King Lear context and quotes

Aristotelian Tragedy

Pre-recognition stage: Lear is beginning to realise the truth of the situation.

Carol Rutter Effeminisation of Lear

Carol Rutter talks of the effeminisation of Lear in terms of his curses, 'Hystericapassio', suffocation feeling to rise from the womb- i.e. hysteria, sense of uprising here, interesting that this is an illness commonly related to women, almost taken on a maternal/paternal role in bringing daughters up, effeminisation Rutter.

Heilmen

the old men themselves come to insight through suffering’

Everyman

Each of the friends he encounters is an allegorical figure, representing an aspect of Everyman’s life. 

(material) “Goods” all abandon Everyman when they learn that he is dying.

 “Knowledge,” “Beauty” and other virtues advise him, but they weaken and vanish as Everyman approaches death. 

Only “Good Deeds” comes with him to his judgement. Everyman illustrates a central doctrine of medieval Christianity: only by leading a good life can you earn salvation.

nihilistic spiritual universe, in which the protagonist—Lear—loses everything as he approaches death, but cannot expect salvation in the Christian sense. 

 Lear also learns which of his possessions he ought to have valued all along: the love of his daughter Cordelia

The nihilistic morality play + influence

extremely influential at the beginning of the twentieth century, inspiring a genre known as the Theatre of the Absurd. 

audiences found the ending of King Lear too shocking to watch: a version of the play rewritten by Nahum Tate to end happily was more popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and more closely resembled earlier renditions of the story Shakespeare borrowed from in writing his version. While it may have been too radical in the bleakness of its vision for Shakespeare’s times, the play’s pessimistic outlook appealed to writers looking to dramatize horrors of the twentieth century such as the Holocaust.

Bloom

‘what the drama of King Lear truly outrages in our universal idealisation of familial love’

A.C Bradley- what lear gained

"Lear lost the world, but gained a soul"

Arnold Kettle

"the social storm which shakes the divided kingdom, the inner storm that drives Lear mad"

The four humours

The four humours- Used as an explanation for human behaviour by renaissance doctors

ferdinand - choleric (excess of yellow bile - angry) - poor intentions of deceit

Duchess- sanguine (excess of blood - full of life) - courage and amorousness, positive nature of deceit

Dollimore

'catastrophic redistribution of power and property'
‘the battle that rages in King Lear is 'between order and power, between feudal system and individual will'

Rutter

patriarchal anxieties about effemnization are played out with a vengeance'

Harsnett’s ‘A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures’ (1603)

• Samuel Harsnett wrote a pamphlet about people who feigned madness to gain money or sympathy.

• Harsnett was a sceptic; he didn’t believe in demonic possession.

• Shakespeare used Harsnett’s pamphlet in creating Edgar’s disguise as Poor Tom.

• There are many links to Harsnett’s pamphlet in the play, such as Poor Tom’s words ‘the Foul Fiend’.

Grace Wildgoose (1603)

• She tried to have her father, Brian Annesley, declared insane.

• She and her sister tried to take control of his estate by proving he was unfit to manage it.

• Shakespeare would have heard about this story – it was big news in 1603–4.

• This real-life scandal probably gave Shakespeare the idea of making Lear go mad

The Spanish Armada (1588) and the Gunpowder Plot (1605)

• The invasion of the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot were both Roman Catholic plots against the government of England.

• As a result of these events and Renaissance Protestant nationalism, Roman Catholicism was seen as hostile and disloyal.

• Shakespeare seems to have avoided direct religious comment in his plays, but his characters, such as Lear, have Protestant leanings.

• Lear is obsessed by his sense of identity – his inner struggle; this was very much a Protestant preoccupation.

Tradition - rightful power in the modern day

Shift in conservatism- trumps america, the spread of reform - really it is the old ways that have become radicalised rather than the youth