SOURCE: "Lear," in Harvester New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare: King Lear, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1988, pp. 69-95.

In the following essay, Leggatt focuses on Lear's death, contending that it is "the completion of life lived to the extreme," and examines the parallels in the experiences of Lear and Gloucester.

One of the principal ways in which critics have sought consolation for the ending of King Lear is to note that, however much Lear has suffered, he has also learnt. Walter Stein puts it succinctly: 'The world remains what it was, a merciless, heart-breaking world. Lear is broken by it, but he has learned to love and be loved'.¹ Lear in the storm, according to Robert Bechtold Heilman, 'feels compassion, acknowledges his own failures, and lessens himself in terms of divine justice; like Gloucester, he has come to a new insight'.² The idea of Lear's progress is given a religious dimension...