the sufferings inflicted have been to great for human beings to bear, and the crimes committed too terrible to be condoned- too terrible to forget. I believe Shakespeare wanted us to feel, and so to know that we must not forget and must not let new sorrows Strike us on the face. That is what we ought to say and what art says. If we do not, we deny the function of art not only to enhance life, but to teach and delight. Our denial makes us participants in the madness that engulfs Lear. IN the words of Prufrock, we have to dare to eat peach, for doing so we disturb the universe.Harold Bloom has published, Shakespeare, the Invention of the Human. This study argues that Shakespeare invented personality, and that any modernist attempt to lower that achievement to current sociopolitical trends does violence to that achievement. Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only Shakespeares greatest originality but also the authentic cause of his perpetual pervasiveness.Bloom initially states that Lear is beyond commentary, but nonetheless proceeds to offer many revisionistic concepts, not the least of which is the belief that divine justice does not prevail at the end, this he terms offensive. He believes that the key to interpreting Lears end and for that matter any moment of the play rests with love; we must note that initially Lear is loved by all of the good characters in the play: The Fool, Kent, Gloucester, and Edgar. Thus cement binding (or not) the Lear world is to much love: Shakespeares implication is that the only authentic love is between parents and children; yet the prime consequence of such love is only devastationthe play manifests as intense anguish in regard to human sexuality, and a compassionate despair as to the mutually destructive nature of both paternal and filial love. This love is what Bloom calls a love that is so deep it cannot be avoided. Thus for Bloom the line that best sums the...
