Discussion Write The first day of our discussion brought up the catharsis in King Lear (#4). I agreed that with Gloucester's death there wasn't so much catharsis as sympathy and happiness. As readers, I think we were happier to see Gloucester put out of his misery by “Pulling out his poor eyes” (3.7.58) and relieved that he died “smiling” (5.3.201). I agreed that we as readers were happy with Edgar's ending as he had so much bad luck throughout the play that he deserved a break, which came in the form of Inheritance of Power. I thought Joe's comment was interesting in pointing out that both Edgar and Kent were at the bottom of the wheel at the start of the play with Kent banished “Out of my see” (1.1.157) by Lear simply for trying to help Lear; and Edgar is a “bad guy” (1.2.80) for no reason. For this reason, at the end of the play, both Lear's and Edgar's wheels would turn to end up above “you, to your rights” (5.3.302). Joe's comment helped understand why Cordelia ended up dying. Although she was banished, her fortune was never exactly on the decline as she never seemed depressed by this fact, but simply said "goodbye to both" (1.1.277) to her sisters, so eventually her wheel had to get down and that happened his death at the end of the show. Additionally, numerous people have pointed out that Cordelia and Lear's deaths actually weren't a real tragedy because at least they ended up together. I found this point interesting and it makes sense to me to see it more as happy than sad. I found the discussion of the minor characters (#3) interesting as Nerman made a lot of sense in showing that Kent was so loyal that he wanted to die after Lear does “My master calls me, I must not say no” (5.3.324). I found…half of the paper…a teenager and forgot about it, so this was another interesting fact why Hamlet is important to teach in high schools. The question of why Tate's version was more popular (#5) raised interesting points. Kristina's point that nowadays you rarely see a film with a sad ending strongly supported the reason why Tate's work was much more popular than Shakespeare's. I know I liked that Cordelia lives in Tate's version as I felt she was the most deserving as she loved her father the most "I love your majesty" (1.1.94). While we haven't really touched on question #1. 1, I thought the play ultimately left readers devastated because of who died. Cordelia was the most upsetting, especially Lear's reaction "she's gone forever" (5.3.261) because at that moment all Lear wanted was to be with her even though she was "Away to prison” (5.3.8).