... drains it of its tragic power by oversimplifying Shakespeare's understanding of the complexities of political life. Ultimately, this kind of reading threatens to reduce King Lear to a form of melodrama, a story of the straightforward conflict of clearly identifiable and separable forces of good and evil, in which the ... stay within the limits of the conventional world and the heroic souls who try to go beyond them. Notes 1 In his Shakespeare Our Contemporary, trans. Boleslaw Taborski (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1966), 130, Jan Kott makes explicit what many ... he enjoins: "Speak...

• Word Count: 8939
• Approx Pages: 36
• Grade Level: High School