Dead as earth

Professor Little ended his discussion of King Lear by focusing on the phrase "dead as earth" in the last scene of the play (V,iii, Line 261). In his lecture he expanded this phrase to the play and indeed the whole world, for in the vast despair of this play, the world is viewed as a dead place.
Echoed again in Lear's cry, "No, no, no life," in line 305, this sentiment informs our reading--or hearing--of the entirety of the play, and connects the ideas of early history with the hopelessness of solving life's problems. We have the sense that because the whole world is dead, there can be no motion or development of a true being. if this play takes place in Albion, the name of early England, and they didn't have an answer, then what tells us we know now? Besides connecting to the religious turmoil and changes that England was going through during this period, this thought brings us to the ultimate impotence of the theater itself. As a mirror of the world, the theater cannot contain an answer and is as empty and dead as the thing it mirrors.
Max Porter Zasada
TA Ian Hoch