King Lear AO3 Context

When was ‘King Lear’ first performed?

December 1606

The Jacobean Era

1. Recent accession of James I – his revival of DROK, reputation, and legacy

2. The Union Question​

3. The Gunpowder Plot & Equivocation​

4. Parliamentary checks on power of monarchy and James’s trouble with parliament

Jacobean era wider context

period of discovery - America was discovered - showing the world was larger than previously thought

Shakespeare was preoccupied with national identity and conflict (union question, political instability)

Shakespeare was not allowed to criticise James I and so set his plays in the past (pagan settings)

Shakespeare’s plays always end in a restoration of order, due to audience expectation and censorship

Within these constraints, Shakespeare criticises the position of (James I) King (DROK) by making Lear imperfect and without full control

Through Lear and Gloucester, Shakespeare criticises Jacobean society as unjust

James I

• crowned king in 1603 following an uncertain succession

• threat of war from europe (mirroring Cordelia + France invading)

• Lear rejects God’s gift of DRoK when he surrenders the throne (and the responsibilities of the throne, the authority of the traitors undermines him, he also has handed over the land - not very kingly as its an abuse of his power given by God to choose who gets what and who is next in line

The Union Question

• there was a turbulent history of the relationship between England, Scotland and Wales

• Lear’s misguided division of his kingdom - Shakespeare could be anti-union - critical

points on James I’s reputation and legacy

• James was accused of having too many favourites

• this raised the question of the king’s courtiers/advisors (Gloucester, Kent, Fool)

• James became known as ‘the wisest fool in chistendom’ due to speech impediment and drinking (lear as a fool)

gunpowder plot 1605 (after Lear was written)

• shows the challenges faced by monarchs in this era and the extent of catholic unrest

• comparable to the failed plot of goneril and regan against Lear → throwing him out into the storm

• James Shapiro’s ‘Year of Lear’ → the meaning of the word “equivocation” shifted abruptly in the first few years of the seventeenth century to mean “concealing the truth by saying one thing, while deceptively thinking another”

tensions with parliament

• in this time there were conflicts between James I and parliament about power and absolutism

• the main issue in 1603/4 was whether james could unite england and scotland. he wanted to but govt. did not

• question of dissolving parliament or not (mirrors lear and kent → banishment of kent despite needed his advise and protection)

• “What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five[…]?” / “What need you one?”

sources in the creation of King Lear

• some say Lear is a composition of different sources

• ‘Titus Andronicus’ was thought to be the first of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and the fool is killed halfway through much like the fool disappears in the middle of Lear

• two late 1500s plays provided the ideas for the 3 sisters and their husbands 

  • ‘True Chronicle History of King Leir and His Three Daughters’ (1594)

  • Edmund Spenser’s 1596 ‘The Faerie Queene’ depicts the hanging of a character Cordelia

parable of the prodigal son

• tells the story of forgiveness and mercy between a father and two sons

• the youngest leaves home with his inheritance money but spends it all and faces famine

• the father forgives him and celebrates his return with a feast

• Lear is a prodigal figure (inverted son) to Cordelia’s forgiving character → Cordelia even has Lear in her name phonetically (Corde-lear)

• he falls for the lies of his eldest daughters due to his own greed for adoration and vanity and rebukes the one child that loves him unconditionally

• he travels around the kingdoms and returns to Cordelia, pleading for her forgiveness

the book of job

• Job, religious and wealthy, is put to the test by Satan to see whether Job’s faith in God is due to his wealth and success

• after losing all his possessions, children and health, eventually Job trusts God’s plan even though he does not understand it

• At the end, God restored all that Job had lost, and gave Job twice as much as he had before

• Edgar as a ‘job-like figure’ who reminds Gloucester that “men must endure” aptient suffering for a higher reward (g. wilson knight)

early morality plays

• morality plays were popular in the 15th - 16th centuries

• they personify virtues and vices, usually in a struggle between good and evil

• usually a story of temptation, fool and redemption

• provides audiences with moral guidance

• the Everyman is a central doctrine of medieval Christianity where personified forces guide him towards death

• Lear is presented as an everyman figure but without redemption (apart from Lear’s reconciliation with Cordelia)

malcontent

• staple figure of elizabethan/jacobean drama

• world weary cynic expressing his contempt for the world

• Edmund - outside normal boundaries of society - use of soliloquy (bringing us almost to empathise with him)

Machiavelli

• the idea that there is no place for morality in a political world

• Edmund, Goneril and Regan are all Machiavellian characters

• Through these characters, Shakespeare critiques the corrupting influence of power and the dangers of unchecked ambition

• the world of king lear is a machiavellian fantasy of politics where God provides no guidance (eg. the storm - not divine justice but violent force of nature)

Nahum Tate

• audiences found the ending too shocking

• rewritten by Nahum Tate in 1681

• Happier ending (more popular in the 18th and 19th centuries)

• this more closely resembled the original stories that shakespeare used to write King Lear - diluted the existentialist aspects

what is catharsis

Aristotle said catharsis is the purging of pity and fear in an audience

it is a relief for the audience when a character takes responsibility

define hamartia. what are the characters hamartias?

fatal flaw of a hero leading to downfall (Aristotle)

Edmund - illegitimacy and bitterness (at society and gloucester)

Goneril - greed for power

Regan - reliance on other people/weakness, her greed for power

Cordelia - loyalty to her father, too truthful and moral - doesn’t fit in this unjust world

Lear - vanity and pride

anagnorisis

moment of critical discovery or realisation (aristotle)

presented as a process in KL

lear has a personal and political anagnorisis

he realises that nature is separate to monarchy, the unjust nature of poverty and power, and his failure of his role of head of state (political anagnorisis) + redemption with cordelia (personal anagnorisis)

the process begins when he strips himself of the royal robes (storm scene, scene 3)

illegitimacy

• illegitimates cannot inherit, and have no place in society

• they are outside usual legitimate power structures which means they are associated with lawlessness

• they are in a perfect position to act as commentators (soliloquy)

• like Shylock’s ‘Has not a Jew eyes..?’ speech from MoV, Edmund says ‘Why bastard? Wherefore base?’

views of women in the 1600s

• no autonomy - enshrined in the identities of their fathers/husbands/masters

• often acted as councillors to their husbands, without their own political views

• the 3 daughters all reject the view of having their husbands’ identities and are stronger than their husbands in all cases - they all have a distinct power and set of morals and motivations unrelated to their husbands

• women suffered from ‘hysteria passio’, meaning ‘affliction of the womb’ → the epitome of the condition was to be found in a female organ

Stagecraft and performances

• Cordelia and the Fool being the same actor - ambiguity of “my poor fool is hanged!” - Fool often closest to Lear much like a surrogate for Cordelia not being there having been banished  

• Lack of understanding w/ actors and their scripts as they were given scripts with only their lines on them (more shock/realism when having the conversations) → power dynamic between actors who were made to feel like they were relying on the other actors (like a dance) 

• Characters would have known the interaction has not gone well by their own lines but would be shocked at the extent to which Lear got angry, for example = more realistic reaction

King George III

• Production of King Lear was stopped - between 1810-1820 - due to the mental illness of King George III

• King George III reigned from 1760-1820 (went mad in his last years)

• The parallel between the play's mad king and the king's condition was deemed too unsettling and potentially disrespectful → supports points about ‘King Lear’ being a political play

• The ban lasted for nine years

in how many of shakespeare’s plays do father-daughter relationships feature?

father-daughter relationships feature in 21 of shakespeare’s plays, out of his total 38

significance of the last line of the play

• “speak what we feel, not what we ought to say”

• traditionally given to the most powerful character on stage in the 16/17thc

• some attempt at catharsis amongst the macabre nature of the final scene

quos vult perdere jupiter dementat prius

“those whom god wishes to destroy, he first deprived them of reason/drives them mad”

cassandra figure

• In Greek mythology, Cassandra is a prophetess who foretells future events accurately, but her prophecies are always disregarded

• the fool is a cassandra figure in ‘king lear’ - a voice of reason, arguably symbolic of Lear’s conscience, yet never listened to

• the fool disappears in the middle of the play, perhaps symbolic of Lear succumbing to total madness

differences between the quarto and folio

• folio has some semblances of hope - quarto has less lines and culminates in a more bleak, miserable play

• folio includes the lines “look here!” before lear dies - he dies similarly to gloucester “smilingly” with some hope and comfort that his daughter may still be alive

• folio includes about 10 lines extra in the scene where gloucester has his eyes gouged out (act 3, scene 7) - includes two unnamed servants “fetch some flax and white of egg to help his face. Heaven help him!” - more merciful than the quarto which omits any semblance of humanity