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A play bigger than itself


Dollimore: Jacobean tragedy exposes the inequalities/flaws in contemporary society
o “We make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars, as if we were villains on
necessity” – Edmund (I
...
iii)

o



“Allow not nature more than nature needs,/Man’s life is cheap as beasts” – Lear, realising the
flaws in the societal system he embodies (II
...
vii)

Dollimore: “the Jacobean malcontent” in Edmund
o “To both these sisters have I sworn my love,/Each jealous of the other as the stung/Are of the
adder
...
” – Edmund (V
...
/Now gods, stand up for bastards!” – Edmund (I
...
iv)

“for my state/Stands on me to defend, not to debate
...
ii)

Wilson Knight: “The play is a microcosm of the human race”
o “Men must endure/Their going hence even as their coming hither
...
ii)
o

“List a brief tale” – Edgar as a choral figure? Recounts the story of how he met Gloucester
wandering blind/disguised himself etc
...
iii)

Productions





Kozintsev (1970): emphasis on Lear’s world collapsing due to a break-up of the feudal system,
peasants, discontented, attempt to revolt
Brook (1971): Lear’s subjects huddled together silently with the appearance of labour-camp
prisoners; Scofield’s Lear acted as a dictator, using the love-test to strike fear into the hearts of any
potential rebels by showing the loyalty of his successors
Hytner (1990): Lear represented the old and weak cast out by an uncaring society, visually recalling
homeless people on our streets today in old jeans, untucked shirt, and worn jacket

Cautionary tale


Freud: “King Lear’s dramatic story is intended to inculcate two wise lessons: that one should not
give up one’s possessions and rights during one’s lifetime, and that one must guard against
accepting flattery at its face value”

Quotes
o

“O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’door
...
i)

o

“Sir, I do love you more than word can wield the matter” – Goneril

o

“Sir I am made of that self mettle as my sister,/And prize me at her worth” – Regan

o

“The weight of this sad time we must obey,/Speak what we feels, not what we ought to say” –
Edgar (V
...
Written in three books, the first is concerned with acting the part of a good
Christian, the second with ruling fairly as opposed to despotically, and the third with the appropriate
way in which to conduct everyday court life
 James I/Lear parallels and differences
o Lear’s sons-in-law, Dukes of Cornwall and Albany, share their titles with James’ sons
o James made knights out of his friends, without regard to merit, just as Lear dismisses courtiers
on the basis of character
o Lear wants the pleasures associated with kingship, without the responsibility: in the same way,
James enjoyed masques without considering the consequences for national finances
o The innate authority Kent observes in Lear reflects the belief in the divine right of kings to
which James so strongly subscribed
o James aimed to unite Scotland and England, restoring the old title of Great Britain to the
country, but failed to win parliamentary support: the division of the kingdom in Lear, with
such drastic consequences, was an obvious endorsement of James’ goal

Divinity?


Elton: King Lear represents a direct challenge to Christian ideals
o
o
o
o
o
o
o



Courthorpe: pre-deterministic force, not divinity
o
o
o
o
o



“We make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars, as if we were villains on
necessity” – Edmund (I
...
ii)
“Fortune, good night: smile once more; turn thy wheel
...
ii)
“I am bound/Upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears/Do scald like molten lead
...
vii)
“The wheel is come full circle” – Edmund as he fights Edgar (V
...
ii)

Tamblyn: “Greek tragedy as a tragedy of fate, and Shakespearean as tragedy of character”
o



“For by the sacred radiance of the sun,/The mysteries of Hecate and the night,/By all the
operation of the orbs/From whom we do exist and cease to be” – Lear disowning Cordelia (I
...
” – Kent to Lear (I
...
”/ “By Juno, I swear ay
...
ii)
“You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames/Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty” –
Lear as Regan rejects him (II
...
vi)
“The gods are just and of our pleasant vices/Make instruments to plague us” – Edgar (V
...
” –
Gloucester (IV
...
iii)
“O dear father,/it is thy business that I go about;” – Cordelia (IV
...
vii)

Empson: “The gods remain a teasing riddle”
o
o
o
o

“O cruel! O you gods!” – Gloucester after his first eye is taken from him (III
...
i)
“This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time
...
iii)
“Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones!/Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use
them so/That heaven’s vault should crack” – Lear (V
...
iv)
“The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long/That it’s had it head bit off by it young
...
” – Fool (I
...
vi)
“But to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend’s: there’s hell, there’s darkness,
there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption!” – Lear (IV
...
I […] “Obey you, love you and most honour you
...
i)
“Sure I shall never marry like my sisters/To love my father all” – Cordelia to Lear (I
...
” – Lear to Cordelia (I
...
iv)
“Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow,” – Lear as Kent explains how Regan put him
in the stocks (II
...
” – Lear to Regan (II
...
iv)
“I am ashamed/That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus” – Lear to Goneril (I
...
ii)

Productions




Warner (1990): Cox’s Lear appeared in a wheelchair for the opening scene; this was a production
dealing more with a father-figure Lear than a dictator
Nunn (1976): Sinden’s Lear played the part of an indulgent, yet feared father, and the production
as a whole emphasised family tensions
Attenborough (2012): after Lear cursed Goneril for rejecting him, he kissed her violently, sexually,
on the mouth, suggesting an incestuous, abusive past, an intimation doubled by similar treatment
of Regan later in the production

Context


Father/daughter relationships: Shakespeare often dealt with the pressures arising from the moment
a daughter must marry and leave her father
o E
...
Hermia attempting to elope with Lysander; Desdemona about to marry Othello

Madness


Salkeld: “All the conflict and the madness of the play, within and without, is visible […] the
exhibition of [Lear/Edgar’s] bodies is thus the means by which the presentation of madness is
achieved”
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o



Wilson Knight: “Incident and dialogue […] walk the tight-rope of our pity over the depths of bathos
and absurdity […] exactly the playground of madness”/ “grotesque comedy”
o
o
o
o
o
o
o



“Since now we will divest us both of rule” – Lear before love-test (I
...
” –
Lear to Goneril as she rejects him (I
...
” – Kent to Oswald, presumably his offence is
following Goneril instead of Lear (II
...
Unaccomodated man […] Off, off you lending: come, unbutton here!”
– Lear (III
...
Plate sin with
gold,/And the strong lance of justice hurtles breaks;” – Lear (IV
...
Thank you, sir
...
” – Lear (V
...
iv)
“Alack, bareheaded?” – Kent on Lear (III
...
iv)

“Arraign her first, ‘tis Goneril”/ “Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool
...
vi)
“Tis the infirmity of his age, yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself” – Regan (I
...
/Does Lear walk thus, speak thus? Where are
his eyes? […] Who is it that can tell me who I am?” – Lear to Goneril (I
...
ii)
“The King would speak with Cornwall, the dear father/Would with his daughter speak,
commands – tends – /service
...
ii)
“We are not ourselves/When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind/To suffer with the
body
...
ii)
“How dost my boy? Art/Cold?/I am cold myself” – Lear to Fool (III
...
” – Knight on Lear (III
...
iv)
“The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long/That it’s had it head bit off by it young
...
” – Fool (I
...
] noble philosopher […] philosopher […]
good Athenian” – Lear (III
...
General trait of c
...




Nunn (1968): theme of divestment taken further to include symbolism by ritual, both of which fell
into chaos concurrent with Lear’s growing insanity

Context


Galenic medicine: Theory that the body is composed of four humours, which correspond to the four
elements and, according to whichever is the dominant humour in a body, determine personality
...
An imbalance in these could lead to
madness
...
Saturn corresponded to melancholy, Jupiter to blood,
Mars and the sun to choler, Venus and the moon to phlegm
...




Greenblatt’s theory of self-fashioning: a term to describe the process of building an identity/public
attitude to fit contemporary societal standards, particularly evidenced in portraiture of the
renaissance period and useful for the divestment theme

Pain


Spurgeon: “[central image is] of a human body in anguished movement […] gashed, scalded,
tortured, and finally broken on the rack”

Quotes
o

“like an engine wrenched my frame of nature/From the fixed place, drew from my heart all
love/And added to the gall
...
iv)

o

“Hear, Nature, heard, dear goddess, hear: […] Into her womb convey sterility/Dry up in her
the organs of increase” – Lear damning Goneril as she rejects him, total dysmorphia (I
...
ii)

o

“You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames/Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty”
– Lear as Regan rejects him (II
...
vii)

o

“Bind him, I say – ”/ “Hard, hard, O, filthy traitor” – Cornwall, and then Regan (III
...
vi)

o

Whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame […] laid knives […] and halters
[…] set ratsbane by” – Poor Tom on his backstory (III
...
vi)

o

“But to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend’s: there’s hell, there’s darkness,
there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption!” – Lear on women (IV
...
The
pain of the original was too great, although Tate did still include Gloucester’s blinding?
Noble (1983): pain and apocalypse connected when Gloucester’s blinding, accompanied by a
hanging globe cracking above him to effect the sense of ‘germens cracking their moulds’, was
echoed by Cornwall’s fatal castration

Redemption





Levin: “Just as growth leads to decay, so decay fosters growth”
Knights: “For what takes place in King Lear we can find no other word than renewal”
Frye: “Death is both the punishment of the evil and the reward of the virtuous”
Wilson Knight: “Transcendent, apocalyptic beauty”

Quotes
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

“Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!/[
...
ii)
“Pray you undo this button
...
/O, o, o, o
...
iii)
“O you mighty gods,/This world I do renounce and in your sights/Shake patiently my great
affliction off” – Gloucester (IV
...
iii)
“You have begot me, bred me, loved me
...
”
– Cordelia to Lear (I
...
i)
“I loved her most, and thought to set my rest/On her kind nursery
...
i)
“We two alone will sing like birds i’the cage” – Lear to Cordelia (V
...
iii)
“I pant for life
...
iii)
“Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich being poor,” – France as he proposes marriage (I
...
Those happy smilets
[…] pearls from diamonds dropped” – ‘gentleman’ on Cordelia (IV
...
iii)
“O dear father,/it is thy business that I go about;” – Cordelia echoing Jesus (IV
...
vii)
“Thou art a soul in bliss” – Lear on Cordelia (IV
...
]/Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill
at once” – Lear (III
...
” – Gloucester (IV
...
i)
o “[…] while we/Unburdened crawl toward death” – Lear (I
...
”/ “Let it fall rather, though the fork invade”
– Lear, and then Kent (I
...
ii)
o “And bawds and whores do churches build/Then shall the realm of Albion/Come to great
confusion” – apocalyptic image, theme of inversion (III
...
iv)
o “No, sir, you must not kneel
...
/I am a very foolish, fond old man,” –
Cordelia tries to restore her father’s dignity; Lear sees himself for what he is (IV
...
”/ “Nothing?”/ “Nothing
...
” – Lear,
then Cordelia (I
...
” – Fool and then Lear, further echoes (I
...
” – Lear as he dies (V
...
”/ “No? […] The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself
...
ii)
o “I have no way, and therefore want no eyes:/ I stumbled when I saw” – Gloucester (IV
...
i)
o “O my follies! Then Edgar was abused? /Kind gods, forgive me that and prosper him
...
i)
o “O villain, villain! […] Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain […] Abominable
villain” – Gloucester proves as volatile as Lear (I
...
I wanted to trust
Shakespeare and the audience: it is shameful to sugar Lear with beautiful effects”
Brook (1962): “the characters seemed to be stumbling about blindly in a hostile universe” –
Foakes



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