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A review by zachlittrell
King Lear by William Shakespeare

4.0

Earl of Kent telling Oswald what he thinks of him:


A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud,
shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy,
worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson,
glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of
good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave,
beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch;
one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deny the
least syllable of thy addition.


Yeah! You tell 'em, Kent! If, in the extremely unlikely case, I had a baby boy, Kent would be a very strong contender for the baby's name, and largely on the merits of what a thorough verbal smackdown Kent dishes out.

For a tragedy, it is a fun story. Everyone's double crossing each other; some characters pretend to be insane while others very much are insane; the villains have a problematic combination of afflictions: paranoid and horny; there is maybe one or two healthy familial relationships (Lear starts Act 1 by kicking out the only daughter who decided to tell him the truth rather than kiss his senile ass), but most of the play depicts love and loyalty and greed and capriciousness being dragged through the mud. Basically, very few people leave this play happy, outside of the readers or viewers.

(I have two small quibbles, though. Edmund's brief moment of regret seems so shocking, given what a maniacal schemer he is, as to almost derail the entire story. And the Fool, by far one of the coolest characters in the play, just up and disappears. But I am slowly being convinced, and intrigued, by the conspiracy theory that the Fool is simply another major character -- who is never around at the same time -- incognito.)