King Lear

1
King Lear

• First lecture

2
Lear in the 21st century

• After all the warfare, bloodshed, genocide of the
  20th cent., not to mention what weve already
  achieved in the fledgling 21st, Lear has come to
  seem Shs most profound tragedy.
• A dark, almost hopeless tragedy, lots of cruelty
  and suffering, even absurdity.
• The death of Cordelia, and maybe of Lear too,
  may seem almost gratuitous.
• And what could be worse to witness onstage than
  the blinding of Gloucester?
• Theater of Cruelty of Antonin Artaud.
• But a play that has depths that open further
  every time one reads or sees it.
• It starts out with the theme of families, but
  quickly becomes more . . .
• . . . and reaches a strangely symbolic character.
  

3
Lear in 1606

• First recorded performance of the play is St.
  Stephens day, 26 December, 1606, before King
  James!
• Mind-boggling to think that a play that shows a
  king giving up his rule . . .
• . . . going mad and thrown to the mercy of the
  elements . . .
• . . . and learning about the completely arbitrary
  nature of all human authority (a dogs obeyed in
  office) . . .
• should be played before the King of England and
  Scotland!
• A play that shows the dark side of the world over
  which James ruled.
• There was a recent case in law, in 1604, of the
  eldest daughter of Brian Annesley, a wealthy
  gentleman pensioner of Queen Elizabeth, who tried
  to have her father declared a lunatic, so she and
  her husband could control his estate.
• His youngest daughter, Cordell, protested and
  appealed (successfully) to Robt. Cecil (Jamess
  minister). Annesley left his estate to Cordell
  at his death in 1604.
• And from June, 1604, to June 1606, a well
  publicized case in Star Chamber saw Sir Robert
  Dudley, bastard son of Robt. Dudley, earl of
  Leicester (Elizabeths favorite), trying
  (unsuccessfully) to have his bastardy overturned.
  
• He lost, partly because of Jamess intervention.
  

4
Texts of Lear

• A quarto was published in 1608.
• And a quite different text in the folio of 1623.
• Quarto has almost 100 lines not in the folio.
• And folio has almost 300 lines not in the quarto.
  
• So essentially two different versions of the
  play.
• Our text conflates the two, as has usually been
  done.
• We get the folio text with the quarto additions
  in square brackets.
• The folio may have been the playing text.

5
Performance and source

• Richard Burbage played Lear in the original
  performances, the actor who had played Hamlet and
  Othello.
• And Richard Armin played the fool. He had played
  the fool in Twelfth Night (which he quotes at
  III.2.75-78), and the grave-digger in Hamlet.
• The setting of the play is very generalized
  pre-historic, pre-Christian Britain. The story
  in Holinsheds Chronicles goes back to 800 B.C.
• Actual source of play is an old play, King Leir,
  which had been performed in 1594 (by another
  company), and apparently staged again in 1605,
  when it was printed.
• Shakespeare clearly knew the text of that play
  and used it in his version.

6
The strange, fairytale-like opening of the play

• Clip of the Olivier film (1984).
• The opening with Gloucester and Kent insists on
  Edmunds bastardy, and a violation of a taboo
  here?
• If realism were the mode of the play, wed
  wonder why Lear is doing this . . .
• . . . and why Cordelia cant simply tell Lear
  what he wants to hear.
• Lear speaks of our darker purpose.
• He wishes to retire, conferring royal duties to
  younger strengths, while we/ Unburdened crawl
  toward death.
• The highly ornate, rhetorical flourish of
  Gonerils speech, I.1.55-61.
• Which Regan tops!
• And of course the exercise is all symbolic, since
  Lear has already determined the shares.
• Do we feel some sort of taboo is being violated?
  Lear was obviously intending to favor Cordelia
  over the others what can you say to draw/ A
  third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
• So why does Cordelia say, Nothing, my lord?
• And goes on to a non-rhetorical, flat statement
  of what daughters owe their fathers and their
  spouses.
• Why is Lear doing this? And why wont Cordelia
  play along?
• Lears rage 109ff.

7
Kents banishment

• Kents intervention begins ceremoniously l.
  140ff
• But Lear demands plainness.
• So Kent lets him have it Be Kent unmannerly/
  When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?
  Note the familiarity of thou.
• And his rhyming at 185ff seems to round off the
  exchange.
• The play is dividing characters according to
  their language and rhetoric.
• The Burgundy/France test Cordelia becomes more
  desirable to France because of her dowerless
  poverty.
• When Kent returns in disguise in 1.4, plainness
  becomes his middle name.
• And this defines his quarrel with Oswald, whom he
  calls a base football player (1.4.85)
• And his opposition to Oswald at II.2 his
  wonderfully inventive list of insults at l. 13ff.
• No contraries hold more antipathy/ Than I and
  such a knave.
• And even to Cornwall Sir, tis my occupation to
  be plain./ I have seen better faces . . .
  (89ff).
• Characters seem to run to the moral poles of the
  world of the play Cordelia vs. her sisters, Kent
  vs. Oswald, Edgar vs. Edmund.

8
The moral poles of the play

• Goneril and Regans opposition to Lear at first
  seems commonsense.
• Their brief dialogue at the end of I.1.
• Gonerils objections to the Fool, her problems
  with the hundred knights (1.4.195ff).
• Her desire that he a little to disquantity your
  train.
• Lears terrible curse of Goneril 1.4.271.
• But Albanys reaction complicates.
• Regans sympathy with Goneril, II.4
• And they whittle down his 100 knights.
• Oh reason not the need! What gives us our grip
  on life?
• By this point their opposition seems moral.

9
Moral poles (cont.)

• Edmund and Edgar
• Edmunds role as a sort of renaissance new man
  his soliloquy at 1.2.
• With a new sense of Nature almost Darwinian?
• His opposition to Edgar and Gloucester.
• And his eventual alliance with Goneril and Regan.
• Edgars choice of disguise Poor Tom
• Why? Hes the son of an earl.
• His feigned madness in stark contrast to Edmund?

10
The Fool

• One of the most wonderful conceptions, and
  wonderful roles, in the play.
• Hes a jester, Lears all-licensed fool, whos
  allowed to say anything.
• Court jesters were sometimes mental defectives,
  retarded adults.
• But sometimes professional entertainers,
  comedians allowed to enliven court proceedings.
• King James had a jester, Archie Armstrong, who
  was well known for an impudence verging on
  arrogance.
• Lears fool has an almost filial relation with
  him.
• Calls Lear nuncle, uncle Lear calls him boy
  (even though Armin was in his early 40s).
• His strange link with Cordelia the Fool has
  grown sad after Cordelia went to France Since
  my young ladys going into France, the fool hath
  much pined away.
• And my poor fool is hanged, Lear says in the
  last scene he seems to mean Cordelia, but speaks
  of the fool?
• Its the Fool who needles Lear mercilessly about
  the foolishness of what he has done in giving up
  his kingdom.
• And the fool disappears from the play after Act
  II, scene 6.