This Month's King Lear Feature >>

As the faithful Kent watches the distraught Lear holding Cordelia's body in his arms he expresses a sentiment that members of the audience may well share, saying "Is this the promis'd end?" (V, iii. l.264). From a revisionist standpoint, there is no lesson to be learned in King Lear by either its title character or the audience beyond the existence of evil in an amoral universe that is indifferent to human conceptions of justice, honor, dignity, and ennobling tragedy. There is no regenerative or redemptive dimension to the play's; the evil and the good characters of the play all suffer a bad end. From this critical perspective, then, King Lear is not a tragic hero, he is a pathetic, powerless, and infirm old man whose story resembles that of all human beings, ending not with a bang but with a whimper when the mortal coil of life unwinds.