The king is dead - long live the king! From French: Le roi est mort! Vive le roi! With such words in France, people were informed from the windows of the royal palace about the death of one king and the beginning of the reign of another. Allegorically about any phenomenon (social or political life),

The Lion King The Lion King was the 32nd animated film produced by Disney. The Lion King was first seen in the United States on June 15, 1994. Initially, the Disney studio was not sure of the success of the cartoon. Many studio employees who worked

King Lear is one of Shakespeare's famous works, which both adults and schoolchildren enjoy reading. This is a tragedy that tells the story of a king and his three daughters. The plot of the work was based on the story of the king of Britain, who, in his old age, decided to divide his wealth and divide power between his children. As a result, neglect on the part of children and an aggravation of the political situation. Shakespeare takes this story as a basis, adding another plot line to it. In Shakespeare's tragedy we meet different heroes and their images, but today, having studied the work of King Lear, we will give the monarch.

King Lear in Shakespeare's work appears to us as a majestic, proud and self-confident sovereign. He is so confident in his power, and also in his father’s, that he decides to divide the kingdom between his daughters, hoping for their further gratitude. But he chooses flattery as his selection criterion. The daughter who is generous with praise and declarations of love will receive a larger share. As it turned out, the two older daughters did not skimp on flattery, but the youngest daughter loved her father very much. But King Lear does not see this love and misjudged his youngest daughter, who did not want to show her feelings for her father in public. As a result, the youngest gets nothing, while the other two get everything. Only they betray their father. As Shakespeare writes, he who values ​​money will always change in trouble.

King Lear understands this, but it is too late. And this is his tragedy, because in the role of king he forgot about his humanity. Having lost everything, Lear managed to see the world not through the prism of royal greatness, he looks at life differently and begins to understand the sincerity of human feelings, reflecting on the question of who a person is. As it turned out, a person is a jester, a destitute, and a beggar. They are just like him. And these people are also victims of an unfair fate.

The story of the king is a long journey that Lear goes through in his life. It is both the burden of power and the loss of power that leads to an important understanding. The king learned to see what is false and what is true, where wisdom and true greatness lie. On his life's journey, the monarch acquires enemies, and what's worst is that his daughters become his main enemies, and he finds friends in the person of the faithful Jester and Kent. The path is difficult and carries heavy losses. So, the king became an exile. And when he regained his sight and found himself with his loving daughter Cordelia, he lost her again. His youngest daughter is killed. However, the finale of King Lear’s life ends with his death. The only good thing is that Lear died spiritually enlightened.

Characteristics of heroes based on Shakespeare's work "King Lear" - Lear

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Characteristics of characters based on Shakespeare's work "HAMLET" Characteristics of the heroes based on Walter Scott's work "IVENHO" Characteristics of the heroes based on the work “The Song of Roland”, Olivier

Composition

An interesting character who carries within himself both good and evil principles is the main character of the tragedy "King Lear", the old King Lear, who has three daughters. The story of Lear is a grandiose path of knowledge that he goes through - from a father and monarch blinded by the tinsel of his power - through his own “inspired” destruction - to the understanding of what is true and what is false, and what lies true greatness and true wisdom . On this path, Lear acquires not only enemies - first of all, his eldest daughters become them, but also friends who remain faithful to him, no matter what: Kent and Jester. Through exile, through loss, through madness - to insight, and again to loss - the death of Cordelia - and in the finale to his own death - this is the path of Shakespeare's Lear. The tragic path of knowledge.

The dominant place in “King Lear” is occupied by the picture of the collision of two camps, sharply opposed to each other, primarily in moral terms. Given the complexity of the relationships between the individual characters that make up each of the camps, the rapid evolution of some characters and the development of each of the camps as a whole, these groups of characters entering into irreconcilable conflict can only be given a conditional name.

If we base the classification of these camps on the central plot episode of the tragedy, we will have the right to talk about the clash between the Lear camp and the Regan-Goneril camp; If we characterize these camps by the characters who most fully express the ideas that guide the representatives of each of them, it would be most accurate to call them the camps of Cordelia and Edmund. But, perhaps, the most fair would be the most conventional division of the characters in the play into the camp of good and the camp of evil. The true meaning of this convention can only be revealed at the end of the entire study, when it becomes clear that Shakespeare, when creating King Lear, did not think in abstract moral categories, but imagined the conflict between good and evil in all its historical concreteness.

Each of the characters that make up the evil camp remains a vividly individualized artistic image; This method of characterization gives the depiction of evil a special realistic persuasiveness. But despite this, in the behavior of individual characters one can identify features that are indicative of the entire group of characters as a whole.

The image of Oswald - albeit in a crushed form - combines deceit, hypocrisy, arrogance, self-interest and cruelty, that is, all the traits that, to one degree or another, determine the face of each of the characters that make up the camp of evil. The opposite technique was used by Shakespeare when depicting Cornwall. In this image, the playwright highlights the only leading character trait - the unbridled cruelty of the Duke, who is ready to put any of his opponents to the most painful execution. However, the role of Cornwall, like the role of Oswald, does not have a self-sufficient significance and essentially performs a service function. The disgusting, sadistic cruelty of Cornwall is interesting not in itself, but only as a way for Shakespeare to show that Regan, whose soft nature Lear speaks of, is no less cruel than her husband.

Therefore, the compositional techniques with which Shakespeare removes Cornwall and Oswald from the stage long before the finale are quite natural and understandable, leaving on stage at the time of the decisive clash between the camps only the main bearers of evil - Goneril, Regan and Edmund. The starting point in the characterization of Regan and Goneril is the theme of children's ingratitude towards their fathers. The above description of certain events typical of London life at the beginning of the 17th century was intended to show that cases of deviation from the old ethical norms, according to which the respectful gratitude of children towards their parents was something taken for granted, became so frequent that the relationship between parents and heirs turned into a serious problem that worried various circles of the then English public.

In the course of revealing the theme of ingratitude, the main aspects of the moral character of Goneril and Regan are revealed - their cruelty, hypocrisy and deceit, covering up the selfish aspirations that guide all the actions of these characters. “The forces of evil,” writes D. Stampfer, “acquire a very large scale in King Lear, and there are two special variants of evil at work: evil as the animal nature, represented by Regan and Goneril, and evil as theoretically based atheism, presented by Edmund. Mix these varieties should not in any way."

Edmund is a villain; the monologues spoken repeatedly by these characters reveal their deeply hidden inner selves and their villainous plans.

Edmund is a character who would never commit crimes and cruelty in order to admire the results of villainous “exploits.” At each stage of his activity, he pursues very specific tasks, the solution of which should serve his enrichment and elevation.

Understanding the motivations that guide the representatives of the evil camp is inseparable from the theme of fathers and sons, the theme of generations, which, during the creation of King Lear, occupied Shakespeare's creative imagination especially deeply. Evidence of this is not only the story of Lear and Gloucester, fathers plunged into the abyss of disasters and ultimately destroyed by their children. This theme is repeatedly heard in individual remarks of the characters.

The characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are contradictory in many ways, but they also have many similarities. They have their own understanding of good and evil, and the expression of good human qualities in them is also different.), for Macbeth, crime is not a way to overcome his own “inferiority complex”, his inferiority). But Macbeth is convinced (and rightly convinced) that he is capable of more. His desire to become king stems from the knowledge that he is worthy. However, the old King Duncan stands in his way to the throne. And therefore, the first step is to the throne, but also to one’s own death, first moral, and then physical - the murder of Duncan, which takes place in Macbeth’s house, at night, committed by himself.

And then the crimes follow one after another: Banquo’s faithful friend, Macduff’s wife and son. And with each new crime, something also dies away in the soul of Macbeth himself. In the finale, he realizes that he has doomed himself to a terrible curse - loneliness. But the witches’ predictions give him confidence and strength:

Macbeth for those born of woman

Invulnerable

And that is why he fights with such desperate determination in the finale, convinced of his invulnerability for a mere mortal. But it turns out “that Macduff was cut out before his time // With a knife from his mother’s womb.” And that is why it is he who manages to kill Macbeth. The character of Macbeth reflected not only the duality inherent in many Renaissance heroes - a strong, bright personality, forced to commit a crime for the sake of realizing himself (such are many heroes of the Renaissance tragedies, for example, Tamerlane in K. Marlowe) - but also a higher dualism, bearing truly existential character. A person, in the name of embodying himself, in the name of fulfilling his life’s destiny, is forced to violate laws, conscience, morality, law, and humanity.

Therefore, Shakespeare's Macbeth is not just a bloody tyrant and usurper of the throne, who ultimately receives his well-deserved retribution, but in the full sense a tragic character, torn by contradictions that constitute the very essence of his character, his human nature. Lady Macbeth is a no less bright personality. First of all, in Shakespeare's tragedy it is repeatedly emphasized that she is very beautiful, captivatingly feminine, and bewitchingly attractive. She and Macbeth are truly a wonderful couple worthy of each other. It is usually believed that it was Lady Macbeth’s ambition that prompted her husband to commit the first crime he committed - the murder of King Duncan, but this is not entirely true.

In their ambition they are also equal partners. But unlike her husband, Lady Macbeth knows neither doubts nor hesitations, knows no compassion: she is in the full sense of the word “iron lady.” And therefore she is not able to comprehend with her mind that the crime committed by her (or at her instigation) is a sin. Repentance is alien to her. She understands this only when she loses her mind, in madness, when she sees bloody stains on her hands that nothing can wash off. In the finale, in the midst of the battle, Macbeth receives news of her death.

The location is Britain. Time of action - XI century. The powerful King Lear, sensing the approach of old age, decides to shift the burden of power onto the shoulders of his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, dividing his kingdom between them. The king wants to hear from his daughters how much they love him, “so that during the division we can show our generosity.”

Goneril speaks first. Scattering flattery, she says that she loves her father, “as children / Until now have never loved their fathers.” She is echoed by the sweet-tongued Regan: “I don’t know other joys other than / My great love for you, sir!” And although the falseness of these words hurts the ear, Lear listens to them favorably. It’s the turn of the youngest, beloved Cordelia. She is modest and truthful and does not know how to publicly swear her feelings. “I love you as duty dictates, / No more and no less.” Lear can’t believe his ears: “Cordelia, come to your senses and correct the answer so that you don’t regret it later.” But Cordelia cannot express her feelings better: “You gave me life, good sir, / Raised and loved. In gratitude / I pay you the same.” Lear is furious: “So young and so callous in soul?” “So young, my lord, and straightforward,” Cordelia replies.

In a blind rage, the king gives the entire kingdom to Cordelia's sisters, leaving her only her integrity as a dowry. He provides himself with a hundred guards and the right to live with each of his daughters for a month.

Count Kent, a friend and close associate of the king, warns him against such a hasty decision, begs him to cancel it: “Cordelia’s love is no less than theirs. Only that which is empty from within thunders...” But Lear has already bitten the bit. Kent contradicts the king, calls him an eccentric old man - which means he must leave the kingdom. Kent responds with dignity and regret: “Since there is no rein on your pride at home, / Then exile is here, but freedom is in a foreign land.”

One of the contenders for Cordelia's hand - the Duke of Burgundy - refuses her, who has become a dowry. The second contender - the king of France - is shocked by the behavior of Lear, and even more so by the Duke of Burgundy. Cordelia’s whole fault “is the timid chastity of feelings that are ashamed of publicity.” “A dream and a precious treasure, / Be a beautiful queen of France...” he says to Cordelia. They are removed. In parting, Cordelia turns to her sisters: “I know your properties, / But, sparing you, I will not name you. / Look after your father, Him with anxiety / I entrust to your ostentatious love.”

The Earl of Gloucester, who served Lear for many years, is upset and puzzled that Lear “suddenly, on the spur of the moment” made such a responsible decision. He does not even suspect that Edmund, his illegitimate son, is weaving an intrigue around him. Edmund planned to denigrate his brother Edgar in the eyes of his father in order to take over his part of the inheritance. He, having forged Edgar's handwriting, writes a letter in which Edgar allegedly plans to kill his father, and arranges everything so that his father reads this letter. Edgar, in turn, he assures that his father is plotting something evil against him; Edgar assumes that someone has slandered him. Edmund easily wounds himself, and presents the matter as if he was trying to detain Edgar, who had attempted to kill his father. Edmund is pleased - he deftly entwined two honest people with slander: “The father believed, and the brother believed. / He is so honest that he is above suspicion. / It’s easy to play with their simplicity.” His machinations were a success: the Earl of Gloucester, believing in Edgar’s guilt, ordered to find him and capture him. Edgar is forced to flee.

For the first month Lear lives with Goneril. She is just looking for a reason to show her father who is boss now. Having learned that Lear killed her jester, Goneril decides to “restrain” her father. “He himself gave up power, but wants to rule / Still! No, old people are like children, / And a lesson in rigor is required.”

Lyra, encouraged by her mistress, is openly rude to Goneril's servants. When the king wants to talk to his daughter about this, she avoids meeting with her father. The jester bitterly ridicules the king: “You cut off your mind on both sides / And left nothing in the middle.”

Goneril arrives, her speech is rude and impudent. She demands that Lear dismiss half of his retinue, leaving a small number of people who will not “be forgotten and riotous.” Lear is smitten. He thinks that his anger will affect his daughter: “Insatiable kite, / You lie! My bodyguards / A proven people of high qualities...” The Duke of Albany, Goneril’s husband, tries to intercede for Lear, not finding in his behavior what could cause such a humiliating decision. But neither the father’s anger nor the husband’s intercession touches the hard-hearted woman. The disguised Kent did not leave Lear, he came to hire himself into his service. He considers it his duty to be close to the king, who is obviously in trouble. Lear sends Kent with a letter to Regan. But at the same time Goneril sends her messenger to her sister.

Lear still hopes - he has a second daughter. He will find understanding with her, because he gave them everything - “both life and the state.” He orders the horses to be saddled and angrily says to Goneril: “I’ll tell her about you. She / With her nails, she-wolf, will scratch / your face! Don’t think, I will return / To myself all the power / Which I lost, / As you imagined...”

In front of Gloucester Castle, where Regan and her husband arrived to resolve disputes with the king, two messengers collided: Kent - King Lear, and Oswald - Goneril. In Oswald, Kent recognizes Goneril's courtier, whom he reprimanded for disrespect to Lyra. Oswald screams. Regan and her husband, the Duke of Cornwall, come out to hear the noise. They order Kent to be put in stocks. Kent is angry at Lear’s humiliation: “Even if I were / Your father’s Dog, and not an ambassador, / You wouldn’t need to treat me like that.” The Earl of Gloucester unsuccessfully tries to intercede on Kent's behalf.

But Regan needs to humiliate his father so that he knows who has the power now. She is cut from the same cloth as her sister. Kent understands this well; he foresees what awaits Lear at Regan’s: “You were caught in the rain and under the drops...”

Lear finds his ambassador in the stocks. Who dared! It's worse than murder. "Your son-in-law and your daughter," Kent says. Lear does not want to believe, but understands that it is true. “This attack of pain will suffocate me! / My melancholy, don’t torment me, go away! / Don’t approach your heart with such force!” The jester comments on the situation: “A father in rags on his children / Brings blindness. / A rich father is always nicer and has a different attitude.”

Lear wants to talk to his daughter. But she is tired from the road and cannot accept him. Lear screams, is indignant, rages, wants to break down the door...

Finally Regan and the Duke of Cornwall come out. The king tries to tell how Goneril kicked him out, but Regan, not listening, invites him to return to his sister and ask her for forgiveness. Before Lear had time to recover from his new humiliation, Goneril appeared. The sisters vied with each other to defeat their father with their cruelty. One proposes to reduce the retinue by half, the other - to twenty-five people, and, finally, both decide: not a single one is needed.

Lear is crushed: “Do not refer to what is needed. The poor and those / In need have something in abundance. / Reduce all life to necessity, / And man will become equal to an animal...”

His words seem capable of squeezing tears from a stone, but not from the king’s daughters... And he begins to realize how unfair he was to Cordelia.

A storm is coming. The wind howls. Daughters abandon their father to the elements. They close the gate, leaving Lear on the street, “...he has science for the future.” Lear no longer hears these words of Regan.

Steppe. A storm is raging. Streams of water fall from the sky. Kent, in the steppe in search of the king, encounters a courtier from his retinue. He confides in him and tells him that there is “no peace” between the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany, that in France it is known about the cruel treatment “of our good old king.” Kent asks the courtier to hurry to Cordelia and tell her “about the king, / About his terrible fatal misfortune,” and as proof that the messenger can be trusted, he, Kent, gives his ring, which Cordelia recognizes.

Lear walks with the jester, beating the wind. Lear, unable to cope with mental anguish, turns to the elements: “Howl, whirlwind, with might and main! Burn lightning! Let down the rain! / Whirlwind, thunder and downpour, you are not my daughters, / I do not blame you for heartlessness. / I didn’t give you kingdoms, I didn’t call you children, I didn’t oblige you with anything. So let it be done / All your evil will is done to me.” In his declining years, he lost his illusions; their collapse burns his heart.

Kent comes out to meet Lear. He persuades Lear to take refuge in the hut, where poor Tom Edgar is already hiding, pretending to be crazy. Tom engages Lear in conversation. The Earl of Gloucester cannot abandon his old master in trouble. The sisters' cruelty disgusts him. He received news that there was a foreign army in the country. Until help arrives, Lear must be covered. He tells Edmund about his plans. And he decides to once again take advantage of Gloucester’s gullibility in order to get rid of him too. He will report him to the Duke. “The old man is missing, I’ll move forward. / He has lived - and that’s enough, it’s my turn.” Gloucester, unaware of Edmund's betrayal, searches for Lear. He comes across a hut where the persecuted have taken refuge. He calls Lear to a refuge where there is “fire and food.” Lear does not want to part with the beggar philosopher Tom. Tom follows him to the castle farm where their father is hiding. Gloucester goes to the castle for a while. Lear, in a fit of madness, arranges a trial of his daughters, inviting Kent, the jester and Edgar to be witnesses and jurors. He demands that Regan's chest be opened to see if there is a heart of stone there... Finally, Lyra manages to be put to rest. Gloucester returns, he asks the travelers to quickly go to Dover, since he “overheard a plot against the king.”

The Duke of Cornwall learns of the landing of French troops. He sends Goneril and Edmund with this news to the Duke of Albany. Oswald, who spied on Gloucester, reports that he helped the king and his followers escape to Dover. The Duke orders the capture of Gloucester. He is captured, tied up, and mocked. Regan asks the earl why he sent the king to Dover, contrary to orders. “Then, so as not to see / How you tear out the old man’s eyes / With the claws of a predator, like a boar’s tusk / Your fierce sister will plunge / into the body of the anointed one.” But he is sure that he will see “how thunder will incinerate such children.” At these words, the Duke of Cornwall tears out an eye from the helpless old man. The earl's servant, unable to bear the sight of the old man being mocked, draws his sword and mortally wounds the Duke of Cornwall, but is also wounded himself. The servant wants to console Gloucester a little and encourages him to look with his remaining eye at how he is avenged. The Duke of Cornwall, before his death, in a fit of anger, tears out his second eye. Gloucester calls on Edmund's son for revenge and learns that it was he who betrayed his father. He understands that Edgar has been slandered. Blinded and grief-stricken, Gloucester is pushed out into the street. Regan sees him off with the words: “Drive him to the neck! / Let him find his way to Dover with his nose.”

Gloucester is escorted by an old servant. The Count asks to leave him so as not to incur anger. When asked how he will find his way, Gloucester bitterly replies: “I have no way, / And I don’t need eyes. I stumbled / when I was sighted. My poor Edgar, unfortunate target / of blind anger / of a deceived father...” Edgar hears this. He volunteers to become a guide to a blind man. Gloucester asks to be taken to a cliff “large, hanging steeply over the abyss” to commit suicide.

Goneril returns to the palace of the Duke of Albany with Edmund; she is surprised that the “peacemaker-husband” did not meet her. Oswald talks about the Duke’s strange reaction to his story about the landing of troops and Gloucester’s betrayal: “What is unpleasant makes him laugh, / What should please him makes him sad.” Goneril, calling her husband “a coward and a nonentity,” sends Edmund back to Cornwall to lead the troops. Saying goodbye, they swear their love to each other.

The Duke of Albany, having learned how inhumanely the sisters acted with their royal father, meets Goneril with contempt: “You are not worth the dust / Which the wind showered you in vain... Everything knows its root, and if not, / It dies like a dry branch no juices." But the one who hides “the face of an animal under a woman’s guise” is deaf to her husband’s words: “Enough! Pathetic nonsense! The Duke of Albany continues to appeal to her conscience: “What have you done, what have you done, / Not daughters, but real tigresses. / An aged father, whose feet / A bear would reverently lick, / Driven to madness! / Satan’s ugliness / Nothing compared to an evil woman’s ugliness...” He is interrupted by a messenger who reports the death of Cornwall at the hand of a servant who came to the defense of Gloucester. The Duke is shocked by the new atrocities of the sisters and Cornwall. He vows to repay Gloucester for his loyalty to Lear. Goneril is concerned: her sister is a widow, and Edmund stayed with her. This threatens her own plans.

Edgar leads his father. The Count, thinking that there is a cliff edge in front of him, rushes and falls in the same place. Comes to his senses. Edgar convinces him that he jumped off the cliff and miraculously survived. Gloucester henceforth submits to fate until she herself says: “Go away.” Oswald appears and is tasked with taking out old man Gloucester. Edgar fights him, kills him, and in the pocket of the “flatterer, servile evil mistress” he finds a letter from Goneril to Edmund, in which she offers to kill her husband in order to take his place herself.

In the forest they meet Lear, intricately decorated with wildflowers. His mind left him. His speech is a mixture of “nonsense and sense.” A courtier appears calling for Lear, but Lear runs away.

Cordelia, having learned about her father's misfortunes and the hard-heartedness of her sisters, rushes to his aid. French camp. Lear in bed. The doctors put him into a life-saving sleep. Cordelia prays to the gods for the “father who fell into infancy” to return his mind. In the dream, Lyr is dressed again in royal robes. And then he wakes up. Sees Cordelia crying. He kneels in front of her and says: “Don’t be strict with me. / Sorry. / Forget. I'm old and reckless."

Edmund and Regan are at the head of the British army. Regan asks Edmund if he is having an affair with his sister. He pledges his love to Regan. The Duke of Albany and Goneril enter with the beating of drums. Goneril, seeing his rival sister next to Edmund, decides to poison her. The Duke proposes to convene a council in order to draw up a plan of attack. Edgar, in disguise, finds him and gives him a letter from Goneril that was found on Oswald. And he asks him: in case of victory, “let the herald call me to you with a trumpet.” The Duke reads the letter and learns about the betrayal.

The French are defeated. Edmund, who came forward with his army, takes King Lear and Cordelia prisoner. Lear is happy that he has found Cordelia again. From now on they are inseparable. Edmund orders them to be taken to prison. Lyra is not afraid of imprisonment: “We will survive in a stone prison / All the false teachings, all the greats of the world, / All their changes, their ebb and flow, Like birds in a cage we will sing. You will stand under my blessing, / I will kneel before you, asking for forgiveness.”

Edmund gives a secret order to kill them both.

The Duke of Albany enters with an army, he demands that the king and Cordelia be handed over to him in order to decide their fate “in accordance with honor and prudence.” Edmund tells the Duke that Lear and Cordelia have been captured and sent to prison, but refuses to hand them over. The Duke of Albany, interrupting the sisters' obscene squabble over Edmund, accuses all three of treason. He shows Goneril her letter to Edmund and announces that if no one comes to the call of the trumpet, he himself will fight Edmund. At the third call of the trumpet, Edgar comes out to duel. The Duke asks him to reveal his name, but he says that for now it is “contaminated with slander.” Brothers fight. Edgar mortally wounds Edmund and reveals to him who the avenger is. Edmund understands: “The wheel of fate has completed / Its turn. I am here and defeated.” Edgar tells the Duke of Albany that he shared his wanderings with his father. But before this fight he opened up to him and asked for his blessing. During his story, a courtier comes and reports that Goneril stabbed herself, having previously poisoned her sister. Edmund, dying, announces his secret order and asks everyone to hurry up. But it’s too late, the crime has been committed. Lear enters carrying the dead Cordelia. He endured so much grief, but he cannot come to terms with the loss of Cordelia. “My poor girl was strangled! / No, he’s not breathing! / A horse, a dog, a rat can live, / But not you. You are gone forever...” Lear dies. Edgar tries to call the king. Kent stops him: “Don’t torture me. Leave his spirit alone. / Let him go. / Who do you have to be to yank him again / onto the rack of life for torment?”

“No matter how much melancholy the soul is struck by, / Times forces us to be persistent” - the final chord is the words of the Duke of Albany.

Retold