Here are two interesting thoughts on the ending of King Lear: Fintan O'Toole in Shakespeare Is Hard But So Is Life (2002), writes that the ending, and more specifically the "gratuitous" death of Cordelia is meant to show that if there is no justice in a society, then what does it matter if there is a happy ending to a story about a bunch of powerful people? Marjorie Garber, in Shakespeare After All (2004) points to the idea that drama and its rituals have often been used for purposes other than aesthetic ones, and that one of these is to help prevent errors in judgement, like the ones made by Lear, that can have catastrophic results. Thus literature can (and should) have an "ameliorative" and perhaps "educative" purpose that helps in "warding off danger".

I strongly agree with both of these points, and the thought that I would add to them is this: I think the setting of the play is very important, and that it is meant to show a world without many of the concepts and institutions that we take for granted - and that it is also meant to make us consider the reasons why such things as philosophy, art and education were created. So yes, the ending of the play is a most tragic one, but in my opinion it's intended effect is not nihilistic, but rather deeply moral. It presents life unadorned to its audience and asks, "What are you going to do about it?"

One of the most thorough and interesting books of Shakespeare criticism that I've encountered is Marjorie Garber's Shakespeare After All (2004). It is thorough in many ways, but I'm thinking of two specifically today: The first is that she covers all the plays fairly, even those that are often undervalued, which makes the book very useful both as a reference and as a place from which to learn. Second, she does a splendid job of incorporating the positions and ideas of leading critics from both the past and present and interspersing them with brilliant original observations of her own. Here is one of the latter. In her must-read essay on The Winter's Tale, Garber points out the following: "Like a number of other Shakespeare plays, The Winter's Tale begins with a conversation that seems to take place half offstage and half on, so that the audience is invited to feel itself a privileged spectator, in effect eavesdropping on a private conversation before the public spectacle is put on show. This is a clever dramaturgical device, drawing us into the action and allowing us to consider the immediately succeeding episode, in this case the second half of the first scene, with a more careful and critical eye." It so happens that both King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra, the next two plays in my lecture series, also begin with the use of this technique, and her description of it made me consider both opening scenes from a new angle. I think the best thing that I can do to say thanks is to highly recommend her book.