1. King Lear First lecture

2. Lear in the 21 st century After all the warfare, bloodshed, genocide of the 20 th cent., not to mention what we’ve already achieved in the fledgling 21 st, Lear has come to seem Sh’s most profound tragedy. A dark, almost hopeless tragedy, lots of cruelty and suffering, even absurdity. The death of Cordelia, and maybe of Lear too, may seem almost gratuitous. And what could be worse to witness onstage than the blinding of Gloucester? “Theater of Cruelty” of Antonin Artaud. But a play that has depths that open further every time one reads or sees it. It starts out with the theme of families, but quickly becomes more...... and reaches a strangely symbolic character.

3. Lear in 1606 First recorded performance of the play is St. Stephen’s day, 26 December, 1606, before King James! Mind-boggling to think that a play that shows a king giving up his rule...... going mad and thrown to the mercy of the elements...... and learning about the completely arbitrary nature of all human authority (“a dog’s obeyed in office”)... should be played before the King of England and Scotland! A play that shows the dark side of the world over which James ruled. There was a recent case in law, in 1604, of the eldest daughter of Brian Annesley, a wealthy gentleman pensioner of Queen Elizabeth, who tried to have her father declared a lunatic, so she and her husband could control his estate. His youngest daughter, Cordell, protested and appealed (successfully) to Robt. Cecil (James’s minister). Annesley left his estate to Cordell at his death in 1604. And from June, 1604, to June 1606, a well publicized case in Star Chamber saw Sir Robert Dudley, bastard son of Robt. Dudley, earl of Leicester (Elizabeth’s favorite), trying (unsuccessfully) to have his bastardy overturned. He lost, partly because of James’s intervention.

4. Texts of Lear A quarto was published in 1608. And a quite different text in the folio of 1623. Quarto has almost 100 lines not in the folio. And folio has almost 300 lines not in the quarto. So essentially two different versions of the play. Our text conflates the two, as has usually been done. We get the folio text with the quarto “additions” in square brackets. The folio may have been the playing text.

5. Performance and source Richard Burbage played Lear in the original performances, the actor who had played Hamlet and Othello. And Richard Armin played the fool. He had played the fool in Twelfth Night (which he quotes at III.2.75-78), and the grave-digger in Hamlet. The setting of the play is very generalized – pre- historic, pre-Christian Britain. The story in Holinshed’s Chronicles goes back to 800 B.C. Actual source of play is an old play, King Leir, which had been performed in 1594 (by another company), and apparently staged again in 1605, when it was printed. Shakespeare clearly knew the text of that play and used it in his version.

6. The strange, fairytale-like opening of the play Clip of the Olivier film (1984). The opening with Gloucester and Kent: insists on Edmund’s bastardy, and a violation of a taboo here? If “realism” were the mode of the play, we’d wonder why Lear is doing this...... and why Cordelia can’t simply tell Lear what he wants to hear. Lear speaks of “our darker purpose.” He wishes to retire, conferring royal duties to younger strengths, “while we/ Unburdened crawl toward death.” The highly ornate, rhetorical flourish of Goneril’s speech, I.1.55-61. Which Regan tops! And of course the exercise is all symbolic, since Lear has already determined the shares. Do we feel some sort of taboo is being violated? Lear was obviously intending to favor Cordelia over the others: “what can you say to draw/ A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.” So why does Cordelia say, “Nothing, my lord”? And goes on to a non-rhetorical, flat statement of what daughters owe their fathers and their spouses. Why is Lear doing this? And why won’t Cordelia play along? Lear’s rage: 109ff.

7. Kent’s banishment Kent’s intervention: begins ceremoniously: l. 140ff But Lear demands plainness. So Kent lets him have it: “Be Kent unmannerly/ When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?” Note the familiarity of thou. And his rhyming at 185ff seems to round off the exchange. The play is dividing characters according to their language and rhetoric. The Burgundy/France “test”; Cordelia becomes more desirable to France because of her dowerless poverty. When Kent returns in disguise in 1.4, plainness becomes his middle name. And this defines his quarrel with Oswald, whom he calls a “base football player” (1.4.85) And his opposition to Oswald at II.2: his wonderfully inventive list of insults at l. 13ff. “No contraries hold more antipathy/ Than I and such a knave.” And even to Cornwall: “Sir, ‘tis my occupation to be plain./ I have seen better faces...” (89ff). Characters seem to run to the moral poles of the world of the play: Cordelia vs. her sisters, Kent vs. Oswald, Edgar vs. Edmund.

8. The moral poles of the play Goneril and Regan’s opposition to Lear at first seems commonsense. Their brief dialogue at the end of I.1. Goneril’s objections to the Fool, her problems with the hundred knights (1.4.195ff). Her desire that he “a little to disquantity your train.” Lear’s terrible curse of Goneril: 1.4.271. But Albany’s reaction complicates. Regan’s sympathy with Goneril, II.4 And they whittle down his 100 knights. “Oh reason not the need!” What gives us our grip on life? By this point their opposition seems moral.

9. Moral poles (cont.) Edmund and Edgar Edmund’s role as a sort of renaissance “new man”: his soliloquy at 1.2. With a new sense of “Nature” – almost Darwinian? His opposition to Edgar and Gloucester. And his eventual alliance with Goneril and Regan. Edgar’s choice of disguise – “Poor Tom” Why? He’s the son of an earl. His feigned madness in stark contrast to Edmund?

10. The Fool One of the most wonderful conceptions, and wonderful roles, in the play. He’s a jester, Lear’s “all-licensed fool,” who’s allowed to say anything. Court jesters were sometimes mental defectives, retarded adults. But sometimes professional entertainers, comedians allowed to enliven court proceedings. King James had a jester, Archie Armstrong, who was well known for an impudence verging on arrogance. Lear’s fool has an almost filial relation with him. Calls Lear “nuncle,” uncle; Lear calls him “boy” (even though Armin was in his early 40s). His strange link with Cordelia: the Fool has grown sad after Cordelia went to France: “Since my young lady’s going into France, the fool hath much pined away.” “And my poor fool is hanged,” Lear says in the last scene; he seems to mean Cordelia, but speaks of the fool? It’s the Fool who needles Lear mercilessly about the foolishness of what he has done in giving up his kingdom. And the fool disappears from the play after Act II, scene 6.