Accessible Lear: Teaching King Lear to Secondary-Education Students

Abstract

Outsiders. These four books all were on the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) website's Top Ten lists for their particular publication year, and all have topped the charts for copies checked out of libraries to young adults in the United States (YALSA n.pag.). Middle school teachers around the country have used these books and as recommended reading to their students because the narratives include tough issues like death, love, and family conflict. These books, however, can work cooperatively with Shakespearean works like King Lear, whose characters struggle with these same themes. This play begins with the titular king deciding how best to divide his land between his three daughters. Lear proposes that each daughter, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, have a chance to express how much they love him in order to help with his decision. While Goneril and Regan, the older sisters, play along with this request in flowery verse, Cordelia refuses to overstate her love, loses her dowry, and is banished to France with her new husband. Shakespeare writes a second pair of fathers and children in family crisis in this play, with the king's advisor Gloucester in the father role. Through clever tricks against Gloucester's own vanity, his legitimate son Edgar is undermined by the bastard Edmund. The play closely follows the political and social outcomes of family betrayal, ending in tragedy for all sides. Though in the end, Cordelia and Lear come to reconcile, he has gone mad in exile from his elder daughters' houses and tragedy is inevitable. Why King Lear as opposed to all the other possible Shakespearean plays? Many choices exist for the teacher who intends to teach a Shakespeare play, and King Lear is not often considered because of its use of older characters, violence, and dark themes. My choice of King Lear might then seem a strange one for a class of thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds, far removed from adult experiences. Still, age-old choices like Romeo and Juliet have had their day, and students can even tune out the familiar call of the love-lorn boy to his lady in the balcony. Likewise, though A Midsummer Night's Dream has charm and promise, so many lesson plans exist that little new ground remains to be discovered. Unfortunately, Cliffs Notes, whose study tools have become book replacements, recently even produced an animated version of this. "I love you but I really hate you sometimes!" screams Oberon eloquently. This 2011 web video also includes the words "crushing on," "barf," and numerous wacky sound effects. While humor can be a great way to get through to students, the bug-eyed animations are a poor substitute for the play. Cliffs Notes advertises that its videos allow students to "leave with basic knowledge of the plots, themes, characters, and the confidence to pass the test" (Cambio Videos n.pag.). Trivia will not help students in their lives and careers, but skills based on reading and interpretation will be a lifelong help to students, helping them gain confidence not just to pass the test, but t...