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Description:

Good thing this guy never wrote a parenting book.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

King Lear, a la Shmoop. You may be young, but we're sure you've already

00:10

experienced the pain of heartbreak.

00:14

Like when your pet goldfish "Swimmy" died.

00:15

The agony of loss, no matter the specifics, can be almost unbearable.

00:23

You might feel like you're going to die.

00:26

But... can you imagine actually, physically dying?

00:30

Did Swimmy really mean that much to you? In Shakespeare's play, the title character,

00:37

King Lear, dies at the end...

00:40

...simply because his heart had a boo-boo. Considering how cold, callous and calculating

00:47

he had been the entire rest of the play...

00:49

...is this too hard a sell?

00:51

Can Lear possibly have died from a broken heart? Assuming he even had one?

00:58

The final straw for Lear is seeing his daughter, Cordelia (cor-dee-lee-uh), dead in his arms.

01:06

But closer to the beginning of the story, he had disowned her and refused to give her

01:10

a dowry...

01:10

...because he had mistakenly interpreted her actions as an expression of disdain toward

01:15

him.

01:16

So... seems like his love came with some conditions.

01:21

If he could so quickly and heartlessly cut her out of his life like that...

01:25

...could their bond really have been so strong that his ticker would stop ticking when hers

01:28

did? Then there's the question of whether Lear

01:33

was even capable of love at all.

01:35

The guy was kind of a monster. No offense to Godzilla.

01:41

He pitted his daughters against each other...

01:43

...disowned one of them...

01:45

...and banished his right-hand man, Kent, for no good reason.

01:49

If a guy like that had a broken heart, would he even feel it?

01:53

Depends on whether or not you believe people can fundamentally change.

01:57

Much of this play is about the transformation that takes place in Lear's head and heart.

02:02

He gradually comes to regret wronging those who cared about him most...

02:07

...and starts to see people in a different light than ever before... like when he takes

02:12

pity on Poor Tom, the beggar.

02:14

So while Lear wasn't in the running for any humanitarian awards early in the play...

02:19

...did he soften up enough toward the end to make the "death by sadness" storyline plausible?

02:24

So why did King Lear die?

02:30

Was his 180 with Cordelia too radical a swing?

02:34

Was he a heartless monster?

02:36

Or was he a monster... who grew a heart? Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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