King Lear

Summary:

Lear, the elderly king of Britain, decides to step down and divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. Before he does, he asks each to profess their love to him, and when Cordelia refuses to flatter him he disowns her and gives her share to the other two. Lear imposes on his two remaining daughters for accommodations and food for his knights, but Goneril and Regan both resent this arrangement, and throw Lear out into a massive storm. 

Meanwhile, the Earl of Gloucester’s bastard son Edmund conspires against his true-born brother Edgar, and convinces his father that Edgar was seeking to murder him and seize his lands. Edgar flees, and Edmund forges an alliance with Goneril and Regan against the former King, betraying his father who sought to support Lear. Gloucester is blinded by Regan and thrown out into the same storm as Lear.

Edgar, now in disguise as a mad beggar, finds both Lear and his father and helps them to Dover where Cordelia, with her new husband the King of France, has amassed an army to unseat her sisters and restore Lear to power. Edmund, now the object of a love triangle between Goenril and Regan, leads their forces in battle and eventually captures Lear and Cordelia, and sentences them to death. Goneril and Regan betray each other out of jealousy for Edmund, with Goneril poisoning Regan then killing herself after Edgar reveals his identity and kills Edmund in a duel. Finally, Cordelia is executed on Edmund’s last order and Lear dies from heartbreak, leaving the kingdom without a ruler.

What It’s About:

Fighting the natural order invites ruin

King Lear is to my mind Shakespeare’s darkest play, presenting an incredibly bleak world of familial betrayal, violence, madness and chaos. It’s also one of his longest works, often testing a reader’s stamina and endurance. Add to this the fact Lear is also one of the most textually complicated plays in Shakespeare’s canon, with two early authoritative copies of the play offering vastly different versions of key scenes, and the result is one of the hardest and most challenging plays to tackle, both as a performer and as a reader. That’s not to say that the results aren’t rewarding - Lear is also rightly considered one of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies, alongside Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth. These four plays taken together mark an absolutely outstanding dramatic achievement - not one but four tragedies that have stood the test of time and remain classics to this day, and somehow even amongst that group of plays Lear stands out as a uniquely pessimistic reflection on our world.

This bleak outlook stems in part from Shakespeare’s narrative choices in terms of adapting his source material. The majority of the play’s plot comes from the legend of the Brythonic King Leir, who according to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannae ruled what we now know as England during the 8th century BC. This was a common contemporary story during Shakespeare’s time - something that was part of the mythological history of the country and that almost everyone knew as a folktale warning against the dangers of flattery. Like Shakespeare’s Lear, the ‘historical’ Leir sought to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters, and in a fit of rage disinherits his youngest, Cordelia. The major departure comes with the ending - historically, Cordelia unseats her wicked sisters and restores Leir to the throne. He rules justly and wisely until his death, when the kingdom passes to Cordelia’s rule. The tragic ending is entirely Shakespeare’s invention, and the sight of Lear carrying his dead daughter’s body onto the stage in Act 5 would have been a shock to audiences at the time not just because of the sudden death of one of the play’s major characters, but also in the complete subversion of what was otherwise a happy ending - power restored to the rightful king, and all being right with the world.

And therein lies Shakespeare’s central thesis of the play - all is very much NOT right with the world. Lear presents a heightened emotional reality where transgressions against what was perceived as the established order of the universe have disastrous consequences, both for the characters and for the natural world around them. England in the 1600s was a patriarchal society - there were countless rituals of respect and difference to power, age, authority and wealth. And throughout the play we see those rituals either cast aside and ignored, or shown to be hollow pleasantries, with no affection beneath them. Lear himself reflects on his power as a King - “They told me I was everything. ‘Tis a lie.”

The breaking of these rituals and of the traditional power structures mainly is expressed through Goneril and Regan’s mistreatment of their father - first their obsequious flatteries, and then their ingratitude and cruel mistreatment, culminating in turning him out into a massive thunderstorm without aid, support, food or shelter. However, Lear himself is just as guilty - in stepping down and abandoning power despite wanting to keep the title and prerogatives of a King, he disrupts the traditional monarchical power structure of the day and creates a strained loyalty amongst many of his subjects - are they loyal to him, or to his chosen heirs?

The best example of this breakdown in society however comes not in the story of Lear, but rather in that of Gloucester. The characters of Edmund and Edgar do not exist in the legend of Lear, and is one of Shakespeare’s most significant and complex uses of a double plot. The conflict between Edmund, the bastard who stands to inherit nothing from his father, and Edgar, the legitimate son, serves not only to underline the traditional transfer of power as it would have happened in 1600s England - father’s passing down lands and property to their firstborn sons - but also the ways in which that tradition could be undermined. Not only does Edmund usurp his brother’s place, but he does so by preying on his father’s very natural fear that his son seeks to supplant and replace him. He produces a fake letter, which he attributes to Edgar, that rants on “the oppression of aged tyranny,” - something Edmund himself believes, as later in the play he will manipulate his father into being stripped of his titles so he can seize his lands and power.

All of these transgressions serve to lay the foundation for the play’s apocalyptic back half, which begins with a massive thunderstorm that seems to echo the wrath of God across the countryside. Gruesome mutilations occur, including the brutal blinding of Gloucester in what can be one of the goriest scenes in all of Shakespeare as Regan and her husband pluck out his eyes one by one. And through all of this, the deaths begin to rack up. By the end of the play the older generation is dead or dying, the few survivors of the younger generation are traumatized by what they’ve seen, and the ruling families are decimated to the point where there seems to be no authority left in the world. All is certainly not well.

If This Were A Movie:

As mentioned above, the plot of King Lear was lifted from a mythological history of England, depicting the tale of the 8th century King Lier. This was a story that would have been common knowledge during Shakespeare’s time, as it was adapted frequently in popular histories as well as fairy tales - several stories based on the ‘contest’ between the three daughters have even made their way to the present day. However, the tragic ending was Shakespeare’s own addition, and would have come as a major shock to the audiences of the time. In this way, King Lear can almost be seen as a darker and grittier reboot of the classic story, in the same way modern directors sometimes approach classic fairy tales. Shakespeare took this common narrative and reimagined it through a darker lens, playing off of familiar beats and expectations to show audiences the dark side of a story they already knew. It’s a textbook case of deconstruction, and one that wouldn’t be out of place in a modern Hollywood blockbuster - “You thought you knew the story of King Lear….”

The Line From The Play That You Know:

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave

My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty 

According to my bond, no more nor less. - 1.189-91

Lear doesn't have any lines that I think are truly famous - it’s not as quotable or as widely known as Hamlet or even Macbeth when it comes to Shakespeare’s tragedies. The only element that may qualify is the scene where Lear tests his daughters - asking them each in turn how much they love him. Goneril and Regan both provide expected, flattering answers, but Cordelia responds with the above - that she loves Lear exactly as much as she’s obligated to. Depending on how the play chooses to depict Lear this line can land very differently - if he’s being portrayed in a positive light, a man betrayed by his offspring, it can come across hard and uncompromising. However, plays often use this scene to highlight Lear’s foolishness and vanity in asking his daughters to essentially stroke his ego. In that case, Cordelia comes across as the most sensible person in the play, calmly telling her father that she’s not here to play his games.

The Line You Should Know:

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsions… - 1.2.107-111

This line comes from one of Edmund’s monologues, where he reflects that it’s the style of the time to blame one’s misfortunes on things outside our control, when in reality the blame usually lies in our own weaknesses and failings. It’s one of many excellent speeches he has, and of course remains relevant today - but that’s not the reason I wanted to highlight this particular line. One of the main things that motivated me to start this blog was reading the novel If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio, which takes its title from this speech. The book tells the story of a murder at a Shakespearean acting conservatory, and of the dramatic circumstances amongst the 4th year students that lead to the death. It’s also dripping with Shakespeare references and features stagings of Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and King Lear that I’m honestly a bit mad don’t exist in reality because they sound incredibly cool. I can’t recommend it highly enough, and I honestly wouldn’t be writing this blog if it hadn’t inspired me to dig deeper into my love of Shakespeare.

Notable Adaptation:

I would be remiss to not mention Ran here, as it’s considered not just one of the greatest Shakespeare adaptations of all time, but also frequently makes shortlists as one of the greatest movies of all time. Legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa loosely adapts the story of King Lear to sixteenth century feudal Japan, and brings his incredible cinematic eye to underscore the heightened emotional reality of Lear. Apparently Kurosawa would paint storyboards from this film during the 10 years or so he was seeking funding, and this artistic vision comes through in one of the most visually striking films I have ever seen.

Kurosawa also makes an interesting choice with the character of his Lear analogue, choosing to portray him as a warlord who united the kingdom he passes down to his children through violence and bloodshed. Part of his folly then is that he expects this transition to be peaceful - that he can escape the consequences of a life drenched in blood simply by laying down his sword and his authority and handing them off to the next generation. Kurosawa’s Lear is tormented by the spectors of his past conquests, and in one of the strongest changes to the plot is ultimately undone thanks to the actions of the daughter of one of the warlords he killed to solidify his rule. While Shakespeare portrays Lear as vain and foolish, he often remains a character that, in his words, “is more sinned against than sinning.” Kurosawa leans in on the villainy, and in doing so I think further articulates the play’s themes of a world falling apart at the seams.

General Notes:

As mentioned above, this is one of Shakespeare’s bleakest plays - it depicts a court where the fundamental structures of society have come undone, and the world around seems to be following. The third act in particular, which sees Gloucester blinded and the majority of the cast wandering through a massive thunderstorm trying to find shelter, is often staged in a way that can seem downright apocalyptic. Darkness, thunder, and lightning all tend to feature heavily, and when done right the scenes emphasize the feeling of a world coming apart at the seams. Compounding this general mood of despair is the fact that the play ends on an extremely dark note - Lear enters the final scene cradling the dead body of Cordelia, desperately begging her to breathe again. When it becomes clear she will not revive, his heart breaks and he too dies, leaving only Edgar and the Earl of Kent, an older courtier who remained loyal to Lear and who acknowledges in the last lines of the play that, given his age, he too will soon pass away. The result is an ending that offers no hope for the future - no path forward or uncrowned King to take the reins and restore order. In fact, the play ends with a death march while Lear and Cordelia’s bodies are carried off.

Given the overall dark nature of the play, and the extreme low point of the ending, it’s not surprising that for some time this play was seen by critics as one of Shakespeare’s lesser works. Especially in the eighteenth century, the general consensus was that while there were moments of promise, the generally pessimistic worldview of the play undercut any artistic merit, and served to drive away audiences and fans alike. There was also a growing consensus that the play was unactable - that the brutal tragedies visited on Lear and Gloucester veered too far into what would today be called misery-porn. This belief was so prevalent that a 1681 revision to the play, written by Nahum Tate, became the de facto standard for stagings. This edit not only spares Cordelia’s life at the end of the play, having her miraculously recover in the last scene, but also sees her marry Edgar, uniting the play’s two unambiguously virtuous characters and presenting a happy ending where the wicked are punished, the just are rewarded, and hope seems to be dawning for England.

But as Neil Gaiman pointed out in the Sandman, “the great stories will always return to their original forms.” In the nineteenth century the original play began to see more stagings, and following World War II the happy ending fell fully out of style, as audiences saw in the play’s  bleak desolation an echo of the horrors that had swept through Europe. Lear has also benefited greatly from the advancements in both modern stage performances and the advent of filmed adaptations of Shakespeare’s work. The play is larger than life, and features scenes both big - the storm in Act 3 - and small - Gloucester’s eyes being gouged out - that present significant challenges for small scale productions. The wider scope of a film adaptation especially can elevate the physical reality of these moments to match their emotional resonance, and recent productions of King Lear do an incredible job of capturing the sheer depth of feeling in this play, and prove that it well deserves its place among the canon of Shakespeare’s great tragedies.

A Monologue For the Road

Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow,

You cataracts and hurricanes, spout

Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks.

You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Strike flat the thick rotundity o’th’ world,

Crack Nature’s molds, all germens spill at once

That makes ungrateful man. - 3.2.1-9