Shakespeare's "King Lear" Part 1: The Story

I think more than any other play, perhaps more than anything else in world literature, King Lear brings us face-to-face with the most basic questions of life. A life's very possibility of the foundations of any human contract. It strips things bare and asks what remains. It forces us to attend to and account for the evidence before our eyes. The play rips things away and asks what if anything can be built from the wreckage. King Lear's also a play about human weakness. It's about temptation and the pain and beauty and vulnerability of love. King Lear is a play about family. It's about what it's like to live in a family, about the blindness and ignorance and passions and unspoken feelings that exist within families. So it's a combination of both. From the one hand, a large, huge, cosmic question, mortality, what it means to live in a body that, you know, that the sense is that it's only purpose to life. These are huge questions, but then this would be intimate ones as well. I'm Simon Palfrey. I'm a professor of English at Brazers College University of Oxford. Welcome to Shakespeare for All. Today, we're talking with Professor Simon Palfrey about King Lear. Written around 1605, this play has perhaps the most expansive cosmic vision of all of Shakespeare's tragedies. The play is based on English Chronicle sources, which tell the story of a king from Britain's ancient past, who divides his kingdom between his two eldest daughters, only to have them rise against him. In Shakespeare's play too, King Lear divides his kingdom between his daughters, Gonerol and Regan, believing mistakenly that they love him more than his youngest daughter, Cordilla. Disastrous consequences follow that strip the aged king, and it seems the whole world down to nothing. In the world of King Lear, no dignity, no possession can be taken for granted. Everything is vulnerable. Everything is open to loss. House, home, nation, family, name, identity, love, your own body, your own mind, your hold upon where or who, or whether you even are. And the world of King Lear is a liminal work. It's in between human and non-human, living and dead, ends and beginnings. If we can imagine life as a storm or life at the edge of a cliff or life in a no place as empty as a stage, King Lear occupies all these places. King Lear was published in two substantially different versions in 1608 and 1623. Our summary is based primarily on the 1623 folio text. In both texts, the play opens with a dramatic political scene. Lear, the aged king of Britain, has decided to hand over the responsibility of ruling to his three daughters. He has assembled his court and is preparing to divide the kingdom. But who will get the biggest share depends on who wins the test that Lear sets. "Tell me, my daughters," he says, "which of you shall we say doth love us most?" He wants to be able to say to other people which have been thought as nothing the most. And so it's this kind of boastful vanity of the father. Where you have this enormous act of dividing the kingdom, which of course would be the worst possible thing to do in a nation would be to divide your kingdom. It's a recipe for disaster. Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the reign of King James I, who was King of both Scotland and England. James petitioned Parliament to unite England and Scotland into a single kingdom, stressing how a divided kingdom leads to tumult and civil war. The play's first audiences watching Lear divide his kingdom would likely have anticipated that strife would follow. And indeed it does. The two eldest daughters, Goneral and Regan pledge that they love Lear beyond anything else in life, beyond what words can say. Lear, pleased, gives them each a third of the kingdom. The youngest daughter, Cordelia, knows that her love for Lear is far more genuine than her sisters. But putting that love into words would sound like she was simply repeating her sister's flattery. She expresses this dilemma in an aside to the audience. What should Cordelia speak? Love and be silent. Then Lear asks Cordelia what she can say to outdo her sisters. We already know that Cordelia is under pressure to speak her truth because she's told us. And so she's kind of unable to speak to Lear because the only truth she can speak is to the audience. And she says nothing. Nothing, my Lord, says Cordelia. Lear is taken aback. Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again, he commands. Cordelia replies that she loves her father according to her bond. But when she marries, she will give half her love to her husband. Lear is enraged. He disinherits Cordelia, saying she will be a stranger to his heart forever. When Lear's faithful advisor Kent tells him he is making a terrible mistake, Lear banishes Kent. But the king of France, who has come to court as Cordelia's suitor, admires her steadfast virtue and asks to marry her. Lear divides the kingdom between Conor and Regan and says he will live alternately with each of them, bringing a hundred knights with him and retaining the name and all the addition to a king. He still wants a king's title and authority. Conor and Regan wonder anxiously what further irrational demands Lear will make, saying he has ever but slenderly known himself. The play juxtaposes Lear with another father and his children, the Earl of Gloucester who has two sons. The younger Edmund is a bastard, born outside of wedlock, and so he won't inherit his father's land, titles or property. He is automatically disinherited by his birth, as Cordelia has been disinherented by her father's decree. But Edmund fiercely questions the social customs that deprive him of status, in a saliloquy to the audience that parallels Cordelia's earlier aside. Both these children are placed in these situations like the oppressive circumstances where they aren't allowed to speak what they speak their minds, and they can only speak their minds in silence or when they're by themselves. Edmund forms a plot to ruin his older brother Edgar and to obtain his inheritance. Edmund tricks his father Gloucester into thinking that Edgar is plotting against his life. Just as Lear cannot see that Cordelia actually loves him most, Gloucester cannot see that Edgar is no traitor. Gloucester sends Edmund to apprehend the villain Edgar and promises to reward Edmund. The scene transitions to Goneril's house where Lear and his hundred nights are staying. The exiled Kent enters in disguise and pledges to serve Lear faithfully. Goneril's servant Oswald, meanwhile, treats Lear rudely. This angers the king, but his jester, the fool, reminds him that he brought about this disagreeable situation through his own folly. "Does thou call me fool, boy?" asked Lear. "All thy other titles thou hast given away," the fool replies. Goneril tells Lear that his men are wreaking havoc in her house and asks him to send half of his followers away. Lear is outraged at her challenge to his authority. Calling her degenerate bastard, he curses her and prays that her children torment her too so that she too may feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child. Goneril's unkindness seems to make him think differently about Cordelia. "I did her wrong," he says. Meanwhile, Edmund is advancing his plot to displace Edger. He tells Edger their father wants to arrest him and convinces him to flee. Bloster sends men after him. To disguise himself, Edger strips off his clothing, smears himself with mud and pretends to be poor Tom, a beggar who is ostensibly mad, but who speeches echo strangely with many of the play's key ideas. "The particular thing that I've been most interested in in Lear is trying to come to terms with the role of Edger and the role of poor Tom. That role has the second most lines in the play after that of the king. I actually think that the figure of poor Tom is the crucial figure for taking the play into the sort of metaphysical territory that everyone recognizes at the play enters. But it's it's poor Tom who takes us there." Lear goes to find Regan, saying that he and his knights will stay with her instead. He expects sympathy and obedience from her, but when Goneril arrives, Regan joins with her sister in telling Lear to dismiss his followers. Why does he need 100 knights, they ask? Or 50? Or 10? Or even one? He's run away from Goneril's plays because he's insulted. He goes there expecting to get looked after better. And what you get is this kind of slow, inextrable, remorseless, cutting away of Lear's presence in that world. You know, 100 knights, 50, 25, 10, 1, none. The outrage Lear now becomes inarticulate in his fury. No, you are natural hags. I will have such revenges on you both that all the world shall. I will do such things. What they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth. I shall go mad. Lear rushes out of the house into the storm that is raging outside. Goneril and Regan, determined to teach him a lesson about his own folly, lock the doors on him. Lear is now trapped in an inner and outer tempest. When Lear goes out into that storm he's left the social world entirely. It's like the curtain has been torn and he's entered this torn world, this drowned world, this world where none of the rules apply. Kent goes out into the storm to look for Lear. Still believing in his absolute authority, Lear is seeking to command the storm itself. Blow winds and crack your cheeks, rage, blow. You cataracts and hurricanes spout till you have drenched our steeples. And thou all shaking thunder smite flat the thick rotundity of the world. I think Lear often speaks in a way. He's like a sort of titan figure who doesn't really speak in metaphor. He just expects his words to come true. And this is why when he's cursing the storm, this is just natural for him because he's on the same level as the guards or something. Or this is what he believes. Kent finds Lear and the fool and persuades them to take shelter in a hovel. "My wits begin to turn," says Lear. "How dust my boy, art cold?" he asks the fool. "I have one part in my heart that's yet sorry for thee." They follow Kent into the hovel. At first Lear focuses on his own sufferings. "In such a night to shut me out. Oh, Regan, Goneroll, your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all." But then his attention turns to all those naked wits that have no shelter to protect them. And he begins to feel pity. "I have taken too little care of this," he says. In the hovel, they find Edgar disguised as Porton. His distracted speech suggests a fool from status, not unlike Lear's. Once, he says, he had "horse to ride and weapon to wear." But now he is Porton that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, and eats cow dung for salads. "Portons are cold," he says. He is also obsessed with the devil, describing his own past acts of darkness and tells Lear to "keep by words justice and beware the foul fiend." Lear seems to find a kind of wisdom in Tom's words and asks to "talk with this philosopher." Gloucester also goes to look for the king. Edmund, seizing another chance to increase his fortunes, tells Cornwall that Gloucester is a traitor. Cordelia has landed at Dover with French troops to aid her father, and Edmund says that Gloucester is aiding the enemy troops. Cornwall gives Edmund his father's title and goes to arrest Gloucester. Gloucester finds Lear and tells Kent to bring Lear to Dover, so Cordelia can protect him from the enemies who want to kill him. Regan and Cornwall arrest Gloucester, and in a growing rage Cornwall rips out one of Gloucester's eyes. A servant tries to stop him and even wounds him, but Cornwall takes out Gloucester's other eye. Gloucester cries out for Edmund, but Regan and Cornwall tell him that Edmund handed him over to them in the first place. Gloucester realizes that he has placed his trust in the wrong son, and cries, "Oh, my follies! Then Edgar was abused! Kind gods forgive me that and prosper him!" In one version of the play, some servants tend to Gloucester's wounds before he is forced outside by Regan and Cornwall. On the road, Gloucester unknowingly meets the son he prayed for. Edgar still disguised as poor Tom. "The father doesn't know it's his son, but the son knows it's his father. You've got the son, as it were, hiding from his own father, not known by the father. And so it's a kind of exquisite, but also kind of excruciating moment, a family drama." More drama is unfolding in Lea's family, too. Cornwall is dead, and Regan wants to marry Edmund, but Goneral wants Edmund, too. They all send forces to meet the French troops at Dover. The anguished Gloucester arrives at Dover, too, with poor Tom, still not knowing that the madman is his son. He asks Tom to bring him to a cliff, from which he intends to jump. "Edga is leading Gloucester to the cliff so that Gloucester can jump to his death. But it's still again, it's not Edga, it's poor Tom. It's mad Tom, is he's called. We've got a naked man or a madman, leading a blind man to the edge of a cliff." Edga tells his blind father that they are on a cliff's edge, describing the dizzying view down to the sea. But when Gloucester jumps, he just falls lightly on the ground. There was no cliff at all. But Edga tells Gloucester that he actually did fall off a cliff and landed unharmed. "Thy life's a miracle," he tells him, hoping this belief might cure his father's suicidal despair. Gloucester believes the gods have preserved his life and says, "Henceforth, I'll bear a fliction." Just then, Lear enters. As Gloucester has been physically devastated, Lear has been mentally devastated. He has gone mad. He shouts orders to imagine attendance and utter vicious denunciations of women. But, as with poor Tom, his mad words contain a certain wisdom. He recognises how authority can be corrupted. "See how John Justice rails upon John's simple thief, changes places, and handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief." He also seems to recognise, perhaps for the first time, that even a king has limitations. He says, "They told me I was everything. Tis a lie." When the French soldiers escort him back to the camp, he admits, "I am a very foolish fond old man, and to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind." But he does recognise Cordelia, and in a reversal of his earlier demand for love, he tells her, "Humbly, I know you do not love me. You have some cause." But Cordelia, full of compassion for her father, replies, "No cause, no cause." And Leah entreats her, "Pray you now, forget and forgive." The play gives us an exquisite scene of reconciliation and redemption, which then isn't the end of the play. Their Joyful Reunion is interrupted by the news that the enemy forces are near. Cordelia's army clashes with that of Edmund and Albany, and Cordelia's forces lose. She and Leah are captured, and Edmund sends them to prison. But Leah sees their imprisonment together, as almost a private paradise in a bleak world. "Come, let's away to prison. We too alone will sing like birds of the cage, without us asking me blessing I'll kneel down and ask of the forgiveness." But no sooner have they entered this imagined paradise than Edmund sends orders to kill Cordelia. Goneril too is plotting death. She poisons Regan to keep her from claiming Edmund. She also encourages Edmund to kill Albany so that she can marry Edmund. But Edga helps Albany discover the plot. Goneril commits suicide, and Albany arrests Edmund and invites Edga in disguise to fight Edmund in single combat. Edga mortally wounds Edmund, and then reveals who he is. He also describes how he finally revealed himself to their father, whose heart burst smilingly at learning he was reunited with his son. Edmund is moved and tries to make amends before he dies. He sends a message to halt the execution of Cordelia. But it is too late. Leah enters carrying Cordelia's dead body in his arms, howling. She's gone forever. She's dead as earth. Kent and Albany try to comfort Leah. Kent removes his disguise and reveals that he has been serving Leah even in exile. Albany declares he will restore Leah to his former power. But Leah can think only of Cordelia, speaking some of the most moving words Shakespeare ever wrote. In one version of the published text, this despairing line is followed by one that seems to offer hope. Does Leah imagine that he sees breath stirring on Cordelia's lips? Does he believe she might still be alive? We never know, for then Leah dies too. For those left alive, there is little sense of hope. The play ends with bleak lines, spoken in one text of the play by Albany and in another by Edgar. The weight of this sub-time we must obey, speak what we feel not what we ought to say. The oldest have gone most. We that are young shall never see so much nor live so long. In the next episode, we'll discuss what exactly we've seen by the end of King Leah, a near-apocalyptic vision of the destruction of the world and glimmers of life's survival. We'll see how this play asks to paraphrase Leah's full what use can be made of nothing.