strength of the impression depends on the very intensity of the contrasts between the outside and the inside, between the death of Cordelia and the soul of Cordelia. The more unmotivated, undeserved, meaningless, monstrous her fate appears, the more we feel that it does not concern Cordelia. The extreme degree of disproportion between favorable circumstances and kindness first shocks us, and then illuminates us with the recognition that our whole attitude towards what is happening, demanding or expecting goodness, is wrong; if only we could perceive things as they really are, we would see that the outer is nothing and the inner is everything.” Developing the same idea, Bradley comes to a very definite conclusion: “Let us renounce the world, hate it and joyfully leave it. The only reality is the soul with its courage, patience, devotion. And nothing external can touch it. Such, if we want to use the term, is Shakespeare's "pessimism" in King Lear.

In modern foreign Shakespeare studies, theories are widely spread, the meaning of which is to explain the tragedy of King Lear as a work imbued with the spirit of hopeless pessimism. One such attempt was made in D. Knight's well-known work King Lear and the Comedy of the Grotesque, which was included in his book Wheeled by Fire. Knight defines the general impression that Shakespeare's tragedy makes on the viewer as follows: “Tragedy affects us primarily by the incomprehensible and aimless that it contains. This is the most fearless artistic look at the extreme cruelty to all of our literature.

A few lines later, defending the right to analyze Shakespeare's tragedy in terms of "comic" and "humor", Knight states: "I am not exaggerating. Paphos is not diminished by this: it is increased. The use of the words "comic" and "humor" also does not imply disrespect for the goal that the poet set for himself; rather, I used these words - a coarsening, of course - in order to extract for analysis the very heart of the play - that fact that a person can hardly face: the demonic grin of sloth and absurdity in the saddest fights of a man with an iron fate. It is she who twists, splits, deeply wounds the human mind until it begins to express the confusion of the chimera of madness. And although love and music, the sisters of salvation, can temporarily heal Lear's contrite consciousness, this unknowable mockery of fate is so deeply rooted in the circumstances of our life that the highest tragedy of absurdity occurs and there is no hope left but the hope of a broken heart and a lame skeleton of death. This is the most painful of all the tragedies that one has to endure; and if we are to feel more than a fraction of this suffering, we must have a sense of the darkest humor.”

Compared to Shakespeare's previous mature tragedies, King Lear is characterized by a strengthening of an optimistic view of the world. This impression is achieved primarily by depicting the camp of evil, which, due to its inherent laws, remains internally disunited and incapable of consolidating even for a short time. The very individual representatives of this camp, guided exclusively by selfish selfish interests, inevitably come to a deep internal crisis and moral degradation, and their death is primarily the result of the destructive forces contained in the egoists themselves. But Shakespeare was aware that the reality surrounding him gave rise to arrogant and intelligent predators, striving to achieve selfish goals by any means and ready to ruthlessly destroy those who stand in their way. It is this circumstance that serves as the most important prerequisite for the severity of Shakespeare's tragedy.

However, at the same time, "King Lear" proves the poet's belief that the same reality can give rise to people who oppose the bearers of evil and are guided by high humanistic principles. These people cannot escape from a society in which egoists are rampant, but are forced to consciously fight for their ideals. Shakespeare does not offer the viewer a utopian picture that would depict the triumph of harmonious relations between people based on the principles of humanism. A certain vagueness of the perspective revealed in the finale of the play was a historically conditioned phenomenon, natural and inevitable in the work of a realist artist. But, showing the audience that the fight against evil, which requires terrible painful sacrifices, is possible and necessary, Shakespeare thereby denied the right of evil to eternal domination in relations between people.

This is the life-affirming pathos of the gloomy play about the king of Britain, expressed more clearly than in Othello, Timon of Athens and other Shakespearean tragedies of the second period created before King Lear.

M. M. Morozov. Shakespeare's tragedy "King Lear"

Morozov M. M. Shakespeare Theater (Compiled by E. M. Buromskaya-Morozova; General editor and introductory article by S. I. Belza). - M.: Vseros. theater. about-vo, 1984.

The tragedy "King Lear" (1605) reflects the severe suffering of the masses in the modern era of Shakespeare, marked by profound changes in the life of English society. In the famous scene in the steppe (III, 4), old Lear, who himself turned out to be a homeless vagabond, utters the following monologue under the howling of the wind and the noise of bad weather:

Homeless, naked wretch, Where are you now? How will you repel the blows of this fierce weather, In tatters, with an uncovered head And a skinny belly? How little I thought about it before!..

Such was the gloomy background of the era, which should be remembered when studying one of the greatest works of Shakespeare - his tragedy "King Lear".

A curious story has been preserved, dating back to the era of Shakespeare and written by an unknown author. It was as if a modestly dressed feudal lord of an old warehouse, surrounded by a crowd of his vassals, appeared to King Henry XII. The king was very dissatisfied with the large number of this retinue and refused to accept the old man into the service. Some time passed, and the old man again appeared to the king, but without his retinue. When asked by the king where his vassals had gone, the old man silently pointed to the expensive gold embroidery with which his clothes were decorated this time. The allegorical meaning of this story is clear: the old man exchanged his feudal rights for gold, the main force of the new age, and began to serve the king along with "upstarts", as they said then, from the new nobility.

Many writers of that era warned against the dangers of feudal reaction. So, for example, in 1552, two learned lawyers Sackville and Norton wrote the tragedy "Gorboduk" (it was the first tragedy in English), which told about the legendary king of ancient Britain, Gorboduk. This king gave up power and divided the country between his two sons. In the end, the lords at war with each other seized power, and the country plunged into the chaos of bloody strife. "Woe to that country where kings are imprisoned and where lords rule," we read in the play "Edward the Second" by the greatest of Shakespeare's predecessors, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593). Shakespeare described the victory of royal power over the rebellious feudal hordes in the most significant of his historical chronicles - "Henry IV".

In "King Lear" the refusal of the king from power leads to the triumph of evil forces (Regan, Goneril). No sooner had Lear descended from the throne, as we already hear about the impending internecine war between the Duke of Cornwall and the Duke of Albany (II, 1). Pretending to be insane, Edgar, singing a song, allegorically persuades Lear to gather the "scattered herd" again:

Do not sleep, shepherd, chase your dream, Your flocks are in the rye. Put your horn to your mouth And show them the way.

The struggle between the new and the old was clothed in sixteenth-century England, maenads by the way, and in ecclesiastical garments. If advanced forces gravitated towards Protestantism, then those who stood for the old united under the banner of Catholicism, which was the bulwark of pan-European reaction. There were not enough powerful forces inside the country to rely on in the struggle for the old (it was not for nothing that numerous conspiracies, including conspiracies that were ripening in the circle of the Catholic Mary Stuart, failed one after another), and the only thing left for the reactionaries was to hope for help from outside, for intervention. There was a time when their hopes seemed to be close to being realised. In 1588, with the blessing of the pope, "His Catholic Majesty" the Spanish King Philip II moved against England a huge fleet at that time, which the Spaniards dubbed the "Invincible Armada" (however, the entire tonnage of this fleet, unprecedented in size at that time, did not exceed the tonnage of two modern battleships). Only a storm, partly sinking, partly scattering the ships of the Invincible Armada, prevented the Spanish invasion.

The playwrights of that era willingly took legends and tales as plot material. But they poured new wine into old wineskins. Shakespeare in King Lear, as we shall see, based the plot on an ancient British legend, but the characters acting in King Lear, their thoughts, feelings, their attitude to life, to each other - all this belongs to Shakespeare's era. It was dangerous to speak directly about reality: for a careless word in the dungeons of the royal prison, the tongue was cut out, or even executed. This circumstance is pointed out in a cautious, veiled form by Bacon in his History of the Reign of Henry VII.

The tragedy "King Lear" was written at the time of the creative maturity of the great playwright, in close proximity to "Hamlet", "Othello", "Macbeth". King Lear is undoubtedly one of Shakespeare's most profound and grandiose works.

The legend of King Lear (or Leir) and his daughters is rooted in ancient times: it probably originated in ancient Britain, before the Anglo-Saxon invasion (5th-6th centuries), and possibly even before the conquest of Britain by the Romans (1st century BC). n. e.). Thus, in its original form, it was the saga of the British Celts. This legend was first recorded in the 12th century by a native of Wales (where the Celtic population survived) - the clergyman Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote in Latin. Since then, it has been retold more than once, already in English, both in prose and in verse. Most of these retellings date back to the 16th century, when a significant interest arose in English literature in ancient British historical legends (let us recall that, for example, the action of the tragedy “Gorboduk”, the first in English dramaturgy mentioned by us, written in the 50s of the 16th century, takes place in ancient Britain).

In the early 90s of the 16th century, one of the English playwrights, whose name remains unknown, wrote and staged a play about King Lear. This pale work, imbued with the spirit of Christian moralizing, along with several retellings of the legend, served the great playwright as the material from which he borrowed the general contours of the plot. However, there is a profound difference between these sources and Shakespeare's tragedy. Let us recall once again that Shakespeare wrote "King Lear" in 1605 - at the time when the tragic beginning in his work manifested itself in all its fullness.

Hamlet is confronted by that predatory world of the Polonii, Osrics, Guildensterns and Rosencrants, over which the great Claudius rules. Othello falls into the net, cunningly placed by one of those predatory adventurers who bred in great abundance in the era of primitive accumulation. Lear, who has barely had time to give up power, is attacked by the entire environment around him. This is not a simple case of filial ingratitude, not just the "sin" of Goneril and Regan, as in a pre-Shakespearean play. In Lear's suffering, the true essence of the environment is revealed, where each is ready to destroy the other. No wonder the images of predatory animals, as textual analysis shows, are found in the text of "King Lear" more often than in any other play by Shakespeare. And above all, in order to give universality to the events, in order to show that it was not a matter of a particular case, Shakespeare, as it were, doubled the plot, telling, in parallel with the tragedy of Lear, about the tragedy of Hamlet (Shakespeare borrowed the plot contours of this parallel action from the novel by the English poet and the 16th-century writer Philip Sidney "Arcadia"). Similar events take place under the roof of different castles. Regan, Goneril with his butler Oswald, the traitor Edmund - these are not isolated "villains". The author of the pre-Shakespearean "King Leir" wrote a moralizing family drama - Shakespeare created a tragedy in which he invested great social content and in which, using the plot outline of an old legend, he bared the face of his modernity.

The era of Shakespeare, as we have seen, was marked by a monstrous impoverishment of the masses. And, as we have already said, one of the artistic representations of people's suffering is the storm scene in King Lear, when in the bare steppe, in bad weather, two homeless travelers approach a hut in which a beggar tramp huddles. This is the central moment of the tragedy: Lear at this moment comprehends the whole depth, the whole horror of the people's suffering. "How little I thought about it before," he says.

Lear had never thought of the people before. We see him at the beginning of the tragedy in a magnificent castle, a proud and self-willed despot who compares himself in a moment of anger with an angry dragon. He decided to give up power. Why did he do this? This question has been repeatedly discussed in the pages of Shakespearean criticism. Modern bourgeois Shakespearean scholars see here only a "formal plot of intrigue" that allegedly does not require psychological justification. If this were the case, Shakespeare would be a poor playwright.

Lear's action is, of course, quite understandable. From a young age, he, the "crowned god" king, got used to self-will. His every whim is a law for him. And so he wanted to amuse himself in his old age: he “does good” to his daughters, and they, Lear thinks, will humbly stand before him and forever utter grateful speeches. Lear is a blind man who does not see and does not want to see life and who did not even bother to look at his own daughters. Lear's act is a whim, tyranny. At the beginning of the tragedy, Lear's every step arouses in us a feeling of indignation. But now Lear wanders through the gloomy steppe, remembers for the first time in his life about "homeless, naked unfortunates." This is another Lear, this is Lear beginning to see clearly. And our attitude towards it is changing.

This "dynamic" image of Lear, which reflects Lear's painful knowledge of the cruel reality surrounding him, is absent in all previous retellings of the legend, including the pre-Shakespearean play. The scenes in the stormy steppe are entirely created by Shakespeare.

The profound change taking place in Lear is reflected in the very style of his speeches. At the beginning of the tragedy, he gives orders, proudly referring to himself as "we":

Give me the card. Find out everything: We have divided our land into three parts... Instantly his anger flares up. Go! Get out of my sight! he says, choking with anger, to Cordelia. I swear by the peace of the future in the grave, I break the connection with her forever.

And when Kent tries to stand up for Cordelia, Lear threatens him: "You are joking with life, Kent." Even after the abdication, Lear at first remains the same despot. "Don't make me wait a minute. Serve dinner," with these words Lear enters the stage (I, 4). "Hey you, little one!.. Click this villain back!" This is the tone in which the LPR speaks. He treats the jester like an animal: "Beware, scoundrels! Do you see the whip?"

Lear spoke quite differently in the scene of the storm. Before us is the thinking Lear, who has seen all the untruth of the reality surrounding him. For the first time in his life, he thinks about "homeless, naked unfortunates." And now he sees a person in the jester: "Go ahead, my friend. You are poor, homeless." Scenes of Lear's madness begin. Let us note that Lear's madness is not, of course, pathological madness: it is the pressure of stormy feelings from within, shaking, like explosions of a volcano, the whole being of old Lear. It was necessary to love your daughters very passionately in order to resent them so passionately.

So, during the course of the action, Lear changes internally before us under the influence of ongoing events. And we, in the words of Dobrolyubov, "we are more and more reconciled with him as with a person."

Shakespeare's enlightened Lear could not, of course, return to his former well-being. Unlike his predecessors, who brought events to a happy ending (Cordelia's troops defeated the troops of the evil sisters), Shakespeare crowned his play with a tragic ending. It is characteristic that Nahum Tate, who remade Shakespeare's King Lear for the sake of the aristocratic audience and deprived the tragedy of its social and humanistic content, restored the "prosperous" denouement. Throughout the 18th century, King Lear was staged on the English stage only in this adaptation.

In folk art, the serious is often interspersed with humor, the tragic with the comic. So in Shakespeare's play, a jester stands next to Lear. This image is entirely created by Shakespeare.

The image of the jester occupies a large place in Shakespeare's work, the buffoonish, comic jester was a frequent guest on the English stage before. As you know, in that era, among the servants of the royal court and noble nobles, there was certainly a jester. His duty was to constantly entertain his masters with all sorts of jokes and jokes. He underestimated the most miserable position: he was not considered a person, and the owner, like any noble guest in the house, could mock him, insult him to his heart's content. Yes, and he himself considered himself "inveterate": they did not go from jesters to people. On the other hand, the jesters were allowed, unlike the rest of the servants, to speak more freely and boldly. "Noble gentlemen sometimes like to amuse themselves with the truth," we read from a contemporary of Shakespeare. However, for excessive frankness, the jester was threatened with punishment.

It is remarkable that Shakespeare was able to see a big mind and a big heart under the motley, buffoon clothes of the jester. Jester Touchstone in Shakespeare's As You Like It follows Rosalind and Celia into self-imposed exile as their true friend. Touchstone is a very smart person (in English, his name - Touchstone - literally means "touchstone": in conversations with the jester, a sample of the mind of his interlocutors is found). With a keen eye, Touchstone observes everything that happens around him. It is not for nothing that we read about him in a comedy that "because of the cover of buffoonery, he shoots the arrows of his mind." The image of the jester Festus in the comedy "Twelfth Night" is also interesting. Fest helps Sir Toby Belch and Maria in every possible way in their merry struggle against the gloomy puritan Malvolio. By his talent, this jester is a poet and artist: Festus wonderfully sings graceful melancholy songs. The king's jester Yorick is mentioned in Hamlet; Prince of Denmark finds his skull in the cemetery. "Alas, poor Yorick!" exclaims Hamlet. He remembers his childhood when this jester carried him on his back "a thousand times". Little Hamlet loved Yorick and kissed him - "I don't remember how often." "He was a man with inexhaustible wit, a magnificent fantasy," says Hamlet. In King Lear, the jester is one of the main characters. His image in this tragedy acquires peculiar features. It is significant that the jester appears only at the moment when Lear first begins to see that everything around him is not quite as he expected. When Lear's insight reaches its completion, the jester disappears. It is as if he enters the play without permission and exits it without permission, standing out sharply in the gallery of images of the tragedy. He sometimes looks at events from the outside, commenting on them and taking on a function, partly close to the function of the choir in ancient tragedy. This companion of Lyr embodies folk wisdom. He has long known the bitter truth, which Lear comprehends only through severe suffering.

The jester is not only a contemplative, but also a satirist. In one of his songs, the jester talks about the time when all abomination will disappear from life and when "it will become a general fashion to walk with your feet" ("All life is unnaturally turned around," the jester wants to say).

Compared with the pre-Shakespearean play about King Leir, Shakespeare's "King Lear" is immediately striking in its majestic monumentality. The very actors of the tragedy are full of an overabundance of power. Old Lear carries the dead Cordelia like a feather. Gloucester, when his eyes are torn out, does not lose his senses. Edgar, despite all the hardships experienced, retains physical strength: he kills Oswald, defeats his brother in a duel. Some rich people. This, of course, is not the external, spectacular "theatricality" of melodramas, whose heroes destroy opponents with their fake swords with extraordinary ease - this is the monumentality of the folk epic. It was in "King Lear" that Shakespeare came into especially close contact with the epic. He thus returned the plot to its native soil and was, of course, immeasurably closer to the folk sources unknown to us of the legend of Lear than the author of a pre-Shakespearean play with its ordinary, pale characters and languid feelings.

The tragedy "King Lear" resembles a legend told in dramatic form. Shakespeare in this tragedy can be called not only a playwright and poet, but also a storyteller close to folk art. Hyperbolicity, exaggeration of the images of "King Lear" by no means exclude their realism, for these images are not arbitrary inventions, but generalizations of living observations.

One of the main themes of "King Lear" is the celebration of loyalty. Until the end, Cordelia, Edgar, the jester and Kent remain unshakably faithful. This is Shakespeare's favorite theme. He sings of fidelity as the best ornament of a person in his sonnets, and in "Remeo and Juliet", and in the comedy "Two Veronese", and in the comedy "Twelfth Night" (where Viola, true to her feelings, finally conquers all obstacles), and in many of his other works.

With regard to psychological characteristics in King Lear, Shakespeare's favorite opposition of the appearance and essence of a person stands out with particular relief. Let us recall the obstinate Katharina from The Taming of the Shrew, who turned out to be obedient and even submissive at the end of the play, and her sister, the submissive Bianca, who, having barely managed to get married, calls her husband a fool in front of everyone and reveals her hidden obstinacy; thick-lipped Othello, who, judging by the surviving ballad, was hardly handsome on the stage of the Globe Theatre, and on the first impression of the "honest" Iago. In King Lear this contrast is even more pronounced. Cordelia at first seems dryish and callous, which does not at all correspond to her nature, characterized in her very name (from the Latin cor, cordis - heart). Evil sisters are very beautiful. The name Goneril comes from the name of Venus, the goddess of beauty; Regan's name clearly echoes the Latin word regina - queen; there seems to be something "regal" about her appearance. Old Gloucester, at the beginning of the tragedy, a jolly joker, nonchalantly chatting with Kent about the circumstances of the birth of his illegitimate son, is an image in sharp contrast to Gloucester's subsequent fate. Under the jester's traditional clothes of colorful rags (bells on the belt and elbows, a cap resembling a cockscomb on his head), as we have seen, a great mind and a big heart are hidden.

Shakespeare's criticism has little shed light on the image of Edgar, but meanwhile it is very informative. At first, Edgar is a frivolous and idle rake. He then talks about his past. "Who were you before?" asks Lear, and Edgar replies: "Proud and frivolous. Curled. Wore gloves on his hat. Pleased his lady of the heart. Hanged out with her." But Edgar is destined for an extraordinary fate: he will have to walk in rags, huddle in a hut, pretend to be crazy, reach the limit of poverty. And in difficult trials, he becomes a different, wiser and nobler person. He becomes the guide of the blind father, and at the end of the tragedy, in a duel against the traitor brother, he avenges the desecrated justice.

For understanding Edmund, his appeal to nature is extremely important ("Nature, you are my goddess! .."). This is a chaotic, gloomy nature - "a forest inhabited by wild beasts," as Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens" says. The image of this wild nature, often found among Shakespeare's contemporaries, is a reflection of a society in which feudal ties were destroyed and the scope for the predatory activity of the knights of primitive accumulation opened up. This nature is worshiped by the illegitimate son Edmund as his goddess.

Among the characters in "King Lear" there are no faceless characters - each has its own face, its own individuality. Kent, for example, is by no means a "reasoner", not an abstract embodiment of virtue, he also has his own, original character. With what ardent haste he rushes to fulfill Lear's order ("I will not close my eyes, my lord, until I have delivered your letter"), so that the jester even jokes at his address ("If a man's brains were in his heels, his mind would not be threatened calluses?")! With what fury he scolds the hated Oswald in the face!

The episodic characters are also interesting. Let us point at least to the servant who, in the name of justice, in the scene of the blinding of Gloucester, drew his sword against the Duke of Cornwall. On the pages of reactionary Shakespearean criticism, it has been repeatedly asserted that in Shakespeare's works, people from the people are always shown only in a ridiculous, comic light. To be convinced of the falseness of such statements, it is enough to recall this humble servant. However, the wisest of Shakespeare's jesters - the jester in "King Lear" is also, of course, a man of the people.

Isn't the hurried court gossip Kuran, for example, not expressive, who informs Edmund that internecine war is ready to break out between the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany (II, 1)! He is in such a hurry to break the news that he runs instead of walking. Edmund's officer, who undertakes to carry out the vile order of his master, utters only two remarks (V, 3): "Yes, I undertake," he laconically answers Edmund's words, and then:

I don't drive carts, I don't eat oats. What is in the power of man - I promise.

And in one joke: "I don't drive carts, I don't eat oats" - the rough nature of this cutthroat is immediately revealed.

Each image in "King Lear" is the result of living observations. When creating each of these images, Shakespeare, speaking in the words of Hamlet we have already quoted, "held a mirror before nature."

In King Lear, one of his most bitter tragedies, Shakespeare painted a picture of the monstrous contradictions, cruelty, and injustice of the society around him. He did not indicate the way out and, as a man of his time, a man of the 16th century, he could not indicate. But the fact that he painted this truthful picture with his powerful brush, being indignant along with Lear and vigilantly observing life together with Lear's faithful companion - the bearer of folk wisdom, is his immortal merit.

It is recorded in the Book of Palace Amusements that on December 26, 1606, "His Majesty's servants", that is, Shakespeare's troupe, "played before His Royal Majesty at Whitehall on the night of St. Stephen" the tragedy "King Lear". E. C. Chambers dates the play to 1605-1606.

A lifetime edition of the tragedy appeared in 1608, published posthumously in 1619 and in a folio of 1623.

Shakespeare, undoubtedly, knew an anonymous play on this subject, which as early as 1594 was played at the Rosa Theater by the entrepreneur F. Henslow. At the same time, the play was registered for publication, but was published only in 1605. Reworking the play of his predecessor, whose name remains unknown, Shakespeare not only rewrote the entire text, but significantly changed the plot. Shakespeare replaced the happy ending of the old play with a tragic ending, introduced the image of a jester, which was not in the old play, and complicated the plot by introducing a parallel line of action - the story of Gloucester and his sons. This last Shakespeare borrowed from F. Sidney's novel "Arcadia" (1590).

"King Lear" is recognized, along with "Hamlet", as Shakespeare's pinnacle of tragedy. The measure of the suffering of the hero here surpasses everything that fell to the lot of those whose tragedies were depicted by Shakespeare both before and after this work. But not only the force of tragic tension distinguishes this drama. It surpasses other works of Shakespeare in its breadth and truly cosmic scale.

Perhaps nowhere did Shakespeare's creative courage manifest itself with such power as in this creation of his genius. We feel it in the language of tragedy, in the speeches of Lear, in poetic images that are bolder than anything we have hitherto met in Shakespeare.

While people are going through mental storms, terrible thunderstorms are happening in nature. All life is rearing up, the whole world is shaking, everything has lost its stability, there is nothing solid, unshakable. On this land, shaken by terrible shocks, under the sky, bringing down the streams of the abyss, the characters of the tragedy live and act. They are caught up in a whirlwind of elements raging within themselves and outside.

The image of a storm, thunderstorm is dominant in the tragedy. Its action is a series of upheavals, the strength and scope of which increase each time. First, we see a family palace drama, then a drama that engulfed the entire state, and finally, the conflict spills over the borders of the country, and the fate of the heroes is decided in the war of two powerful kingdoms.

Such upheavals should have been brewing for a long time. But we do not see how the clouds were gathering. A thunderstorm arises immediately, from the very first scene of the tragedy, when Lear curses his youngest daughter and expels her, and then the gusts of a whirlwind-whirlwind of human passions - capture all the characters, and we have a terrible picture of the world in which there is a war not for life, but to death, and in it neither father, nor brother, nor sister, nor husband, nor senile gray hair, nor blooming youth are spared.

If we perceive the tragedy of the king of ancient Britain as a majestic drama of a socio-philosophical nature, interpreting issues that are not tied to one era and have universal significance, then for contemporaries this play was a historical drama. In any case, they believed in the true existence of Lear, and they were convinced of this by the main historical authority of the era, R. Holinshed, whose Chronicles included in its early part a presentation of Lear's "history" (Holinshed, like other historians of his time, willingly used legends, if they had a poetic nature and moral and instructive value). It is no coincidence that the first edition of the tragedy was called: "A true story-chronicle about the life and death of King Lear ..." Only in the folio the play was called "The Tragedy of King Lear."

The proximity of the tragedy to the chronicles lies in the identity of the motives of the struggle within the dynasty, and "King Lear" includes a number of episodes that undoubtedly have political significance. There were attempts to interpret the tragedy in terms of politics. The reason for Lear's misfortunes was explained by the fact that he wanted to turn the wheel of history back, dividing a single centralized state between two rulers. As evidence, a parallel was drawn between "King Lear" and the first English Renaissance tragedy "Gorboduk", whose political morality really consisted in affirming the idea of ​​state unity * .

Shakespeare's tragedy has this motif, but it has been pushed aside. Shakespeare wrote not about the division of the country, but about the division of society. The state-political theme is subject to a more extensive plan.

Nor is it a family drama, as was the anonymous pre-Shakespearean play about King Lear and his daughters. The theme of ingratitude of children plays a big role in Shakespeare. But it serves only as an impetus for the development of the plot.

"King Lear" is a socio-philosophical tragedy. Her theme is not only family relations, not only state orders, but the nature of social relations in general. The essence of man, his place in life and price in society - that's what this tragedy is about.

In our word usage "nature", as a rule, denotes something opposed to society, and in this way our speech, as it were, reinforces the estrangement of man from nature that occurred in the course of the development of class society. The people of Shakespeare's era (in particular, Shakespeare himself) were immeasurably closer to nature, and with this word they embraced all life, including social relations. Therefore, when Shakespeare's characters say "nature", they by no means always mean fields, forests, rivers, seas, mountains; nature for them is the whole world and, first of all, the most interesting creature of this world for them is a person in all the diverse manifestations and relationships that make up his life.

Belonging to the realm of nature meant for man an inextricable connection with the whole system of life, including nature in the proper sense of the word and "natural" society. Public relations were also included in this system of universal connections. There were family, estate, state ties. The subordination of children to parents, subjects to the sovereign, the care of the parent for the children and the sovereign for the subjects were forms of natural connection between people. This was seen as a universal law of nature, ensuring harmonious relationships in all human groups from the family to the state.

This understanding of nature is one of the central motifs that run through Shakespeare's entire tragedy. Such is the ideological form in which its socio-philosophical content is clothed.

* (In King Lear, the word "nature" and derivatives of it occur over forty times.)

In King Lear, we see from the very beginning that the laws of nature are violated. The key to what happens in the tragedy is given in the following words of Gloucester: "... These recent solar and lunar eclipses! They do not bode well. Whatever scientists say about it, nature feels their consequences. Love cools down, friendship weakens, fratricidal strife is everywhere. There are revolts in the cities, in the villages of discord, in the palaces of treason, and the family bond between parents and children collapses. Either this is the case, as with me, when the son rebels against his father. Or as with the king. This is another example "Here the father goes against his own offspring. Our best time has passed. Bitterness, betrayal, disastrous unrest will accompany us to the grave" (I, 2. Translation by B. Pasternak).

"Nature" suffers greatly, and we see confirmation of this in the picture of the complete collapse of all natural and social ties between people. King Lear banishes his daughter, Gloucester his son; Goneril and Regan rebel against their father, Edmond dooms his father to a terrible execution; the sisters Goneril and Regan are each ready to cheat on her husband, and in a fit of jealous rivalry in the struggle for Edmond's love, Goneril poisons Regan; subjects are at war against the king, Cordelia is at war against her homeland.

In "Othello" we saw the tragedy of chaos in the soul of one person, in "King Lear" - the tragedy of chaos that engulfed an entire society.

Human nature has rebelled against itself, and is it any wonder that nature surrounding man has rebelled? The tragedy therefore cannot be reduced to the theme of the ingratitude of children, although this occupies a significant place in the plot.

There is an opinion that King Lear represents a society that lives according to patriarchal laws that are just beginning to crumble. In fact, already at the beginning we have a world in which only external signs of patriarchy have been preserved. None of the actors no longer lives according to the laws of the patriarchal system. None of them is interested in the common, none of them cares about the state, each thinks only of himself. This is clearly seen in the example of Lear's eldest daughters Goneril and Regan, who are ready for any deceit, just to get their share of royal lands and power. Selfishness, combined with cruel deceit, is immediately discovered by the illegitimate son of Gloucester - Edmond. But not only these people, possessed by predatory aspirations, are deprived of the patriarchal virtues of humility and obedience. The noble Earl of Kent, with all his quite feudal devotion to his overlord, shows no less independence when he boldly reproaches the king for his unreasonable anger against Cordelia. And Cordelia herself is capricious and stubborn, which is manifested in her unwillingness to humiliate her personal dignity not only with flattery, but in general with a public confession of feelings that she considers deeply intimate. She does not want to participate in the flattery ritual started by King Lear, even if it costs her not only the inheritance, but also Lear's love.

Although all the characters in "King Lear" have feudal titles and ranks, nevertheless, the society depicted in the tragedy is not medieval. Behind the feudal guise hides individualism. And in this, as in other works of Shakespeare, the new self-consciousness of the individual is expressed in different ways by the characters in the tragedy. One group of characters are those in whom individualism is combined with predatory egoism. First of all, these are Goneril, Regan, Cornwall and Edmond. Of these, Edmond acts as an exponent of the philosophy of life, which guides all people of this type.

Edmond is an illegitimate son, and consequently he cannot expect to inherit the blessings of life and an honorable position in society, as his brother Edgar, the legitimate son of Gloucester. He is outraged by this injustice. He rebels against the customs because they do not provide him with the place in life that he would like to achieve. He begins his speech, expressing his view of life, with the significant words:

Nature, you are my goddess. In life, I only obey you. I rejected the Curse of prejudice and rights I will not give up, even if I am younger than my brother.

Orderly nature, a harmonious world order based on natural connections, that is, everything that is so dear to Gloucester, is rejected by Edmond. For him it is (I translate literally) "the plague of custom." The nature that he worships is different: it is a source of strength, energy, passions that are not amenable to obedience to one or another "nature". He laughs at those who, like his father, believe in the medieval doctrine of the influence of heavenly bodies on the character and destinies of people. “When we ourselves spoil and distort our lives, having gorged ourselves on well-being,” says Edmond, “we attribute our misfortunes to the sun, moon and stars. True, one might think that we are fools at the will of heaven, swindlers, drunkards, liars and debauchees under an irresistible planetary pressure. We have supernatural explanations to justify everything bad. The magnificent subterfuge of human licentiousness - to throw all the blame on the stars ... What nonsense! I am what I am, and would be the same if the most chaste star twinkled over my cradle" (I, 2).

The words about the violation of the laws of nature, given above, characterize Gloucester as an exponent of the traditional worldview. In contrast, in the understanding of Edmond, nature means the right of man to rebel against the existing order of things. It seems to Gloucester that he has the eternal law on his side, and that all violations of it are the consequences of individual arbitrariness, but he is mistaken. Here, as in a drop of water, the world-historical process of changing two social formations is reflected, which K. Marx wrote about, explaining the social essence of the tragic: “The history of the old order was tragic, while it was the power of the world that existed from time immemorial, freedom, on the contrary, was an idea that overshadowed individuals - in other words, as long as the old order itself believed, and had to believe, in its legitimacy" * . Gloucester believes in the legitimacy of the old order, and the violation of it seems to him a violation of the laws of nature. Edmond no longer recognizes what this order rested on - the old patriarchal ties. In his denial of them, he goes so far as to not only become an enemy of the former king, but fight against his brother and betray his father, thus severing the most sacred blood bond of kinship.

* (K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 1, p. 418.)

What happens in the family of Gloucester is repeated in the family of Lear.

The main destructive force is the desire to possess those property rights that give a person independence, and in other cases, power over others.

Goneril, Regan, and Edmund were deprived of their independence so long as they depended on Lear and Gloucester. It was important for them to get their hands on what the royal and paternal power of their parents was based on at any cost. All three resort to deceit for this. It is interesting that they all play on the most expensive for Lear and Gloucester - on devotion and a sense of duty, although they themselves do not put them in a penny. When they get their hands on lands, titles and even crowns, they shake off the debt of obedience to their parents, like a worn-out dress.

The second group of actors in the tragedy are also people with a clear consciousness of their personality, but alien to egoism. Cordelia, Edgar, Kent, the jester of King Lear have not a lowly selfish, but a noble understanding of human rights. For them, there are concepts of loyalty, devotion, and in their behavior they are selfless. They also follow "nature", but they have noble ideas about the nature and dignity of man. Not the instinct of submission, but the free choice of the object of service determines their behavior. They serve Lear not as subjects, but as friends, maintaining their spiritual independence, including the jester, the sharpest of them and mercilessly direct in expressing their opinions.

In the course of the tragedy, two polar worlds are formed. On one side is a world of wealth and power. There is an eternal squabble here, and everyone in this world is ready to gnaw out the throat of another. Such is the world that Goneril, Regan, Cornwall, Edmond have built for themselves. We have seen Shakespeare's picture of this world more than once in his dramas.

The other world is the world of all outcasts. It contains first Kent and Cordelia, then Edgar, King Lear, the jester, and finally Gloucester. Of these, Cordelia, expelled by her father, became the wife of the French king and bears the burden of moral suffering alone. The rest are thrown to the bottom of life in the most literal sense of the word. They are destitute, thrown out of their former habitual way of life, deprived of shelter, means of subsistence and left to the mercy of fate.

The picture of these two worlds reflects the state of society in Shakespeare's time. On one pole, those who won in the shameless pursuit of wealth and power, on the other, those who lost in this game because they were honest and this honesty made them defenseless against the cunning of predatory money-grubbers. But honest people did not remain submissive to their ill-fated fate. First of all, none of them recognized the superiority of the world of fortune's minions. They are full of hatred and contempt for those who are so stingy in their wealth and so cruel in their imperious omnipotence. We sense this contempt in Kent's proud demeanor and in the jester's caustic sarcasm. Kent even uses force, but what can he do with his honest indignation alone in this world of dishonor and injustice? The only thing he achieves is that they put him in stocks. Gloucester, for sympathizing with Lear, is subjected to terrible torture and his eyes are torn out. Cordelia, standing up for her father, loses her life.

The world of the strong and rich takes revenge on those who rebel against it, but this does not stop the champions of justice. Even if evil is stronger than them, they will still fight against it, and not even because they count on victory, but simply because they cannot live, submitting to evil. If at the end of a tragedy the villains are rewarded, it is not so much because they are overcome by honest people, but because they are destroyed by enmity among themselves. Just as they are merciless in relation to others, they are merciless in rivalry with each other.

What place does Lear occupy in this struggle, the one who laid the foundation for it and around whom it is constantly being waged?

First we see Lear the despot. But in his autocracy, reaching tyranny. Lear relies not only on the impersonal power of his royal prerogative, which gives him the right to decide the fate of all his subjects. An outstanding man, surrounded by universal admiration, he imagined that his royal dignity rested on personal superiority over others. Like everyone around him, Lear has a highly developed consciousness of his personality, and this is a feature of the new psychology in him. However, the consciousness of personal dignity acquires in Lear a one-sided, egoistic character. It consists in an exorbitantly high assessment of one's personality, reaching an extreme degree of self-adoration. Everyone praises his greatness, and he is imbued with the conviction that he is great not only as a king, but also as a person. This was perfectly defined by N. A. Dobrolyubov, who wrote that Lear is a “victim of the ugly development” of a society based on inequality and privileges. Lear's fatal mistake, which manifested itself in the renunciation of power and the division of the kingdom, is by no means a whim of the feudal lord, and Dobrolyubov expressed the very essence of the matter, explaining the plot of the tragedy as follows: Lear renounces power, "full of proud consciousness that he, in himself, is great , and not by the power that he holds in his hands" * .

* (N. Dobrolyubov, Sobr. op. in three volumes, vol. 2, M. 1952, p. 197.)

Describing the protagonist of the tragedy, Dobrolyubov wrote: “Lear has a really strong nature, and general servility to him only develops it in a one-sided way - not for great deeds of love and common good, but only for the satisfaction of one’s own, personal whims. This is completely understandable in a person, who is accustomed to consider himself the source of all joy and sorrow, the beginning and end of all life in his kingdom. Here, with the external scope of actions, with the ease of fulfilling all desires, there is nothing to express his spiritual strength. But here his self-adoration goes beyond all limits of common sense : he transfers directly to his personality all that brilliance, all that respect that he enjoyed for his rank, he decides to throw off power, confident that even after that people will not stop trembling with him.This crazy conviction makes him give his kingdom to his daughters and through that, from his barbaric senseless position, to pass into the simple title of an ordinary person and experience all the sorrows connected with human life" * .

* (N. Dobrolyubov, Sobr. op. in three volumes, vol. 2, M. 1952, p. 198.)

Throughout subsequent events, Lear continues to cling to his feudal dignity. The consciousness that he was a king was firmly rooted in him. The habit of commanding others does not leave him even when he is rejected and the homeless roams the steppe. We see him appear, fancifully adorned with wildflowers, and deliriously shout: "No, they can't forbid me to mint money. That's my right. I'm a king myself."

King, and to the end of the nails - the king! I should take a look - everything around is trembling.

His madness lies precisely in the fact that he continues to consider himself a king, a person above all others, and enlightenment will manifest itself in the fact that he will understand the madness of this and feel like just a person who does not need power, honor, or general admiration. .

The path to this enlightenment of the mind is associated with the deepest suffering for Lear. First we see his proud conceit. He really believes that he is worthy of that extreme degree of adoration that Goneril and Regan express. What they say is in line with his self-esteem. Cordelia's silence and her unwillingness to join this chorus of praise annoy Lear so much because he is convinced of his royal human greatness. At the same time, he measures his daughters not so much by their attitude towards him, but by his attitude towards them. Loving Cordelia more than others, he believes that by giving her his feelings, he obliges her to the highest praise. his personas. In all other people, Lear values ​​not their true feelings, but the reflection in their feelings of himself and his attitude towards them. Such is the extreme degree of egocentrism and selfishness to which he has reached. This reveals the ugly development of individuality in a world based on social inequality. The paradoxical, unnatural nature of such a development of personality is manifested in the fact that a person who really possesses virtues belittles them and becomes smaller, just as Lear is petty here because, having placed his personality in the center of the world, he made himself the only measure of all human values. Even the punishment he inflicts on the recalcitrant Kent and the recalcitrant Cordelia reflects Lear's self-adoration in its own way. Casting them out, he thinks with truly regal naivety that the greatest punishment is excommunication from his person, as if he alone gave light and warmth to life.

Lear is convinced that power will belong to him even when he gives up its outward signs. He even thinks that the kingship of his personality will appear even more clearly and vividly when he renounces the material basis of his power, from the possession of lands. This reveals both a naive overestimation of the significance of one's personality and Lear's noble idealism. Special attention must be paid to this second side of his error, for it reveals the best side of Lear, and this will lead us to what constitutes the central socio-philosophical theme of the tragedy - to the question of the value of the human person.

From the general worship he was surrounded with, Lear concluded that the main value of a person is determined not by his social position, but by personal merits. This is what he wants to prove when he renounces real power, for he is convinced that even without all its attributes he will retain the love and respect of those around him. This is no longer the tyranny of the feudal lord, but naive, but basically noble idealism, which ascribes to the personal virtues of a person a value that they cannot really have in a class society. We can call it pride in its purest form, for Lear is proud not of his royal title, but of human greatness, which, however, he overestimates beyond measure.

Relinquishing power, Lear leaves himself a large retinue. One hundred people must serve him alone, catch his every word, fulfill his every whim, entertain, herald his arrival with their noise. He has relinquished power, but still wants everyone to obey him and to have external signs of greatness and courtly pomp accompany his every step.

Therefore, he reacts so painfully to the fact that his daughters demand a reduction in his retinue. He needs it for the parade, as a frame for his greatness, and they see in his retinue a feudal squad, powerful enough to force any will of Lear to be carried out. Goneril and Regan want to deprive Lear of the last real strength that he still left for himself in the form of this small army.

Lear clings desperately to the last vestige of his power. He was shocked by the ingratitude of his daughters; he gave them everything, and now they want to deprive him of the only thing he left for himself. In desperation, he rushes from one daughter to another. He is no less tormented by the consciousness of his own impotence. For the first time in his life, Lear felt that his will ran into resistance, which he not only could not break (he could no longer break the resistance of Kent and Cordelia), but was also unable to punish. The first sensation of falling arises in Lear precisely as the consciousness of his impotence.

The question of the retinue develops for Lear into a problem of philosophical significance: what does a person need in order to feel like a person? To Regan's words that he does not need a single servant, Lear objects:

Do not refer to what is needed. The poor and those in need have something in abundance. Reduce all life to necessities, And man will be equal to the animal. You are a woman. Why are you wearing silk? After all, the purpose of clothing is only so as not to get cold, And this fabric does not heat, it is so thin.

Until now Lear himself had been warmed by pomp. He measured humanity precisely by excess over "what is needed." And the higher the person, the more he has everything that is not necessary. In the struggle with his daughters, Lear defends his right to this unnecessary, because it still seems to him that it is the first sign of human significance and greatness. In other words, Lear is still in the grip of the conviction that the measure of a person's dignity is determined by how great an excess of material goods he has.

Throughout his life, Lear built up his omnipotence. It seemed to him that he had reached his peak. In fact, he rushed into the abyss. Without knowing it, he destroyed everything he built with one gesture. He wanted to be the person who has the greatest power - the power of personal superiority, but it turned out that this is the most precious thing for him - a miserable illusion. His daughters made him realize this. Terrible curses burst out of Lear's mouth, and there is no such misfortune that he would not call on the heads of the children who betrayed him. He threatens them with terrible revenge, but his anger is powerless. The world no longer obeys him. He was denied obedience by those who, by all the laws of life - by the law of nature, family, society, the state - are most obliged to obey: his own children, his flesh and blood, his subjects, vassals - those whom he himself endowed with power. All the foundations on which Lear's life was based collapsed, and the mind of the old king could not stand it. When Lear saw what the world really was, he went crazy.

The distraught Lear leaves at night for the steppe. He leaves not only from his daughters. He leaves the world in which he wanted to dominate and be above everyone. He leaves people, from society and goes to the world of nature, as the heroes of Shakespeare's comedies went there, when human malice and cruelty deprived them of their rightful place in life. But nature met the heroes of comedies with the gentle shadow of the forests, the murmur of clean streams, gave peace and consolation.

Lear goes into the bare steppe. He has nowhere to hide. There is no roof over his gray hair. Nature meets him not with gentle silence, but with the roar of the elements, the heavens opened up, thunder rumbles, lightning flashes, but, no matter how terrible this storm in nature is, it is not as terrible as the storm that occurs in Lear's soul. He is not afraid of a storm in nature, it cannot do him more harm than that which his own daughters did to him.

The inhuman essence of selfishness is revealed to Lear at first in the ingratitude of his daughters, who owe him everything and yet reject him. His wrath is turned against them, and the mad Lear judges his daughters. It is not enough for him to condemn them. He wants to know the reason for human cruelty: "Investigate what is in her heart, why is it made of stone?" (III, 6).

There is a deep symbolic meaning in the fact that these hard-hearted people, who dominate the world of power and wealth, Lear brings to justice the outcasts - the exile of Kent, Tom of Bedlam and the jester. He himself has now moved from the world of omnipotence to the world of the powerless and disenfranchised.

Lear's madness is genuine, not imaginary, as in Hamlet. But everything he says and does in a state of insanity is by no means meaningless. One can rightly say about him what Polonius says about Hamlet: "Although this is madness, there is consistency in it." Edgar says the same thing about Lear's crazy delirium: "What a mixture! Nonsense and meaning - all together" (IV, 6). In his madness, Lear rethinks all previous life experiences. It would be more correct to call his madness a stormy and painful mental shock, as a result of which Lear evaluates life in a completely new way. One of the best performers of the role of King Lear in the history of the theater said it beautifully. His madness is "the chaos of old views on life and the whirlwind of the formation of some new ideas about life" * .

* (S. M. Mikhoels, Modern stage disclosure of Shakespeare's tragic images (From the experience of working on the role of King Lear), in the book: "Shakespeare's collection 1958", p. 470; see also S. M. Mikhoels, Articles, conversations and speeches, M. 1960. pp. 97-138 and Yu. Yuzovsky, Obraz i epoch, M. 1947, pp. 27-29.)

The first sign of the spiritual upheaval that has taken place in him is that he begins to think about others. The storm whips him mercilessly, but Lear - for the first time in his life! - thinks not about the suffering that she causes him, but about other outcasts.

Homeless, naked wretch, Where are you now? How will you repel the blows of this fierce weather In rags, with an uncovered head And a skinny belly. How little I thought of this before!

"How little I thought of it before!" The old Lear would never have said that, for he thought only of himself. The transfigured Lear, whom we now see, begins to realize that, in addition to human greatness, there are human hardships and poverty. No true greatness has the right to disregard the suffering of those who are not organized and not provided for. Lear exclaims:

Here's a lesson for you, arrogant rich man! Take the place of the poor, Feel what they feel, And give them a share of your excess As a token of the highest justice of heaven.

Such is the lesson that Lear teaches, not to anyone else, but to himself. Now, when he knew misfortune and suffering, a feeling was born in him, which was not there before. He feels someone else's suffering.

In the steppe, during a storm, Lear meets Edgar, hiding under the guise of Tom from Bedlam. In this unfortunate, destitute being, he sees a man. Previously, as we know, he defined the measure of human greatness as "excess" and thought that if a person is limited only to what is needed, then he will be equal to an animal. But here in front of him is Tom from Bedlam, who does not even have the most necessary things. Pointing at him, he exclaims: “Is this, in fact, a person? You and I are all fake, but he is a real, unadorned person, and there is precisely this poor, naked, two-legged animal, and nothing more. 4). Lear rips off his clothes. He, who previously thought that it was impossible to live without a retinue of a hundred people, now realized that he was just a poor, naked, two-legged animal.

This shedding of clothes has a deep meaning. Lear tears away from himself everything that is alien and superficial, external and superfluous, which prevented him from being what he really is. He doesn't want to remain "fake" as he used to be.

Mad Lear understands life better than the Lear who fancied himself a great sage. He realizes that he lived entangled in lies, which he willingly believed, because she was pleasant to him: "They caressed me like a dog, and lied that I was smart beyond my years. They answered me everything:" yes "and" no ". All the time "yes" and "no" is also not enough joy. But when I was wet to the bone, when my teeth did not fall into a tooth from the cold, when the thunder did not stop, no matter how much I begged him, then I saw their true essence, then I saw through them. They are notorious liars. Listen to them, so I - anything. But this is a lie. I am not conspired from a fever "(IV, 6).

Lear is experiencing a rebirth. Childbirth is always associated with pain, and Lear says this to Gloucester:

In tears we came into the world; And in the first moment, barely inhaled the air, We began to complain and scream.

The second birth of Lear takes place in terrible agony. He also suffers from the fact that all false ideas have collapsed. which he used to live, but even more so because the life he sees around him is meaningless and cruel.

This soul-renewed Lear does not put up with the injustice reigning in the world. He, who had himself been one of the perpetrators of injustice, now condemns it. He is obsessed with judging - and not only his daughters, but everyone who is cruel to others.

One of the most heartfelt places in the tragedy is the episode of the meeting between the insane Lear and the blinded Gloucester. Lear now sees that injustice reigns everywhere, the root of which is inequality. The power he used to boast about was the reinforcement of injustice. “Did you see,” asks Lear of Gloucester, “how a chain dog barks at a beggar? .. And the tramp runs away from him? Note that this is a symbol of power. It requires obedience.

Power, the right to dispose of people's lives, always seemed to Lear the highest good. Nothing gave him such a sense of his own greatness as the fact that he could punish and pardon. Now he sees power in a different light. It is an evil that cripples the souls of those who possess it, and a source of disaster for those who depend on it. Another illusion, which Lear is experiencing the collapse of, is that the holders of power are just by the mere fact that they possess it. Now he understands that those who hold the life and death of people in their hands are no better than those whom they punish as criminals; they have no moral right to judge others. "Do you see," Lear says to Gloucester, "how the judge mocks the pathetic thief? Now I'll show you a trick: I'll mix everything. One, two, three! Guess now where the thief is, where the judge" (IV, 6). The trouble is that the very "excess" that gives people the guise of decency, in fact, covers up their vicious essence; power and wealth make such people unpunished, while the poor are defenseless.

Through the rags, an insignificant sin is visible; But the velvet of the mantle covers everything. Gild vice - about gilding The Judge will break the spear, but dress Him in rags - you will pierce with reeds.

Having comprehended the injustice reigning in the world, Lear becomes the defender of the disadvantaged, those who are victims of power and cruel unjust law. All whom the world of wealth and power condemns, Lear justifies: "There are no guilty, believe me, there are no guilty" (IV, 6). But there are people who see their purpose in supporting and justifying the unjust way of life. The angry irony of Lear is turned against them when he says to the blind Gloucester:

Buy yourself glass eyes And act like a scoundrel-politician That you see what you don't see.

These speeches by Lear are among the most striking denunciations through which Shakespeare expressed his deepest protest against social injustice.

At the beginning of the tragedy, we saw Lear, towering over all people and confident that he was destined to rule over the rest. It was he, a man who was so highly exalted, that fate threw to the very bottom of life, and then the misfortune of this exceptional personality merged with the misfortunes and sufferings of thousands and thousands of the destitute. The fate of man and the fate of the people have merged. Lear now appears before us no longer as a person full of pride, not as a king, but as a suffering person, and his torments are the torments of all who, like him, are deprived of the first conditions of a normal existence, suffer from cruel injustice of power and inequality of fortunes. Let Lear doom himself to such a fate. But he realized that others were doomed to it by the will of those who, like him, had power and, happy with their power, did not want to notice the suffering of others.

Now we see, together with Lear, what is the root of the evil and calamities of life. It is in the people themselves, in the order of life they have created, where everyone strives to rise above the rest and, for the sake of his well-being, dooms everyone, even the closest people by blood, to misfortune.

In a world of wealth and power, there is no humanity. She did not remain there after Kent, Cordelia, Edgar, Gloucester were expelled from him. If sympathy for suffering is still preserved, it is only in the world of the destitute.

I am a poor man, Taught by blows of fate and personal grief to sympathize with others.

These words are spoken by Edgar. He also went through a difficult path of knowledge of life. At first, he, like everyone to whom wealth gives the possibility of unbridled pleasures: "was proud and anemone. He curled. He wore gloves on his hat. He pleased his lady of the heart. He hung out with her. thought of pleasures and woke up to deliver them to himself. He drank and played dice. As regards the female sex, he was worse than the Turkish Sultan. But besides the vices of voluptuousness and gluttony, he condemns himself for something more evil: “He was deceitful in his heart, easy on words, cruel in hand, lazy like a pig, cunning like a fox, insatiable like a wolf, mad like a dog, greedy, like a lion" (III, 4). It would be naive to think that this really corresponds to the character and former behavior of Edgar. He only wants to say that he was a rich courtier who belonged to the very top of society, and he characterizes not himself, but the environment to which he belonged.

The tragic irony of Shakespeare is inexhaustible. Just when Edgar, as it seems to him, found consolation even in his sad fate (“It is better to be rejected than to shine” (IV, 1) - Edgar is now sure), life prepares a new test for him: he meets his blinded father.

Gloucester also goes the way of the cross of knowing life through suffering.

At the beginning we see him not yet lost the memory of the pleasures of youth. He tells Kent with frivolous playfulness that it gave him and his wife "great pleasure" to "make" Edmond (I, 1). He also sinned in credulity when he listened to Edmond's slander against Edgar. Lear's misfortune was the first blow that forced Gloucester to take a fresh look at what was happening around him. He warned Lear's associates that the distraught king should be sent to Dover. For this he paid the price. His own son betrayed him - the one whom he loved most and for whose sake he expelled another son. Cornwall and Regan, whom he faithfully served after Lear's abdication, plucked out his eyes and pushed him blind into the high road.

Lear, in his madness, began to understand everything, and the blind Gloucester received his sight. Yes, he is now mature. But how differently Lear, Edgar and Gloucester react to the world after their insight! Lear judges those who were unjust, wants to go to war with them. Edgar - for a while, only for a while! - turned into an embittered and melancholic philosopher of "happy" poverty. He hid and did nothing while injustice concerned only him, but when he saw what was done to Lear and his father, Edgar was filled with determination to fight. Gloucester is overcome by despair and has lost faith in the meaning of life. People seem to him pathetic worms. Gloucester also owns the most epigrammatically sharp judgment of his time. When he, blind, meets Edgar, who continues to pretend to be a crazy beggar, Gloucester takes him as his guide. He himself points to the symbolic meaning of this:

Such is our age: the blind are led by fools.

(IV, 1. Translated by T. Shchepkina-Kupernik)

Gloucester, like Lear, having experienced suffering, is imbued with sympathy for the poor. He also speaks of the "surplus" that the rich must share with the needy (IV, 1).

It is profoundly significant that suffering leads Lear and Gloucester to the same conclusion about the necessity of mercy towards the destitute.

While some are rising, others are falling, and all the participants in the drama live in the full intensity of passions and torments, one of the witnesses of the unfolding tragedy laughs. So he is supposed to, because he is a jester, and everything that happens gives him a reason for witticisms, jokes and songs.

The jesters had a long-standing privilege: they had the right to speak the truth in the face of the most powerful rulers. This is the role played by the jester in tragedy. Even before Lear realizes that he has made a mistake, the jester tells him about it (I, 4).

His jokes are evil, not because he is angry, but because life is evil. He expresses the ruthlessness of its laws by telling Lear the harsh truth to his face. The jester has a good heart - kind to those who suffer. He loves Lear, instinctively feeling the nobility of spirit inherent in the king. And in the fact that the jester follows Lear when he has lost everything, the nobility of a man from the people is manifested, whose attitude towards people is determined not by their social position, but by human qualities.

The jester himself belongs to the most disadvantaged and disenfranchised part of society. His jokes express the thought of a people wise by the bitter experience of centuries of social injustice. Lear wanted to live according to other laws in his old age, but the jester knows that this is impossible.

The meaning of the satirical "prophecy", which he utters in the steppe, is that relations based on humanity are impossible in a society dominated by deceit, money-grubbing and oppression ("When the priests are forced to plow ...", etc. - III, 2). The jester was born with such an understanding of life. Lear had to be born a second time to understand the same thing.

The role of the jester in tragedy lies in the fact that with his bitter jokes, like a scourge, he whips up Lear's consciousness. In England, jesters have long been called fools, because it was assumed that a clever owner takes a jester for his entertainment, at whose stupidity he laughs. King Lear's jester is called "Fool" in the play. But in the tragedy, the roles have changed, and the jester, punning, more than once tells Lear, who divided the kingdom between his two daughters, that he “would have made a good jester,” in other words, a fool (I, 5). The jester accelerates the insight of the old king, and then suddenly disappears.

The mysterious disappearance of the jester from among the characters is one of those insoluble mysteries that are found in the works of Shakespeare. What became of him after he helped carry Lear to a farm near Gloucester Castle, where the old king fell asleep, we do not know. It is useless to guess and look for external plot justifications for the disappearance of the jester. His fate is determined not by the laws of everyday reality, but by the laws of poetry. He came into tragedy (I, 4) when he was needed so that Lear, who had given up the kingdom, would quickly understand the tragic consequences of his fatal act. He leaves it (III, 6) when Lear has reached this understanding * . Everything he could say, Lear knows now. At the same time, Lear understands everything even deeper than the jester, because, although the latter’s woeful remarks are the result of centuries of habit, Lear’s perception of the vices of life is exacerbated by the terrible tragedy of the fall through which he passed. The contradictions of life are inevitable and unavoidable for the jester. His

* (There is another - professionally theatrical - explanation for the disappearance of the jester from the tragedy: the same actor may have played two roles - the jester and Cordelia. The jester disappeared because the actor was needed in order to play Cordelia, who had returned to her father. See Questions of Literature, 1962, No. 4, pp. 117-118.)

consciousness therefore does not rise above bitter sarcasms. For Lear, these same contradictions are exposed as the greatest tragedy of life. His vision of evil is deeper and more powerful. If the jester in the fate of Lear saw only one more confirmation of his skeptical outlook on life, then in Lear the misfortune experienced ill aroused indignation at the tragic imperfection of being.

We left Lear in a state of extraordinary madness, which, contrary to the usual course of things, manifested itself not in obscuration, but in the clarification of reason. But Lear is still insane. His brain is clouded with sorrow, like the sky with clouds. Only occasionally in this darkness of madness do lightning flashes of reason and burning thoughts illuminate the field of life's disasters with their flashes. In the light of them, we see the terrible face of truth, and before us, with all intolerance, the injustice reigning in the world is revealed. Lear's anger and suffering express not only his pain, but the pain of all suffering humanity. He was mistaken when he thought that all the good forces of life were embodied in the greatness of his personality. His true greatness was manifested in the fact that he was able to rise above his own grief and experience in his soul the grief of all those unjustly offended. This Lear is truly great. He discovers qualities that he did not have when he was at the height of power. After the tragedy experienced by him, as Dobrolyubov writes, “all the best sides of his soul are revealed; here we see that he is accessible to generosity, and tenderness, and compassion for the unfortunate, and the most humane justice. The strength of his character is expressed not only in curses to his daughters, but also in the consciousness of his guilt before Cordelia, and in regret for his tough temper, and in repentance that he thought so little about the unfortunate poor, loved true honesty so little ... Looking at him, we first feel hatred for this dissolute despot; but, following the development of the drama, we are more and more reconciled with him as with a man and end up filled with indignation and burning malice, no longer towards him, but for him and for the whole world - to that wild, inhuman situation, which can drive even people like Lear to such debauchery.

* (N. A. Dobrolyubov, Sobr. op. in three volumes, vol. 2, M. 1952, p. 198.)

Lear, who at first was the extreme embodiment of despotism, then turned into a victim of despotism. Seeing his inhuman suffering, we are imbued with hatred for the order of life, dooming people to such disasters.

We want a force to be found in the world to put an end to Lear's agony. There is such a force - it is Cordelia. Not remembering the offense, driven only by the desire to save her father and restore his rights, Cordelia hurries from France. She is at the head of the army. Before us is no longer a lonely defenseless girl. Now we see Cordelia the warrior.

Cordelia is one of the most beautiful images created by Shakespeare. She combines femininity, beauty, mental strength and resilience, an unyielding will and the ability to fight for what she believes in. Like other women - Shakespeare's heroines, Cordelia is a free person. There is not a grain of stupid and wordless humility in it. She is the living embodiment of the humanistic ideal. She did not give up the truth even when her own well-being depended on how much she could flatter her father, who had reached the extreme foolishness in his self-adoration. As a bright image of pure humanity, she appears before us at the beginning of the tragedy, then Cordelia disappears from the action for a long time. She is the first victim of injustice, despotism, appearing before us in tragedy. In the injustice that Lear committed towards her, the essence of all injustice in general is symbolically embodied. She is a symbol of suffering for the truth. And Lear knows that his greatest fault is with Cordelia.

And now Cordelia appears to save her father, who suffered from injustice. The fact that she is above personal grievances makes her appearance even more beautiful. Cordelia's doctor undertakes to heal Lear. He puts him into a deep sleep. While Lear sleeps, music plays, which, with its harmony, restores the disturbed harmony of his spirit. When Lear awakens, his madness is over. But a new change has come to him. He is no longer a naked two-legged creature, not homeless, who rushes homeless across the steppe. He is wearing rich royal clothes, he is surrounded by many people, and again, as before, they all catch his eyes in order to guess his desires and immediately fulfill them. He cannot understand whether this is a dream, or whether he has gone to heaven, for he is no longer able to believe that there can be life without torment and suffering: "You don't have to take me out of the coffin ..." (IV, 7).

Of all that he sees around him, Cordelia strikes him the most, whom he takes for the "spirit of paradise." It seems impossible to him that she forgives him and returns to him. But it is so! And then the proud Lear, that Lear, to whom it seemed that the whole world should lie flat at his feet, kneels before his daughter. He recognizes his guilt before her and cannot understand why she is crying.

Cordelia, who forgave her father and came to his aid, expresses the principle of mercy dear to the humanist Shakespeare. But this is not Christian mercy, as some of the latest interpreters of tragedy assure, for Cordelia is not one of those who respond to evil with uncomplaining obedience. She came to restore justice, trampled on by her older sisters, with weapons in her hands. Not Christian submission to evil, but militant humanism is embodied in Cordelia.

However - and this is one of the most tragic motives of the play - Cordelia is not destined to win. Her army is defeated. But courage does not leave her. When Lyra and her are taken prisoner, she says to her father with stoic courage:

No, we are not the first in the human race Who longed for the good and got into trouble. Because of you, father, I lost heart, I myself would have taken the blow, perhaps.

(V, 2. Translation by B. Pasternak)

She is even capable of joking and asks Lear with obvious irony: "Shouldn't we see my sisters?" At the same time, she means that one could ask them for indulgence. She asks this not because she believes in their kindness - their treatment of Lear leaves her in no doubt about their ability to be merciful - she checks Lear: does he still have the ability to resist the world of injustice and evil. Yes, Lear had it. He answers four times "No, no, no, no!".

Cordelia does not yet know what her father has become now. This new Lear, having passed through the crucible of suffering, understood what is most necessary for a person. It is not in the "excess" without which he could not imagine his life before. The most important thing for a person is not power over other people, not wealth, which makes it possible to satisfy any whims and whims of sensuality; interests. Lear is not afraid of the dungeon if he is in it with Cordelia. She, her love, her purity, her mercy, her boundless humanity - that's what he needs, that's the highest happiness of life. And this conviction is imbued with the words with which he addresses Cordelia:

Let them take us quickly to the dungeon: There we, like birds in a cage, will sing ...

Once Lear renounced power, not really thinking of abdicating it. He was indignant for a long time and was very worried that power over others was no longer available to him. It took him a while to get used to his new position. But now that world has become forever alien to him. He will not return to him, his soul is full of contempt for those in power, for their inhuman strife. Let them think that by capturing Lear and Cordelia they have won a victory over them. He is happy with her and without a throne and without power (VI, 2). Cordelia weeps, listening to his speeches, but these are not tears of grief and impotence, but tears of tenderness at the sight of the transformed Lear. However, he does not seem to understand the reason for her tears. It seems to him that this is a manifestation of her weakness, and he comforts her.

Terrible were the trials through which Lear went, at a high price he bought stoic calm in relation to the troubles that befell him. It seems to him that there is nothing left that could now destroy the new harmony of the spirit that he found when Cordelia returned to him. But Lear is waiting for another most terrible, most tragic test, because the previous tests shook his delusions, and the test that will come now will be a blow to the truth, which he gained at the cost of so many torments.

Here, the evil spirit of the tragedy, Edmond, intervenes in the fate of Lear and Cordelia. He knows that even prisoners they are dangerous, and decides to destroy them. He gives the order to end them in prison. Then, when his brother wins the duel and Edmond realizes that his life is running out at the last moment, "against his nature," he wants to do good and save Cordelia and Lear, whom he had previously ordered to be killed. But his remorse comes too late: Cordelia has already been hanged. She is taken out of the loop, and Lear appears before us, carrying the dead Cordelia in his arms. We remember how his angry voice thundered when he thought that with the loss of the kingdom he had lost everything. Then he found out that he hadn't lost anything that time. He lost now that Cordelia had died. Again grief and madness seize him:

Howl, howl, howl! You are made of stone! I would have your eyes and tongues - The firmament would have collapsed! .. She was gone forever ...

Why is life needed if such a beautiful creature as Cordelia is dead:

The poor thing was strangled! No, not breathing! Horse, dog, rat can live, But not you! You are gone forever...

Lear's cup of suffering overflowed. To come at the cost of so many trials to the knowledge of what a person needs, and then lose what he has acquired - there is no greater torment than this. This is the worst of tragedies. Until his last breath, Lear still thinks that maybe Cordelia is not dead, he still hopes that life has been preserved in her. Shocked, he looks at her lips to see if a sigh will escape from them. But Cordelia's lips don't move. He looks at them like that, because from these lips he heard the truth for the first time in his life, which he did not want to believe in his arrogant delusion, and now he is again waiting for the mouth of truth to answer him. But they are mute. The life is gone from them. And with this, the life of the long-suffering Lear leaves.

Edgar thinks Lear has passed out and tries to bring him back to his senses, but Kent stops him:

Don't torment. Leave his spirit alone. Let him go. Who do you have to be to pull Him up again on the rack of life for torment?

The tragedy is over. The bloody chaos is over. It had many victims. All those who, despising humanity in the pursuit of imaginary blessings of life, caused suffering and exterminated those who stood in their way, perished. Cornwall, Goneril, Regan, Edmond fell, but Gloucester, Cordelia and Lear also perished. This is the highest measure of justice, which is accessible to tragedy. The innocent and the guilty die. But does the death of thousands of Gonerils and Regan balance the death of one Cordelia? And why should a person suffer as much and as much as Lear suffered, if in the end he still loses all the best, for the sake of which it was worth enduring the torture of life?

These are the tragic questions with which the drama ends. She does not answer them. But Shakespeare, who has known and revealed to us the greatest depths of suffering, does not want to part with us, leaving us without a glimmer of hope. The last words of the tragedy are imbued with deep sorrow, but courage also sounds in them:

No matter how longing the soul is smitten, Times force to be persistent. All endured the old, hard and unbending. We young people do not experience this.

Again, not Christian long-suffering, but stoic courage blows over us. We have joined the spirit of tragedy. It seems to others that in the name of a moral ideal, Shakespeare must also add here the conviction that life is not meaningless, just as suffering is not meaningless. Therefore, they seek guilt not only from Lear, but even from Cordelia. Lira certainly has some guilt, but isn't his guilt offset by the extent of the suffering that has befallen him? In any case, Cordelia dies innocent, and nothing in the world can justify her death.

Tragedies are not created for consolation. They arise from the consciousness of the deepest contradictions of life. Not to reconcile with them, but the artist wants to realize them. And he puts us before them with all ruthlessness, exposing the truth about the terrible aspects of life. It takes great courage to face this truth the way Shakespeare did. He did not want to reconcile with the tragedy of life, but to arouse indignation at the evil and injustice that doom people to suffering.

Introduction

In the tragedy "King Lear" the problems of family relations are tightly combined with the problems of social and political. In these enumerated correlations, the same theme of contact of true humanity with indifference, self-interest and vanity takes place. Lear at the beginning of the play is a king of the medieval type, like Richard II, equipped with a fantasy of his own omnipotence, indifferent to the problems of his people, who disposes of the country as his personal estate, which he can divide and give away as he pleases. In his opinion, everyone around, including his daughters, should be submissive, and not sincere or loving. His dogmatic and scholastic mind needs not a truthful and direct expression of feelings, but external, conventional signs of humility. This is used by the two eldest daughters, hypocritically assuring him of their love. They are opposed by Cordelia, who knows only one law - the law of truth and naturalness. But Lear does not hear the voice of truth, for which he suffered a cruel punishment. His fantasies of king father and man flutter. But at the moment of his cruel collapse, Lear "recovers". Having experienced the necessity of his own “I”, many things that had previously been inaccessible to him became clear to him, he began to look at his rule, life, and people in a different way. He thought about the "poor, naked poor," "the homeless, with a hungry belly, in tatters full of holes," who, like him, are forced to fight the storm on this terrible night (act III, scene 4). He became aware of the terrible injustice of the created government, which he supported. The collapse of Lear lies in his fall and suffering. The use of the above hyperbole (“... naked poor people” - in fact, poor people do not go completely naked) indicates the existence of “anti-”: “- hero”, “- life”, “- mood” and so on.

The relevance of the topic lies in several points:

relevant for its novelty, since, specifically, Shakespeare's concept of the anti-hero in King Lear was not considered so thoroughly;

the relevance lies in the specifics of displaying the anti-hero, which performs the author's function not only as an artistic trick to create a certain literary style, but as a psychological way of influencing the reader. Here are the philosophical judgments of the character, which is directly an anti-hero;

Shakespeare's idea itself - the embodiment of an antihero in a work, also belongs to the relevance, as his methods of creating images - antiheroes differ from the methods of other authors.

The theoretical basis was the work of such literary researchers: Ankist, Komarova, Morozova, Lukovs, Pinsky, Urnovs and many other famous authors.

The purpose of the study: to prove the relevance of the chosen topic, and for this purpose the following tasks were put forward:

explain the concept of an antihero;

show the purpose, role and meaning of the anti-hero in a work of art;

determine the place of the anti-hero in the tragedy "King Lear".

Research methods:

analytical, that is, analysis was carried out by dividing phenomena or processes into incoming elements: signs, properties, and the like, as well as the study of these elements;

in some moments (in the theoretical part) when writing a term paper, an analogy was used. This research method helps to determine the meaning and meaning of the desired component using comparisons. In this situation, we are talking about an anti-hero;

the deductive method of analysis allows generalizing and summarizing certain statements, that is, in simple terms: to combine a set of concepts into a single logical whole;

the inductive method of research is the opposite of the previous one, namely: the most significant facts are selected from the general concept;

The classification in this course project allows you to put the information “on the shelves” according to common or various features.

All of the above methods of research, both individually and in combination, represent an independent analysis, where they were used as evidence for the statements of famous authors (links are attached to the author's confirmations).

Object of study: antihero.

Subject of research: W. Shakespeare's tragedy "King Lear".

Structurally, the course project consists of: “Contents” - 1 page, “Introduction” - 5 pages, two chapters “Chapter 1 The concept of an antihero and its significance in a work of art” - 10 pages, “Chapter 1 The role and functions of an antihero in a play W. Shakespeare "King Lear" - 10 pages, "Conclusion" - 2 pages, "References" - 40 sources. Total volume: 32 pages.

In the first chapter, a theoretical analysis was carried out, where the concept of an antihero was considered in a broad sense. The essence of the use of the anti-hero in a literary work, as well as its impact on the reader, was immediately analyzed.

The first chapter is theoretical, because here the terms and their use in a literary text are studied.

The second chapter is of an exclusively practical nature, as it carried out its own analysis of a literary text, where theoretical knowledge (acquired in the first chapter) and the work "King Lear" itself acted as auxiliary means. Here the antihero was considered not only as a separate concept, but as:

a way to embody several negative qualities in one character;

antihero as a type that is part of the character system;

the nature of the antihero and his life in the work (compatibility with other characters (heroes - antiheroes));

the philosophical meaning of Shakespeare's anti-hero;

the psychological significance of Shakespeare's anti-hero;

the concept and technology of creating an anti-hero in the tragedy of W. Shakespeare "King Lear", that is: why is he needed at all.

Conclusions are the final part, which contains general information or the result of the work done.

In general, the work is a kind of theoretical and practical research and, in addition, it can itself serve as an informative source for students of higher educational institutions (on literary subjects) and teachers.

The general analysis is presented as a classification that has a sequence according to the signs and principles of the existence of an anti-hero in a work of art, namely in the tragedy of W. Shakespeare "King Lear". Characteristics of the study: quotes from the work "King Lear" itself and scientific statements of writers who dealt with the issue of the anti-hero and the study of Shakespeare's work were used as evidence. In addition, it is logical that it is easier to theoretically explain the term antihero than to discover the same concept in a practical sense, since the author does not use terminology when writing a work of fiction. Accordingly, the identification of an antihero in practice consists in the analysis of the stylistic formulation of sentences, namely: stylistic expressive means (epithet, metaphor, hyperbole or any other play on words), which in turn point (but does not name) the antihero himself. In the same situation, such a concept as a system of characters should not be excluded, just as an antihero is not a separately existing person, but a person living in society (in a script). Based on the foregoing, it is obvious why the specified research methods, purpose and objectives were used in the work.

1. The concept of an antihero and its meaning in a work of art

tragedy shakespeare antihero play

Anti-hero - a type of literary hero, devoid of genuine heroic characteristics, but occupying a central place in the production. and acting in varying degrees as a confidant of the author; conditionally singled out in the typology of literary characters of the 19th-20th centuries.

In the everyday life of modern criticism, the concept of an antihero is sometimes applied to the character of Western modernist literature - an ordinary, impersonal, "mass" person, "everyone", who, unlike the "little man" in classical prose of the 19th century, turns out to be not so much the subject of the author's compassion as expressing the writer's well-being in a world hostile to him, his loss and alienation. In neo-avant-garde prose and dramaturgy, such a character from an enduring person finally turns into a nameless point of application of irrational and absurd forces; at this stage, the literary image as such is liquidated, similarly to the abolition of a literary work in "aliterature", "anti-drama", "anti-novel". In this understanding, the anti-hero, as a figure that does not claim to be exclusive, is essentially identical to the "non-hero".

Meanwhile, F.M. Dostoevsky, who introduced the very word “anti-hero” into literature (“Notes from the Underground”, 1864), puts this person in polemical relations with the image of a positive hero: “A novel needs a hero, but here all the features for an anti-hero are deliberately collected ...” ( Complete collection of works, in 30 vols., vol. 5, 1973, p. 178). The two-part word “anti-hero” here indicates at the same time the opposition of the new character to the integral and demonstrative traditional hero-protagonist and the fact that there is no one else to fill the empty vacancy of the hero (compare with the two-accent formula “hero of our time”, where the sad irony combined with a statement of topical fact).

Dostoevsky's "underground" anti-hero is a substitute for the hero, his substitution under the conditions of the bourgeois-positivist de-heroization of life, fully revealed by the European reality of the 19th century; we are talking about a powerless protest of an individuality that has lost its transpersonal guidelines against the dictates of common truths and worldly automatism in a prosaic two-dimensional world, about a dispute between “unfortunate consciousness” and “ordinary” consciousness (Hegel). The anti-hero, this retired romantic, completes the path of sanction-free, autonomous consciousness, the untried play of power, begun by romantic idealism. It signals a deep crack in the traditional spiritual solidity of society, the loss of generally significant bonds, which actually clears the springboard for the artistic discovery of a new, disoriented individual. At the same time, an ethically full-fledged hero does not disappear at all from literature (especially the hero-truth-seeker of Russian classics), but the anti-hero - in the person of the "underground man" and his heirs - having appeared on the literary scene, casts a shadow of problematicity on him, and the former indecomposable indisputability of Kornelev's or Schillerian becomes hardly possible for the protagonist.

Together with such an anti-hero, a world of fundamentally unseemly existence enters literature. If the main category of the hero's behavior is a feat, then for the antihero the corresponding category of "anti-behavior" is a scandal; if the essence of the heroic mood is in self-overcoming, then the essence of the “anti-heroic” is in hysterical self-defense; if the "classical" hero was brought up in instructive wanderings, then the anti-hero often undergoes a kind of "anti-travel" through the backyards of life, "to the end of the night"; if the tragedy of the hero leads to catharsis, then the drama of the anti-hero is exhausted in an atragic hopelessness.

The anti-hero occupies an intermediate position of a person who “has lost his faith, but yearns for the shrine” (S. L. Frank); an idealless vacuum painfully attracts his “enhanced consciousness” (Dostoevsky) and heightened sensitivity, provokes him to unbridled sincerity, bordering on buffoonery. Throwing down a declarative challenge to society and the laws of an indifferent nature, thereby making a claim for a heroic opposition to the order of things, at the same time he turns out to be incapable of a pathetic breakthrough action and tries to justify his bankruptcy by ridiculing the ideal as such. Exposing the complacency and hypocrisy of the "environment", the anti-hero reveals an unfavorable spiritual and historical situation, and demonstrating his own ugliness, he testifies to a personality crisis in general.

The literary and ideological pedigree of the anti-hero originates in the spheres of both “high” and “low”, both serious and “funny”, the paradoxical meeting of which is just characteristic of carnivalized artistic devices that undermine the stability of everyday truths. One line comes from the "Confession" J.J. Rousseau, de Sade's pre-romanticism, B. Constant's "pre-Byronism" ("Adolf"), N.M. Karamzin in "My Confession", romantic. Hamletism and Byronism; the other - from the menippea (see v. 9), philosophical and ideological. comedies ("The Misanthrope" and "Don Juan" by Moliere), ironic. dialogue in the spirit of "Ramo's Nephew" by D. Diderot. Directly, the predecessor of the anti-hero in Western literature is the "Napoleonic type" of the provincial and plebeian (Rastignac from O. Balzac's "The Human Comedy" and Julien Sorel from Stendhal's "Red and Black"), in Russian - "an extra person", primarily Lermontov's Pechorin, who, in contrast to Pushkin's inactive Onegin, develops an immoral line of "anti-behaviour", scandalizing society and discrediting its foundations. However, sharing groundlessness and a sense of exclusivity with the “superfluous person”, the anti-hero testifies to a new stage in the loss of “roots” and the loss of “form”; his spiritual orphanhood is supplemented by social humiliation and ugliness (not an aristocrat, a dandy, or an independent local nobleman, but a clerical official, a home teacher, an urban intellectual out of work, living off casual income, and sometimes an adventurer, a man of the "bottom"). In literary terms, the anti-hero differs from the "superfluous person" as a dialogically open consciousness - from the consciousness objectified by the author's evaluating word and look, as the inner voice of the personality - from the character typified from the outside. Hence the prevailing form of confession in these cases, narration in the first person or through the prism of one central consciousness (see The image of the narrator, v. 9) or, more rarely, the image of the antihero through the eyes of a confused but devoted fellow traveler (Serenus Zeitblom from "Doctor Faustus" T .Manna). Leaving the anti-hero free from being determined by the environment (in contrast to how Oblomov or even Turgenev's heroes are fixed by it), the author does not block his ways of spiritual self-identification, regardless of his assessment of his actions. Thanks to such a new formulation, the anti-hero gets the opportunity, in his request for life, to go beyond the limits of his own historical and everyday situation into the sphere of eternal “damned questions” about the meaning of being, to become a disinterested “ideologist”, referring to his fate as an argument in a dispute. The “dialectic” of the anti-hero, which preempts any reciprocal reproach, is, as it were, calculated to ensure that the reader, shocked by his outpourings, nevertheless admits that he is “no better”. The anti-hero's boundless self-exposing, that is, both undermines and saves his reputation. Hence, as a rule, the extremely confused and ambiguous moral and ideological reaction of readers to literary images of this kind - from sympathetically repentant identification of oneself with an anti-hero to dissociating indignation.

The anti-hero, due to his fundamental intermediateness, his moral ambiguity and unresolved nature, is a kind of hero of the crossroads, where Hamlet meets Klim Samgin (The Life of Klim Samgin by M. Gorky), Childe Harold with Peredonov (The Petty Demon by F. Sologub) , Don Giovanni with Sanin (Sanin by M.P. Artsybashev). His indefatigable inconsistency between self-flagellation and cynicism; between inspiration and apathy, between tragedy and falsehood, between autocracy and fatalism, are a variety of practically mutually exclusive variants of this character that do not break with the “underground man” (as their archetype), with an internal split in which good is always powerless, and force is destructive (“I don’t give… I can’t be… kind!” – F. M. Dostoevsky, ibid., p. So, depending on the degree of unity of the writer with the character and on the author's system of feelings, the anti-hero may not be devoid of attractive features: he can borrow the conscientious sacrifice of Fedya Protasov (“The Living Corpse” by L.N. Tolstoy), the courage of Bazarov (“Fathers and Sons” I.S. Turgenev), the nervous vulnerability of Chekhov’s Ivanov (“Ivanov”), the independence of “angry young people” (the heroes of J. Osborne, J. Wayne, etc.) or, on the contrary, descend to the base capitulation of the characters of “Darkness” and “ The Abyss” by L. Andreev, the cynical despair of the autobiographical hero in Celine’s “Journey to the End of the Night”, to the sensitive indifference of Meursault (“The Outsider” by A. Camus), the hysterical sadism of the young heroes of F. Arrabal (“The Great Ceremonial” and other plays), pathological self-isolation of the characters of Kobo Abe. King Lear is a narcissistic egoist, for whom even his own children are these obedient slaves (“King Lear” by W. Shakespeare). However, in all these contrasting cases, the anti-hero is endowed with the attraction of a mysterious outcast who is in pain, which, in particular, puts the anti-hero in an unbearable position of the “first lover” (a motif of testing by feeling, characteristic of the literature of the 19th and 20th centuries). Compared to Dostoevsky's original alignment of forces (where the "underground man" is put to shame through the image of Liza, Ippolit in "The Idiot" - by the presence of Prince Myshkin), the anti-hero in his literary history is increasingly turning into a means of ideological authorial confession and, moving from fiction to philosophical essays, is already completely identified with the author's consciousness (for example, the exposed and provoking "I" in the late romantic S. Kierkegaard, in the "reappraiser of values" F. Nietzsche, the lawyer of the "underground" L. Shestov; also with the American pamphleteer of the "counterculture" N . Mailer - "White Negro", etc.). The devaluation of the anti-hero while simultaneously merging the author with him is characteristic of Western literature of modernism. As for the Shakespearean concept of the anti-hero in the tragedy King Lear, the author lowers his anti-hero to “no” and calls for the reader’s pity, showing that the anti-hero is not so anti, that is, is not an absolutely negative character.

In contemporary Soviet criticism, the term "anti-hero" is also applied to certain characters in the literature of the 1960s and 1970s. (for example, the prose of A. Bitov and E. Vetemaa, the dramas of A. Vampilov), more specifically, to images that are characterized by moral duality, a wavering between the ideal and skepticism, and which serve the cause of social and ethical self-criticism.

The antihero is a timeless and international concept, namely: a kind of value orientation (dominant) in culture and literature.

There is no way to give a precise definition of such a term as an antihero, since each author has his own principle of identifying this character. But the anti-hero is a literary trope that became known as a distinct concept as early as 1714.

Further, the "anti-hero" grows, changing its form and essence. Naturally, the character of the antihero changes in accordance with the worldview of society. For example, Shakespeare's anti-hero - King Lear differs from Turgenev's Hippolytus in the way that the works themselves were written at different times and in different "civilizations".

The antihero, as a rule, plays either a major or a secondary role, which has negative qualities, not only to explain to the reader what “bad” is, but also to highlight the positive hero against the background of the antihero as “white” is better seen against a black background. But at the same time, an antihero can often arouse sympathy in the reader, since even “villains” have their positive sides, for example, an antihero - a coward is able to sincerely fall in love; antihero - despot changes through repentance and so on.

For a long time, literature has been a great saga about a person's overcoming negative phenomena or about the forms of his defeat in a collision with reality, the environment, people, and with the contradictions of his own soul. That is why the forces opposing man were originally extremely important in all their senses.

A literary text without conflict is boring and uninteresting to the reader, respectively, without an anti-hero and a hero is not a hero. The absence of conflict, but instructive situations is characteristic of folklore and fairy tales, and even then not for everyone, even the hero - Cinderella had anti-heroes - tormentors in the face of an evil stepmother and her daughters. In fairy tales, the ending usually prepares the reader for a happy ending (“The Little Mermaid” by G.H. Anderson is one of the exceptions), which indicates the predictability of the end of the story, which is already inherently taken for a banal story - a fairy tale for children.

Often the anti-hero goes one step ahead of the hero, that is, he is more of a main character than a positive character (for example, King Lear is the anti-hero who plays the main role in the play "King Lear"). It is already clear that the antihero is "evil", and the hero is "good". But the concepts of evil and good can change their trend over time due to social development in the same way as the concept of beauty (French standards have replaced baroque women).

Conclusion: the antihero is a system of principles of "evil", starting from which, the picture of "good" is more clearly visible. Thus, the author allows the reader to distinguish "enemy" from "friend" on the basis of comparison.

More modern writers characterize the negative hero by identifying his mentality, psychological characteristics and picture of values. But there are always exceptions to the rule. In this situation, the principle of transformation is an exception, that is, a negative character is bad not because he is such by nature, but because life and circumstances played a cruel joke on him. Regarding the Shakespearean concept of the anti-hero in King Lear, it should be said that the negative character, under the influence of certain reasons, changes his anti-nature and causes pity for himself. In such a situation, a conflict of contradictions of character occurs, which revives the character himself.

Any work of art contains a conflict of "good" and "evil", where "good" is true. The same should be said about the significance of the anti-hero in the work. But the change in the nature of the anti-hero for the better in literature is regarded as a spiritual feat, and the anti-hero reincarnates into a hero, that is, into a person who has realized his mistakes and embarked on the true path. And this speaks (regardless of the event climax of the plot) about the victory of "good" over "evil", which means that the hero defeated the anti-hero, even if these two contradictory concepts are combined in one person.

Early work is familiar with the literary anti-hero as a positive character who acted as a teacher-philosopher, preaching the correctness of life and explaining the difference between "good" and "evil".

Since literature is interested in various types of consciousness, a gradual transition from an exclusively negative face to a positive one is possible. The variety of types and characters of the characters just creates that "zest" that makes the work of art interesting. In this sense, an anti-hero should be singled out, who has the character of a jester or a character who is laughed at by everyone, both the characters in the script and the reader himself. In this situation, the antihero cannot be called completely negative, since his other side is positive, but most often not understood by others. The social perception of a person does not always truly characterize a character. As a rule, “good” is something that is positively perceived by the majority, but is “good” really “good”? Often a normal person, who is perceived by the environment as "evil", is described in a work of art as a person "not of this world." It is these characters that are most interesting to the reader, who are accompanied by ironic, humorous statements, accompanied by a serious attitude to life (“The Idiot” by F.M. Dostoevsky).

There is another type of anti-hero who is a puppet of evil circumstances; weak-willed personality or low intelligence. Most often, such a character strives for "good", but the opposite comes out for him. Here the writer's idea is that virtuous stupidity is much worse than a well-thought-out insidious act. In simple terms - a monkey with a grenade. In this aspect, the author tries to show that a stupid person is the tragedy of all mankind. But again, a stupid character in our time as a negative hero has outlived his life in the same way that in modern art stupid and cynical people are the main characters and the reader is “rooting” for them (series: “Happy Together”, “Daddy’s Daughters”). That is, over time, the concepts of “good” and “evil” change places, and what was previously considered evil is now considered good in modern art. There are no longer those heroes who gave their lives for the fatherland; there are no women who preferred death to violence. All this was replaced by characters who do not take into account public opinion and strive to survive at any cost. And it is impossible to call one of the above-mentioned "evil" or "good" in the way that the mentality of each person defines these terms for himself in a broad sense.

Here, the evolution of the anti-hero was presented so that in the next chapter it would be easy to define not just an anti-hero as a negative character, but to show precisely the Shakespearean manner of creating an anti-heroic image in the tragedy "King Lear".

2. The role and functions of the anti-hero in the play by W. Shakespeare "King Lear"

In the tragedy "King Lear" the problems of family relations are closely intertwined with the problems of social and political. In these three plans, the same theme of the collision of pure humanity with callousness, self-interest and ambition runs through. Lear at the beginning of the tragedy is a king of the medieval type, like Richard II, intoxicated with the illusion of his omnipotence, blind to the needs of his people, who disposes of the country as his personal estate, which he can give away to anyone. From all those around him, even from his daughters, he demands only blind obedience instead of sincerity. Two eldest daughters take advantage, hypocritically assuring him of their love. They are opposed by Cordelia, who believes in only one law - the law of truth and naturalness. But Lear is deaf to the voice of truth, and for this he suffers a cruel punishment. His illusions of king, father and man dissipate.

However, in his cruel downfall, Lear is renewed. Having experienced the need and deprivation himself, he began to understand much of what had previously been inaccessible to him, began to look at his power and life differently.

Next to the story of Lear and his daughters, the second storyline of the tragedy unfolds, the story of Gloucester and his two sons. Like Goneril and Regan, Edmund also rejected all kinship and family ties, committing even worse poverty out of ambition and benefit. By this parallelism, Shakespeare wants to show that the case in the Lear family is general and typical.

First, about the construction of "King Lear". The play is divided into two parts, maybe three. In the first scene of the first act, Gloucester, Kent and Edmund appear, in a minor key, and then Lear and his three daughters. Then follows Edmund's plot against his father, Gloucester. In the third scene of the first act, we are shown once throughout the play Lear's quarrel with Goneril and Regan. In the third act comes the climax: the storm over the moor, the madness of Lear, the blinding of Gloucester, the arrival of the French army to the rescue. Here you can see such a phrase "Lear's madness", which was considered in the previous chapter, as the concept of an anti-hero - a jester, where a stupid benefactor is worse than a well-thought-out insidious plan, that is, a stupid person is an enemy to all mankind. In the fourth act, there is a relative calm: there is a rivalry between Goneril and Regan for the possession of Edmund, the meeting of the crazy Lear with the blind Gloucester - an extremely important episode - and the scene of reconciliation between Cordelia and the no longer passionately mad, but Lear embraced childhood. The weather is fine now, the storm has subsided. In the fifth act, a battle takes place, and the action reaches its denouement: the suicide of one daughter, the murder of another, the death of Cordelia, the death of Lear. What is the meaning of Shakespeare's anti-hero in the work? Yes, it is clear that Lear is a negative character, and as already mentioned in the first chapter, death is not always a bad ending. Lear realized his mistake, which means that the fetters of the antihero are broken, respectively, "good" triumphed over "evil", despite the fact that pain in connection with the loss of loved ones turned out to be retribution for past mistakes. Death is salvation in a way that it is better to die than to mourn for dead children all your life. Lear causes pity on the part of the reader, which speaks of universal forgiveness. Conclusion: Shakespeare's anti-hero is capable of reincarnation.

King Lear is the only Shakespearean tragedy in which the subplot was fully developed; we first saw the development of a subplot in Henry IV. In Henry IV, Falstaff is the exact opposite of Prince Henry. Similarly, Gloucester and Lear are contrasted in King Lear. In the course of the main plot, Lear is deceived about his daughters and banishes the good daughter, in a side story - Gloucester is mistaken about his own sons and banishes the good son. Lear is responsible for his actions, Gloucester - to a lesser extent, as he trusted other people's words. One father goes crazy, the other parent gets blinded. One father meets a good daughter and recognizes her, the other meets and does not recognize his good son. Two evil daughters destroy each other, a good son kills an evil son. Lear finds his daughter dead and dies of grief himself, Gloucester finds a good son who looked after him and also dies. In the main plot, reckless passion, good or evil, leads to disaster. In a subplot, the cause of the collapse is the mind, good or evil. The brutality of the subplot is intended to fill its relative prosaicness. Lear is more tragic because he reigns over his feelings, Gloucester is miserable because he tries to avoid suffering.

Lear, in the first scene, divides his kingdom like a birthday cake. This is not a historical approach, but it can be experienced by each of us at times. Shakespeare tries to do something for the development of characters, for example, turning Edgar into Poor Tom, but it looks a little artificial. Shakespeare treats the characters in King Lear like the characters in an opera. The property common to all major operatic roles is that each of them reflects a passionate and deliberate state of mind; as compensating for the lack of psychological depth, the composer presents us with the direct and simultaneous relationship of these mental states to each other. The dazzling glory of the opera is in the ensemble. The jester, Edgar and mad Lear form the crown trio in King Lear. The ensemble creates a picture of human nature, although the individual is sacrificed. Lear's meeting with Gloucester during a storm does nothing to advance the plot. It's amazing that Lear could get lost at all. Shakespeare wants to bring two characters together - a victim of pride and a victim of gullibility. The motives of the French army's move remain unclear: it is only obvious that the French must arrive in order for Lear to reunite with Cordelia, because this is the most important thing. Nor is it convincing that Kent should be kept incognito with Cordelius, and Edgar with Gloucester. This is only necessary to give more strength to the scene of Lear's reunion with Cordelia. Recognition of Kent by Lear would reduce the drama of the meeting. Recognizing Edgar Gloucester on stage would have led to the same result - a drop in tension. When Kent is revealed, his name no longer means anything to Lear. Shakespeare is now interested in states of mind. The dramatic episodes that would have been further developed in the chronicles - the rivalry between Goneril and Regan for the love of Edmund, the battle between the English and the French - are considered superficially. They are only important for displaying states. Yes, something has to be sacrificed. Both Gloucester's blinding and his suicide run the risk of being ridiculous. The states of passion, as we shall soon see, are contrasted in the play with a passionless storm.

The play revolves around the various meanings of the word "nature". Lear says:

Tell me, daughters: how are we loved?

To open kindness more generously

In response to natural love

Act I, scene 1.

Lear sends Kent into exile because he “bred our will with thought, / Which does not reconcile with our nature.” Lear tells the French king about Cordelia as “a freak whom nature / Itself is ashamed of,” and the French king replies: “It must be a terrible fault / Offend Nature, since your feeling / Disappeared forever.” Kent meets Oswald at Gloucester Castle and scolds: ? ?“Cowardly rascal, deny nature from you, the tailor made you” (Scene II). Cornwall remarks that Kent has "since<… >, / Whom do you praise once for being straightforward - / They are rude and, contrary to nature, / will disband” (Scene II). At first, Lear tries to forgive Cordelia's behavior by remarking that:

When sick, we do not have ourselves,

And the spirit is a prisoner of the body.

Act II, scene 4.

Regan declares to Lear that he is an old man: "Nature at your age goes / Toward the border" (Act II, scene 4). Lear, begging Regan to take care, says that she understands better than Goneril "Nature's duty, the duty of children" (I, 4). Lear would later throw to Regan:

It is impossible to judge what is needed.

Pitiful beggar

Has something more needed.

When nature is limited to what is necessary,

We would descend into cattle.

Act II, scene 4.

Lear, competing in a rage with the storm, calls "Flying thunder, / pot-bellied flatten the globe, break / Nature's shape, scatter seeds, / the ungrateful breed" (Act II, scene 2). Kent, asking Lear to enter the hut, says: "The cruelty of this night is too hard / Nature can bear" (Act III, scene 4). Having changed his father, Edmund says to Cornwall: "Then consider that nature has given way to my sense of duty" (Act III, scene 5). Lear asks, "Are there causes in nature that make hearts hard?" (Act III, scene 6). Duke Al - Banska says: Consider "King Lear" in the context of Pascal's idea that the human being is greater than the universe, because he has reason and will. What do the characters in the play want? What is the contrast between their nature, position in society and social functions? Lear desires absolute power and demands boundless love from others. He is a father and a king, and he has power. Lear's power arises from his nature and royal dignity. He voluntarily parted with the throne. He is still a king, endowed with natural power, but by social position he has become a subject. He is driven out of patience, and he surrenders to passions, while the royal dignity comes into sharp conflict with the body of a weak old man, captured by a storm. His kingdom fell apart. Now his nature is like that of a child, and in his social position he becomes the father - the child of Cordelia. At first, two evil daughters, perhaps, do not feel boundless desire, but only strive to get rid of parental oppression, but, having received freedom, they surrender to the power of an endless, manic desire to do their own will, which pushes them to kill and, finally, leads to death: in the last act, Regan dies from poison, and Goneril commits suicide. At their core, they are both she-wolves.

Cordelia wants to love freely, without coercion, and, paradoxically, she also defines love as a duty. Lear, awakening from his madness, says to her:

You don't love me. your sisters

I was offended, but for no reason.

You have a reason.

Act IV, scene 7.

Cordelia's response is "No, no reason" (Act IV, scene 7). Comparing with the words of Leonora in Beethoven's Fidelio: "Nichts, nichts, mein Florestan" Cordelia does not seek power, she wants to love freely.

Edmund at the beginning of the play just wants to be Edgar. Luck develops in him a craving for power and introduces him into the temptation of evil - power and evil as such. He delights in deception for the sake of deception. He cuts his hand like a drunkard in a funny carnage, deceives Cornwall, and then becomes dangerous. He plays with fire, for some reason pitting Goneril against Regan, and calls for the death of Lear and Cordelia for no apparent reason. The "natural" son behaves unnaturally and turns out to be a criminal whose dagger is directed against everyone and everyone.

Gloucester at the beginning of the play wants to be an ordinary person, an elderly courtier respected by everyone. Excessive, unreasonable gullibility to the words of one son and an extra readiness to blame Edgar puts his existence outside the framework of everyday life. In fact, what leads to his death is that in trying to save Lear, he acts as a person, and not as a courtier in the traditional sense. He turns into an outcast, into a persecuted blind man, with a father who has become a child, and his death, imbued with sincere, deeply personal joy, is also extraordinary.

The Duke of Albany wants a quiet life, he does not have natural power like Lear and the arrogance of Cornwall. The horror of what is happening makes him take the reins of government in his hands. Cornwall does not change, he is who he wants to be, and he dies a violent death of a criminal, he believes only in strength. Edgar wants the reliability and rights of a legitimate son. He is doomed to become an outcast. When he is deprived of the support for a normal existence, he pretends to be imbecile, breakfast on guilt as a renegade. Thanks to this, his character changes, he begins to understand the meaning of his own words, and until the end of the play he grows into a personality. Kent is not looking for new ways, but remains what he was - an honest and devoted servant. In Oswald's forum of personal identity, only the instinct of self-preservation. He changes color like a chameleon - he is the real antipode of Kent.

The jester is perhaps the most interesting of all the characters. It is difficult to say whether he has passions and a natural character. He has a talent, his vocation is buffoonery and nothing more. What is his talent? In irony, as a protection from tragic experiences. The jester and Edgar are related to Hamlet and Thersites. The jester clings to bare facts and therefore speaks not in beautiful verses, but in playful verses, resorting to saving irony. Unlike Iago's honesty, which only reflects the feelings of other people, the jester's honesty is completely independent. He utters simple truths and separates them from feeling, belittling the world around him. In ancient Greek tragedy, the hero is a doomed sufferer, and the chorus must express respect, reverent fear and pity, as well as the acceptance of tragic pathos. In a Shakespearean tragedy, where the characters are the victims not of the year but of their own passions, the role of the choir is to evoke a sense of protest, and this role is deliberately apoetic. In comedy, the jester rebels against convention. In tragedy, the jester rises up against the frenzy of personal passions, postulating sober, general truths.

That is why we are talking about the nature of mental states, and not about the composition of characters, masks acquire special significance. Edgar, the unloved son, pretends to be a madman indifferent to everything, so as not to ruin his filial love. Here, W. Shakespeare uses the “mask” method in relation to the anti-hero, that is, the character is characterized by false malice. He becomes cunning and skilled, and pretends to know evil. Both he and Lear believe that people are equal: Lear sees humanity as equally weak, Edgar as equally evil. Edgar in the face of Poor Tom answers Lear's question "Who were you?": Red tape. He was proud in his heart and mind, curled his hair, wore gloves in a hat, with a lady of the heart he loved to accept and did the deeds of darkness with her. Whatever the word, he swore and broke the oath before the pure heavenly face. Falling asleep, he thought about how to please lust, waking up, he did it. He loved wine deeply, December tenaciously, was more angry with the female sex than the Turkish Sultan; deceitful in heart, gullible in hearing, bloody in hand; a pig out of laziness, a fox out of stealth, a wolf out of gluttony, a dog out of rage, a lion out of greed. Act III, scene 4.

Edgar's language may refer to Edmund, but Edgar begins to realize that he could use these words to describe himself. He disguises himself as a peasant and in this outfit stabs Oswald to death. Kent hides his formal clothes so that Lear can accept his faithful service.

Confusion and errors in the mutual assessments of the characters occur in King Lear either as a result of madness or as a result of deliberate passion. Gloucester and Lear are mistaken about their own children, the Duke of Albany and Goneril are in each other, Cornwall seems to be unaware of the existence of servants, Oswald does not notice the presence of Edgar in the clothes of a peasant. Edgar touchingly and incorrectly interprets the reason for his father's blindness: "Father for your dirty conception / Paid with his eyes" (Act V, scene 3), he says to Edmund. In fact, Gloucester paid with his eyes because of his nobility. The errors of insanity confuse memories and judgments. Lear refers to Gloucester as a philosopher, and in the court scene, the chair as his daughter. Finally, he misinterprets Gloucester's words during their meeting in the fourth act.

Now for the storm, which Shakespeare does not call nature in King Lear. The question of whether Lear is stageworthy depends on how the storm is presented.

It is understandable why, in staging most plays, there is no need for realistic scenery. Words are enough, and there is no point in duplicating them. However, consider the storm in King Lear. After Lear's departure, Gloucester stands in front of his castle, and Cornwall says to him: "Shut the gates! What a night! /<…>Well, let's get out of the storm" (Act II, scene 4). The courtier tells Kent that Lear:

In the fight against the raging elements

He asks the hurricane to blow the land into the sea,

For the waves to surge from the ocean

And filled it up. Rip gray hair.

The steppe wind grabs them on the fly

And he spins them, but Lyra is in vain.

And in the human small world argues

With rain and wind that whip towards.

Act III, scene 1.

Lear himself shouts to the storm: “Blow, wind, blow! Let your cheeks pop! Blow" and calls her "Nature form, scatter the seeds, / the ungrateful breed" (Act III, scene 2). He cries: “Let the gods, / thundering above us in the sky, / find their enemies” (Act III, scene 2). After a short time, however, he shows pity for the "Unfortunate and naked creatures / persecuted by severe weather" (Act III, scene 4) and exclaims:

too few

I tried for you! Heal, luxury

Experience what they experience

And give your surplus to the poor,

To justify the sky.

Act w, scene 4.

And yet, in spite of the naked Edgar, he says: It would be better for you to lie in the grave than to face this harsh weather uncovered. Well, a man and such as he is. Look at him well. The silkworm has not given you its cloth, the cattle its tires, the sheep its waves, the musky cat its scent. - Ha! We three are all fake, you are a creature, as it is; an undisguised person is nothing more than a poor naked two-legged animal like you. Out, out! It's all borrowed! Unzip me here. Rip off his clothes.

Conclusion

The relevance of the topic is proven, namely:

its novelty was highlighted, that is, specifically Shakespeare's concept of the anti-hero in King Lear, which had not previously been considered so thoroughly;

the specificity of displaying the anti-hero, which performs the author's function not only as an artistic trick to create a certain literary style, but as a psychological way of influencing the reader, is revealed. Here are the philosophical judgments of the character, which is directly an anti-hero;

Shakespeare's idea itself is shown and investigated - the embodiment of an anti-hero in a work, as his methods of creating images - anti-heroes differ from the methods of other authors.

The purpose of the study was achieved through the tasks performed:

explained the concept of an antihero;

showed the purpose, role and significance of the anti-hero in a work of art;

determined the place of the anti-hero in the tragedy "King Lear".

The study was carried out independently, but during the work we used the terminology of scientists in the field of literary theory and other scientists. In writing the course research, a list of informative sources of such well-known authors as Ankista, Komarova, Morozova, Lukovykh, Pinsky, Charles Dickens, L.N. Tolstoy, B. Russell, Belinsky, Nietzsche and many others. In addition, encyclopedic data were used. To prove the relevance of our work, a goal was set, which is the basis of our analysis. So, the purpose of our work is to identify the uniqueness of the very concept of the antihero in the tragedy of W. Shakespeare "King Lear", and to understand its meaning.

As for the generalization about all the work done, if you look closely, you can see the high social status of the characters. But more on that later. Throughout the play, the same theme of the collision of pure humanity with callousness, self-interest and ambition runs through. By this parallelism, Shakespeare wants to show that the case in the lyre family is general and typical. King Lear is the only Shakespearean tragedy in which the subplot is fully developed.

In a Shakespearean tragedy, where the characters are the victims not of the year, but of their own passions, the role of the choir is to evoke a sense of protest, and this role is deliberately apoetic. In comedy, the jester rebels against convention. In tragedy, the jester rises up against the frenzy of personal passions, postulating sober, general truths.

With all that said, it's obvious that King Lear isn't the only character who is an anti-hero. Here is the Jester and the lying daughters. It turns out that Shakespeare's concept says: "It is not evil that conquers good, but evil is reborn into good."

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