1. Motif in King Lear

2. Motif
An element that recurs in a narrative or drama that has symbolic significance
Can be an image, phrase, act, word, sound or idea
A work can have more than one motif
Motifs tend to be concrete, while theme tends to be abstract

3. Repetition, often with slight variation is Key…

4. King Lear Motifs: Blindness and Insight Clothing and Nakedness
Betrayal
Old Age
Madness
The Gods
Nothingness
Nature
Fortune

5. Blindness and Insight Figurative and literal blindness
Lear and Gloucester misjudge their children
Show lack of insight into the characters and situations around them
Lear shows lack of insight in dividing kingdom
Lear can’t recognize Kent; Gloucester doesn’t recognize Edgar either as madman or when he picks him up from the great fall…

6. Blindness highlights the inner vision needed to tell substance from the superficial
“All that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men; and there’s not a nose among twenty but can smell him that’s stinking.” II, iv (Fool)
“I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw.” IV, I (Gloucester)
“A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears.” IV, vi (Lear)
“Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvey politician, seem/ To see things thou dost not” IV,vi (Lear)
Lear asks which is the justice, which the thief…

7. Clothing and Nakedness
Play has several references to clothing and disguise:
Kent as Caius,
Edgar as Poor Tom
Lear associates Goneril and Regan’s fine clothing with their duplicity
Clothing becomes a symbol of the desire for power and status that corrupts
Through tattered clothes small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all… Act 4 scne 6
Nakedness is vulnerability man is nothing but a poor bare forked animal…
Vulnerable characters must assume disguises to survive, and contunue to do good in their new roles.
On the heath, kent and edgar and the fool are all humbly dressed and lear removes his clothing. He must remove his kingly garments to be able to look beyond appearances and see truth. servants are often the source of hope charity and justice in king lear.
Ceremonial garments are suspect. They conceal the truth.

8. Clothing: The fool offers his coxcomb to Kent
Kent to Oswald – “a tailor made thee…” II,ii
“thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man…” III, iv
Lear wears a crown of wild flowers, a symbol of his lost sanity as well as his lost power. Then he is later given fresh garments at Cordelia’s order.
Regan’s clothing is impractical perhaps, inadequate. If nakedness is clarity, then Regan’s clothing
Lear revives and begins to regain his identity, and with his growth in self-knowledge and perspective
People hiding their identities
Nakedness – who we are at our most basic humanity
Clothing hides character flaws and represents the desire for power and wealth
Edgar says that his character, Poor Tom, was once a serving man with 3 shirts to his back… the quote links the character to corruption.

9. “Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,…” III,iv (Lear)
Clothing and nakedness support the idea of appearance versus reality, shallowness versus substance…
“Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,…” III,iv (Lear)
“I do not like the fashion of your garments” III,vi (Lear)…”And bring some covering for this naked soul” IV, I (Gloucester)
“Robes and furr’d gowns hide all” IV, vi
Lear in his madness is becoming more lucid… recognizes that the Fool and other poor people suffer in their lot in life. (the storm)
Lear speaks in reference to Edgar’s near nudity. Perhaps in some part of his madness he recognizes that edgar needs protection from the storm…

10. Treason and Betrayal
The disruption of the chain of being - body politic and the family
Betrayal of King, country against country, brother against brother, children against parents…
Treason and betrayal are both cause and consequence of the breaking of natural laws

11. Betrayal is both cause and consequence
“In palaces, treason; and the bond crack’d twixt son and father” I, ii (Gloucester)
“Machinations, hollowness, treachery…follow us quietly to our graves” I,ii (Gloucester)
“If it be you that stirs these daughters’ hearts/ Against their father…” II,iv (Lear)
Edmund is arrested for treason

12. Old Age
Lear tries to free himself of the burden or rule - “crawl unburdened toward death”
Regan and Goneril make much of Lear’s age: “O, sir, you are old…you should be led by some discretion…”

13. The play causes us to question our attitudes and assumptions about old age…
The play also suggests that old age should command respect.
Regan and Goneril’s abuse of their father for being old makes their cruelty all the worse.
Cornwall and Regan’s cruelty to Gloucester is also heightened by his age (Regan plucks his white beard)

14. “…the oppression of aged tyranny,…” I,ii (Edmund’s forged letter)
“tis the infirmity of his age…” I,I (Regan)
“…the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them” (Goneril)
“Idle old man…Old fools are babes again, and must be us’d With checks as flatteries…”I,iii (Goneril)

15. “my old heart is crack’d, it’s crack’d” II,I (Gloucester)
“O heavens, If you do love old men, …if you yourselves are old, Make it your cause…” II,iv (Lear)
“here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.” III,ii (Lear)
“The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.” I,iii (Edgar)