Essay Comparing The Tempest and King Lear
Comparing The Tempest and King Lear
This essay will focus on the similarities and differences of the plays The Tempest
and King Lear in general, as well as looking at comparisons of Prospero and Lear in
somewhat more detail.
Prospero and Lear are, without a doubt, the two most compelling mature figures in
Shakespeare. In a way, one is the flip side, so to speak, of the other. Each represents
an aging man s relationship to family, environment, and, most importantly, himself.
One might even be so bold as to venture that had Lear lived, he might, through the
enormity of his painful transformation, have become a character much like Prospero,
a man who has learned bitter lessons from his intercourse with the world and has ...
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Lear, likewise, is the victim of a tempest, also a turning point in the plot, as well as a
powerful force in his own agonizing journey through growth and self discovery. In a
way, Lear s tempest is more significant in that it represents the Hegelian dialectic of
thesis, antithesis, synthesis; out of Lear s agonizing conflict with nature and his
subsequent madness comes a new and better man, a man cleansed, literally and
figuratively, by the raging water of the storm. It is interesting to note the main
difference between the roles played by Lear and Prospero in their respective
interactions with the storm: Lear is the victim of the maelstrom, Prospero the creator.
Each character is defined to a certain extent by this relationship to nature s wrath, one
experiencing it as a kind of chastisement, the other utilizing it to further his own ends.
Lear rages against the storm, shouting, You sulph rous and thought executing fires,
/ Vaunt couriers of oak cleaving thunderbolts,/ Singe my white head! And thou all
shaking thunder,/ Strike flat the thick rotundity o th world! (III.II.4 7). Compare this
with Miranda s request that If by your art, my dearest father, you have/ Put the wild
waters in this roar, allay them. (I.I.1 2).
The bond between father and daughter in each play, while seemingly incidental, must