SOURCE: “‘And that's true too’: King Lear and the Tension of Uncertainty,” in Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 33, 1980, pp. 43-53.

In the following essay, Peat focuses on the ambiguities and mounting anxiety in the final scene of King Lear. Audience response to this scene repeatedly alternates between hope and despair. Peat asserts that spectators with no previous knowledge of the play would be thoroughly confused by the tumultuous events taking place on stage during this scene, and would become so emotionally involved that it would be impossible for them to serenely view the deaths of Lear and Cordelia as signs of affirmation or renewal. Peat's discussion of confusion and uncertainty in King Lear also includes an analysis of the Dover Cliff scene.

‘By the end of King Lear, we should see that Cordelia possesses everything that is genuinely worth having.’ This might be a quotation from Shakespearean Tragedy, but it...