King Lear Reader’s Response Essay Example

his own stubborn nature and misinterpretation of his circumstances, as even those who express their honest intentions out of concern are rejected by him. Aside from being hung up on some vocabulary in Shakespeare's writing, I really enjoyed King Lear, particularly Lear's character. His reactions to what happens around him are very entertaining to say the least, and I felt great sympathy towards Lear in the final scene of the play.

In the last scene, all of the antagonistic characters seem to reveal their intentions in a more blatant fashion, giving a solid representation of their selfish nature. The end of the final act, with all of its byproducts of death and deception, really targets Lear at the brunt of it. Clearly, his episode in the sixth scene of the fourth act is when Lear reaches his pinnacle of madness, and though he somewhat recovers from this, it doesn't really compare to the emotional toll taken on him by the hanging of Cordelia.

Amidst Lear's disbelief and frustration at the death of his daughter, he is unable to comprehend any appreciation of what the loyal Duke of Kent speaks, delving into his madness again before finally dying. I found that the final words uttered before King Lear passed away to be very ambiguous, yet oddly enough I could feel or imagine and almost make sense of his thoughts and actions in looking over the lines of text.

I find it difficult to articulate precisely what this is, but even in my previous reading of another of Shakespeare's plays, there were often points in Macbeth that gave me a similar emotional reaction of

“understanding” or just “knowing” without being able to necessarily communicate the respective significance. It was like a feeling of being in the position of the character and standing within his or her shoes, so to speak, yet I was sensing a greater importance that affected mood rather than something intelligible.

The greatest comparison I would compare this to is musical audition. All music evokes a mood within its listener, whether or not the listener can or chooses to acknowledge this, and to varying degrees of subjectivity based on who is listening and its tonal qualities. Often times music evokes a sense of depth, and is not necessarily something that can be categorised into a simple mood description, which I feel is the best way to compare what I've experienced in reading King Lear among other Shakespearean works.