King Lear
King Lear
THE LITERARY WORK
A play set in ancient Britain in the first thousand years b.c; first performed in 1605 or 1606, revised by Shakespeare about 1608.
SYNOPSIS
An aged king divides his kingdom among his daughters, two of whom flatter him to earn their shares. When the youngest, favored daughter offends her father by refusing to join in the flattery, she is deprived of her portion of the kingdom and banished by the king. This hasty action comes back to haunt the king when his two remaining daughters turn on him.
Events in History at the Time the Play Takes Place
Events in History at the Time the Play Was Written
Forty-one years old when he wrote King Lear, Shakespeare created the play to be performed for King James, who had assumed the English throne in 1603. Shakespeare’s play features a ruler quite different from the one that James I was proving to be. Despite some disharmony with parliament and other problems during his reign, James gained a reputation as a ruler with a peaceful nature, a concern for justice, and an interest in unifying Britain. In contrast, the ancient King Lear divided his kingdom, which led to bloodshed and war.
Events in History at the Time the Play Takes Place
English history—fact and legend
Scholars describe Shakespeare as being less interested in historical accuracy than in the passions and psychology of his own time. Nevertheless, although the setting of King Lear is not firmly fixed, the play appears to take place in the southern portion of the British island in the first thousand years b.c. Cornwall, Kent, and Gloucester, the names of characters in Shakespeare’s play, are likewise names of regions in the southern portion of the island. According to the early English scholar Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain, 1136), the events on which King Lear is based took place in the era before recorded history, around 750 b.c. Later scholars have questioned the accuracy of Geoffrey’s information. New facts about the Celts uncovered since his work suggest that such a kingdom would have existed sometime later in the first thousand years b.c.
Historians look to both facts and legends to piece together information about England in the time before recorded history. Tales about such ancient English rulers as King Arthur, with his court at Camelot, are studied intently. A character in Shakespeare’s play, the Fool, places the events of King Lear before the time of Camelof by mentioning King Arthur’s magician Merlin: “This prophecy Merlin shall make for I live before his time ...” (Shakespeare, King Lear, 3.2.95-96).
Shakespeare set his play among the Britons, one of the peoples who inhabited the island in the first thousand years b.c. The Britons are known to have been part of a larger group, the Celts, who in ancient times had migrated to the island from western continental Europe. By examining Celtic legends, scholars have traced the name of Shakespeare’s title character to Llyr, a Celtic sea god. Turning to early histories of England, they have further traced the character to a King Leir, who, according to these records, once ruled over all the Britons. He is thought to be a separate character from the Celtic sea god, despite the similar name. Other plays from Shakespeare’s time, such as The True Chronicle History of King Leir, also discuss this monarch. There is, however, no real evidence to prove that a historical King Leir actually existed.
Celtic society
“The whole nation ... is war-mad, both high-spirited and quick for battle” (the Greek writer Strabo in Powell, p. 76). The Greeks and Romans had encountered the Celts (or Gauls, as the Romans called them) on continental Europe, where the groups traded and fought with one another. The Celts possessed a highly aristocratic society, with kings, priests, a warrior class, freeman farmers, and slaves. Their social structure survived in large part in the early Celtic communities of both Ireland and southern Britain.
In Celtic Britain, society consisted of kings, nobles, free commoners (farmers), and an unfree population. As a rule, the people lived in kin or extended family groups. Land in early Celtic communities was owned not by individuals but by the kin group. Evidence suggests that several hundred years after Shakespeare’s play is set, it was common among Britain’s Celts for a father to divide his estate among his children. There is uncertainty about when this custom began or how widespread it was, but it parallels Lear’s division of his kingdom at the outset of King Lear.
Among the ancient Celts, nobles and commoners related to each other in a system known as clientship. The commoners provided military and other services to a noble, who in return protected them and helped them meet basic needs. Unlike peasants in a feudal society, they were free and could own property.
In Shakespeare’s play, King Lear’s forces include an army of knights. Knights appeared in later, feudal societies, in which they fought for a king in exchange for land grants. But, while rulers in early Celtic culture did have bands of skilled warriors, there is no evidence that their armies included knights. A king could amass a powerful fighting force, but in another way. A local king would sometimes enter into a pact of friendship with less powerful kings, becoming their overlord. The less powerful kings would pledge armed services to the overlord in return for his military protection.
The power of women
King Lear concerns a father’s efforts to divide his kingdom among his daughters indirectly, by distributing portions to his sons-in-law. He plans to give Cordelia’s share to the man she will marry. The play seems to suggest that only male Britons could own property, which may not have been the case. In fact, daughters may have been able to inherit property directly and wives to own it independently of their husbands.
DID WOMEN REALLY RULE?
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae names an unusually large number of female rulers in early British history. As J. S. P, Tatlock notes in The Legendary History of Britain, “the most startling thing is the number of women among them [rulers of ancient England], three or four or five queens ruling alone” (Tatlock, p. 286). Tatlock believes this list was also a shock to readers in Geoffrey’s time, since they were unused to females holding exclusive power. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s claims have been questioned since they were first published. Later historians have maintained that the right to rule could be transmitted and shared by women in early Britain, but females did not rule alone. A similar state of affairs exists in the play; Lear plans to distribute his kingdom to his sons-in-law, not his daughters.
There is evidence of strong female leaders in ancient England, though they may not have exercised the exclusive power that Geoffrey wrote of. Queen Boadicea, who died in 62 a.d., serves as an example. After her husband’s death, this queen led her Celtic tribe (the Iceni) in a revolt against the Romans. The English placed a statue of her at Westminster Abbey in London, which stands as proof of their admiration for the female leader.
The Play in Focus
The plot
King Lear is remarkable for its skillful integration of parallel plot lines. The play tracks King Lear’s tragic fall as well as the Earl of Gloucester’s undoing. As the play opens, the Earl of Gloucester jests crudely about the conditions leading to the birth of his bastard son Edmund. It is this son’s evil plan that will lead to the earl’s undoing. Gloucester suffers a fate similar to Lear’s in the play—both believe their deceitful offspring and fail to trust their honest children, and both meet with disaster.
The aged and weary King Lear then turns his kingdom over to his daughters’ husbands. His daughters must pledge their love to him in order to earn their share of his estate. While the words of his elder daughters, Goneril and Regan, win his approval, his youngest daughter, Cordelia, is unwilling to play this game of hollow flattery. Lear banishes her in a fit of rage and divides her share between Goneril’s and Regan’s husbands. The Earl of Kent objects, but his continued protests result in his banishment as well.
PUNISHMENT IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND
The blinding of the character Gloucester may seem a horrifying punishment, but even in Shakespeare’s day many punishments were grisly. If a man was convicted of high treason, the law demanded that he be hanged and cut down while still alive. Next his bowels were to be taken out of his belly and burned before his eyes while still alive. Finally, his head was cut off and his body divided into four quarters. The head might afterward be displayed on a pike along London Bridge or some other public venue. Punishment for a female traitor was somewhat milder; she was to be burned by fire until dead. Although the law was supposed to be carried out as written, in fact mercy was often shown by hanging the male until he was dead before mutilating his body.
King Lear’s decision to banish his youngest daughter affects her two suitors. Both the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France had expressed a desire to marry her. Stripped of her dowry, she is no longer attractive to the duke, but the king feels drawn to her and takes her to France.
Meanwhile, Gloucester’s bastard son, Edmund, schemes to advance himself. A central motivation unfolds—Edmund aims to get even with his legitimate brother, Edgar, and his father, Gloucester, by gaining control of their estate. He gives Gloucester a letter, written by himself but signed with Edgar’s name, that talks about the younger generation’s right to inherit their elders’ wealth without waiting for their parents to die. Gloucester feels betrayed by Edgar but wants further proof of his treachery; therefore, Edmund sets up a meeting in which he frames the unwitting Edgar. Feeling trapped, Edgar flees, and Gloucester calls for his arrest.
The banished Earl of Kent, meanwhile, returns in disguise to serve King Lear. Gloucester’s son Edgar, too, has resorted to disguising himself, masquerading as Poor Tom, or Tom o’ Bedlam, a homeless madman tormented by “foul fiends.” Another servant to the king, the Fool, sees the folly of Lear’s actions and attempts to warn Lear of his error in judgment in a series of riddles and songs. Lear highly values the Fool and tolerates much criticism from him; he does not, however, understand the Fool’s message.
Meanwhile, Goneril and Regan have launched a plot to deflate their father’s power. Lear, who has decided to divide his time between his daughters’ castles, has set a condition that 100 knights accompany him on his journeys back and forth. His daughters, each in her turn, coldly refuse to support such a large contingent of knights. The outrageousness of these actions drives Lear from first Goneril’s and then Regan’s castle.
Homeless and exposed to a lashing storm, Lear rails at nature. Kent and the Fool attempt to coax him into a nearby hovel or hut. Soon the exertions of his ranting and his growing madness weary the old king, and he collapses in exhaustion. Although Goneril and Regan have forbidden him to do so, Gloucester finds Lear and his companions and offers them shelter. He informs Kent of a plot against Lear’s life, and the king leaves for Dover to meet the forces of the King of France and Cordelia, which are coming to his aid.
Upon returning to his castle, Gloucester is arrested and brought before Goneril, Regan, and Regan’s husband, Cornwall. They condemn Gloucester for treachery and punish him by plucking out his eyes. Edmund is then named Earl of Gloucester, a development that makes it appear that he has managed to usurp his father’s place, just as Lear’s daughters have usurped their father’s. Soon, however, Cornwall is fatally wounded by a servant still loyal to the old Gloucester. Cornwall’s death proves to be the first step in the disintegration of the wicked new rulers’ power. Goneril and Regan become entangled in a competition for Edmund’s affection and physical love that eventually leads to both their deaths. Out of jealousy, Goneril poisons Regan and subsequently Goneril commits suicide.
At Dover a tender reunion takes place between Lear and Cordelia, but her French forces
lose to Goneril and Regan’s army, and the father and daughter are arrested. Goneril’s husband, the Duke of Albany, who has come to hate his evil wife, has Edmund arrested for treason. Edmund, in turn, offers to fight anyone who calls him a traitor. Still in disguise, Edgar meets Edmund in one-to-one combat and mortally wounds him. Edmund makes a last-minute attempt to do some good before his death, confessing that he has ordered the deaths of Lear and Cordelia. This information, however, is given too late to countermand his order. King Lear, having recognized Cordelia’s loyalty and love, dies grieving over her breathless body. With the death of most of the principals—Lear, Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan, among others—Edgar declares that those remaining must, “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say” (King Lear, 5.3.325). This allusion to the false flattery that triggered the play’s tragic events thus links the end of the drama to its beginning.
Science vs. nature in King Lear
The words nature, natural, and unnatural appear some forty times in King Lear. There were two views of nature in Shakespeare’s England, and they competed with each other. Inherited from the Middle Ages was the image of nature as closely tied to God; man, according to this image, must cooperate with the natural order and behave with human decency to succeed. In Shakespeare’s play, Lear considers his cruel treatment by two of his daughters as an offense against nature, which demands that children honor their parents. He holds the medieval view of a naturally moral universe and shows an increasing human decency as the play progresses.
At first, King Lear seems unaware of the disparities and inequalities in his world. But as he loses his land, his power, and ultimately his identity, he comes to understand the vulnerability of the poor. When Lear is exposed to a lashing, wind-driven rain, he laments his earlier insensitivity to them:
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed
sides ... defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this!
(King Lear, 3.4.28-33)
The character Edmund represents another, competing view. He is the “new man” of the post-medieval Renaissance period, a creature who is, above all, a political animal driven by self-interest and a desire for power. The century leading up to Shakespeare’s play had seen the appearance of such politically driven and scientific men. Perhaps most notably, Europeans had seized on and perverted ideas from Nicolo Machiavelli’s 1529 book The Prince (also covered in Literature and Its Times). These ideas, which concerned strategies for acquiring and retaining power, helped foster the image of the new man and became part of a larger, scientific view of nature. Instead of being connected to God, nature was regarded as an independent machine that God had created but then left to run of its own accord. Man, according to this view, need not worry about having to cooperate with nature to excel. Rather he could discover nature’s laws and manipulate them for his own purposes. Even human nature could be manipulated, as shown by Edmund in King Lear; when Goneril and Regan compete for his love, he ruthlessly exploits their feelings for his own personal gain.
The two views—that of nature as including man and tied to God and that of nature as independent of God and controllable by man—coexisted uneasily in Shakespeare’s society. Shakespeare himself takes a position in King Lear. Favoring the first view, he casts Edmund, the new-age man in the play, as the villain. But Edmund shows some human decency at the end, when he tries to save Lear and Cordelia from death, an act that suggests his character is a complex mixture in which old values have not altogether been displaced by the new.
Sources
Shakespeare almost certainly drew upon the play The True Chronicle History of King Leir (c. 1590) in developing his own drama. He definitely drew upon Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587) and probably upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1135) as well. The similarities between Shakespeare’s King Lear and the stories of King Leir in the Chronicles and the Historia are remarkable. Those documents describe Leir as a king of ancient England with three daughters. The two elder ones, Goneril and Regan, earn a share of his kingdom; Cordelia, the youngest, refuses to flatter her father. She is banished, only to return at a later time. The key difference between Shakespeare’s work and the earlier accounts is found at the end. In the sources, Cordelia rescues Leir from his wicked daughters and establishes a peaceful kingdom (although she is later driven to suicide by her sisters’ sons). Other publications of the era in which the same basic storyline appears are Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590 and 1596) and John Higgins’ The First Parte of the Mirror for Magistrates (1574).
Shakespeare apparently developed the Gloucester subplot from Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1581 and 1583). Sidney’s work also had a tragic ending, with the equivalent of the Gloucester character dying of a broken heart, which may have influenced the tone of the conclusion to King Lear.
Shakespeare drew inspiration from several other quarters in his creation of a number of characters in King Lear. For the figure of Tom o’ Bedlam, Shakespeare used Samuel Harsnett’s Declaration of Egregious Popishe Impostures (1603), a work dealing with demons. The devils and fiends who torment Tom are derived directly from this piece.
The character of the Fool dates back to ancient times. By Shakespeare’s era, fools had become servants in the homes of nobles. Mentally impaired or physically deformed, fools were thought to be touched by God and so enjoyed a privileged position. They were expected not only to amuse but also to criticize their masters. Queen Elizabeth, who ruled before and during Shakespeare’s lifetime, is known to have scolded one of her fools for not being critical enough with her.
Events in History at the Time the Play Was Written
From Queen Elizabeth to King James
England under the rule of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) became a vigorous land of growth, opportunity, and fierce competitiveness. The queen proved to be a unifying force whose leadership helped propel her island nation to new levels of achievement. An intellectual and a writer of poetry herself, she was a patroness of the arts as well as a forceful ruler.
Queen Elizabeth never married or had any children. Because of this, there was no direct heir to the throne; as she grew older, the question of who would succeed her as monarch became one of increasing concern to her subjects. Internal politics and religion complicated the problem. There was great concern that ambitious rivals for the throne would plunge England into a civil war. The transfer of power, however, proved to be a smooth one. Before her death, Elizabeth arranged for James VI of Scotland to give up his Catholic religion, convert to the Anglican Church, and rule England as James I. James proved to be a capable king.
King Lear was first performed in 1606, only three years after Elizabeth’s passing. Some readers feel that Shakespeare may have used the play to pay tribute to the queen, his late patroness. By focusing the play’s plot on the difficulties that can arise in determining succession to the throne, he may have been indirectly praising her—as well as King James—by showing how dangerous the transfer of power can be. Certainly, Shakespeare presents a startling contrast to James I’s relatively untroubled ascension to the throne.
As king, James concluded a peace with Spain, ending a war that had lasted nearly twenty years at great expense to England. On the first day of Parliament after his coronation, he promoted plans for a formal union between Scotland and England (which, despite his efforts, would not occur during his reign). James tried to resolve disputes in the church, too. He clearly kept the well-being of his kingdom in mind when making
THE MODEL FOR LEAR?
Brian Annesley was a nobleman who lived during Shakespeare’s lifetime. He went insane, and two of his daughters took him to court to have him committed to an asylum and to win control of his estate. A third daughter, Cordell, protested. As a result of a letter she wrote to King James, her father was allowed to live out his life in the care of a friend. In his will Annesley left Cordell his estates, a move that her sisters contested unsuccessfully in court. A friend of Shakespeare’s knew the family, and it is likely that Shakespeare was aware of the case.
decisions and taking action. Moreover, his efforts on behalf of unity contrast sharply with the divisions and subsequent decay in the kingdom of King Lear.
Great Chain of Being
Although the world of King Lear sometimes seems to lack any sense of order, Shakespeare’s audiences were familiar with a certain hierarchy, or system of organization by rank or authority. This hierarchy was based on a model of the world known as the “Great Chain of Being,” a name given to the model only after Shakespeare’s time. The name alludes to a chain of existence that begins with God and descends downward through the angels, to humans, then to beasts, and finally to rocks and other inanimate objects.
In King Lear, Shakespeare focuses on the position of humans between angels and beasts. Angels, it was assumed, already knew themselves and therefore had little interest in self-understanding. Humans did not have automatic self-knowledge but could learn to understand themselves, which helped explain why they occupied a higher position on the Great Chain than beasts, who were incapable of self-knowledge. At the outset of the play, Lear suffers from poor self-understanding and so would drop down to the position of beast on the chain. As the drama progresses, however, he realizes the truth about his own foolish misjudgment of his daughters. To educated playgoers, Lear’s growing awareness allows him to assume his proper place on the Great Chain of Being.
Treatment of the insane
In Shakespeare’s time, the insane were thought to be possessed by evil spirits. Edgar, disguised as Poor Tom, speaks of these spirits—Flibbertigibbet, Modo and Mahu, Frateretto, and Hoppedance—as fiends who prey upon him. The name Tom o’ Bedlam is taken from the name of a hospital in London (Bedlam, a corruption of Bethlehem) dedicated to the “treatment” of the mentally ill. In treating the insane, the hospital typically prescribed whipping as a “cure” for madness. Patients released from Bedlam were almost always poverty-stricken, and they usually resorted to begging for their existence.
Family life in Shakespeare’s England
Life in England during the 1600s was still very precarious. People died suddenly of diseases and injuries for which no cure existed. Despite the all-too-likely risk of sudden loss, though, people formed close attachments and institutions of the time concentrated on preserving and promoting the immediate family. Church courts penalized people for straying from their loyalty to a husband or wife, and a divorce was virtually impossible to obtain. Severe punishments were handed down for those who murdered or attacked their parents or husbands. Living in such a society, audiences must have regarded the actions of Lear’s two elder daughters as especially wicked and contrary to nature more than just evil. In Act 1, Lear rages against Goneril, expressing his desire that she might feel, “How sharper than a serpent’s toofh it is / To have a thankless child” (King Lear, 1.4.279-80). This sums up the revulsion that most playgoers probably felt toward Goneril and her sister Regan, especially in view of Lear’s generous gift of his kingdom to them. In fact in Shakespeare’s England, children who challenged the authority of their elders were generally considered “brainsick” (MacDonald, p. 165).
A CRITIC APPROVES OF SHAKESPEARE’S ENDING
After surviving so many sufferings, Lear can only die ... if he is also to be saved and to pass the remainder of his days in happiness, the whole loses its signification.
(Schlegel, p. 413)
Reviews
Although King Lear is a play of great power, in its action and its depiction of characters, as well as in its themes and tragic mood, some early audiences were dismayed by the play’s bleak conclusion. In 1681 the English playwright Nahum Tate altered the tragedy by giving it a happy ending that included victory for Cordelia’s army and Lear’s return to the throne. Tate’s popular version was staged with greater frequency than the original for the next 150 years. Not until the 1800s would critics prefer Shakespeare’s own tragic ending as the most realistic, effective one for his play.
For More Information
Burgess, Anthony. Shakespeare. Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1994.
MacDonald, Michael. Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Mcllwain,, Charles Howard. The Political Works of James I. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1918.
Powell, T. G. E. The Celts. 1958. Revised edition. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980.
Schlegel, August Wilhelm. “Criticisms on Shakespeare’s Tragedies” in A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. 1846. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1965.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. New York: Penguin, 1970.
Tatlock, J. S. P. The Legendary History of Britain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950.