For your third essay, you will write on William Shakespeare's play King Lear; the essay will be at least one-thousand-word argument. As with the previous essays, you will create a thesis statement that reflects your opinion about what you think Shakespeare is saying about the topic you choose. I have suggested topics listed below. You may choose one of them, or you may choose your own topic. However, if you choose your own topic, please clear it with me first.

Your essay will then support the argument put forth in the thesis. For a thesis to be sound, you should be able to answer "yes" to the following question: Could a reasonably intelligent reader familiar with the play logically disagree with what I'm arguing? Remember also that the thesis must be an opinion of what you believe Shakespeare is saying about the topic, not your views about the topic. Use incidents and lines from the play to support your argument. When you quote lines from the text, document them according to these guidelines:

  • Introduce the quotation by letting your reader know who is speaking and to whom.
  • Use present tense verbs in your introduction. Remember that the play is always with us.
  • Example: In the play King Lear, Kent explains the difference between the benevolent Cordelia and her malicious sisters with the following words: "The stars above us govern our conditions, / Else one self mate and make could not beget / Such different issues." (4. 3. 39-41). The numbers in parenthesis represent act four, scene three, lines 39 to 41. The / indicates where one line ends and another begins.
  • If you choose a quotation of longer than four lines of poetry, then separate the quotation ten spaces from the left margin of your text. You should not use quotation marks for a long quotation. The indentation tells the reader that you are quoting. Such a quotation would look like the following:

In the play King Lear, Edmund, the bastard son of Gloucester, reveals to the audience his belief that raw Nature is his deity:

Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law,
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? (1. 2. 1-6)

  • The above lines should be double-spaced, but the program I'm working with won't allow that spacing here. But be sure to doublespace everything in your essay.
  • A maximum of 15 % of your paper should appear in quotation marks, and keep your long quotations to a minimum.

If you have trouble understanding what I mean by a thesis, then check out the link on my website dealing with the thesis statement.

The above form of documentation is referred to as in-text documentation. To complement it, you will also have to include a works cited page at the end of your paper. Such a page would appear as follows:

Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New

York: Washington Square Press, 1993.

Of course, if you use any source that influences your essay--whether through direct quotation, paraphrase, or summary--you must give credit to that source, in the text of your essay and in the work cited page. For further information about how and what to document, and how to avoid plagiarism, visit my website on documentation.

Some Suggested Topics

1. One of the central themes in the play King Lear is justice. In fact, as Frank Kermode reminds us, "the play demands that we think of its events in relation to the last judgement, the promised end itself" (Shakespeare's Language 184). Given this statement, and the tragic ending of the play, what vision do you think the play puts forth about justice?

2. For all his seemingly admirable qualities, Edgar acts in what might be considered naive and cruel ways in the play. For instance, think of his intial gulability with his brother Edmund. Then after Edgar's father loses his eyes, the old man seeks the peace of death. Edgar, however, goes through the charade of leading Gloucester to the cliffs of Dover and having him father leap off. Throughout this charade, Edgar maintains his disguise as Poor Tom of Bedlam, depriving his father of the solace of asking his "good son" for forgiveness. Later Shakespeare tells us that when Edgar reveals himself to his father, the news destroys Gloucester : "But his flawed heart / (Alack, too weak the conflict to support) / 'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, / Burst smilingly. (5. 3. 232-235). Explore the character of Edgar--from his intial naive reaction to Edmund to his final relationship with his father. Does this man have the strength of character to be the next king?

3. As he is dividing up his kingdom at the beginning of the play, King Lear asks his daughters what has to be considered an imprudent question: "Which of you shall we say doth love us most"? (1 . 1. 56).   Equally curious, however, is Cordelia's cryptic--if not equally imprudent--answer to her father's request for verification of her love:  "Nothing, my lord" (1 . 1. 96).   What motivates this woman to say such a thing to her father?  What does this reveal about her character, and to what extent is she responsible for her own tragedy of being exiled from her homeland--and her ultimate death?

4. Throughout King Lear, characters blame the stars, the gods, and fortune for the calamities that occur. However, in his book Shakespearen Tragedy, A. C. Bradley states that in Shakespeare "character is destiny." In addition, he argues that although Shakespeare allows chance and the supernatural to influence events in the plays, each tragedy is ultimately "the story . . . of human action [my emphasis] producing exceptional calamity." Applying Bradley's ideas to this play, defend or refute his idea that human action causes the tragedy in King Lear.

Think, write, and rewrite. Good luck!

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