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Of the five major Shakespearean tragediesHamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and OthelloKing Lear is perhaps the most challenging. Issues of rulership, family and blood, are overlaid with bastardy, loyalty, lust, and deceit. Add to this the apparently gratuitous on-stage blinding of Gloucester, the deaths of Cordelia, Lear, Gloucester, and Kent, and one might be inclined to agree with Samuel Johnson that The good suffer more than the evil, that love and suffering, in this play, are almost interchangeable terms and the driving force of the action is derived from the power of the evil to inflict mental agony upon the good (quoted in Kermode, 505). However, one would be mistaken to accept wholeheartedly the happy endings of the eighteenth and nineteenth century revisionists. While the pleasant ending would certainly ease the sensibilities of the audience, it would omit the Aristotlean concepts of hamartia and the purgation of fear and pity attendant upon actually witnessing Shakespeares King Lear, the necessary catharsis, a possible scapegoat for our own emotions. Of course, the ending is to some extent unpleasant and even shocking; however, one can argue that the ending is organic to the play; the ending IS, to a great extent, the play.

Because Julius Caesar has been required reading in most high schools, it may be the Shakespeare play most familiar to students. However, as one reader protested, it cant be much of a play when the hero dies early in the third act. However, many of us have been instructed that Julius Caesar is not the protagonist; Brutus is. This is apparently made clear by Mark Antonys comment over Brutus body in Act V: This was the noblest Roman of them all. On a closer reading, however, it seems that Brutus is certainly not the noblest. A comparison between Julius Caesar and Brutus reveals many similar traits: both are ambitious, both are quite pompous, and both speak of themselves in the third person. Actually, neither one of them is a model Roman. Perhaps Mark Antony comes closest to being the actual protagonist. One could even advance the argument that Cassius acts most honorably of the plotters; he is certainly the most level-headed; yet Brutus has his way and contravenes Cassius advice repeatedly, always to ill effect. Perhaps none of these men is the true protagonist; maybe there isnt one.