ABSTRACT
The overriding critical problem in King Lear is that of its ending. The deaths of Lear and Cordelia confront people like a raw, fresh wound where their every instinct calls for healing and reconciliation. This problem, moreover, is as much one of philosophic order as of dramatic effect. Shakespeare may have inherited with the plot of Hamlet , this tragic ending was imposed by Shakespeare on a story which, in its source, allowed Cordelia’s forces to win the war. Moreover, the massive intrusion into King Lear of Christian elements of providence, depravity, and spiritual regeneration make it impossible to shunt aside the ending as a coincidence of its pre-Christian setting. Some recent critics have gone much further than Bradley in an attempt to build from Lear’s momentary emotion at death a “chance which doth redeem all sorrows,” and make the play’s ending a transfigured vision of attained salvation.
