Abstract

Ever since its appearance, King Lear has become one of the most popular dramas of William Shakespeare and been acted thousands of times. Not only has it successfully won the favour with those audiences, but it has also attracted critic’s attention to figure out the reasons which lead to the popularity of the drama. However, those analyses are far from being perfect. The analysis of solely taking King Lear as a drama is too subjective because different audiences will enjoy totally different points of views on the plot. Just like the old saying goes: there is one thousand Hamlets in one thousand people's eyes. Treating King Lear as a Christian play will be too old-fashioned or too  general because this opinion has appeared since an early time. Merely focusing on analysis of personalities of different people will be too one-sided because other factors need involving. In this thesis, the author will make a context analysis focusing on the interaction between characters and environment and try to figure out the secret that has caused the popularity of King Lear.

Through the analysis, this thesis finds that William Shakespeare has set a group of people with various personalities using three different methods in King Lear. First of all, the kingdom of Britain, the wild land and the kingdom of France are three different space structures that have created a unique space environment for the drama. In addition, characteristics of some people have experienced a change with the development of the plot, which has added a special time structure for it. Finally, different personalities can be considered as changeable colours, which has made the drama more colourful. With the absolute models of different structures, the author will argue to the readers that these three methods of building characters should be considered as the real reason that has caused the popularity of King Lear.


Key words: Characters Building, Three Methods, Secret of Popularity, Shakespeare, King Lear.