May 9, 2007

The Next Generation - and I Don't Mean Star Trek

Lear's great age is [emphasized] from the beginning; Gloucester is the father of both Edmund and Edgar; and Kent, though young by modern standards (he is 48), is presented as a man in the twilight of his years. Edmund, Goneril, and Regan are their children. Lear, then, and those around him, are a representation of the traditional, feudal order; while Edmund, supremely, and those around him are a representation of the current generation in the process of replacing them.

William Zunder "Shakespeare and the End of Feudalism: King Lear as Fin-De-Siècle Text"

The feudalist system of government consisted of a hierarchy in which a ruling land owner offered mounted fighters a fief - a unit of their land to control and cultivate - in exchange for military service. The individual who accepted this land became a vassal, and the man who granted the land become known as his liege or his lord.

Apparently, as William Zunder puts it, King Lear kind of blows that system out of the water. The old way of life dies just like the elder characters of the play. How's that for service?

Posted by Diana Geleskie at May 9, 2007 7:33 PM
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