King lire what's the point. Shakespeare's tragedy "King Lear": plot and history of creation

In King Lear, the problems of family relations are closely intertwined with the problems of social and political issues. 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, managing the country as his personal estate, which he can divide and give away as he pleases. From all those around him, even from his daughters, he demands only blind obedience instead of sincerity. His dogmatic and scholastic mind does not require a truthful and direct expression of feelings, but external, conventional signs of humility. This is used by the two eldest daughters, who hypocritically assure him of their love. They are opposed by Cordelia, who knows only one law - the law of truth and naturalness. But Lear is deaf to the voice of truth, and for this he suffers severe punishment. His illusions of the king of the father and the man dissipate. However, in his cruel downfall, Lear is renewed. Having experienced the need for deprivation himself, he began to understand much of what had previously been inaccessible to him; he began to look differently at his power, life, humanity. He thought about the "poor, naked poor", "homeless, with a hungry belly, in a holey rags" who are forced, like him, to fight the storm on this terrible night (act III, scene 4). The monstrous injustice of the system he supported became clear to him. In this rebirth of Lear is the whole meaning of his fall and suffering.

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 atrocities out of ambition and self-interest. By this parallelism, Shakespeare wants to show that the case in the Lear family is not an isolated one, but a general one, typical of the "zeitgeist", when, according to Gloucester, "love grows cold, friendship perishes, brothers rise against one another, in cities and villages there are strife, in palaces - betrayals, and bonds are broken between children and parents. This is the disintegration of feudal ties, characteristic of the era of primitive accumulation. The dying world of feudalism and the emerging world of capitalism oppose truth and humanity in this tragedy.

28. The originality of Shakespeare's tragedies. Macbeth analysis.

Shakespeare refuses to idealize man. The person is contradictory. There are no goodies (except for Cardelia). Time does not tolerate the best (the intrigues of low people reveal contradictions in good heroes). A man in a crazy world (man in the mind - crazy actions; crazy man - insight). Mannerist style - flashy contrasts, contradictions that cannot be resolved. Each of the characters has a rich nature. The heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies are extraordinary people endowed with titanic spiritual powers. They may be mistaken, make mistakes, but they always arouse interest. They have such human qualities that cannot but attract attention. Shakespeare tries not to endure any moral assessments - Shakespeare encourages us to come closer to understanding human nature. In most tragedies written in the mature years of life, evil triumphs. Outwardly, it can fail. Man is far from perfect. The gaze is always on significant, interesting, energetic, strong-willed people. Shakespeare's understanding of man: man, personality, in all its diversity. Macbeth understands the difference between good and evil. He realizes that by committing murder, he violates the moral laws in which he believes. Having committed a murder, Macbeth loses his peace forever: he ceases to believe in others, he is seized by suspicions. He achieved power, but deprived himself of the opportunity to enjoy it. The tragedy of Macbeth is that he, once a beautiful and noble man, a true hero in his personal qualities, fell under the influence of bad passion and lust for power pushed him to many insidious crimes. But Macbeth does not fight to the end, does not give up, even when everyone is against him, because the soul of the hero lives in him to the end, although stained by his bloody crimes. Macbeth is a talented commander, a strong-willed and unbending person, fearless in battle, cruel and at the same time mentally subtle in everything that concerns him. W. Shakespeare creates the tragedy "Macbeth", the main character of which is such a person. The tragedy was written in 1606. "Macbeth" is the shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies - it contains only 1993 lines. Its plot is taken from the History of Britain. But its brevity did not in the least affect the artistic and compositional merits of the tragedy. In this work, the author raises the issue of the destructive influence of sole power and, in particular, the struggle for power, which turns the brave Macbeth, a valiant and illustrious hero, into a villain hated by everyone. It sounds even stronger in this tragedy by W. Shakespeare, his constant theme is the theme of just retribution. Just retribution falls on criminals and villains - a mandatory law of Shakespeare's drama, a kind of manifestation of his optimism. Its best heroes die often, but villains and criminals always die. In "Macbeth" this law is shown especially brightly. W. Shakespeare in all his works pays special attention to the analysis of both man and society - separately, and in their direct interaction. The conflict in Macbeth is that 2 worldviews fought in it. On the one hand, a person serves himself, but on the other hand, he a member of society serving him.

Composition

An interesting character, carrying both good and evil inclinations, is the protagonist of the tragedy "King Lear", the old King Lear, who has three daughters. The history of Lear is a grandiose path of knowledge that he goes through - from a father and monarch blinded by the tinsel of his power - through his own "inspired" destruction - to understanding what is true and what is false, and what is true greatness and true wisdom . On this path, Lear finds not only enemies - first of all, his eldest daughters become them, but also friends who remain faithful to him, no matter what: Kent and Jester. Through exile, through loss, through madness - to enlightenment, and again to loss - the death of Cordelia - and finally to his own death - such is the path of Shakespeare's Lear. The tragic path of knowledge.

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.

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.

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 understandable, 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 moment 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 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, represented by Edmund. these varieties should not be."

Edmund is a villain; in the monologues repeatedly uttered by these characters, their deeply disguised inner essence and their villainous plans are revealed.

Edmund is a character who would never commit crimes and cruelties in order to admire the results of villainous "feats". At each stage of his activity, he pursues quite specific tasks, the solution of which should serve to enrich and exalt him.

Understanding the motives that guide the representatives of the camp of evil is inseparable from the theme of fathers and children, the theme of generations, which, during the creation of King Lear, especially deeply occupied Shakespeare's creative imagination. Evidence of this is not only the history of Lear and Gloucester, fathers who were plunged into the abyss of disaster and finally ruined by their children. This theme is repeatedly heard in individual replicas of the characters.

The characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are in many ways contradictory, but in many ways they also have similarities with each other. They have their own understanding of good and evil, and the expression of good human qualities in them is also different.), for Macbeth, atrocity is not a way to overcome his own "inferiority complex", his inferiority). But Macbeth is convinced (and rightly convinced) that he is capable of more. His desire to become king stems from the knowledge that he is worthy. However, old King Duncan stands in his way to the throne. And so the first step - to the throne, but also to his own death, first moral, and then physical - the murder of Duncan, which takes place in Macbeth's house, at night, he himself committed.

And then the crimes follow one after another: a true friend of Banquo, wife and son of Macduff. And with each new crime in the soul of Macbeth himself, something also dies. In the finale, he realizes that he has doomed himself to a terrible curse - loneliness. But the predictions of witches inspire confidence and strength in him:

Macbeth for those who are born of a woman,

invincible

And therefore, with such desperate determination, he fights in the final, convinced of his invulnerability to a mere mortal. But it turns out that “it was cut before the deadline // With a knife from the womb of Macduff’s mother.” And that's why he manages to kill Macbeth. The character of Macbeth reflected not only the duality inherent in many Renaissance heroes - a strong, bright personality, forced to go to crime for the sake of incarnating himself (such are many heroes of the tragedies of the Renaissance, say Tamerlane in K. Marlo), - but also a higher dualism, wearing truly existential. A person, in the name of the embodiment of himself, in the name of fulfilling his life purpose, is forced to transgress laws, conscience, morality, law, humanity.

Therefore, Shakespeare's Macbeth is not just a bloody tyrant and usurper of the throne, who eventually receives a well-deserved reward, but in the full sense of the word a tragic character, torn by contradictions that make up the very essence of his character, his human nature. Lady Macbeth is a no less bright personality. First of all, in Shakespeare's tragedy it is repeatedly emphasized that she is very beautiful, captivatingly feminine, bewitchingly attractive. She and Macbeth are a really wonderful couple worthy of each other. It is generally believed that it was Lady Macbeth's ambition that inspired her husband to commit the first atrocity he committed - the murder of King Duncan, but this is not entirely true.

In their ambition, they are also equal partners. But unlike her husband, Lady Macbeth knows no doubts, no hesitation, no compassion: she is in the full sense of the word "iron lady". And therefore, she is not able to comprehend with her mind that the crime committed by her (or at her instigation) is a sin. Repentance is foreign to her. She understands this, only losing her mind, in madness, when she sees blood stains on her hands, which nothing can wash away. In the finale, in the midst of the battle, Macbeth receives news of her death.

"King Lear".

IN "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 power, blind to the needs of his people, managing the country as his personal estate, which he can divide and give away as he pleases. From all those around him, even from his daughters, he demands only blind obedience instead of sincerity. His dogmatic and scholastic mind does not require 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 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 need and deprivation himself, he began to understand much of what had previously been inaccessible to him, began to look differently at his power, life, humanity. He thought about the "poor, naked poor," "homeless, with a hungry belly, in ragged rags," who, like him, were forced to fight the storm on this terrible night. The monstrous injustice of the system he supported became clear to him. This rebirth of Lear is the whole point of his fall and suffering.

Next to the story of Lear and his daughters, the second storyline of the tragedy unfolds - the story of Gloucester and his two sons. Edmund also rejected all kinship and family ties, committing even worse atrocities out of ambition and self-interest. By this parallelism, Shakespeare wants to show that the case in the Lear family is not an isolated one, but a general one, typical of the “zeitgeist”, when, according to Gloucester, “love grows cold, friendship perishes, brothers rise against one another, in cities and villages there are discords, in palaces, treachery, and bonds are broken between children and parents. This is the disintegration of feudal ties, characteristic of the era of primitive accumulation. The dying world of feudalism and the emerging world of capitalism are equally opposed to truth and humanity in this tragedy.

"Macbeth".

IN "Macbeth", As in "RichardIII", the usurpation of the throne is depicted, and the usurper, by his bloody actions, himself opens the way for the forces that should destroy him. This is the meaning of Macbeth's words when, still full of hesitation, he weighs the consequences of his planned assassination of the king:

But the judgment awaits us here too: as soon as it is given

Lesson bloody, immediately back

It falls on the head

Who did it. And justice

With a fearless hand a cup of our poison

Brings to our same lips.

This is not about a “future” life and “heavenly” justice, but about earthly, real retribution. The eternal fear of rebellion makes Macbeth commit more and more crimes, because he has “gone into the blood” so far that he is no longer able to stop - until, finally, the whole country and even nature itself takes up arms against him (“Bynam Forest”, moving, according to the prediction, towards Macbeth).

The center of gravity of the tragedy is in the analysis of Macbeth's emotional experiences, whose image for this reason completely overshadows all other figures in the play, with the exception of the image of his fatal assistant - his wife. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is a brave and noble warrior, faithfully serving the king. But in the depths of his soul lies the germ of ambition. Gradually, under the influence of circumstances, exciting impressions and exhortations of his wife, ambition grows in him and, after a difficult internal struggle, leads him to crime. But, having made a decision, he no longer retreats from anything. His titanic character is manifested in the fact that he does not feel any remorse and, realizing all the horror of both what he has done and what he still has to do, fights with desperate stubbornness to the end.

In "Macbeth" Shakespeare reflected not only the seething passions and violent political upheavals of that time, in which heroism often went hand in hand with crime, but also a reassessment of all values, a crisis of moral consciousness, the exclamation of witches ("prophetic sisters") of the initial scene of the tragedy, which serves as a prelude to it, creating a gloomy mood of the play:

Evil is good, good is evil.

Let's fly in an unclean haze.

Shakespeare's contribution to the development of Renaissance realism.

Shakespeare's work is distinguished by its scale - the extraordinary breadth of interests and scope of thought. His plays reflected a huge variety of types, positions, eras, peoples, social environment. Shakespeare depicts the flourishing of the human personality and the richness of life with all the abundance of its forms and colors, but he brought all this to a unity in which regularity prevails.

Shakespeare continues the tradition of folk English drama. This includes, for example, the mixture of the tragic and the comic that he systematically used, which was forbidden by the representatives of the learned classicist trend in the dramaturgy of the Renaissance. In the same way, except in the rarest cases, when the specifics of the play determined this, he does not observe the unity of time and place. Shakespeare gave full rein to his imagination and used an "open" form of play construction, in which the action develops more according to psychological laws than logical ones, allowing for the invasion of unexpected episodes and additional touches that are not strictly necessary. In Shakespeare, we observe a motley mixture of persons and events, an unusually fast pace of action, its rapid transfer from one place to another. This liveliness, brilliance, ease of style, abundance of movement and striking effects are very characteristic of folk drama.

Shakespeare's realism is inextricably linked with the people. Shakespearean realism is based on a living, direct relationship to all the phenomena of life. At the same time, Shakespeare not only truthfully depicts reality, but also knows how to penetrate deeply into it, notice and reveal what is most essential in it.

Shakespeare's realism is manifested in the fact that he depicts phenomena in their movement and mutual conditioning, noticing all the shades and transitions of feelings. This gives him the opportunity to draw whole people in all their complexity and at the same time in their development. In this respect, Shakespeare's character building is also profoundly realistic. Emphasizing typical features in his characters, having a general and fundamental significance, he at the same time individualizes them, endowing them with various, additional features that make them truly alive.

The realism of Shakespeare is also found in the accuracy of the analysis of the emotional experiences of his characters and the motivation of their actions and motives. Finally, Shakespeare's realism is evident in his language. The exceptional richness of Shakespeare's language lies not only in expressions, turns of speech, but also in the abundance of semantic shades of various words or sayings. Shakespeare has several styles. Different characters speak different languages, depending on their social status. The scenes are lyrical, touching, comic, tragic, etc. also written in different styles. But regardless of all this, Shakespeare's style changed over time, gradually freeing itself from poetic embellishments and more and more approaching the lively intonations of colloquial speech. The folk element is very strong in Shakespeare's language, expressed in an abundance of folk turns of speech, proverbs, sayings, excerpts from folk songs, etc. Shakespeare's style, taken as a whole, is profoundly truthful and realistic. Shakespeare avoids schematic, vague expressions, choosing concrete and precise words that convey the essence of each feeling or impression, down to its smallest shades.

Shakespeare - a talent without equal

The versatile talent of William Shakespeare at one time was revealed to the maximum, leaving future generations with priceless literary treasures. Today, each of his plays is something truly unique.

In each of them, with particular accuracy and detail, he reveals the characters and actions of the characters, who are always forced to act under pressure from the outside. As the author of such world-famous plays as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice and King Lear, Shakespeare can provide an answer to almost any question that concerns the modern world concerning human soul. Times go by, and only the shell of the world lends itself to change. The problems remain the same, and are more and more violently transmitted from generation to generation.

It can't be more difficult

I would like to note that "King Lear" is one of the most difficult plays by Shakespeare. Its complexity lies in the fact that the author displays here the image of not only the distraught king, who, at the peak of his madness, understands the whole tragedy of what is happening, but also the entire royal entourage, including the king's children. Here, in addition to the theme of madness, there is also the theme of love, betrayal, mercy, the theme of fathers and children, generational change and much more that is difficult to notice right away.

Shakespeare was always famous for writing between the lines - the essence is hidden not behind a single word, but behind a couplet, behind a set of words. Lear gradually begins to understand the evil that reigns in life. The main conflict of the work stems from family relations in the royal family, on which the fate of the entire state depends. In this work, as in no other, there is a crushing fall into the abyss of madness that King Lear experiences. He is forced to descend to the level of a beggar and reflect on the key issues of life, being in the shoes of the simplest person.

King Lear - analysis and opinions

In the 1800s, a certain Charles Lam declared that Shakespeare's King Lear could not be staged in any theater without losing the colossal meaning and energy of the work that the author invested. Having taken this position, he enlisted the support of the eminent writer Goethe.

In one of his articles, Leo Tolstoy was critical of the play. He pointed out a number of absurdities that clearly appeared in the text. For example, the relationship between daughters and father. Tolstoy was annoyed by the fact that for 80 years of his life, King Lear did not know how his daughters treated him. In addition, there were a few other oddities that caught the eye of such meticulous people as Leo Tolstoy. Thus, the plot of this tragedy seems very implausible. The main problem is that Shakespeare is more of a "theatrical" person than a "literary" one. Creating his plays, he counted, first of all, on the stage effect of the narration. If you watch a production in the theater, you will notice that everything starts so quickly that you do not have time to follow how the situation develops. The whole effect of such a beginning does not allow the audience to doubt the veracity of the relationship that King Lear carries in itself. Shakespeare fully trusted this effect of an instant audience shock - the story gradually grows before the eyes of the audience, and soon, as if after the smoke has cleared, clarity comes...

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 associated 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 the 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, in its own way, reflects Lear's self-adoration. 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 an 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 first we see him still not 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 amusement, 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 that dooms 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 guilt is his guilt towards 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 consoles 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 don't experience it.

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.