Essay: Explore Human Creativity to Understand Socio-Political Changes in Shakespeare’s King Lear and Aristotle’s The Poetics

With reference to Aristotle’s The Poetics and William Shakespeare’s King Lear, I will discuss both of the literary works separately and then attempt an evaluation on both of them as examples of human creativity that are necessary to construct social-political changes.
To start with, in Aristotle’s The Poetics, he showed that ‘tragedy’ was created by human creativity. The definition of tragedy as stated in The Poetics was “Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.” (10). Basically, Aristotle is saying ‘tragedy’ must be a representation of society that is serious, complete and great with the six main elements which are plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and song. Among all these core elements, I think that ‘spectacle’ is the most creative part of the tragedy. In The Poetics Part XIV about the plot, Aristotle says that the tragic emotions of pity and fear should spring out the plot itself. Although spectacle is not the most important part of tragedy but it has the function of creating a sense of horror when reading or watching the tragedy. According to Carney, “Fear is an expression of apprehension and a reminder of individual agency and responsibility. Fear is the aim too,” (Carney 221). It coordinates with plot and character to bring out the fear in the audience so that they will immerse themselves in the play. However, it is up to the playwright’s decision to determine the effect of spectacle in the play. By way of illustration, I will give two examples of spectacles in the play.
In addition, in Shakespeare’s King Lear, he showed that the play was simply created by human creativity since it contains a universe of its own. King Lear brings out the humanity of mankind by the spectacle, which means it presents the characters collectively in the play as well as the quality of being humane. For instance, Shakespeare created two spectacles as in ‘the extrusion of Gloucester’s eyes’ (3.7.80) and in ‘the storm and tempest scene’ (2.4.283). The first scene reflects the cruelty and heartlessness of Regan and Cornwall while the second scene reflects and represents Lear’s wrath. The storm and rain effect implies Lear calls down God’s wrath on him. Yet, in my opinion, the former is too savage for the audience to be seen on stage whereas the latter creates a shocking and stunning effect on the audience. These examples prove that spectacles have great effects on the audience, which can emerge pity and fear emotions and mirror them to the play.
Personally, I agree with the transition from Aristotle’s The Poetics to Shakespeare’s King Lear was a successful one to constructive social-political changes and I think that The Poetics has brought positive social-political changes to King Lear as a tragedy. From my point of view, Shakespeare successfully revealed the meaning of suffering in human life (Carney 131) and the relationship between human and nature socially. As Aristotle puts it, “For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality.” This shows that tragedy does not only represents humanity but also represents human life itself, which is very real, solid and tangible. Moreover, he also illustrated Lear’s existential problem of his political body and natural body politically. In other words, Lear suffered from the betrayal of his two daughters Gonerill and Regan, and the loss of Cordelia at the end of the play. This depicts the pain and anguish of Lear as a father and an ordinary man on the social level. In Kirsch’s view, the physical and emotional feelings are the core parts of King Lear as well as an extension of our emotion capacity (Kirsch 154). Then again, he has lost his kingdom as a King on the political level. Shakespeare put Lear in the centre of the universe and let him called down God’s wrath on him. He portrayed him as an arrogant King who wants to separate himself from his political body and natural body but remains as a King to others. This is simply impossible to do so because it is certain that his position enabled others to usurp power. Having said that, it is generally accepted that there are three unities in tragedy and they are time, place and action. The events happened in the plot should occur in the same day; the story should happen in the same location; the plot should be the only action of the story, that is a single but complex plan as Aristotle explains in The Poetics. Michael Best states that Shakespeare was aware of Aristotle’s concept of unities and followed his rules of tragedy when writing the plots in the plays (Best, Aristotle on tragedy). The progress and process of tragedy make the audience relate to their experiences in life. Hence, human creativity is essential to reveal positive social-political changes.
To sum up, I would like to point out that human creativity is necessary to constructive social-political changes as shown in Aristotle’s definition of tragedy in The Poetics and William Shakespeare’s King Lear. Shakespeare employed the core elements especially spectacle to create a sense of horror in the audience to represent the suffering in human life. At the same time, he followed the rules of tragedy to discuss the political events happened in King Lear which makes it very concrete to the audience, thus associating our experiences with his.