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King Lear
King Lear is widely regarded as Shakespeare’s most artistic
achievement. A mad king was angry and naked on a stormy heath because his
daughters cheat him. Many scholars think these scenes as the finest example
of tragic lyricism in the English language. There was a folk tale that an
old monarch was abused by his children. Shakespeare took his main plot from
this story. In other works about “Lear”, the king does not go mad, his
“good” daughter does not die, and the tale has a happy ending.
This is not the case with Shakespeare’s Lear. This
tragedy has such strong force that audiences and readers may wonder whether
there is any meaning to the physical and moral slaughter with which King
Lear concludes. Like the noble Kent, seeing a mad, poor Lear with the
murdered Cordelia in his arms, the deep cruelty of the tale forces us to ask
“Is this the promis’d end?” (Act V, Scene iii, L264). That very question
divides two traditional critics of King Lear. One finds a heroic pattern in
the story, and the other see no redeeming or purgative dimension to the play
at all. According to the latter, the play just tells people the useless of
the human condition with Lear as Everyman.
Lear, the king of Britain, decides to step down from
the throne and divide his kingdom evenly among his three daughters. First,
however, he puts his daughters through a test, asking each to tell him how
much she loves him. Goneril and Regan, Lear’s older daughters, give their
father flattering answers. But Cordelia, Lear’s youngest and favorite
daughter, remains silent, saying that she has no words to describe how much
she loves her father. Lear is angry with the answer. The king of France, who
loves Cordelia, says that he still wants to marry her even without her land,
and she accompanies him to France without her father’s blessing.
Lear quickly knows that he made a wrong decision. Goneril and
Regan begin to get the little power that Lear still holds and treat him
badly in their houses. Unable to believe that his beloved daughters are
doing this to him, Lear slowly goes crazy. He leaves his daughters’ houses
to wander on a wild land during a great thunderstorm in which he utters the
injustice befalling him and express his desire to seek the justice from the
gods:
Let the great gods,
That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulgéd crimes,
Unwhipped of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjured, and thou simular of virtue
That are incestuous. Caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming
Hast practiced on man's life. Close pent-up guilts
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinned against than sinning.
(Act III, Scene ii, L47-58)
At this stage, Lear sees the storm as a possible
manifestation of divine anger at the way he has been treated. He is
searching for a sign from the gods that he is right. His stance is (to us)
absurd (although we have probably all known some old men with a similar
tendency to scream at the world if they don't get their way), but his sense
of outrage is so powerful, he is filled with such a passionate self-pity,
that he is, like Job, demanding justice from the chaos of natural forces all
around him, seeking an answer from God.
Meanwhile, an elderly nobleman named Gloucester also
experiences family problems, very much like what happened to King Lear.
Gloucester is abandoned by his illegitimate son.
When the loyal Gloucester realizes that Lear’s daughters have
turned against their father, he decides to help Lear although it is
dangerous. Regan and her husband, Cornwall, discover him helping Lear, blind
him, and turn him out to wander the countryside. He ends up being led by his
own son, Edgar, toward the city of Dover, where Lear has also been brought.
In Dover, a French army lands on England led by Cordelia in
order to save her father. Edmund wants to be with both Regan and Goneril,
whose husband, Albany, is sympathetic to Lear. Goneril and Edmund plan to
kill Albany.
Gloucester tries to kill himself, but Edgar saves him by
pulling the strange trick of leading him off an imaginary cliff. Meanwhile,
the English troops reach Dover, and the English, led by Edmund, defeat the
Cordelia-led French.
Lear and Cordelia are caught. In the scene, Edgar duels
with and kills Edmund. Goneril poisons Regan for jealousy over Edmund and
then kills herself when her crime is exposed by Albany. Lear finally dies
out of grief at Cordelia’s passing. Albany, Edgar, and the elderly Kent are
left to take care of the country under a cloud of sorrow and regret.
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. She’s gone forever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth.
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