William Shakespeare: King Lear (1605-06)
[Line
references are to the Series 3 Arden edition, ed. R.A. Foakes, 1997. This
conflates the three scenes usually numbered II.2-4 into one tremendous
composite scene that begins at dawn and ends at night (II.2).]
From The Faerie Queene, Bk II, Canto X:
27
Next him king Leyr in happie peace long
raind,
But had no
issue male him to succeed,
But three
faire daughters, which were well vptraind,
In all that
seemed fit for kingly seed:
Mongst whom
his realme he equally decreed
To haue
diuided. Tho when feeble age
Nigh to his
vtmost date he saw proceed,
He cald his
daughters; and with speeches sage
Inquyrd, which of them most did loue her parentage.
28
The eldest Gonorill gan to protest,
That she
much more then her owne life him lou’d:
And Regan
greater loue to him profest,
Then all the
world, when euer it were proou’d;
But Cordeill
said she lou’d him, as behoou’d:
Whose simple
answere, wanting colours faire
To paint it
forth, him to displeasance moou’d,
That in his
crowne he counted her no haire,
But twixt the other twaine his kingdome whole did
shaire.
29
So wedded th’one to Maglan king of Scots,
And th’other
to the king of Cambria ,
And twixt
them shayrd his realme by equall lots:
But without
dowre the wise Cordelia
Was sent to Aganip
of Celtica.
Their aged
Syre, thus eased of his crowne,
A private
life led in Albania
With Gonorill,
long had in great renowne,
That nought him grieu’d to bene from rule deposed
downe.
30
But true it is, that when the oyle is spent,
The light
goes out, and weeke is throwne away;
So when he
had resigned his regiment,
His daughter
gan despise his drouping day,
And wearie
waxe of his continuall stay.
Tho to his
daughter Regan he repayrd,
Who him at
first well vsed euery way;
But when of
his departure she despayrd,
Her bountie she abated, and his cheare empayrd.
31
The wretched man gan then auise too late,
That loue is
not, where most it is profest,
Too truely
tryde in his extreamest state;
At last
resolu’d likewise to proue the rest,
He to Cordelia
him selfe addrest,
Who with
entire affection him receau’d,
As for her
Syre and king her seemed best;
And after
all an army strong she leau’d,
To war on those, which him had of his realme
bereau’d.
32
So to his crowne she him restor’d againe,
In which he
dyde, made ripe for death by eld,
And after
wild, it should to her remaine:
Who
peaceably the same long time did weld:
And all mens
harts in dew obedience held:
Till that
her sisters children, woxen strong
Through
proud ambition, against her rebeld,
And
ouercommen kept in prison long,
Till wearie of that wretched life, her selfe she
hong.
33
Then gan the bloudie brethren both to raine:
But fierce Cundah
gan shortly to enuie
His brother Morgan,
prickt with proud disdaine,...
And so, with barely a ripple, Spenser’s chronicle proceeds;
miraculous, haunting, powerful and infinitely distanced. The first three books
of the Faerie Queene were published in 1590, and recognition was
immediate.
Shakespeare knew the passage, and took “Cordelia”
from it as his preferred version of the youngest daughter’s name; perhaps, too,
the basic drift of Gonerill’s and Regan’s formal flatteries in the opening
scene.
He also took the detail of Cordelia dying by being hanged (and Edmund's idea of passing it off as suicide).
The old play of Leir had followed the chronicles up to the point where
the king is triumphantly restored, and no further. But the overarching
tranquillity of Spenser’s chronicle involves the acceptance that all happiness
is temporary; that dissolution follows achievement, dissension follows peace,
tragedy rears up without warning and the best that can be hoped for is calm
release. In short, Spenser denies the possibility of happy endings, and with
Spenser in mind Shakespeare must have felt that the structure of Leir
fell short of that insight. He wanted his protagonist to experience something
yet chillier than the true worth of his daughters, with its relieved conclusion
that one at least is a rock. The surprisingly desolate nature of Cordelia’s
end, in Spenser’s version, suggested a way of making the play a tragedy.
Lear’s own death, at such an advanced age, wouldn’t be
sufficient to make the play tragic. But the play had to be made tragic, or the
power of Lear’s unhinged rhetoric would be seriously undercut by a vague sense
that a silly old man makes a lot of pother about nothing, and it all comes out
all right by the end. (Of course I am not suggesting that Shakespeare analysed
his way to this, or conceived his dramatisation in these terms. More likely the
whole thing fell into place at once.)
When we read Spenser the expanses of time are so great, and
the events so isolated, that we don’t know the characters. An intelligent
reader is bound to wonder what it felt like for Lear to be gradually disdained,
or what sort of a person Cordelia was, but we can gain no sense of integrated
personalities, and chronicle flows smoothly away. We, the readers, feel an
imaginative impulse to stop and “bring it all to life”, but the materials of
history are sparse. Shakespeare dwelt on the suffering implied in “Too truely
tryde in his extreamest state”, and on what it must then have meant for Lear to
be received at last “with entire affection”.
Shakespeare’s dramatisation of chronicle entails shortening
long periods of time, both for practicality of staging and for dramatic
tension. The suggestion of long time having passed is allowed to remain, and
“double time” is the inevitable result; seen at its most blatant in Othello,
where times and dates are critical to the plot, but really a basic methodology
that Shakespeare uses everywhere. *
In Spenser’s chronicle the king spends a long time reigning,
a long time contentedly with Gonerill, another long time contentedly with
Regan, and finally a few years contented resumption of his rule. Shakespeare is
ruthless with these periods of undramatic peace. Of Lear’s past reign we learn
nothing; Shakespeare blanks it. He ends the first scene with Gonerill and Regan
already making it clear that the king’s amiable plans are going to be severely
modified; and before Lear reappears on stage Gonerill is pushing matters to a
crisis (I.3). Regan smartly avoids entertaining Lear at all by not being at
home (he is, of course, not yet due); by the time Lear meets with her he has a
fair inkling of what to expect (II.2), and it will take no more than an
animated conversation in a courtyard to propel him out into the storm. As for
the contented resumption, it is eliminated by making Cordelia lose the battle
(a reversal of Spenser, or rather, a conflation with her later defeat at the
hands of her sisters' children) and meet her death while in custody.
All this hustling of the time-scheme produces a more
concentrated anguish, as it did in the history plays. Someone once said that
people commit suicide when three things go wrong on the same day. In Lear’s
case, it leads convincingly to madness – to what we would call today, “some
sort of breakdown”.
This is well prepared for. He is a man who is already
accustomed to “losing it” in an imperious sort of way, as he does in the first
scene. These volcanic tantrums are in fact part of how he does his job. On his
own account, he feels it’s time to slow down, but retirement does not come easy
to such a man. In fact he conceives his retirement not as an unobtrusive
slipping away but rather as a grand abdication ceremony in which he
majestically cedes kingdoms to his courtiers; a ceremony emphasizing his God-like
power. He had planned to spend his retirement thereafter with Cordelia;
Shakespeare presents the idea of a monthly progress between the other daughters
as an improvisation after his first plan is frustrated. All of his daughters
are new-married and leaving home for the first time; Lear seems to need a
daughter on hand, and does not think of maintaining his own household.
Nevertheless the improvised solution is a very bad idea, and it’s this as much
as the treatment of Cordelia that provokes Kent to say
Reserve thy
state,
And in thy best consideration check
This hideous rashness. (I.1.149-51)
No outrageous wickedness on the part of Gonerill and Regan
is required for things to go wrong thereafter, as has often been remarked. The
word “evil” is first applied to Lear.
I’ll tell thee thou dost evil. (I.1.166)
But Cordelia soon enough tells us what her sisters are, and
her condemnation is fresh in our minds as we listen to their subtle dialogue at
the end of the scene.
Gonerill is the instigator of it. No doubt bothered by
Lear’s announcement of the “hundred knights” and “The name and all th’addition
to a king”**, she recognizes the need to circumscribe his authority; she also
sees that this will only happen if the two sisters support each other. What she
says is really unexceptionable, though clearly her comments on Lear’s “poor
judgment” are designed to make a case. It is tough-minded and realistic, but
that’s all; which is how wickedness generally does slip into existence. Regan
hangs back; her first remark is coolly neutral:
That’s most certain, and with you; next month with
us. (I.1.287)
This is a sentence that is ready for anything. The next
speech is barely more committed, since everyone would agree with it:
‘Tis the infirmity of his age. Yet he hath ever but
slenderly known himself. (I.1.292)
Everyone, that is, but Lear. With these words Regan denies
her own formal speech of flattery, but only to the extent of admitting that she
has common sense. The hanging back is suggestive. Gonerill has every reason to
be optimistic, for the sisters are close (Regan’s flattering speech had
actually paid a compliment to Gonerill’s); Regan’s hesitation at this juncture
could be seen as a faint hint of their future enmity, but more likely it
registers timidity. If Regan were a games theorist, she should consider a
clever strategy here, which would be to encourage Gonerill to commit herself,
and then to betray her by supporting the king. But Regan is not so calculating.
Gonerill is a dominant elder sister, and Regan is somewhat in her shadow. She
has less confidence, is less confrontational, and feels her way (II.4.287, for
example, is a question as much as a statement; she is seeking approval from
Gonerill). Sensing her own weakness, she likes to assert herself by
interrupting her husband. Her manner is more “tender-hefted” than Gonerill’s
(Lear is trying to persuade himself, but this must be based on the truth), and
she wears gorgeous, feminine clothes that hardly keep her warm (II.2.459 – Lear
must be addressing Regan, who arrived at dawn and has had time to change her
clothes; Gonerill would still be cloaked). Some have speculated that Gonerill
is good-looking (II.2.355), Regan rather less so (II.2.91-3), though to push
this too far might rather spoil the Fool’s remark at I.5.15, which emphasizes
the extent to which Regan duplicates her elder sister.
Regan discovers her own strength, however, in the scene
where Gloucester
is blinded. It was Gonerill who came up with the idea that Cornwall now
executes, and Regan behaves at first as a one-woman rent-a-mob, most of her
speeches being shouted (her aptitude for this role was already apparent at
II.1.88 and II.2.133) .
[I have not seen the following lines explained:
(Gl.) ... O
cruel! O you gods!
Reg. One side will mock another – th’other too.
Corn. If you see vengeance –
1 Serv. Hold your hand, my
lord. (III.7.69-70)
But he’s interrupted by the servant, and Gloucester
does manage to glimpse the blow that will be the end of Cornwall , at least. It’s Regan who deals with
the unruly servant (stabbing him, probably twice). At this point she begins to
understand her own potential, and from now on feels subservient neither to Cornwall (who is about to
die) nor to Gonerill. We recognize her new independence as soon as, when she
next appears, we hear her say:
It was great ignorance, Gloucester
To let him live. Where he arrives he moves
All hearts against us. (IV.5.11-13)
No doubt it’s her late husband’s error that she is moaning
about. But “us” must mean Edmund, Gonerill and, chiefly, herself; she being now
(as Gonerill fearfully predicted) potentially the apex of the triangle. There
is also a hint of the royal “we”, which she certainly does use a few lines
later (IV.5.16, and again at V.1.1, 34, 36, V.3.61, 62, 63). Something has
changed with the death of Cornwall .
It empowers Regan, who now calls no-one lord and is thus indisputably the ruler
of her half of Britain
(but since Lear is still alive and retains the “name and all th’addition to a
king”, should Regan be using the language of a queen? I am unsure of the royal
protocol for princesses). Cornwall ’s demise also
empowers Albany ,
because he is now the only male with the supreme executive (he pointedly
rejects Edmund’s assumption of parity). Albany
seems to use the royal “we”, at V.1.20, 22, 25 and V.3.45. But both these
elevations seem rather to diminish Gonerill, who herself uses the royal “we” on
just one occasion (IV.2.1).
At present Regan is only trying out this commanding tone on
Gonerill’s servant, and there is some fumbling when she tries to turn him. But
she has also met with Edmund, and something, not conclusive but nonetheless
constructive, has been said (IV.5.32).
[The 3rd Arden Cornwall Cornwall
was dead, he had all the more reason to go to Cornwall ’s
HQ (that is, either Cornwall ’s or Gloucester
In V.1 Regan’s manner jars on Gonerill, at least according
to the quarto, and Regan tries to manipulate the movements of her sister, who
sees through her at once. When she regally says “Tis most convenient; pray you
go with us”, it’s a reversal of Gonerill’s dominance at the end of I.1.
Gonerill appears to comply, but we know enough of her to doubt what this means.
By the time Regan reappears in V.3, Gonerill has already poisoned her. I forget
which sister Bradley regarded as the more detestable, but Regan remains the
more uncertain one, the one who feels the need to assert herself. It is
not inappropriate that she should also be the sister who goes furthest in the
play’s most savage episode.
I've digressed a long way down a Bradleyan road to support
the assertion that in the play Lear’s madness arises from his character, but I
don’t regret the digression since it demonstrates Shakespeare’s consistent and
subtle character-portrayal in a comparatively minor figure.
The growth of Lear’s madness is carefully portrayed,
too. At I.4.69 he admits, fairly
lightly, that he has been uneasy about his treatment, but has assumed it’s
“just in his head”. And he doesn’t like people referring to Cordelia (I.4.74).
This is fertile soil, but nothing unusual. From here up to the end of Act II
the progress, at first slow, is remorseless; Lear never gets a breathing space
in which to recover his equanimity. He blames his folly at first; that’s
painful, and exposes a tension between the man and the king, but it still
leaves his present poise unthreatened. At I.5.44-45 he identifies his internal
adversary for the first time. The possibility of madness, at that moment, is
viewed with terror. At various points in II.2 he registers its growing pressure
to break out, and finally arrives at this:
You think I’ll weep,
No, I’ll not weep.
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or e’er I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad. (II.2.471-74)
This amounts to an acceptance of madness; sanity, which
would mean sobbing in front of his daughters, has now become unendurable. It’s
not a matter of dignity – it’s just that they aren’t his daughters any more.
Lear is now homeless and alienated from his family, states
that perhaps have always been closely connected with mental instability. From a
dramatic point of view Lear is no longer an agent and his grand speeches in the
face of the storm are from one point of view a compensation; he grasps at a
sort of universal agency. He also becomes politicized. At the same time his
wits are turning, and though this is first clearly seen in his unhinged words
to “Poor Tom” (III.4.48) it may be suspected earlier in the anti-climactic
inconsequence of III.2.57-60.
That there is a problem of sorts with the middle scenes of
the play has been often stated and as often denied. The dramatic movement of
the first two Acts exemplifies Shakespeare doing what no-one has ever done
better – taking the bare bones of a chronicle (as in Spenser’s verses) and by
force of imagination turning them into a wholly vivid and astonishing portrayal
of character in action. But in III.2, III.4, III.6 and IV.6 Shakespeare has
arrived at a dramatic situation that lies outside the action, from which Lear
has become detached. Those who want to regard these scenes as the heart of the
play, like G.K. Hunter in his introduction to the New Penguin edition (1972),
are forced into making rather unsatisfactory formulations such as “terrifying
maelstrom of words.... a world of fragmentary reactions to the present, a world
without a connected past and therefore without personal purpose.... bound
together by the orchestration of the scene... In this unstructured and
disparate world Lear comes to know things he (and we) could not know in sanity.
The whirlpools of his obsession dredge up truths that are normally concealed...
‘The reader’s attention’ is meant to be prised loose from individual
motives and actions, I suspect, and attached to a different but equally
dramatic sense of man’s general status, rather than his individual destiny...
the language of the play is not so much an imitation of the way people speak as
an evocation of the realities behind what people say... This stupendous
scene (IV.6).... (Lear) the master of a torrential vein of mad moral
eloquence.... the free-wheeling
phantasmagoric energy of Lear....” Inspiring as much of this commentary is, the
wealth of metaphors, adjectives and italics also strikes me as insecure. Does
the utmost pitch of human art require so much talking up?
From a dramatic point of view there are formidable
difficulties with presenting scenes in which the characters have no urgent
sense of time passing and in which, though they speak, they don’t listen. There
are indeed moments when we are compelled to do so; Lear’s speech about
the “poor, bare, forked animal”, or “None does offend, none, I say none”. These
powerful generalities arise from the logic of the play with which I began; if Lear
was to be tragic at all, it had to be a “supra-tragedy” that contemplated a
universal suffering. (An analogy that must have occurred to many people is
Euripides' Women of Troy.)
One way of giving the scenes a “thread” might be to show
them trying to contain Lear’s madness. The would-be containers are (sometimes)
Lear himself; Kent ; Gloucester , when he is
trying to control where the king stays or when he flees; the attendants in
IV.6, and so on. Naturally it is not possible to tie up the winds again, as
Cordelia’s death eventually proves. I am not at all content with this idea, and
perhaps the mad scenes resist theatrical interpretation as well as Bradleyan
commentary. The mad scenes represent the world that we actually inhabit, and
while you can leave the rest behind when you leave the theatre, you take this
bit outside with you. Lear thus plays on the notion of an “interlude”. A
brief scene of loopy rhetoric was always a popular thing on the Jacobean stage;
but it was contained by the rest of the play.
Here, however, the “interlude” is an incursion from outside, like the
sudden whine of a motor-bike, which threatens the dramatic illusion.
*
*
*Note
on “Double Time”:
This
was not Shakespeare’s invention, but is a potential device in any narrative. In
unsophisticated fiction the present action is bound to be described one step
after another: “and then... and then...” Time-pauses are uninteresting and apt
to be elided by phrases such as “the next day”. But the implications of the
imagined background are by definition not observed so attentively, and are open
to manipulation. It actually takes more effort to maintain consistency than to
flout it; I am thinking of those boring calculations of dates and logistics
with which a novelist is familiar; the readers will never notice, but the
novelist has to work out consistencies to be sure that all the narratives he
does not actually recount are viable. Characters show a tendency to age at
different speeds, a great deal happens to one person while another is in one of
those vacant periods when their preoccupations have nothing to do with anything
and even they can hardly remember afterwards what they were doing. Unless the
teller deliberately focuses on the development of a community over time (as
e.g. Zola), stories are so unlike the passing of real time – so selective, so
heightened – that distortions such as double time are almost inevitable.
A
notable earlier example is in Chrétien’s Li contes del
**Note
on “the name and all the addition to a king”
This use of “addition” appears (I think) 4 times in Lear and is thematically
important. It means – what exactly? It means honours, of a sort, that
Lear thinks important; to him they represent respect, but does it really amount to anything more
tangible than “honorific titles”? What
it does not mean, as Lear soon discovers, is power; as the Fool urges, what
Lear has really retained doesn't add up to very much. At one level Lear is
an examination, building on the earlier Richard II, of the nature of
majesty deprived of power. The debate was current, and would shortly lead on to
a quantified Divine Right of Kings that was then found to be much too tangible
to be acceptable.
(2003, 2014)
Labels: William Shakespeare
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