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A Critical Study of William Shakespeares King Lear: Plot and Structure

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DOI: 10.18488/journal.23.2019.81.14.18

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International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
ISSN(e): 2306-0646
ISSN(p): 2306-9910
DOI: 10.18488/journal.23.2019.81.14.18
Vol. 8, No. 1, 14-18
© 2019 AESS Publications. All Rights Reserved
URL: www.aessweb.com

A CRITICAL STUDY OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S KING LEAR: PLOT

AND STRUCTURE

Samer Mahmoud
1,2
Assistant Professor, Ajloun National University, Jordan
Al Zoubi1+
Ameen Zuhair Al
Khamaiseh2

(+Corresponding author)

ABSTRACT
Article History This study sheds light on the dramatic devices and techniques which William
Received: 3 October 2018 Shakespeare used in constructing his play King Lear. It involves analyzing the
Revised: 26 October 2018
Accepted: 21 November 2018 structure and plot and main themes of the plays. Shakespeare used the Elizabethan five-
Published: 31 December 2018 act structure, which is derived from the Greek form and remains an often starting point
for contemporary plays. The major plot in this play deals with king Lear and the
Keywords misfortunes that he has to face as a result of the ungratefulness of his two eldest
William Shakespeare daughters. The central argument focuses on critiquing the notion that Shakespeare's
King Lear plays are not original in their genesis. Some scholars go even further to suggest that
Plot
Structure Shakespeare has borrowed so much from Latin and Greek sources, ascribing them to
himself, without acknowledgment. However, the present paper aims at challenging such
beliefs and showing thereby the originality of Shakespeare's oeuvre of drama. This play
is chosen among other plays as it represents most of the tragedies written by
Shakespeare.

Contribution/ Originality: This study contributes in the existing literature to identifying the dramatic devices
and techniques which William Shakespeare used in constructing his play King Lear. It involves analyzing the
structure and plot and main themes of the play. Moreover, it shows thereby the originality of Shakespeare's oeuvre
of drama.

1. INTRODUCTION
Among many other Shakespearean tragedies, King Lear, which was published in 1623, is considered one of the
most tragic plays ever written in English literature. The tragedy of King Lear results when man's law gains
precedence over the law of nature. The main source of tragedy in King Lear, therefore, is the character. Perhaps
Shakespeare was more concerned with human behavior than any other elements of life. His major goal was to
illuminate the dark side of humanity and penetrate into the heart of its nature. However, the four most significant
generic contexts influencing this play are history, romance, comedy and tragedy.
In King Lear, there are many elements of dramatic conventions one should be aware of so that analyzing these
elements can help to understand the action as connected, purposeful, and oriented to a logical end rather than
considering it as a haphazard gathering of apparently accidental incidents .This confirms the fact that anything we
are told by Shakespeare is for purpose and has some consequences. However, in constructing the tragedy of King
Lear, Shakespeare uses different literary devices. The most important one is the use of double plot. This device

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© 2019 AESS Publications. All Rights Reserved
 International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 2019, 8(1): 14-18

serves an important function, as it highlights the natural law as an crucial aspect of both plots. By emphasizing the
important role of nature which seems absent in King Lear, Shakespeare is able to demonstrate the tragic
consequences that result from the absence of such an important role.
The play appears in two forms or editions. First, it was printed in 1608 and referred to as the First Quarto. The
second edition appears in a 1623 Folio edition. Because there exist to be some missing parts in the two editions,
some recent anthologies include a combination of both editions.

2. THE PLAY STRUCTURE

The structure of the play was common among most Elizabethan plays. It is a five-act tragedy. Most
Elizabethan theatre adheres to the five-act structure, which corresponds to the divisions in the action and makes the
audience easily figure out and thus understand the various parts of the tragedy. The first act is the exposition, in
which the playwright sets forth the problem and introduces the main characters. In addition, it establishes the
nature of the conflict between Cordelia and Lear, among Goneril and Regan and Lear, and between Gloucester and
Edgar .Consequently, the opening scene gives rise to the problem of domestic and personal relationships which are
closely linked with royal power and authority. Act two is the complication ( rising action) in which the
entanglement or conflict develops further. The erosion of Lear's power and respect begins, the depth of the conflict
between Lear and his daughters is revealed, and the conspiracy that unites Goneril, Regan, and Edmund is
established. Act three is the climax in which the action of the play takes a turning- point and the crisis occurs. In
this act, Lear has been cast adrift in the storm and his words reveal that he begins to lose his mind and his sanity.
Likewise, the extent of Regan and Cornwall's depravity is revealed as they torture Gloucester, ultimately gouging
out his eyes.
Act four is called the falling action, which signals the beginning of the play's resolution. In this act, we have
Edgar reuniting with his father and Cordelia with Lear, who begins to recover from his madness. This act indicates
that the story may be moving towards a good-triumphing-over-evil happy ending are the deaths of Cornwall and
Oswald as it is approaching downfall of the conspirators and foreshadows the tragedy of the hero.
In the final act, (act five) the play draws to a close and the action brings closure to the play. This act presents
the catastrophe to the play, wherein the conclusion occurs, a resolution to the conflict is established, and the
tragedy is actualized. In this act, good and bad characters are dead: Regan and Goneril die, Edmund is killed in a
duel with his brother, and Lear and Cordelia die. As the play draws to an end, Edgar is nominated to restore peace
and control to the kingdom.
Having this short version about the story of the whole play in mind, one needs to understand how Shakespeare
has structured his play so that it has become a great work of art. According to Steele (1991) Shakespeare has used
an "explicit structure" to form his plays. They are written and structured in the same manner that a "book, chapter,
and verse organize the text of the Bible. For Steele, "references to the dramatic works of Shakespeare should be keyed to
act, scene, and line numbers, not to page numbers, not to running time" and these divisions "constitute the explicit structure of
the plays ." (ibid).
Basically, the way the plays are performed on the stage and produced in a written text has caught the attention
of many scholars of Shakespeare. Steele (1991) argues that "Shakespeare scholars have recognized for decades that, in
actual fact, plays were performed on the bare, unlocalized Elizabethan public stage without pauses for acts and scenes" (ibid).
Of the original quartos, none of Shakespeare's plays is divided into numbered scenes and only Othello is divided into
acts (Dobson and Watson, 2004). However, Shakespeare's plays were originally written without act divisions and
performed without act pauses. Instead of using act and scene divisions, he has weaved his plays with stage
directions and signals that indicate the end of one act and the beginning of another. Shakespeare's plays were
performed in playhouses, with elaborate scenery, and staged with music, dancing, thunder, lightening, wave
machines, and fireworks (Snuggs, 1960).

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 International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 2019, 8(1): 14-18

On the stage, a new scene begins when the stage is cleared and the action is not continuous, which is not
characteristic of Shakespearean plays. According to Steele (1991) "Shakespeare's original audience would have been
much more affected by shifts from prose to verse, or from balcony to stage level, or from song to dialogue, than by arbitrary act or
scene divisions" . This structure has its own significance as it makes the play sound more coherent and the actions
more integrated and interrelated. Thus, the actions move smoothly without being interrupted or disrupted by
arbitrary act or scene divisions. "Shakespeare developed a great variety of strategies to ensure coherence and organic unity in
his plays" (Routledge Library Editions, 1986). As far as the written form is concerned, act and scene divisions are
established by having a generous white space or typographical ornaments, which indicate the transitions between
the scenes and the acts.
In terms of character performance on the stage, each time a new character enters or exits is signaled with the
dynamic between the on-stage characters being altered In King Lear, for example, the majestic entrance of Lear and
his courtiers suddenly end the short conversation between Kent and Gloucester. There are, however, more complex
situations, especially when two or more characters enter the stage simultaneously (Steele, 1991). A good way to
understand the structure of Shakespeare's plays is through their characters. On this basis, Steele suggests that the
act and scene divisions are not of great importance as to analyze Shakespeare's plays, but through the characters'
interaction lies the importance of the play. He rightly assumes:
"Moreover, the fundamental dramatic experience is not one of acts and scenes, but of characters in action and
interaction. Drama has no narrator, no single omniscient perspective; instead, there are multiple and
continually conflicting perspectives, much like those we consider in everyday life… . In many ways,
Shakespeare's characters are the explicit structure of his plays; in the Globe playhouse, working manuscripts
of plays were divided into individual parts for each actor, not into acts or scenes. Finally, then, text analysis
software which limits itself merely to act, scene, and line divisions cannot capture the subtleties or
complexities of the structure of Shakespeare's works." (ibid).
In his article the structure of King Lear, Bowers (1980) claims that King Lear viewed as a modified classical
tragedy. He added that the benefits of Shakespeare's innovation are clear. Instead of the first half of the play is
devoted to the rising action concluding in the kingdom's division, after that sliding with some speediness down to
the catastrophic consequences. Shakespeare allows himself almost the full length of the play to work out the far-
reaching and complex results of Lear's tragic decision. This searching and detailed analysis of error and
consequence provides the play its extraordinary weight and density. Generally speaking ,Shakespeare used the
Elizabethan five-act structure, which is derived from the Greek form and remains an often starting point for
contemporary plays .

3. THE PLAY PLOT

Despite the fact that the major plot in this play deals with Lear and the misfortunes that he has to face as a
result of the ungratefulness of his two eldest daughters, the sub-plot deals with the misfortunes that Gloucester has
to experience as a consequence of the ingratitude of his bastard son Edmund. The similarity between the two stories
is clear. Both men suffer the disastrous consequences of their madness and want of judgment in relying upon their
wicked children. Each father is relieved and comforted by his good child, Cordelia, in the case of the main plot, and
Edgar, in the case of the sub-plot (Nafi, 2015).
The use of double plot, though, seems to be one of Shakespeare's artistic devices to universalize his themes or
present different perspectives about human beings. In King Lear, for example, "some critics believed that
Shakespeare used the Gloucester plot to universalize his theme; others, to contrast Lear's reaction to his fate with
Gloucester's" (Halio, 2005). The use of double-plot structure in King Lear is also meant to reflect Shakespeare's
view of life, or to use (Goldberg, 1974) words, to incarnate "the structure not of the protagonist's character, but of
Shakespeare's own imaginative insight, his vision of the world."

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© 2019 AESS Publications. All Rights Reserved
 International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 2019, 8(1): 14-18

King Lear is unusual, and unique in Shakespeare, in its distinctive structure. The climax takes place early on in
the play. Despite the fact that the climax takes an actual form in act three, it really occurs in act one, scene one
where the king sets forth the division of the kingdom among his ungrateful daughters and where the conflict
between the daughters is exposed. Perhaps this foregrounding of the typical Shakespearean structure is meant to
shed light on the impact of the foolish decision that the king makes to divide his kingdom and to give a full picture
of the consequences of such a decision.
Principally, the play has many themes which are handled in various ways. The two plots reinforce each other
and both have to do with the relationship between parents and children. They are not, therefore, woven together by
mere coincidence. Rather, they both dramatize Shakespeare's attitude towards life and reflect his view of the whole
world. As a consequence, Shakespeare has drawn these plots from a variety of sources. The main plot of King Lear
and his three daughters comes from an old chronicle play called, "True Chronicle History of King Leir and his Three
Daughters." The plot of Gloucester and his two sons comes from Sir Philip Sidney's popular romance, The Countess
of Pembroke's Arcadia (Abrams 886).
In the original story of King Leir, the king remains alive and returns to the kingdom as a king. This original
play does not celebrate the sub-plot about Gloucester, Edgar and Edmond which Shakespeare adds to his play. The
play, therefore, ends happily. In King Lear, however, Shakespeare has made radical changes in the dramatic
structure of the original story which he draws upon. This poses puzzling questions: why did Shakespeare end his
play with a tragedy? And why did he add another element of tragedy, which the sub-plot about Gloucester and his
sons presents?
In fact, Shakespeare's dramatic structure of King Lear presents more universal aspects about human beings than
does this original story. The play, therefore, was written to give a comprehensive picture of life and dramatize
various approaches to it. On the other hand, some critics criticize and reject the abundance of death that takes place
in the closing scene of Shakespeare's play. In the late seventeenth century, a reaction against what was seen as the
excesses of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama took place. The tragedies of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Webster, in
which stages we were often littered with numerous corpses, were now seen unacceptable. An example of the effect
of this on drama was Nahum Tate's alteration of King Lear (Cameron, 2001).
This approach continues in the Victorian age and among those critics who critique the structure of King Lear is
A.C. Bradley who provided examples of its dramatic defects. He concludes the main motives of King Lear's
structure. He states that, "Many of these [motives] relate to the sub-plot involving Gloucester and Edgar and to the
vagueness of both the chronology and the geography of the play." The twentieth-century critics, however, respond to such
criticism by emphasizing the fact that Shakespeare was not concerned with presenting a specific time and location
and that this lack of precision has been a major factor in the play's universal appeal.
In an attempt to answer the question why Shakespeare changed the original story of his play and added the
tragic element to it, Thomas P. Roche argues that although he believes Shakespeare to be a Christian writer, King
Lear is not a Christian play. Rather, it depicts the plight of man before the Christian era, that is, before the salvation
of man by Christ's sacrifice was available. "Shakespeare altered the story as it appeared in King Lear precisely to
emphasize this fact (Halio, 2001).

4. CONCLUSION
The dramatic structure of King Lear reveals Shakespeare's topicality, whether he writes about a specific topic or
variation of topics, or whether he writes about a particular time or for the ages, and finally, whether he writes about
a specific group of people or about human beings in general. In his essay "What does Shakespeare leave out of King
Lear?" Brink (2008) convincingly argues that by the virtue of his status in the canon, Shakespeare is associated with
the view that great art is timeless and speaks to universals in the human condition. Shakespeare's fame, therefore,
lies in the appeal to his persistent relevance, and his capacity to speak to one generation after another.

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© 2019 AESS Publications. All Rights Reserved
 International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 2019, 8(1): 14-18

Consequently, the double-plot Structure in King Lear becomes evident of Shakespeare's indirect and allusive
approach to topicality, an approach which Brink describes as "manifesting political awareness that leaves interpretation to
the audience" (ibid).
Still, there are many different opinions among the critics with reference to the effect of the introduction of the
sub-plot in this play. According to some, the subplot interferes with the structural unity of the play and weakens the
dramatic effect of the Lear story by distracting our attention to the characters and events of the sub-plot. Others
point out the skillful manner in which Shakespeare has interlinked the main plot and the sub-plot by keeping the
unity of the whole play integral; and they also express the view that the dramatic effect of the main plot is
reinforced by the sub-plot, rather than weakened by it. With regards to the structure of King Lear, it can be claimed
that the two plots are greatly similar to each other in both cases and infatuated father proves to be blind towards his
good-hearted and well-meaning child, while the unnatural child or children, whom he prefers, cause the ruin of all
his happiness.
Finally, the plot in this play is an advantage, rather than a disadvantage. It improves the dramatic effect of the
main plot and provides a real meaning to the play’s form and structure. Therefore, in constructing his plays,
Shakespeare followed no rules and had no dramatic theory. Every line of his plays has been carefully structured and
well-constructed. The central argument focuses on critiquing the notion that Shakespeare's plays are not original in
their genesis. Some scholars go even further to suggest that Shakespeare has borrowed so much from Latin and
Greek sources, ascribing them to himself, without acknowledgment. They believe that his familiarity in Latin and
Greek has helped him so much and contributed a great deal to the whole matter. However, the present paper aims
at challenging such beliefs and showing thereby the originality of Shakespeare's oeuvre of drama. King Lear is
chosen among other plays as it represents most of the tragedies written by Shakespeare.

Funding: This study received no specific financial support.

Competing Interests: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication
of this paper.
Contributors/Acknowledgement: Both authors contributed equally to the conception and design of the
study.

REFERENCES
Bowers, F., 1980. The structure of King Lear. Shakespeare Quarterly, 31(1): 7-20.
Brink, J.R., 2008. What does Shakespeare leave out of King Lear? King Lear: New critical essays. Ed. Jeffrey Kahan. New York:
Routledge.
Cameron, L., 2001. Excel HSC English study guide: King Lear. New York: Pascal Press.
Dobson, M. and N.J. Watson, 2004. England's Elizabeth: An afterlife in fame and fantasy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, S.L., 1974. An essay on King Lear. London: Cambridge University Press.
Halio, J.L., 2001. King Lear: A guide to the play. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Halio, J.L., 2005. “Introduction” in the tragedy of King Lear. Ed. Jay L. Halio. 1992. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Nafi, J., 2015. The introduction of a sub-plot in Shakespeare’s play King Lear and its dramatic effect. Arab World English
Journal, 3: 58-71.
Routledge Library Editions, 1986. Shakespeare's dramatic structures. Oxon: Anthony Brennan.
Snuggs, H.L., 1960. Shakespeare and five acts: Studies in a dramatic convention. U.S.A: New York.
Steele, K.B., 1991. A TACT exemplar, chapter ’The Whole Wealth of Thy Wit in an Instant’. Tact and the explicit structures of
Shakespeare's plays. Toronto: Centre for Computing in the Humanities. pp: 15–35.

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