Religion in King Lear Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Religion in King Lear - Essay Example The chaotic mixture of fairies with Gods seems to characterize the religious confusion in the play. Characters endlessly invoke Gods, divine powers, and mystical forces; there seems to be an assumption that something governs our lives on earth, but the direction of the play as a whole is towards a radical questioning of this whole idea. When Gloucester says As flies to wanton boys, are we to th’ Gods; They kill us for their sport (IV, 1, 36-7). his view will not do here as a summary of the world shown in the play, for one thing because there simply is no evidence of Gods doing anything at all, callous or benevolent. In Act V Edgar comments on his father’s fate in terms which again assume some sort of divine order in things: The Gods are just, and if our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us: The dark and vicious place where thee he got Cost him his eyes (V, 3, 170-3). ... It is a world without justice, nor any convincing sense of meaningful moral order. The characters assume, however, that the divine is present in their world, and that it can be addressed and appealed to, though it comes in many forms. Lear begs "sweet heaven" (I, 1, 46) to prevent him from going mad. He prays for "all the stor'd vengeances of Heaven" (II, 4, 163) to strike down his ungrateful daughter, and begs the "Heavens" (II, 4, 273) to give him patience and strength. "O Heavens, / If you do love old men" (II, 4 191-2), he says in the same scene. In the storm scenes Kent's description of its peculiar severity prompts one to see it as more than just a physical event. He has never in his life seen "such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder" etc., and the implication is that the storm has more than natural causes. This leads Lear to his reflection on the power of the storm to purge evil and crime: Let the Great Gods, That keep this dreadful pudder o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now(III, 2, 49). He believes the Gods are present and that they have the power to punish wrongs - even his own. In III, 4 he acknowledges his own responsibility for how Goneril and Regan are: "Judicious punishment! 'twas this flesh begot / Those pelican daughters" (III, 4, 75-6). Gloucester too believes in the divine, but in very muddled way. His son Edmund feels none of the strength of the spiritual, and despises his father for his naivety: Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound (I, 2, 1-2). means, in fact, that he has no gods or goddesses, that religious sense to him is bosh, and a sign of superstitious weakness in others. His closeness to the sisters is clear. His "Nature", it is obvious, is a different