Huntsville-Madison County Public Library discussion

Filial ingratitude versus blind obedience


Looking at the bare plot framework of 'King Lear' one sees a fairly simple tale with many of the qualities of a venerable old folk or fairy tale: the vain old king/patriarch dividing his kingdom, seeking flattery and eloquent proclamations of love from his daughters, the two villainous scheming daughters Goneril and Regan, pitted against the honest, faithful and loving daughter, Cordelia. The universality of legend and myth is immanent in the structure of the story and most of the characters (unlike Hamlet) have little complexity beyond their measure of virtuous or villainous qualities.

However, Shakespeare uses this conventional tale to support ruminations upon the nature of the universe, justice and how where in the spectrum of ultimate order or random chaos the mass of humanity falls. As in most of his plays, the author's own viewpoint is indeterminate. Shakespeare is everywhere and nowhere in his plays. In 'King Lear' Gloucester claims, "As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods; They kill us for their sport' while his legitimate son Edgar, near the end of the play after the death of his father, states, "the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us.' The gods are cruel in both characterizations; the difference is that in one the fortunes of humanity are purely random and chaotic and in the other there is an ultimate order of cosmic justice. The fates of the characters can bear out both interpretations.

Among many other issues, 'King Lear' examines the institutions of state and family in an ancient world. Lear is a vain, foolish old man gullible to praise and flattery who happens to be a king. He is the patriarch of his family as well as his country although his power is not as secure as he would like to believe, especially as he sincerely believes that he can retain the trappings of authority even after divesting himself of his kingdom to his vile daughters. Only by losing his power and being turned out in a storm can he hope to lose his mind and regain his humanity. In his rootlessness he is fortunate to have the loyalty of his wise Fool who, like Shakespeare's other wise fool in 'Twelfth Night,' can exercise the liberty of speaking truth to power beneath the shield of wit and the protective status of fool. Also joining him on the heath is Kent, the man who jumped to the defense of Lear's hones, loving daughter Cordelia and was exiled for speaking truth, now in disguise as a beggar.

'King Lear' has a parallel secondary plot involving another vain, foolish old man, Gloucester, who has bought into the lies and schemes of his bastard son Edmund and turned out his legitimate son Edgar. Being blinded, Gloucester has been given the gift of an opportunity to gain spiritual insight with the aid of Edgar, also disguised as a beggar.

Regardless of the author Shakespeare's world view, there were prevailing beliefs in the Elizabethan world regarding a chain of being, a macrocosm and a microcosm of order, and mixtures of elements and humors that were evident in all humanity. This view was put forth most succinctly in E.M.W. Tillyard's brief book 'The Elizabethan World Picture.' Viewed through the prism of such an order, one can see the characters of 'King Lear' operating within such a universe. King Lear sees the madman Tom o' Bedlam (really Edgar in disguise) as 'unaccommodated man,' the thing itself. By stripping himself naked, Lear is removing the facades of royal ceremony and returning to commonality and union with the mass of humanity.

One of the qualities of Shakespeare's genius (and one of the primary reasons why his work endures and his plays continue to be performed, adapted and studied) is his 'god's-eye' view of humanity. Lear is a foolish old man. One can step back and judge him and say the old fool got what he deserved. Indeed, there are really few redeeming qualities in this pompous, lost monarch. His claim that he was more 'sinned against than sinning' rings hollow and reeks of a man still clinging to his bruised ego. However, once he is stripped, accommodated, redeemed and restored to receptivity of Cordelia's unconditional love one feels a heart-wrenching poignancy of the brevity of joy before the savage plotters execute Cordelia, with the inevitable and literal breaking of Lear's heart. The man desperately seeking life in his daughter's corpse elicits tears of pity and yet there is a justice in the sense that Lear did finally evolve into a recognition of love and acquire the sincere ability to receive it.

It is a cliché to state that Shakespeare possesses an eternal universality. It is also a cliché, though no less true, to state that his ability to analyze and dissect humanity and show us to ourselves in a vast global mirror that transcends 400 years and barriers of centuries of evolution of culture and language to reach out to us with familiarity, recognition and wisdom, never with more heart-piercing clarity than in 'King Lear'.