Free English Literature Dissertations - Michel De Montaigne Regards The Fear Of Death As Absolutely Useless,
Michel de Montaigne regards the fear of death as absolutely useless, stressing the importance of reason in the issues of death, the concept that was a characteristic feature of the Renaissance philosophers. King Lear understands this idea and accepts his own death with inevitability, although he has to face many difficulties until he finds necessary courage to realise this truth. In fact, death in Shakespeare’s King Lear is analysed in all its depth and through numerous characters, revealing that death in Renaissance England was accepted as a natural and inevitable phenomenon. As Evelyn G. Hooven claims in regard to Shakespeare’s play,
The dramatic emphasis is on the generality of death The reiterated fact of the
multiple deaths is processional in quality. It is like an enormous summarial
obituary. The Fool disappears of causes mysterious; Oswald is killed by Edgar;
Goneril and Regan are poisoned and dagger-slain; Gloucester dies offstage of
weariness, conflicting emotion, and a broken heart; Kent is about to die of grief
and service; Edmund is killed by his brother in a duel; Cordelia dies (by a kind
of mistake) at a hangman’s hands; and King Lear dies of grief and deluded joy
and fierce exhaustion Death is neither punishment nor reward: it is simply in
the nature of things11.
Thus, death is omnipresent in King Lear, but what is more important is that the characters in Shakespeare’s play are in search of worthy death. Although some characters, like King Lear, Goneril and Regan, are afraid of death, other protagonists, such as Cordelia and Kent reveal great courage in their attitude towards death. For Shakespeare, similar to Michel de Montaigne, the way a person dies is more crucial than the way he/she exists. Such an attitude is explained by the uniqueness of Elizabethan society that was guided by the ideas of death inspired by Christianity and Stoicism. Cordelia’s death signifies forgiveness and reconciliation between two loving people a father and a daughter; her death also uncovers the virtues that King Lear possesses. On the other hand, Shakespeare’s preoccupation of death in King Lear reflects the principal concept of the early modern philosopher Jacques Choron who states that the question of the meaning of human existence in the totality of Being, this fundamental question of philosophy, gains its true and practical importance through man’s total discovery of death12.
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