Dramatic Irony

William Shakespeare
King Lear
First Published 1608


I would love to link a free version of King Lear from Amazon Kindle Store, unfortunately they do not have one! All the versions in English of King Lear are .99 cents and up. Fortunately, you can download from these sources:

• Magic Catalog. If you have this on your kindle you can just search the book and download directly. If not click the link for a guide on installing it.
• Project Gutenberg
• Feedbooks
• Manybooks.net
• The Internet Archives

Inkmesh is a great source for finding eBooks. Inkmesh is a search engine for eBooks. I used it to find free versions of King Lear. You can search specifically for free eBooks and it will search multiple databases including the kindle store and Project Gutenberg.


King Lear is a tragedy written by Bill Shakespeare. After spending the last six months studying fourteen of his plays, I feel like I am on a first name basis with Bill. I read all the plays on my Kindle. The play explores social and moral notions of justice and whether they are possible in a natural world. King Lear is retiring and is leaving everything to this three daughters. When the good one, Cordelia, decides not to play to his ego she is removed from the inheritance. The two older sisters divide the land and come to hate their father. The tragedy is that King Lear abandons his only loving daughter and the other daughters come to abandon him. The two daughters eventually fight over Edmund, a grand villain written by Shakespeare, and come to a bad end.

Tragedy n.
any dramatic or literary composition dealing with serious or sombre themes and ending with disaster.

Or as my Professor calls them, “plays where everyone dies at the end.” There are a few survivors in King Lear. With Shakespeare, the ending is not the important part, it is the journey he takes us through. We read Shakespeare for the human insight and depth of character’s psychological development. Freud loved reading Shakespeare because his characters were so complex and well developed.


Edmund is one of the vilest villains created by Shakespeare. He has a great soliloquy in Act 1 Scene 2 where he tells us how he feels about being called the bastard son and his brother the legitimate one. He tells us his plan to turn his father against his older brother Edgar with a letter and how he feels of everyone that is not made out of passion.

As to th’ legitimate. Fine word, “legitimate”!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed
And  my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top th’ legitimate. I grow, I prosper.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Shakespeare uses this soliloquy to build Dramatic Irony.

Dramatic Irony n.
irony that is inherent in speeches or a situation of a drama and is understood by the audience but not grasped by the characters in the play.

We, the reader/audience, know the intentions of the character in the play. The other characters on the stage are unaware of what he is doing. Now when Edmund says something on stage there will be multiple meanings to it. We know what his plans are but his father thinks he is a great son for telling him what is going on. The audience can see what he is doing with the letter and and have mixed emotions about the character. We don't want him to succeed but we can’t do anything about it. He is telling us what he plans to do and we can see everything he does with a different understanding.


The Dramatic Irony in Shakespeare’s comedies is even more complex. When you have boys dressing as girls who are pretending to be boys, the meaning of their lines is quite complex. When a boy who’s really a girl played by a boy is being courted by a man starts talking about who we really are, on stage, talking about plays while acting, well you really don’t know how to take it besides to laugh.


King Lear is a great play about the tragic situation of a man who loses everything he once loved. Ian McKellen does a great job in the 2009 version of King Lear. Read the play then watch the movie. The characters in this play are very interesting. I now contradict myself! The last scene, where Lear walks in carrying a dead Cordelia, is gut wrenching. The scene gets it's emotional power because of everything that Lear has gone through. 


This is the second post in my Shakespeare series. Certain terms need to be explained in order to be able to understand the plays better. A soliloquy leads to dramatic irony in many plays. Understanding what certain scenes are helps in reading that scene. If you see a character come on stage alone you know he will give you information that only you will know for the rest of the play. You have to pay special attention to soliloquies to understand the multiple meanings of what they say later on.


Please share this post or any others on your social media of choice and bookmark the site for future post. You can also grab the rss feed or try a   free 2 week trial*  on your kindle to have the posts delivered directly to you. Follow me on twitter @seframos. Happy Reading.

Soliloquy

Literary terminology is important in understand works. I am working on presenting terms in relation to the works of literature discussed. Soliloquies are used extensively in plays. The most famous soliloquy would have to be Hamlet’s “To be or not to be.” A soliloquy is normally a person alone on stage talking about his real feelings or innermost thoughts.

Soliloquy  [suh-lil-uh-kwee] n.
1.an utterance or discourse by a person who is talking to himself or herself or is disregardful of or oblivious to any hearers present (often used as a device in drama to disclose a character's innermost thoughts).
2. the act of talking while or as if alone.

Shakespeare was a master of language and his soliloquies are studied and quoted extensively.

William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
First Published 1608


Hamlet Nicely formatted. $0.99 


Hamlet Quarto 1608 Free


Hamlet Folio 1623 Free


A nicely formatted version is available from the Magic Catalog for free!

I have not read Hamlet yet, but I have read about it. The reason I am including it here is that I will be reading this play starting tonight! Anyone want to read along with me?


Here is what Wikipedia has to say about Hamlet:

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatizes the revenge Prince Hamlet exacts on his uncle Claudius for murdering King Hamlet, Claudius's brother and Prince Hamlet's father, and then succeeding to the throne and taking as his wife Gertrude, the old king's widow and Prince Hamlet's mother. The play vividly portrays both true and feigned madness – from overwhelming grief to seething rage – and explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption.

Sounds great to me! Wikipedia and Sparknotes are great resources for background and notes on text. This is especially useful when the language is a barrier to full understanding. Shakespeare had a ridiculous vocabulary and the language has also changed a bit in the last few hundred years. His texts are studied with annotations in universities that are done by Shakesperian Scholars. Attending a play or watching a film version will also help with understanding the work. YouTube also has theatre outfit’s recordings of the plays that you can listen to while you read along. I recommend doing all of these. Study up on the play by reading online. Read an act or two and look up the synopsis online to make sure you are following along and understanding it all. Finish the play then watch a  film version. This will give you much more interaction with a play and help with the understanding of themes and characters.

Shakespeare’s works are a challenge but ones that are well worth it.

Please share this post or any others on your social media of choice and bookmark the site for future post. You can also grab the rss feed or try a   free 2 week trial*  on your kindle to have the posts delivered directly to you. Follow me on twitter @seframos. Happy Reading.