Final Exam/Paper #3 Assignment

In Chapter 9, “Endings” from Poole’s Tragedy: A Very Short Introduction, he writes,

Death is promiscuous in tragedy. It engulfs the good, the bad, and the indifferent without regard to their mortal qualities, the Cordelias as well as the Gonerils and the Regans. There is no justice we can recognize in the way war, famine, and plague choose their victims. That’s what happens with weapons of mass destruction—they do not discriminate. The ‘evil’ that tragedy shows us is a realistic assessment of the way individuals are destroyed with no regard to whether they deserve it or not (118).

For your Final Paper (and Final Exam, so to speak), I want you to use King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra to respond to Poole’s idea: what are we supposed to learn from the deaths in both plays? Good people are maimed and killed in each play (Gloucester, Cordelia, Enobarbus) and several ‘evil’ people get their comeuppance (Edmund, the sisters, Lear? Cleopatra?). Of course, plenty of people don’t die at all, and the balance of good vs. bad people doesn’t lend itself to an easy moral interpretation. Are the deaths random in Shakespeare’s plays, like life itself? Are they staged merely for dramatic effect? Or do they lead to other themes and ideas beyond merely rewarding good and punishing evil? And how do we get catharsis (or relief, justice, satisfaction) by the end of the each play? Do the deaths accomplish this…or do we get it in spite of the deaths?

This is important to think about today, in the midst of COVID-19, which takes the young and the old, the sick and the healthy, the good and the bad. Is Tragedy a mirror or life, merely showing us what we know to be true? Or does it try to make sense out of the random chance and injustice of life? In other words, how does Shakespeare transform death in these plays to achieve his larger purpose?

REQUIREMENTS

• I won’t grade this like a polished paper, but more like a Final Exam you composed in class. So feel free to be a little more messy and extemporaneous. Give yourself a few hours and see what comes out. Though feel free to revise if you can.
• Use BOTH plays, though you can focus more on one than the other.
• Besides the quote above (which you can discuss directly), use Poole elsewhere in your paper to help make your argument. You can also use Wells if you like.
• Length is not an issue--that's up to you. Double space, though, please. 
• DUE NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, MAY 8^th BY 5pm

Please e-mail me with questions and concerns, or simply to talk some of these ideas out with me. I’m still here to help, even if we can’t talk face to face!