King Lear

1
King Lear

• Fourth lecture

2
Endings

• Strange to say, King Lear hasnt always ended
  with the almost unbearable ending Shakespeare
  assigned it.
• In the late 17th cent. Nahum Tate, a poet and
  theater director, produced a version of the play
  that ended happily, with a romance-like
  conclusion.
• He cut the King of France from the first scene,
  and instead suggested a potential love between
  Cordelia and . . .
• Edgar!
• And at the end of his text of the play
  (extensively revised throughout), he had Lear
  save Cordelia from hanging.
• Edgar and Albany enter and in turn save Lear.
• Lear is returned to his kingship.
• Cordelia becomes queen and agrees to marry Edgar.
  
• Gloucester survives, and he, Kent, and Lear
  retire together, while Cordelia and Edgar take
  over the kingdom.
• Obviously Tate had to write a new final scene.
• Fool is also cut.
• And this is the version of King Lear that played
  throughout the 18th century.

3
Nahum Tates ending

• Tates ending seems a travesty to us.
• (Of course we also need to acknowledge what we do
  the text of Shakespeares plays the cuts and
  rewriting of contemporary productions and
  wonder how those will look a century or two
  hence.)
• But does the trajectory of the plot demand
  tragedy?
• Samuel Johnson (Dr. Johnson), who was used to
  the Tate version on stage, said he could never
  bear to read Shakespeares actual ending until he
  had to edit the play.
• Lears journey from a foolish decision,
  rejection, madness, insight in madness, recovery
  and finally his return to Cordelia might seem a
  narrative pattern that could lead to a romance
  ending.
• From a purely narrative point of view, Tates
  ending may not seem entirely inappropriate.

4
The meeting with Cordelia

• There was a climactic scene in the old morality
  plays when the penitent protagonist was given a
  garment of repentance by the saving Virtue
  character.
• IV.7 Lear brought in, freshly clothed, asleep in
  chair.
• Cordelia slowly wakens him with music, kisses
  him.
• Lears true delusion Thou art a soul in bliss
  . . .
• And in kneeling plays the part in old the
  morality play.
• And slowly recovers a sense of himself.
• But only in a relational sense to Cordelia? as I
  am a man, I think this lady/ To be my child
  Cordelia.
• His guilt? No cause. No cause.
• And then in V.3 he imagines a contented life in
  prison with Cordelia.
• The meeting and penitence would be the denoument
  of the morality play.

5
Justice in the Gloucester plot

• Edgars miracle scene analogous to Cordelias
  meeting with her father.
• But despair is cured abstractly, by the staged
  miracle?
• Bear free and patient thoughts.
• Reiterated at V.2 9-11 Ripeness is all. (Cf.
  Hamlets the readiness is all.)
• But still Edgar doesnt reveal himself.
• After the battle, Edgar and Edmund exchange
  charity.
• And Edgar holds to a sense of absolute justice
  The dark and vicious place where thee he got/
  Cost him his eyes.
• But seems to admit his own fault in concealing
  himself from his father ll 193ff.
• The circumstances suggest a dark and rigid
  justice playing itself out Edmund and Gloucester
  both die.
• And Edgar, the just son, survives.
• But how does it compare to the Lear story?

6
Irrelevance of justice in the Lear plot?

• By contrast, everything seems excessive in Lear
  story.
• Lears anger at Cordelia, his utter rejection by
  older daughters, his suffering.
• And clearly justice seems irrelevant.
• The loss of Lears kingdom to the evil forces.
• And finally the terrible stage direction Enter
  Lear with Cordelia in his arms.
• The play gives us no hint that this will happen.
• And no poetic justice in the death of the one
  redeeming daughter
• A nameless gentleman had said of Cordelia Thou
  hast one daughter/ Who redeems nature from the
  general curse/ Which twain have brought her to
  (IV.6.204-06).
• If death had indeed been implicit in the first
  scene, it was not for this death.

7
Enter Lear . . .

• Lear enters with one long sustained cry of
  anguish the texts howl, howl, howl! are more
  a stage direction, I suggest.
• O, you are men of stones is as much directed to
  the audience as to those on stage.
• And Lears words tell the audience what they need
  to know about the actors body he carries on
  stage.
• Kents, Edgars, and Albanys words speak also
  for the audience is this an image of the terror
  of the Last Judgment?
• Lears words and actions try to verify Cordelias
  death Shes gone forever.
• Or is she, What ist thou sayst?
• But the feather apparently doesnt stir.
• Can we imagine a more heart-breaking scene on the
  stage or a more sustained stage meditation on
  the fact of death?

8
Alls cheerless, dark, and deadly

• Kents despairing words.
• Lear attends only to the dead Cordelia.
• At l. 311 Albany cries out O, see,see!
• What are we to see? What does the actor playing
  Lear do?
• Lears lines heart-breakingly focus on the
  lifelessness of Cordelia and the finality of
  death.
• So if death was implicit in the opening scene, we
  get an uncompromising vision of it.
• The gesture of the help with the button where
  have we seen this before?
• And finally Lears insistence that we see
  Cordelias lips.
• Does he think theyre moving, that shes saying
  something?
• Clearly hes deluded.
• Or does he see something we cant see?

9
Stage and audience -- reaction

• Kent encourages Lears death for him the world
  is a rack, an instrument of torture.
• And Kent seems to envisage his own death I have
  a journey shortly to go . . .
• Edgars final formulation what we feel, not the
  usual comforting words.
• Gloucesters earlier words about the world I
  see it feelingly.
• He meant the need for touch in his blindness, but
  the word has resonance.
• Will Edgar ever be the same after these
  experiences?
• Will the audience?