Criticisms - Worrall, Rutter, and O'Toole

KEY:

• ^^blue - quotes from the critical source^^
• @@orange - quotes from king lear@@
• %%green - a critical point with which I agree%%
• ==red - a critical point with which I disagree==

in summary, this article looks at the way in which the tragedy of King Lear is concerned not with the domestic matters of Othello, or the matters of ‘nationhood’ that characterise Macbeth and Hamlet, but with matters of government. This definition is justified by the idea that the ^^‘national location’ of the play - Ancient Britain - ‘is incidental, a wider contextual setting is involved’^^, with Rob Worrall suggesting here that the play serves as a metaphor for Shakespeare’s criticism of the Jacobean court.

}}I would agree that it does serve as a metaphor for the corruption of the court of James I for many reasons:}}

• the contemporary relevance of the theme of succession, which runs through the central dilemma of King Lear - the love test of the opening scenes is concerned with the inheritance of each of Lear’s daughters, and the division of a kingdom is shown to be a precursor to conflict, in the idea that you can divide something by three, because then a majority can be formed, but not by two as that leads to a state of constant conflict, rivalry, and stalemate. The idea of succession was very relevant in Jacobean society as many were concerned that James I, as a Scotsman, had no right to the English throne
• Britain is a divided land, and would have been so at the time of Shakespeare’s writing, between four countries, and this is significant as, during the Jacobean period, there was an interest in historical tales and folklore explaining the formation of Britain today. Thus I would agree that by drawing on a folkloric tale of King Lear (the story was not originally written by Shakespeare, only the subplot between Edgar and Edmund was), Shakespeare is attempting to draw parallels between ancient and contemporary society, explaining why society was the way it was in his day
• foreign settings were often used in Jacobean literature to allow indirect criticism of issues in the home country of the author, and therefore it is clear to see the tragedy of King Lear as a commentary on governance, because although it takes place in Britain, its location in time is unfamiliar to the audience, and casts it as foreign
• there was also a great interest in Jacobean culture, in consuming stories of less civilised lands, from a position of civilisation such as Britain, and juxtaposing the Christianity of his audience with such a paganistic setting, even a setting that blurs the boundaries between Christianity and paganism, Shakespeare achieves just this

Worrall also justifies his idea that King Lear is a criticism of Jacobean governance, by identifying that its time of writing can be contextualised right after an attempt to dismantle government. His estimation of when King Lear was being performed is placed around ^^‘St Stephen’s Day, 1606’^^, which situates it just after Guy Fawkes’ infamous ^^‘attempted terrorist attack upon the Houses of Parliament on 5 November 1605’^^, and as such Worrall asks the question, ^^‘could it be that the attempt to blow-up the seat of Government prompted the playwright to develop this dramatisation of old age and disaffectation between the generations into a more political play?’^^

}}Worrall is making the suggestion here that part of the metaphor for corruption of governance lies in Shakespeare’s juxtaposition between old age and youth, and I agree with this.}}

We can see that there is much criticism of old age from the younger characters in the play, and a suggestion that old age returns man to dependence and immaturity so that their reign must be overseen by someone else. This could thus arguably suggest that the theme of youth serves as a metaphor for a new kind of leadership to replace the old.

Quotes to justify this idea can be seen in Goneril and Regan’s criticism of Lear’s age, at the end of act 1, scene 1, as well as at other points throughout the play

• @@Regan: ‘tis the infirmity of his age yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself’ (Act 1, Scene 1)@@ - youth and this new kind of leadership is characterised with a sense of self awareness that the old leadership lacks (or do they just believe they are?)
• many quotes juxtapose wisdom and old age with each other, which is unconventional, since the two are usually shown as coexisting. This further adds to Shakespeare’s suggestion that old age/ old leadership is insufficient to rule the country:
  • @@Goneril: ‘as you are old and reverend, should be wise’ (Act 1, Scene 4)@@
  • @@Fool: ‘if thou were my fool, nuncle, I’d have thee beaten for being old before thy time’/ ‘thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise’ (Act 1, Scene 5)@@

therefore, Worrall suggests that the play is making a political commentary, not just in being representative of the corrupt Jacobean court, but in suggesting a far more suitable means of governance to replace it, through the metaphor that lies in his juxtaposition of old age and youth. He identifies a trend within his contemporaries, which Shakespeare’s writing is no exception from, and that is the idea that ^^‘Renaissance literature is peppered with didactic writing’^^

[[I agree with this to some extent, especially when considering the idea that Shakespeare’s juxtaposition between the young and the old is a didactic political argument; however, it could be argued that there is a level of reflexivity in his writing, as if he is challenging the audience to question his own authority to explain to them what morality is. As a playwright, what puts him in a position of moral superiority?[[

Worrall argues that ^^‘drama is equally capable of instruction, and may very well have been intended to be so by Shakespeare as much as it was by Shaw or by Priestley, in subsequent eras’^^, however, I would argue that a question is asked as to what gives drama the moral high-ground over its consumers. I would even go as far as to argue that Shakespeare questions if morality even exists or if it is simply socially constructed.

This deconstruction of morality can be seen in multiple ways:

• the youthful characters, intended to be a metaphor for a new and more suitable form of governance, are characterised with as much barbarity and corruption as their father and their predecessors
  • this is shown through the theme of the female relationship with power - they are antagonised and characterised as if they are taking something that does not rightfully theirs during the love test
  • we can tell that Lear intended for the most bountiful and generous land to be given to Regan and Goneril’s sister Cordelia in his inattentiveness to them which is juxtaposed with a warmth towards his youngest daughter that is elicited by no one else - @@‘Goneril, our eldest-born, speak first’ (Lear) / ‘whom even but now was your best object, the argument of your praise, the balm of your age, the best, the dearest’ (France)@@
  • however, this taking of power and inheritance is not presented as revolutionary, but is villainised. The two daughters become allegorical predators, and Lear their defenceless prey.
  • there is constant reference to mythological stories of children eating their parents - @@‘he that makes his generation messes to gorge his appetite’ (Lear, Act 1, Scene 1)@@
  • the verb ‘digest’ carries with it connotations of devouring and hunting - @@‘with my two daughter’s dowers digest the third’ (Lear, Act 1, Scene 1)@@
  • there is much use of derogatory language that compares Goneril and Regan to animals, especially birds of prey - @@‘detested kite, thou liest’ (Lear to Goneril, Act 1, Scene 4)@@; by comparing Goneril to a bird of prey such as a ‘kite’, Lear also compares himself to carrion, as these birds often scavenge. It is as if he is emphasising his defencelessness, as well as her lack of sympathy
  • }}the characters of Goneril and Regan regularly criticise Lear’s mannerisms and behaviours, but are far more similar to him than they would care to admit. This is shown very much through the language they use, language being a very important theme in the play, and this relates to the ideas presented by Rutter in Language and Female Power in King Lear}}
  • Rutter suggests that language acts as a string holding Lear and his daughters together, casting them as one in the same, with Goneril and Regan ‘having learned his language to survive his love test’

      This is shown in the elaborate and ceremonial language they adopt similar to their father in the love test - @@Goneril’s ‘a love that makes breath poor and speech unable; beyond all manner of so much I love you’, and Regan’s ‘I am alone felicitate in your dear highness’s love’@@, are highly exaggerated statements. * The two also become very controlling through their speech. Not only are they able to control and manipulate their father with flattery, as above, they adopt definitive modal verbs and imperative verbs into their vocabulary, finding that with their words they are able to make demands. For example, in @@Act 1, Scene 3, Goneril explains to Oswald that ‘when [Lear] returns from hunting, I will not speak with him. Say I am sick’@@

      It is as Rutter explains - ^^they learn to ‘manage words’, and, in ‘managing words, they manage their father’^^ * Goneril and Regan are also argued to become more like their father than their father himself, replacing him as the masculine force of the play while forcing him to assume the feminine. This is argued by the idea that in Jacobean culture, literature, and drama, the act of cursing was associated with women, and a summary of the source explains that ^^‘Lear himself is made to seem womanish by his tears and cursing. Rutter suggests that at the time, these were associated with women, who wept or cursed because they had no real power’^^. Women take on the role of masculinity and vice versa, showing that the male violence and anger that characterised Lear’s rule, still reigns in the younger generation. * A quote for the reversal of these gender roles can be found in Act 2, Scene 4, when Lear begs @@‘touch me with noble anger, and let not women’s weapons, water-drops, stain my man’s cheeks’@@, as well as in Act 1, Scene 4, when Lear engages in the ‘feminine’ act of cursing - @@‘Hear, Nature, hear! dear Goddess, hear! Suspend thou purpose if thou didst intend to make this creature fruitful’@@

• The theme of religion creates a world where there is no clearly discernible moral code, in the fact that Christianity and paganism coexist within the society of King Lear. In showing that there is no social solidarity and no singular belief system, Shakespeare suggests that people do not know where to take instruction on morality from. This is an idea that Worrall touches on, describing the setting of King Lear as ^^‘a composite world’,^^ and asking ^^‘is it Dark Ages Pagan or is it Renaissance Christian? The textual evidence demonstrates that it is both. The world of this play is anachronistic: it refers to God and it refers to the Gods’^^
  • However, this could alternatively be part of the metaphor for the new replacing the old, as paganism in the play is mostly associated with the older characters, such as Gloucester or Lear, and scorned by the young - especially Edmund, who sees pagan understanding of predestination as outdated and sees that morality can be chosen, as people have free will. He makes a mockery of his father’s obsession with horoscopes @@(‘these late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us’, Act 1, Scene 2)@@, stating that it @@‘is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, the stars; as if we were villains on necessity’ (Act 1, Scene 2)@@
• there is a distinction made between virtue and vice in the form of the three sisters, a trope ubiquitous in folklore who act as literary foils of one another, which would, if this were a straight-forward didactic teaching of morality, without any sense of reflexivity, end in a denouement with the former prospering over the latter. However, as with the form of tragedy, and its constant downward trajectory into pessimism, virtue dies alongside vice.
  • Cordelia dies at the end of Act 5, the needlessness of her death prompting many critics to express frustration at the ^^‘injustice of King Lear’^^, perhaps because this prevents it from fulfilling any didactic means
  • @@Edmund: ‘he hath commission from thy wife and me, to hang Cordelia in the prison’ (Act 5, Scene 3)@@ - she dies offstage as well, which denotes her death as unimportant, suggesting that vice or virtue, we are all human, and we all die the same
  • her death is also minutes after her reconciliation with Lear, a moment which teases the idea that morality may still exist in that he confesses his foolishness - @@‘pray do not mock me: I am a very fond and foolish old man, fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less; and, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind’ (Act 4, Scene 7)@@ - and we can see his realisation of love for her in his desperation to find any sign of life in her lifeless body - @@‘lend me a looking-glass; if that her breath will mist or stain the stone, why, then she lives’ (Act 5, Scene 3)@@ - and in the quote: ‘@@Cordelia, Cordelia! Stay a little, Ha! What is’t thou say’st? Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in a woman. I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee’@@ - the confusion between present and past tense here shows his inability to believe that his daughter is dead

    However, his repentance is not rewarded with salvation - instead he dies of a broken heart. Quotes for the pain and intensity of his heartbreak: * @@‘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. She’s gone forever’. (Act 5, Scene 3)@@ * @@‘And my poor fool is hanged! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all?’ (Act 5, Scene 3)@@

• The unfairness of fate, and its lack of discrimination between vice and virtue is shown too through the character if Kent, whose story suggests that morality does not truly exist in this world, because he is punished for being good:
  • Edmund presents an oxymoron between Kent’s ‘crime’ and his punishment in saying @@‘and the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! His offence, honesty! ‘Tis strange’ (Act 1, Scene 2)@@
  • A final way in which Shakespeare suggests morality is socially constructed, is through the themes of hierarchy and control. The world of the play is very hierarchical, first and foremost in that the premise of the play is centred around inheritance - the inheritances of Lear’s daughters and of Gloucester’s sons - and it could be argued that some of the characters try and impose a hierarchy and sense of structure onto the natural world. For example, attitudes are presented that see women as inferior, according to natural order (this can be seen in scenes where Lear attempts to curse his daughters). However, with the paganism of the world of the play, and the introduction of the storm - described as untameable and destructive by the likes of Cornwall (@@‘shut up your doors, my Lord; ‘tis a wild night’, Act 2, Scene 4@@) and Gloucester (@@‘alack! the night comes on, and the bleak winds do sorely ruffle; for many miles about there’s scarce a bush’, Act 2, Scene 4@@) - we see that the natural world is rules by chaos. Hierarchy, and the idea that one person can be more moral than another, and that this is a way of denoting someone as deserving of power, is shown to be a construct created by humans to allow them to feel they have some control over their unstable lives.

}}This entire point about reflexivity, and the idea that Shakespeare questions his own authority with regards to teaching morality is supported by the arguments of O’Toole in The Morality of King Lear:}}

• ^^‘Conventional complaints about the ending of the play - that there is no convincing re-assertion of the moral and social order at the end - forget that this is precisely the effect that Shakespeare structured the play in order to achieve’^^ - O’Toole recognises a deliberate deconstruction of morality
• O’Toole argues that the ending is made even more unsatisfactory and Shakespeare’s point emphasised further by the undermining of the conclusive denouement that exists in Edmund and Edgar’s fight - ^^‘the ending of the play is in a sense a second ending. We have already had a conventional, moral ending, the one provided by the single combat of Edmund and Edgar […] except that it is not the end, that it is not enough, that we are suddenly faced with this old man who comes back onto stage, literally howling’^^
• ^^‘things start to go wrong with the moral ending in which good has vanquished evil’^^