"Cliff Notes - King Lear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

challenge and mortally wounds Edmund. Goneril sees the
handwriting on the wall and flees from the scene. Edmund
confesses all his crimes as a servant enters and announces that
Goneril has poisoned Regan and killed herself. Edmund then
reveals that he has ordered Lear's and Cordelia's deaths.
Albany sends soldiers to prevent it, but he's too late. Lear
enters carrying the dead Cordelia in his arms. As he weeps for
her, surrounded by the bodies of Goneril and Regan, the
survivors can only stare in respectful awe.

Albany, the victor of the battle, relinquishes rule of the
country to Kent and Edgar, but the worn-out Kent doesn't accept.
Edgar is left to restore order in England as the bodies of the
dead are carried away.

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KING LEAR: SOURCES

There may well have been an ancient king of Britain named Lear.
And he may have had daughters to whom he relinquished his
kingdom and his authority when he retired at an early age. But
we can only speculate about these people because there is no
historic record of such a ruler. Lear may be only a popular
myth.

By the time Shakespeare came to write about Lear, there were
several available versions of the story. We know that
Holinshed's Chronicles, Shakespeare's source for several of his
histories, contained a Lear story. There was also another play
performed at that time called The True Chronicle History of King
Leir. The author is unknown, but there is a record of its
performance in London in 1594, some 12 years before
Shakespeare's King Lear appeared. Edmund Spenser's great epic
poem The Faerie Queen also includes the Lear story.

Some fine points differ in these stories, but Shakespeare's
version is unique in one uncontestable aspect: the others had
happy endings. Some even had a sequel showing how the "happily
ever after" turned out! And none had the Gloucester subplot.
Shakespeare took the outline of this story from a contemporary
romance, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. He changed names and
adapted its theme of filial ingratitude as a parallel to
reinforce the tension and impact of his main plot.

Since he was concerned with tragedy, not history, Shakespeare
was free to take whatever liberties he chose in order to shape
the drama to his purpose. And that was his story of King
Lear.

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