hello, hello tt le monde!
après la transe de moffett de ce matin(je pourrais dire quotidienne ms je trouve qu'il était particulièrement en forme ce matin=) sur son cher beckett et shakespeare, jvou envoi l'explication de la scene 9 de King Lear(elle est un peu incomplètecar g rajouté des notes après ms il y a le gros du boulot) ms n'hésitez pa a mdemander si vs voulez mon brouillon(ms faudra décrypter!! )
bon aprèm!
KING LEAR analysis of scene 9 from line 1 down to line 79

First, we’ll see that in this scene, the world is turned upside down. the storm reflects both the inner disorder of lear and the disorder in his family influencing disorder in the kingdom.
Then, we’ll study how Shakespeare makes a vivid description of the storm, how he manages to make the audience feel sympathy. We will ask us if Lear provokes the storm himself and see the parallelism between the disorder both outside and inside.
We’ll see how lear is a victim and how this scene is a turning-point in the play because we attend lear’s conversion

A STORM AND A CHANGE ANNOUNCED BEFORE
Both The storm and the madness are previously foreshadowed, announced in previous scenes:
-p176 line 445:the storm is announced by Gonerillwho is safe in her house “T’will be a storm”-)”will” indicates that she makes a prevision the storm isn’t here now
-p179 lines29-30:Kent(who is the one who sees clear in the play) says ”how unnatural and bemadding sorrow the King has cause to pain”
-p180 line41:Kent”Fie on this storm!”the storm is here
-now in scene 9 Lear and the fool are outside, under the storm. all the previous indications in the text make the storm and the madness of Lear bound to happen, it is like a sentence.


A VIVID DESCRIPTION OF THE STORM
The storm is frightening because all the forces of nature are both numerous and powerful
-All the different elements are here :we can notice the natural sequence “wind, rain, lightning, thunder” at the very beginning of the scene:”wind”-)”cataracts”corresponds towind and water-)”hurricanoes”refers to wind-)”fires”to light-)”thunderbolts” to thunder. Lear enumerates the diverse elements again line 15 “nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters” while making a comparison between nature and his daughters but we’ll see that point later. Elements are impersonated and are the subjects of all the first lines: they really have power
-nature expresses its rage through different elements, but its rage is also due to its intensity: might given by both rhythm and sounds:
--sounds:
We can hear Lear cry and the wind blow with the consonances in “a” and “o”: plaint:
“Blow wind and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow,
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched the steeples, drowned the cocks!”
Ther are also striking assonances where the audience can almost hear what it is described :line 14”spit fire;spout rain”:we can really hear the sounds fire and rain do
--rhythm:
.the many spondees slow the rhythm and so give solemnity to the text(particularly the first words Lear pronounces as he enters on stage: the first line begins and ends with spondees and with the same word: ”blow wind…rage, blow”) slowing the rhythm turns the words into a complaint, as if Lear was moaning. Actually, although the actor is free to give his own interpretation to the text: he can easily whisper the consonances or shout the assonances, Shakespeare’s words bear their meaning in their letters which give life to them thanks to the rhythm and the sounds
Shakespeare breaks the usual structure of blank verse:in addition to the spondees is a choriambus(a spondee followed by an iamb) line 3 ”till you have drenched..”
.there is a break in the rhythm lines5,6,7,8 because the first syllable is stressed ”vaunt/singe/smite/crack” what is striking in blank verse normally composed of iambs that is feet stressed on the second syllable: it shows that something extraordinary is going on
.nature is also overwhelming in the way the sentences are built: when Lear or Kent speaks and describes the devastating nature, he almost always uses run-on-lines: from line 42 down to line 48 for example :nature appears uncontrollable and causing disorder
Run-on-lines capture the attention of the audience who is always waiting for the following words, what is going on next?the lines often end with the subject of the sentence “that love night…/ the wrastful skies.../ I ne’er…” so that the action is always sustained. The flow of words gives the impression of something which can’t stop. It continues in crescendo until the sentence which I consider one of the two climaxes of the scene “my wit begins to turn”line 68. It is a short and incisive sentence drawing a great contrast with the previous very long ones(the other one being “I will say nothing” line38)

DISORDER BOTH OUTSIDE AND INSIDE
Is it Lear who provokes the storm or is he given a punishment from a supernatural force: gods or nature?
Lear gives many imperatives stressed by their first position in the lines 5,6,7,8 for example; he addresses the various elements. He appears to ask for external chaos to illustrate the disorder he is suffering in his heart and his mind.
During the Elizabethan Age, people strongly believed that the microcosm and the macrocosm were closely linked. Nature was supposed to reflect people’s inner feelings. People believed they lived in an ordered universe planned by god as a harmonious whole; or here, Lear invokes natural forces to create disturbance in it. His world has collapsed, so must do the world. People used to see parallelisms between the cosmic and the human planes (man is made of the four elements, his heat is like fire, his veins like river, his sighs like wind..: we find the various elements quoted at the beginning of the scene)


POWER OF SUPERNATURAL FORCES FACING POWERLESS HUMAN BEINGS
Nobody can stop nature:-nature affects everybody, all men: both fool and king(here the two characters being at the two extreme sides of the social ladder are on the same level; Lear is, facing nature, a man before being a king. There is both an opposition and a mix of the two characters facing nature: line12:”here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool”
Line 40:”that’s a wise man and a fool”:Kent is speaking, he sees a difference between the two men, whereas the storm doesn’t make any.
Appear here the world unfair and life hard.
Lear and Kent speak in blank verse whereas the fools either speaks in prose or sings in rhymes. Nature is beyond everybody, that diversity of ways of speaking adds to the unnatural atmosphere of the scene:it is odd to sing when terrible things are happening around you, but this absurdity in the text is meaningful, it expresses the absurdity of what is going on.
but beyond this difference in this way of speaking, the fool and Lear use the same words and echo to each other. There is a discrepancy between the levels of language but (and we can see here that Shakespeare addresses the whole audience because the key words are simple ones like man, head, wit, rain…”Blank verse increases the tragic aspect of the scene and also the pathos; prose and commonplace expressions make it more vivid for the audience.
Man is the victim of nature,the characters are showed naked facing nature, appearances can’t deceive nature like men, Kent tells us that Lear is “bareheaded”line 61. you can’t stop nature :it is supernatural line48: “man’s nature cannot carry/the affliction nor the force”the run-on-line has two effects: the audience can think that the sentence is finished after carry or is wondering what?what can’t man’s nature carry? Because this verb needs an object .
Line 9: after a long sentence with heavy rhythm and sounds that we have already noticed, the word “man” is the last word at the end of the line and of the paragraph in order to emphasise the burden man has to bear, “man” is crushed down by the powerful nature. The elements are active whereas men are passive.
no alternative, you can’t change natural events but only undergo them.Here Lear realises he can’t stop what is supernatural, but his daughters are even worse than elements, they are unnatural.
We can notice the repetition of the word “head” lines 23, 29… is used by both Lear and the fool, to give the impression of something more powerful than them which crush them down, but it is also to show that Lear’s pain is physical, but above mental.


LEAR AS A VICTIM-)PITY
Shakespeare uses different devices to arouse pity and sympathy from the audience:both the events and the way the characters account for them make feel the audience sympathetic for them.
Line 12: “here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool”:everybody suffers from nature. The use of the word “pity” isn’t groundless because the verb “to pity” means here “plaindre” but the noun “pity” means “pitié”.
Lear is not only showed as a man and not as a king, but he is also showed as an old wretched man, a victim “I am a man more sined against than sinning”line 60
The characters are thoughtful(attentionnés) between each other:the fool calls Lear “good nuncle”line 11, he stresses his age and so his weakness:”a head so old and white as this”line 24. lear himself feels sympathy for the fool: ”poor fool and knave, I have one part of my heart that sorrows yet for thee” lines 72,73


LEAR’S CONVERSION:
Now that lear has suffered , we can see a change in him.the two climaxes of the scene”I will say nothing; my wit begins to win”
Line 67 “my wit begins to turn” lear seems to address himself .after talking to the gods and Kent, and before addressing the fool, he looks inside of him. He is sain enough to understand he is going unsane. He is answering the question “who’s there?”line 39. He is different as usually, he is aware of something else , he nearly take the figure of the father “my boy”line 68 “my good boy” line79, this kindness, this thougtfulness for the poors is new for him.
A climax of the scene for me is line 38”I will say nothing”; now his heart is broken, now he understand that words are meaningless and can be deceiptive. This line refers to the first scene Kent just appears on stage when Lear pronounces those words. Kent is the one who, from the beginning, represents faith, who is loyal to Lear both as a king and as a man , he is sincere when he says line 59: “some friendship” .Kent was there in the first scene and attended the “nothing my lord” of cordelia:there is a strong unity in the work of Shakespeare.
2 words underline the change in Lear: “nothing” and “true”
“true” is the first word of line 79 which ends the scene, now, lear gives importance to new values for him: truth. This “true” refers to line 99 in the first scene of the play when cordelia says ”so young my lord, and true”
But lear himself that now that he sees the world well(such a disaster was necessary to that), now that he sees the truth, he makes the premonition of his future madness, his wit will turn.