Chapter V

KING LEAR

Shakespeare's King Lear, since first staged and published in the early

seventeenth century, has been the subject of extensive literary interpretation and
the object of intense critical debate. The key issue here is whether King Lear is a

classical tragedy with a redemptive moral or a play with a profoundly pessimistic,

even nihilistic, view of man and the world he briefly inhabits. The critics of

Shakespeare’s tragedies are broadly grouped as said by Kiernan Ryan thus:

In the two dominant and complementary interpretive manoeuvres, the

tragedies are presented either as dramatising the validity of the
established social order and vindicating conventional beliefs and values,

or as reconciling us to what is perceived as our intractably flawed human

nature, and thus to the inescapable necessity of the given human
condition, however monstrous and unbearable its cruelty and injustice.1

This is the substance that a large number of Shakespearean study guides and
journals on tragedies have taken for granted. The fate of the tragic hero seems to

lie in what he does; some kind of ‘moral flaw’ is searched in him. Shakespeare’s

tragedies are convoluted into tales of temptation and damnation. If the tragedies
are re-read we realize that Shakespeare presents in his tragedies not this but the
greatness of men set against their helplessness, who are caught in those

1 Kiernan Ryan, King Lear: The Subversive Imagination, included in King Lear: New Casebook,
ed. by. Kiernan Ryan, (Macmillan Press Ltd, London, 1993), p.73.

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circumstances which are outside their control, who in Cordelia’s words “with best
meaning, have incurr’d the worst” (King Lear. V. iii. 4). King Lear is the tragedy

which represents a real picture of life, and strikes the human psyche and
symbolizes human sentiments, which teaches that human sufferings at times
could be enormously disproportionate to human follies.

In tragical pathos, in dramatic force, in grandeur of sentiment and diction,

King Lear has no superior in all the wide range of the world's drama. The

language often rises to or even exceeds the sublimity of Aeschylus and

Sophocles. A. W . Schlegel states that:

. . .in King Lear the science of compassion is exhausted. The principal

characters here are not those who act, but those who suffer. W e have
not in this, as in most tragedies, the picture of a calamity in which the
sudden blows of fate seem still to honour the head which they strike, and
where the loss is always accompanied by some flattering consolation in
the memory of the former possession; but a fall from the highest
elevation into the deepest abyss of misery, where humanity is stripped of
ail external and internal advantages and given up a prey to naked
helplessness.2

The tragedy, further seems to be dealing less with merely the human beings, or
human passions, or human frailties, but more with the phenomenon of human
suffering itself.

King Lear is the play which depicts the misfortune resulting from the fatal

ingratitude shown to a self-conscious king, an old man, and most important, a

father, by his two elder daughters. Lear is indeed “a man more sinned against
than sinning". The play depicts Lear’s sufferings which are so intense that we do

2 A W Schlegel, from Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (1811), included in Shakespeare:
King Lear A Case Book, ed. by Frank Kermode, ( Macmillan Education Ltd, London, revised ed
1992), p.29-30.

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develop a feeling of righteous anger for his elder daughters who have inflicted so

much pain upon him and in the end we tend to excuse him for the wrong that he
has done to Cordelia and to Kent. W e feel pity and admiration for his heroic
efforts to be patient, the nature of his repentance towards the end of the play

touch us and the scene of the reunion with Cordelia moves us to the core. The
sub-plot of Gloucester makes us experience the agony of Lear as a reduplicated
universal predicament. Therefore, in the end we are forced to feel that though the
storm which overwhelmed Lear in the beginning of the play seems to be
generated by his own deeds, he is in fact more a patient, that is, a sufferer, than
the agent, the wrong doer.

■■

II

The tragic action begins when Lear, the ruler of Britain enters his state
room and announces his plan to divide the kingdom among his three daughters.
He intends to give up the responsibilities of government as he is now over eighty

and wishes to spend his old age visiting his children. Moreover, anticipating the

trouble that might arise after his death about the division of the kingdom he well in

advance wants to sort out the matter and so himself takes the responsibility of
dividing the kingdom among his three daughters. And here lies the paradox of the
play, the king who wants to shake off all the responsibility and care so that he can

“unburthen’d crawl toward death” (I. i. 40) faces the heaviest burden of unmerited
grief. The play makes us at once aware of how problematic things can turn out to

be: man may intend something good but its fulfillment he can never be sure
about. It also exposes how unreliable our customary formulations and
generalizations can be when we see the spectacle of the man as old as King Lear
“four score and upwards” (IV. vii. 61) who must renounce the family and, the

legitimate comforts of the world, and plunge into untold misery.

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 In the opening scene we find Lear displaying a childish vanity and
arrogance. Lear has already decided to divide his kingdom among his three
daughters and has marked the territories to be allotted to them on the map. He
does not propose to make any alteration in the divisions he has already made.
Yet he commands his daughters to proclaim which of them loves him the most,
promising to give the greatest share to the most deserving daughter. The love test
at the beginning of Act I, scene i, sets the tone for this extremely complex play,

which is full of emotional subtlety, conspiracy, and double-talk, and which swings
between confusing extremes of love and anger. Lear’s demand that his daughters
express how much they love him is puzzling but it may conceal the sense of
insecurity and fear of an old man who needs to be reassured of his own
importance. Of course, rather than having a true assessment of his daughters’
love for him, the test turns out to be an invitation to flattery by the treacherous

daughters.

Lear’s scheming older daughters, Goneril and Regan, respond to his test at

once with flattery, telling him in wildly overblown terms that they love him more
than anything else. Goneril, the eldest daughter speaks first. She tells her father

that she cannot even put her professed love into words: “A love that makes breath
poorer, speech unable / Beyond all manner of so much I love you” (I. i. 59).

Regan, the middle daughter, speaks next. She follows her sister’s lead by saying,

“I find she names my very deed of love; / Only she comes too short" (I. i. 70-71).
The excessive and pompous speeches of Goneril and Regan are gaudy
speeches delivered to match Lear’s own awkward demand.

Finally it is Cordelia’s turn to express the depth of her love for her royal
father who demands still more from his joy, his youngest daughter, and turns to
her with the greatest expectation:

What can you say to draw

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 A third more opulent than your sisters? (I. i. 84-85)

But when queried by her father, Cordelia, Lear’s youngest and favourite daughter

refuses to speak. In contrast to her sisters, whose professions are banal and
insincere, Cordelia does not know how to flatter her father: this is an immediate
reflection of her honesty and true devotion to him. “Love, and be silent,” (I. i. 61)

she says to herself. When her father asks her the crucial question as to what she
can say to merit the greatest inheritance, she answers only, “Nothing, my lord,"
(I. i. 86) and thus seals her fate. Lear insists “Nothing will come of nothing: speak
again” (I. i. 89) and when she still fails to satisfy him, he exclaims “How, how,
Cordelia! Mend your speech a little, / Lest you may mar your fortunes" (I. i. 93-94).

Lear here is hopeful and under the impression, may be that Cordelia is not able to
speak what she wishes because of some reason, or has forgotten her lines. W e
see here Lear waiting to hear a particular kind of speech which would surpass
even the absurd protestations of love made by Goneril and Regan.

Cordelia’s reply “Nothing” is a word that reappears throughout the play with

disastrous connotations. “Nothing” is a key word that is repeated several times in

the play, thus emphasizing the word’s importance. Cordelia’s utterance, “nothing”
is echoed at the end of the play when she is dead and nothing remains of her.

When Gloucester sees nothing he is finally able to see the truth and when Lear
emerges from nothingness of his mental decline, it is to know that Cordelia has

always loved him the most.

When pressed further by her father Cordelia says, in the love contest:

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave

My heart into my mouth: (I. i. 90-91).

Cordelia loves her father Lear according to the bonds of blood relationship, as
paternity demands. She answers her father in plain words but with sincerity and

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love. Her response is in keeping with Elizabethan social norms, which expect a
daughter to love her father because that is the law of nature. According to nature

man is part of a hierarchy, from God, to King, to child. Cordelia tempers her reply
with reason to a simple unembellished statement, that the honour she accords is
but due to a father by his daughter:

I love your Majesty

According to my bond; no more nor less. (I. i. 91-92).

So when Cordelia refuses to barter her love for material profit, Lear, in response,
in sheer arrogance and injured self-esteem gets enraged and sees Cordelia’s
reply as an obstinate rejection. He disowns Cordelia by denying her all affection
and paternal care:

Let it be so; thy truth then be thy dower:

. . .Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,

And as a stranger to my heart and me

Hold thee from this for ever (I. i. 107,112-15)

King Lear banishes Cordelia and divides her share of the kingdom between her
two flattering sisters Goneril and Regan saying:

With my two daughter’s dowers digest the third (I. i.127)

Cordelia’s answer hurts Lear’s pride; he needed an overwhelming protestation of

love to justify his gift of the best portion of his kingdom.

The earl of Kent, a nobleman who has served Lear faithfully for many

years, is the only courtier who disagrees with the king’s actions. Kent tells Lear he
is insane to reward the flattery of his older daughters and disown Cordelia, who
loves him more than her sisters do. Lear turns his anger on Kent, banishing him

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from the kingdom and telling him that he must be gone within six days. Lear’s
intense anger towards Kent also suggests the fragility of the King’s emotional
state, who believes to be scorned by those from whom he expected fuller support.

Indeed anger marks the play’s opening scene. Lily B Campbell makes a

very relevant observation on anger, citing Aristotle:

The foundation of all Renaissance discussion of anger is to be found in

Aristotle [who] defined anger as:

“an impulse, accompanied by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous
slight directed without justification towards what concerns oneself or towards
what concerns one’s friends” (Rhetorica, 1378a).
Anger, according to Aristotle, always rises from injured self-esteem, from
some slight inflicted upon an individual...
Since a man expects to be respected by his inferiors, he expects those
to respect him to whom he believes he is superior in birth, capacity,
goodness, or anything else. Furthermore, he expects those whom he has
treated well, as well as those whom he is now treating well, to respect
him. According to Aristotle, then, the man who is slighted by those who
he thinks ought to respect him and feel grateful toward him is the more
easily offended.
Furthermore, Aristotle pointed out that the slight is most keenly felt if that
aspect in which we think ourselves most worthy of consideration is
treated slightingly. . . Anyone who shows in speech or in action a
tendency to slight rather than praise these qualities upon which we base

our self-esteem will be the recipient of our anger. But we will be most
angry with friends than with others, with those who have previously
treated us becomingly and now change, and with those people who do
not adequately appreciate or return kindness.
Aristotle also says that the feeble are more given to anger than are the
strong, and old men than young.3

3 Lily B Campbell, Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes: Slaves o f Passion, (Methuen, London, 1930),

p.177-78

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Lear's folly in the opening scene though seems enormous, is apparently intended

well and is harmless. After all, he has merely sought publicly to be glorified with
the presumed confidence that his youngest daughter Cordelia who loves him
most would surpass in protestation of love his other daughters. His intention was

to spend the rest of his life with his youngest daughter whom he loved most and it
is clear from his statement:

I lov’d her most, and thought to set my rest

On her kind nursery (I. i. 122-23)

The present situation in which he is to live with his two elder daughters

one by one is forced upon him and if his original plan according to which he was
to stay with Cordelia had been successful there would have been no such

disastrous consequences. He seems to be acting under a simple human situation

unaware of what future holds for him. Many scholars and critics have gone over
the play pointing out moral faults in Lear and have found those in him. They lay
the whole blame on Lear for his inevitable doom. The hamartia of Lear simply
does not lie in the fact that he divided the kingdom in folly but in that by which he

banished Cordelia and Kent, both his well wishers. Though it can be that Lear

with more insight could have conceded his doom, the theory that the protagonist
of the tragedy must possess a serious ‘moral flaw' does not hold true in this case

too. He has created the conditions that certainly make his suffering possible; but

to lay the entire blame on him would be to deny the presence of uncertainty that is

always there in life and the part played by ‘the gods’ in making man’s plans go

amiss. If Cordelia would have been able to gratify Lear’s vanity the tragedy might
not have occurred at all. Bradley rightly interprets the initial situation and puts
King Lear in the right focus:

. . .the dependence of the division on the speeches of the daughters,

was in Lear’s intention a mere form, devised as a childish scheme to
gratify his love of absolute power and his hunger for assurances of

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 devotion. . .We may say that the main cause of its failure was not that
Goneril and Regan were exceptionally hypocritical, but that Cordelia was
exceptionally sincere and unbending. And it is essential to observe that
its failure, and the consequent necessity of publicly reversing his whole
well-known intention, is one source of Lear’s extreme anger. He loved
Cordelia most and knew that she loved him best, and the supreme
moment to which he looked forward was that in which she should outdo
her sisters in expressions of affection, and should be rewarded by that
‘third’ of the kingdom which was the most 'opulent'. And then - so it
naturally seemed to him - she put him to open shame.4

In the same way, when Kent takes Cordelia’s side, Lear’s self-esteem is injured

further and in anger he banishes both Cordelia and Kent. So Lear is strongly
angered with friends both Cordelia and Kent, with those who have previously
treated him affectionately and now seem shockingly changed, and is now thrown

with those who do not appreciate his love and kindness. W e realize throughout
the play that neither his good intention nor his faith in Cordelia falters though he
banishes her in anger. In fact, as the play progresses he feels a deep remorse for

the wrong he has done to his sweet, loving Cordelia. Deprived of his dearest, Lear

desires avidly only for one thing: to have the respect of his two elder daughters.
And that he does not get. On the rashness of the King towards Cordelia and Kent,
Bradley rightly comments:

. . .a long life of absolute power, in which he has been flattered to the top
of his bent, has produced in him that blindness to human limitations, and
that presumptuous self-will.. . 5

4 A C Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lecture on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth,

(Macmillan Education Ltd, Hong Kong, 1904), p. 213-14.
5 ibid., p.243.

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 Ill

There is a glaring and dramatic contrast between Goneril and Regan who

were exceptionally hypocritical in their protestations of love and Cordelia who was
exceptionally sincere and unbending. Thus a fond father is duped by his two elder
daughters to disinherit the third, previously and deservedly dearer to him, and far
nobler. Goneril and Regan scheme together in secrecy. As they recognize that
they now have complete power over the kingdom, they agree that they must act
promptly to reduce even any semblance of their father’s authority. Lear is to
spend the first portion of his retirement at Goneril’s castle. Goneril quarrels with

Lear by charging that he has struck her people and complains that Lear’s knights
are becoming “riotous" (I. iii. 7) implying that Lear himself is an obnoxious guest.

Seeking to provoke a confrontation, she orders her servants to behave rudely with

Lear and his attendants. She even becomes adamant in her demand and asks
Lear to restrain his knights and reduce [disquantity (I. iv. 246)]_his train by
dismissing half of his one hundred knights. The Fool rightly gives the example of
the cuckoo while referring about Goneril. He says, the cuckoo lays an egg in the
nest of the sparrow and when the egg has been hatched, the sparrow feeds the

young one of the cuckoo. This young one, when it grows up tries to make room

for itself by hitting off the head of the sparrow which had been feeding it. Lear’s
daughters behave in a similar way. Goneril reduces Lear’s men to fifty at which

Lear is shocked. An enraged Lear regrets the handing of his power over to

Goneril. He curses his daughter, calling on Nature to make her childless. Lear’s
outburst is understandable as we should expect from any such royal fathers

Oedipus curses his own children likewise. Surprised by his own tears, he calls for
his horses. He declares that he will stay with Regan, whom he believes will be a
true daughter and give him the respect he deserves. The position of Lear makes
us think about the limitations of a man: he can hardly defend himself against
unanticipated heartlessness and all that he can do is burst into a wild rage.

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 Lear begins to question his own identity when he realises that Goneril

plans to frustrate his position. He asks:

Does any here know me? This is not Lear. . ..

Who is it that can tell me who I am?” (I. iv. 223-228).

Lear, shorn of the paraphernalia of authority, looks first senile to Goneril. He

wonders whether he is really himself anymore or whether he has lost his mind.
Driven to despair, even at the end of Act I, scene v, he says, “O! let me not be

mad, not mad, sweet heaven” (I. v. 43), foreboding his eventual insanity.

Lear leaves Goneril’s place by saying “I have another daughter” (I. iv. 303)

subconsciously realizing now that he had banished the one daughter Cordelia
who really loved him disinterestedly. Regan too with her husband Cornwall goes
to Gloucester's castle to avoid the imminent visit of Lear. Cornwall even orders

Kent to be put in the stocks knowing very well that he is insulting the king’s
messenger and hence the king himself. The stocks were a punishment used for

common criminals, and their use for Lear’s serving man could easily be
interpreted as highly disrespectful to Lear’s royal status. She almost seems to

welcome the idea of inviting Lear’s anger. Goneril and, as we soon discover,
Regan enjoy being in power and conspire to destroy Lear’s illusion of personal

authority. Lear discovers in Regan a daughter who is just not loving and kind, but
a new monster who denies all the daughter-father relationship, and negates the

very concept of filial relationship. Both Goneril and Regan combine together to
oppose Lear and both the sisters adopt a callous attitude towards him to rob him

of even a small number of knights to attend upon him. Their plan to whittle down
Lear’s retinue from a hundred knights to fifty may not seem devious, but they

soon wish to purge his knights altogether.

Goneril: Hear me, my Lord,

What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,

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 To follow in a house where twice so many
Have a command to tend to you?
Regan: W hat need one? (II. iv. 258-62)

This gradual diminishment of Lear’s attendants symbolizes the gradual

elimination of any remnants of power. Knights and servants are part of the formal
pomp that surrounds a powerful king, and Lear sees his loss of them as indicative
of his daughter’s scorn for his dignity not only as a former king but even as a
father. The stunned Lear responds not with a new curse but in an act of wilful
abasement in pain, asks for her forgiveness and bare subsistence:

Dear daughter, I confess that I am old;

Age is unnecessary: on my knees I beg
That you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food. (II. iv. 151-53)

Rosalie.L.Colie states the Elizabethan ethics, where she notes that;

In England, a mark of respect paid to parents by their children was

kneeling for their blessing: in a sermon of 1629, far later than this play,
Donne wrote, ‘Children kneele to aske blessing of Parents in England,
but where else?'6

While referring to the play Rosalie further writes that:

The king's gesture of kneeling to his children is not just a momentary

criticism of the children’s behaviour to him, but also a confirmation of the

Fool’s sharp words, that he has made ‘[his] daughters [his] mothers’, and
must kneel to them to supplicate the elemental support that fathers

6 Rosalie. L. Colie, Reason and Need: King Lear and the 'Crisis’ of the Aristocracy, included in
Some Facets of King Lear: Essays in Prismatic Criticism, ed. by. Rosalie. L. Colie and F. T.
Flahiff, (Heinemann, 1974), p.210.

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 without question provide for their children and can in turn expect from

them.7

Instead of expecting any respect from his monster daughters Lear accepts in
agony of the reversal, all the rude expressions intended to offend or hurt him,
suffers deliberately offensive acts, runs from one ungrateful daughter to the other,
begs, prays and bargains till he stands at last debased and helpless when his two
daughters refuse him any hospitality at all. Maynard Mack (1965) writes that:

[Goneril and Regan are] the two daughters whom Kent calls ‘dog-
hearted’, Albany calls Tigers, not daughters’, and the gentlest voice in
the play calls 'Shame of ladies’. . . [by them] Lear is first squeezed dry of

all his remaining dignities and illusions and then spat away. . .The
motivation of the sisters lies not in what Lear has done to them, but in
what they are. . .they are paradigms of evil rather than (or as well as)
exasperated spoilt children.8

From the beginning itself to the end of the play we, as the audience, are
aware at least relatively where the right is and where the wrong, where virtue
resides and where vice. W e are aware from the beginning of the play of the

monstrous nature of both Goneril and Regan, but Lear has little idea of that
because though he loves Cordelia more for her loving and kind nature, he has no

reason to believe that the other two would be so cunning and ungrateful.
Moreover man does not know in advance as to from which direction and in what

form the disaster will strike him and nor does he know what to make of the
specific disaster. And that happens to Lear. It is now clear to Lear that he has

blundered in handing over his power to Goneril and Regan. Lear’s error is that, in
stepping down from the throne, he has also given up all of his both formal and

moral authority to those who do not actually love him. But this error committed by

7op. cit., p. 211.

8 Maynard Mack, King Lear in Our Time (1965), included in Shakespeare: King Lear A Casebook,
ed. by. Frank Kermode, (Macmillan, London, 1969), p.66.

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him unknowingly cannot be stated as some kind of ‘tragic flaw’ in his character.

He no longer has the power to command anyone to do anything, even to give him
shelter or food, his daughters, each of whom is now a queen over half of Britain,
wield special authority over him. W e feel grieved for Lear beyond words when he
addresses the heavens:

You see me here, you Gods, a poor old man,

As full of grief as age: wretched in both!
If it be you that stirs these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger
And let not women's weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! (II. iv. 270-76)

After seeing the ingratitude of Goneril and Regan towards their father we seem to
question ourselves as Bradley rightly does:

How can there be such men and women? W e ask ourselves how comes
it that humanity can take such absolutely opposite forms? And, in
particular to what omission of elements which should be present in

human nature, or, if there is no omission, to what distortion of these

elements is it due that such beings as some of these come to exist? This
is a question which lago forces us to ask, but in King Lear it is provoked
again and again. And more, it seems to us that the author himself is
asking this question. “Then let them anatomize Regan; see what breeds
about her heart. Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard
hearts?” 9

The more we search the more we tend to realize that there is some power
beyond that is behind the workings of things. Kent has this to say:

It is the stars,

9 op. cit., p. 225

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 The stars above us, govern our conditions. (IV. iii. 32-33)

In King Lear this feeling is raised through the characters by Shakespeare not just
once but many times. Any situation is multi-faceted; there is order above and
order within the cosmos. From macrocosm to microcosm, that is from the King to
a worm all are handled by some higher power. Worldly beings do not seem to be

causing the events but it seems that the stars, the unknown power above us
which seems to be governing our actions and our state of happiness or misery.
Human existence is controlled by a higher agency which is beyond the
comprehension of man. If that is so, then how is man held wholly responsible for
any thing that goes wrong? If things are handled elsewhere by a higher power,

then to look for some flaw or even one radical weakness in the tragic protagonist
is to be grossly lopsided.

The picture of the world painted in King Lear is full of “filial ingratitude”

(III. iv. 14). The humanity is shown to be stripped of all hope when you consider

the cruelty of the son of Gloucester and the two daughters of Lear. Gods also
seem to be conspiring with his ungrateful, monster-like daughters. “Man’s life is
cheap as beast’s” (II. iv. 265). Lear’s first appeal to gods is;

0 Heavens,
If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
Allow obedience, if you yourselves are old,
Make it your cause: send down and take my part! (II. iv. 187-90)

He is confronted with the “wolvish-visage” (I. iv. 306), “sea-monster” (I. iv. 259),

“marble-hearted fiends” (I. iv. 257), “serpent-like" (II. iv. 158), “Most savage and
unnatural" (III. iii. 6) daughters who refuse him the bare minimum care and the
respect necessary for an old man like Lear, and more than that, for their own
father who had given them everything he had. Both Goneril and Regan are

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“Tigers not daughters," (IV. ii. 40). It is as if forms of falsehood are disguised as
women who assume the shape of monsters. Dr Johnson argues:

It is disputed whether the predominant image in Lear’s disordered mind

be the loss of his kingdom or the cruelty of his daughters.10

Further citing Mr. Murphy he writes:

. . .the cruelty of his daughters is the primary source of his distress and

that the loss of royalty affects him only as a secondary and subordinate
evil ...Lear would move our compassion but little, did we not rather
consider the injured father than the degraded king.11

Lear’s another appeal to the gods where he seems to be asking them to

take notice of his pitiable and heart-rending condition:

You see me here, you Gods, a poor old man,

As full of grief as age; wretched in both! (II. iv. 270-271)

is answered by the gods by pouring in heavy rains and breaking storm. The gods

here are portrayed not merely as wanton boys, but we find them deaf and dumb

too who cannot hear the tragic cries of Lear. W e are indeed made to think about
the fragile condition of man where,

As flies to wanton boys, are we to th’ Gods;

They kill us for their sport. (IV. i. 35-36).

W e watch Lear being stripped first of an extraordinary worldly power, then of

ordinary human dignity, then of the very necessities of life. Even the Heavens

10 Dr Johnson, Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. by. H R Woudhuysen, (Penguin Books,

London, 1989), p. 223.

"ibid., p. 223.

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above seem to reject his plea for any grace from them. Here we have nihilism in
its starkest form: there is no order, no goodness in the universe, it seems to be

subjected only to caprice and cruelty. This theme of despair in the face of an
uncaring universe makes King Lear one of Shakespeare’s darkest plays. For
Gloucester, as well as for Lear, there is no possibility of happiness in the world;
there is only the “sport” of the inscrutable gods. This is what Marilyn French also

writes:

In fact, all three of his daughters challenge his will. Cordelia refuses to
bow to his impossible demand in l.i; Goneril and Regan deny him what
he has asserted as his right, afterwards. He begins to move outside the
hothouse of certitude: 'I did her wrong’, he mutters. When the storm too
ignores the rightness of his cause, defies his commands, when he finds
himself exiled from a l l . . . wet, hungry, and cold, he cracks entirely. But
what is destroyed is not the man, Lear, but the King, Lear...Toppling

from power does not strip him of his manhood; it confers humanhood
upon him.12

Thus, in this dark world where gods seem to be conspiring against Lear, he tries
to develop humility and simplicity in order to redeem himself and that is what
Shakespeare wants us to notice.

iv

Lear is even denied to find shelter in any civilized habitation, he has been
cut loose from his place in the human society and the end result is that his very

12 Marilyn French, Shakespeare's Division of Experience, (Abacus, London, 1982) included in

Shakespearean Tragedy, ed. by. John Drakakis, (Longman, London and New York, 1992), p.246.

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sanity disintegrates. W e find Lear and his courtiers plodding across a deserted

heath with winds howling around them and rain drenching them. The storm marks
one of the first appearances of the apocalyptic imagery that is so important in
King Lear and that becomes increasingly dominant as the play progresses. The
chaos reflects the disorder in Lear’s own mind, and as we have seen, the chaos in

nature also reflects the very real political chaos that has engulfed Britain in the
absence of Lear's authority. Lear, like the other tragic characters, is unused to
such harsh conditions, and he soon finds himself symbolically stripped bare. He

has already discovered that his cruel daughters can victimize him; now he learns
that a king caught in a storm is as much subject *.0 the power of nature as any

other man. When Lear is cast out into the storm, the tempest in the heavens
echoes the tempest in his mind. The positioning of the storm, and its symbolic

connection to the state of mind of Lear at first suggests that the King’s state of
mind is shown to be as turbulent as the winds and clouds surrounding him.

Shakespeare’s use of pathetic fallacy, a literary device in which inanimate objects

such as nature assume human attributes, amplifies the tension of the characters’

struggles by elevating human passions to the level of natural forces. Lear is trying
to face down the powers of nature, an attempt that seems to indicate both his

despair and his acceptance of the reality. Both of these strains appear in Lear’s
famous challenge to the storm:

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown'd the cocks! (III. ii. 1-3).

The powers of the roaring wind and pouring rains mirror the tormented soul of
Lear. Nature seems to be convulsed with the tragic and pathetic state of Lear.
Lear’s attempt to speak to the storm suggests that he has now become one with
the natural world and his relation to nature makes him closer to it and his is a
more than an ordinary human response to nature. Lear’s encounter with the rough
weather embodies one of the central questions posed by King Lear, namely,

165
whether the universe is fundamentally hostile to man. Lear asks whether nature
and the gods are actually good and if so, how life can have treated him so badly.

Lear calls upon the storm in which he raves:

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:

i tax you not, you elements, with unkindness;
i never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender’d battles’ gainst a head
So old and white as this. 0 , ho! 'tis foul. (III. ii. 15-24)

Lear now possesses a ‘noble anger’ and while enraged, tells the thunder that he

does not blame it for attacking him because it does not owe him anything and
what seems to vex him is why should the rain, wind and thunder, when they have

no cause, collude and collaborate with the unnatural daughters. The abandoning
of the struggle and embracing of the misfortune is the mark of growth in Lear and
as Barbara Everett suggests:

Lear is at his most powerful and, despite moral considerations, at his

noblest; the image of a man hopelessly confronting a hostile universe
and withstanding it only by his inherent powers of rage, endurance, and
perpetual questioning, is perhaps the most purely 'tragic' in
Shakespeare.13

13 Barbara Everett, Critical Quarterly: The New King Lear, included in Shakespeare: King Lear,
A Casebook, ed. by. Frank Kermode, (Macmillan, London, 1969), p. 169.

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This turning point of the play shows that Lear is now at the nadir of his fortunes
and the tragic depths are at hand. But it also exhibits that Lear starts educating
himself by cultivating patience. Lear adopts the tone of righteous indignation; the
‘noble anger’ overtakes his curses and gone now are all the traces of his desire
for self-glorification which he had exhibited in the beginning of the play. The play
represents a man from one act of folly to pass through the fire of hell to learn
bitter lessons and redeem himself through extreme suffering. Shakespeare uses

this paradigm of folly- suffering- redemption, to convey to us that we must look for
every particle in the play which makes his hero come to terms with all the
struggles and accept all the blows of fate patiently. This consummation of
crucifixion is indeed Lear’s own attempt at reinvention through un-delusion and
clarity of spirit.

Lear becomes aware of the sufferings of others, besides his own sufferings
as he suddenly notices his Fool and asks him, “How dost my boy? Art cold?” (III.
ii. 68). He adds, "I have one part in my heart / That’s sorry yet for thee” (lll.ii.72-
73). Here, Lear takes a real and compassionate notice of other human beings.
Kent leads Lear through the storm to the hovel. He tries to get him to go inside,
but Lear resists, saying that his own mental anguish makes him hardly feel the
storm:

. . .this tempest in my mind

Doth from my senses take all feeling else (III. iv. 12-13).

Lear’s reply demonstrates that that the symbolic connection between the storm

outside and his own mental disturbance is significant. Lear’s physical sensitivity to
the storm is more than matched by his mental and emotional anguish. Enid
Welsford states:

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 Lear hardly feels the storm because he is struggling to retain his mental
integrity, his ‘knowledge and reason’, which are not only, as he himself
calls them, ‘marks of sovereignty', but the essential marks of humanity
itself:
O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
Keep me in temper, I would not be ma d ! . . .
Lear’s dread is justified; 'sweet heaven’ rejects his prayer...now that Lear
has lost his sanity, he has enlarged his vision. As his wits begin to leave
him, he begins to see the truth about himself; when they are wholly gone
he begins to have spasmodic flashes of insight in which, during
momentary lulls in the storm of vengeful personal resentment, he sees
the inner truth about the world.14

Lear sends his Fool inside to take shelter and then kneels and prays. He reflects

that, as king, he took too little care of the wretched and homeless, who have scant
protection from storms such as this one. He seeks shelter in the hovel merely for

the Fool’s sake and prays for the miserable and houseless poor. He does not pray

for himself; instead, he asks the gods to help “poor naked wretches, whereso’er
you are, / That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm” (III. iv. 28-29).

Lear’s obsessive contemplation of his own humanity and of his place in

relation to nature and to the gods is heightened still further after he meets Edgar

in the guise of a bedlam beggar, who is clad only in rags. Lear’s wandering mind
turns to his own fine clothing, and he asks, addressing Edgar’s largely uncovered

body, “Is man no more than this? Consider him well” (III. iv. 100-1). As a king in
fact as well as in name, with servants and subjects and seemingly loyal

daughters, Lear could be confident of his place in the universe; indeed, the
universe seemed to revolve around him. Now, as his humility grows, he becomes
conscious of his real relationship to the universe. The bedlam beggar provides
him with the living example of the poverty which he pities and by tearing off his

14 Enid Welsford, The Fool in King Lear, included in Shakespeare: King Lear A Casebook, ed. by.
Frank Kermode, (Macmillan, London, 1969), pp.128, 130.

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clothes he tries to “Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel” (III. iv. 34). Lear
identifies himself with the “unaccommodated man” (111. iv. 105), “poor, bare, forked

animal" (III. iv. 106) stripped of everything that made him secure and powerful.
The destruction of Lear’s pride leads him to question the social order that clothes
kings in rich garments and beggars in rags. He realizes that each person,
underneath his or her clothing, is naked and therefore weak. He sees too that
clothing offers no protection against the forces of the elements or of the gods.
Lear’s attempt to bare himself is a sign that he has seen the similarities between

himself and Edgar: only the flimsy surface of garments marks the difference
between a king and a beggar. Each must face the cruelty of an uncaring world.

Lear has also internalized the Fool’s criticisms of his own errors, and thus he no
longer needs to hear them from an outside source. This self-criticism and
newfound sympathy for the plight of others marks the continuing humanization of
Lear. He wishes the rich people to part with some of their superflux and give it to

the poor. This concern for others reflects the growth of Lear’s humility, which

eventually redeems him. W e notice in Lear a transformation of his very person,

from the inability to accept the truth to undergo all sufferings patiently, to
acknowledge his flaws, to face self-knowledge, to repentance, which in the end

enables him to win Cordelia’s forgiveness as he achieves his full humanness.

Apparently, the traditional view of the tragedy does not seem to satisfy any

longer where man is centrally located and where every cause seems to arise from

him and gods are seen to be just. While Irving Ribner stated that the play "affirms

justice in the world, which it sees as a harmonious system ruled by a benevolent

God15, which Dollimore rephrases as “the Christian claim that the suffering of Lear
and Cordelia is part of a providential and redemptive design”16. Instead, for the

last few years the humanist view is predominant and as Dollimore argues:

15 Irving Ribner, Patterns In Shakespearean Tragedy, (Methuen, New York, 1969), p. 117.
16 Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of
Shakespeare and his contemporaries, (Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, 1984), p.189.

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 When he is on the heath King Lear is moved to pity. As
unaccommodated man he feels what wretches feel. For humanist tragic
paradox arises here: debasement gives rise to dignity and at the moment
when Lear might be expected to be most brutalized he becomes most
human. Through kindness and shared vulnerability human kind redeems
itself in a universe where the gods are at best callously just, at worst
sadistically vindictive . . . the humanist view likewise centralizes man but
now he is in a condition of tragic dislocation. . . If that suffering is to be
justified at all it is because of what it reveals about man’s intrinsic
nature- his courage and integrity. By heroically enduring a fate he is
powerless to alter . . . man grows in stature even as he is being
destroyed.17

The truth seems to lie somewhere between the straightly Christian and the
anguished humanist positions.

Lear has realized, despite what flatterers have told him that he is as
vulnerable to the forces of nature as any human being. He finally understands
that his older daughters were sweet-talking to him:

They flattered me like a dog. . . .

To say ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to every thing that I said! (IV. vi 96-98)

He cannot command the rain and thunder and is not immune to colds and fever

(the “ague” of IV. vi. 105) Lear now understands that no amount of flattery and
praise can make a king different from anyone else: ‘Through tattered clothes

small vices do appear; / Robes and furr’d gowns hide all” (IV. vi. 162-63). An
important thing to notice is that although Lear's physical journey moves tragically
from the loss of his kingdom to the loss of his life, on the other level, his
psychological progress in the play charts a more optimistic upward path. In his

17 ibid., p.189.

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isolation, confusion, and anger, he learns how to be a good human being; he
regains his lost ability to empathise with all living creatures, no matter how

wretched and ignoble they seem. His psychological journey, therefore, takes him
from being a king to being a man, which ironically confers on him self-knowledge
and insight which was lacking in his royal condition. About Lear’s madness some
of the most memorable phrases in the play come from these descriptions when
Cordelia assesses Lear’s condition and she says he is:

As mad as the vex’d sea; singing aloud:

Crown’d with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
With hordocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle w e e d s . . . (IV. iv. 2 -5 )

Lear’s madness, which is indicated here by both his singing and his self­
adornment with weeds, is tragic and ironic and marked by an embrace of the

natural world. Rather than perceiving himself as a royal or heroic figure who

transcends nature, he understands that he is a small, component of it. Lear

learns from his mistakes and becomes a better and more insightful human being
and his values do change over the course of the play. As he realizes his
weakness and insignificance in contrast to the awesome forces of the natural
world, he becomes a humble and caring individual. He comes to cherish Cordelia
above everything else and to place his own love for Cordelia above every other

consideration, to the point that he would rather live in prison with her than rule as
a king again.

This self-awareness gained through suffering enables Lear to reunite with

Cordelia, not as a king condescending to his subject, but as a father embracing

his devoted daughter. Awakened from his restorative sleep, he looks deeply into
her eyes and discovers his proper place in the world around him:

For, as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child, Cordelia. (IV. vi. 68-69)

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Lear’s psychological journey in the play has finally made him worthy of Cordelia’s
unconditional love, which he could only experience and appreciate as a man, not
as a king. Lear’s progress takes him on a spiritual journey through death and

purgatory, which concludes in a heavenly reunion with Cordelia. When Lear gives
up his throne at the outset of the play, he dies as a king so that he can be reborn
as a man. His agony in the storm which follows with his “death” is purgatorial in
nature because it punishes him not for his sins but purifies him for the eventual
reunion with his daughter, whom he describes in celestial terms after awakening
from his sleep:

You do me wrong to take me out o’ th' grave.

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead. (IV. vii. 45-48)

He thinks he is in hell, having been rescued by an angel. The wheel of fire is a

“traditional metaphor in the medieval legends and visions of Hell and Purgatory’’18
as noted by Kenneth Muir. Envisioning hell is not difficult for Lear, since Cordelia
as some heavenly spirit has only just rescued him from a hellish existence on the
earth. Thus, Lear’s purgatorial torment, complete with all the possible instruments
of torture, has so thoroughly cleansed his spirit that he can finally experience, at

the very end of his life, the regenerative love of his angelic Cordelia. Armed with

this knowledge, Lear can express his newfound humility and beg repentance.
“I am a very foolish fond old man” (IV. vii. 60), he tells her sadly, and he admits
that:

If you have poison for me, I will drink it.

I know you do not love me, for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.

18
Kenneth Muir, The Arden Shakespeare: King Lear, 1964, (Methuen & co Ltd, London, 1975),
p. 178.

172
 You have some cause, they have not (IV. vii. 72-75}

Love and forgiveness, embodied in Lear’s best daughter, join with his humility and
repentance, and, for a brief time, happiness prevails. Throughout the play, King
Lear, we are awaiting to see this reunion of Lear and his daughter Cordelia. While
Lear hides from Cordelia out of shame, she seeks him out of love, crystallizing the
contrast between her forgiveness and his repentance. Shakespeare has
miraculously depicted a heavenly reunion of Lear and Cordelia in incredibly
religious imagery. The phenomenon of embarcing suffering is a true mark of the

condition of purgatory. And Cordelia’s angelic 'charity’ exactly matches the

abysmal humility of Lear. Call the scene Christian or humanistic; it certainly
reaches the climax of high poetic and dramatic art where all the elements find
their perfect place in a higher synthesis.

The play’s emotional extremes of hope and despair, joy and grief, love and
hate, are brought to the fore in the final scene. Lear’s address to Cordelia at the
beginning of the scene is strangely joyful. When he is being taken to prison we

find in him no trace of the desire to take revenge, in fact he has left behind all
those attributes of anger and has gained a new stature. He inhabits an intimate
world that knows only love and no pride:

W e two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage;

When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: (V. iii. 9-11).

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This expression of ‘kneeling’ glances back at his own words to Regan 19 but is
uttered with a heaven of difference. Lear asks for nothing more than to be with
Cordelia. Shakespeare has been careful to counterbalance defeat on the physical
level with victory on the psychological and spiritual realms. At this very instance

we are reminded of the words of Edgar where he states:

Men must endure

Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all. (V. ii. 9-11)

What Edgar speaks holds true for Lear as in his endurance he has gained a wider
vision of life. He is ripe in mind as more age and experience has taught him

wisdom. He is a man who has learned humility and has achieved spiritual health
only through enduring patiently. The play portrays the profound truth of life and

depicts man’s journey from birth to death wherein a man comes in this world
crying realizing beforehand the sufferings of this life and he leaves this world

crying after playing his part on this great stage. It is only through enduring

patiently all the blows of fate and evils that cause suffering, can man gain a real
and precious wisdom and redeem himself from all the wrongs he has done. Lear

learns to recognize this painful truth when he says to blind Gloucester:

Thou must be patient; W e came crying hither:

Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air
W e wawl and cry. I will preach to thee: mark.

. . . When we are born, we cry that we are come

To this great stage of fools. (IV. vi. 176-178,180-81)

and in this cognizance lies his greatness. Lear speaks of life as beginning where
in man has to continue to suffer and end in suffering and he further feels that we
have to seek the strength to bear all since there is no end to miseries in this life.

19 refer p.155 above, lines (II. iv. 151-53).

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W e are reminded of the words of Hamlet when he says, “the readiness is all”
(Hamlet V. ii. 219). Man’s wisdom lies in the ripeness and readiness of mind to
accept all the errors committed by him and to seek forgiveness for the wrongs he
has done to others. This ripeness is all that matters if Lear were to face in life the
slow and agonizing journey towards death. Lear dies only after he has gained

wisdom through suffering and heavenly compassion through the redemptive

grace of Cordelia.

One may argue that Albany’s words ring hollow where he reassures that:

All friends shall taste

The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings. (V. iii. 301-3)

This refers to the suggestion that the good and the evil both ultimately get what

they deserve and upon this notion rests the belief of many scholars that

Shakespeare’s tragic characters reach to their tragic doom because of some

'grievous flaw’ in them, and as Merilyn French rightly comments:

. . .to pounce on Lear’s guilt or flaw, to see the drama as one of sin
leading to punishment, penitence, and salvation, seems to me to
diminish him in a way the play itself refuses to do. For we love Lear not

because he is right, or because he is more sinned against than sinning

but because of the depth of his passion.20

Can anyone deny the fact that gods give their approval most readily to the kind of
sacrifice which Lear and Cordelia make. Lear’s inspired utterance is significant in

reminding us of this:

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,

The Gods themselves throw incense (V. iii. 20-21)

20 op. cit., p.250.

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Lear is not thinking of the gods who toy with us as wanton boys do with flies.
These are gods who know. It melts our hearts and gains our sympathies too, that
had been frozen. The good are seen growing better to liberate their souls and
from conceit and confusion. To err is indeed human, and to mend is more

profoundly human. Lear’s suffering cannot be seen as a punishment that visits a

blundering soul but as an agent of growth and maturity. If he is punished for a
chance folly, so enormously, it is indeed monstrous. Gods though they seem to be

hostile greatly honour these magnificent souls. Though we do not find this
transfiguration of man through suffering, Aeschylus’s vision stands vindicated in
the spectacle of Lear’s life. The great insight is not found accomplished in

dramatic terms in Greek tragedy. Shakespeare fully achieves the Aeschylean

ideal. Who can say that the Greek tragedy fell short and the Shakespearean
tragedy was triumphant? One must acknowledge that the tragic muse evolves
from Aeschylus to Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s tragic imagination only
completes what Aeschylus began. The tragic substance belongs to the human

heritage.

Most of the virtuous characters die along with the villains, making it difficult

to interpret the scene as poetic justice. W e may feel that the disloyal Goneril and

Regan, the treacherous Edmund, the odious Oswald, and the brutal Cornwall
richly deserve their deaths. But, in the last scene, when the audience expect

some kind of justice to be doled out, the good characters Gloucester, Cordelia,
Lear die as well, and their bodies litter the stage alongside the corpses of the

wicked. This final, harrowing wave of death raises, yet again, a question that has
burned throughout the play: is there any justice in the world? “Is this the promised

end?” (V. iii. 261). Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms, howling over her
dead body:

Howl, howl, howl, O! you are men of stones:

Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so

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 That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone for ever. (V. iii. 256-58)

Lear now asks:

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? (V. iii. 305-306)

This question can be answered only with the stark truth that death comes to all,

regardless of each individual’s virtue or all. The great ‘rage’ may be killed in him

but Lear kills the person who hanged Cordelia signifying that he is not a person
who wavers in his action. He still is the same King Lear, ‘every inch a king’
(IV. vi. 107), who cannot tolerate injustice and denial of love. He is not a person in
whom we witness a mere change of personality but maturation. As W R Elton
writes:

. . . anger marks both Lear’s opening scene, when he rages at Cordelia,

and his closing scene, when at her death he storms at the heavens.. .as
in [this case it is] Lear’s desired ‘noble anger1 which, instead of bursting
forth, comes deliberately called.21

When wronged he is not ready to excuse and at the same time, when he does

something wrong himself he is ready to kneel down and ask for forgiveness. The

only hope for him was to die with Cordelia by his side and when even that vision
is denied he enters into a great gloom and a noble rage. Certainly we also with
Lear feel the same kind of agony for the death of Cordelia who seems to be

punished by the gods for no fault of hers. Nahum Tate’s22 ending which resurrects

21 W R Elton, King Lear and the Gods (1966), included in Shakespeare: King Lear: A Casebook,
ed. by. Frank Kermode, (Macmillan, London, 1992), pp. 203-4.
22 Nahum Tate, Dedication and Prologue to his version of King Lear, 1681; included in
Shakespeare: King Lear A Casebook, ed. by. Frank Kermode, (Macmillan, London, 1992),
pp.25-26

177
Cordelia and Dr Johnson’s 23 more honest version where he finds Cordelia’s

death shocking that he wants to avoid it are instances of the same kind of feeling
of despair and anguish at the event. And as for Lear he suffers the last affliction of
all because of the death of Cordelia and any facile theory of poetic or any other
justice stands discarded. Lear never deserved this ultimate punishment of seeing

Cordelia dead in his arms.

A. W . Schlegel rightly observes:

After surviving so many sufferings, Lear can only die; and what more
truly tragic end for him than to die from grief for the death of Cordelia?
. . . According to Shakespeare's plan the guilty, it is true, are all
punished, for wickedness destroys itself; but the virtues that would bring
help and succor are everywhere too late, or overmatched by the cunning
activity of malice.24

Kent rightly says, “The wonder is, he hath endur’d so long:” (V. iii. 315) and in his
grief and madness, Lear expires in a flash of utterly illusory hope, thinking that
Cordelia is coming back to life:

This feather stirs; she livesl If it be so,

it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows

That ever I have felt ( V. iii. 264-66)

Lear, now an embodiment of love, affection and humility seems to go past all the
sorrows experienced by him in his life and dies looking at Cordelia’s lips and face:

Look on her, look, her lips,

Look there, look there! (V. iii. 307-8)

23 op. cit., p.222.

24 op. cit. p.32.

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It seems to him that she is still alive. Thus W R Elton is right in saying that:

Lear dies between extremes of a kind of joy in his desperate illusion of

her lips’ movement and of grief in his emphatic knowledge that his
daughter was needlessly butchered. 25

The poignant ambiguity of emotion is inclusive: the tragedy of unmerited death

and hope of life are held in equilibrium in the climactic moment of Lear’s own

death. Lear’s dying in grief for Cordelia is his dying in bliss. Though he wanted to

live in happiness under her care, he has now the compensation of dying with a

vision of a living Cordelia.

Similarly, Gloucester, as Edgar announces, dies partly of joy: “his flaw’d

heart, ... ’Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, / Burst smilingly”
(V. iii. 195-98). For everyone else in King Lear, love seems to lead only to death.
In perhaps the play’s ruthless final moment, we are left with only a terrifying

uncertainty: the good and the evil alike die. The corpses on the stage at the end
of the play, of the young as well as the old, symbolize despair and death just as
the storm at the play’s center symbolizes chaos and madness. W e are left

wondering whether there is any justice, any system of punishment and reward in

the “tough world” of this powerful but painful play, where though the wicked ones

perish the good ones have no hope to survive. The ending with Edgar’s words is
a poor consolation. The modern deconstructive critics view that in this tragedy

there is no vision of order. The way things happened, the play would prove that
there does not seem to be any central belief in justice, which means it does not
have any moral kind of fulcrum. But we should not forget that chaos is part of

cosmos. W e have final visions of love in the worlds of Edmund. Even Edmund,
learning of the death of Goneril and Regan, says,

Yet Edmund was belov'd.

25 op. c it., p.200.

179
 The one the other poisoned for my sake,
And after slew herself (V. iii. 238-240)

Even the cruel Edmund thinks of love in his last moments, a reminder of the
warmth of which his bastard birth deprived him:

I pant for life; some good I mean to do

Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send,
Be brief in it, to th' castle; for my writ
Is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia.
Nay, send in time. (V. iii. 242-46)

Even Satan forgot his mission after seeing the Paradise of Adam and Eve as
Milton writes in his Paradise Lost Book IX:

Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold

This flow’ry plat, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone; her heav’nly form
Angelic, but more soft and feminine,
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Or gesture or least action overawed
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought.
That space the Evil One abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge; (455-66)

The wheel is come fill! circle affirming and reinforcing the basic moral fabric.
Edmund, the one who was making fun of stars now says, “I am here” (V. iii. 173).
The words of Albany ring in our ears:

The judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble,

Touches us not with pity. (V. iii. 230-31)

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When we see the spectacle of divine justice wreaking punishment on the evil

ones we do not pity them for their sufferings. W e realise suddenly the moments
when God does not seem to pity the loved ones too. W e just tremble with fear
when God’s justice beats evil ones. Does it not mean that there is justice in this

world as Edgar says:

The Gods are just, and of our pleasant vices

Make instruments to plague us; (V. iii. 169-70)

There is nothing particularly facile in the words of Albany or Edgar. But we do

wonder at the inexplicability of justice. This fact is certain: the good ones die in
grace, while the bad ones, in disgrace.

vi

The final words of King Lear uttered by Edgar are not just leaves drifting in

the wind but profound statements from a man of faith who has witnessed the
entire chaos:

The weight of this sad time we must obey;

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long (V. iii. 322-325)

These sober and sombre words emphasise the true meaning as well as the
experience of the play. These words exhibit the texture of the play where Lear has

seen and borne so much in his life time, that his experience of life is so profound
and heart rending that none, not even a person like Edgar, can ever experience

181
such convulsion in the rest of his whole life. W e feel pity for the vulnerable
situation of man after having envisioned the condition of Lear, and we experience
terror for the world where in the workings of the divine elements remain
incomprehensible forever. Shakespeare does point out that Lear’s appeal to the
gods is put down. This is a deconstructive vision. Then how do we explain
Edgar’s statement, “the Gods are just”. This kind of basic morality does not

conflict with the general chaos. The tragic sense depends upon this kind of
dichotomy between human actions and its consequences. W e see the victims of
the world rising to the stature of the angles who take upon themselves the
mystery of the things. Here we are forced to comment as George Steiner writes
in The Death of Tragedy with insight:

Tragedy is irreparable. It cannot lead to just and material compensation

for past suffering . . . W e are punished far in excess of our guilt.
It is a terrible, stark insight into human life. Yet in the very excess of his
suffering lies man’s claim to dignity. Powerless and broken, a blind
beggar, hounded out of the city, he assumes a new grandeur. Man is

ennobled by the vengeful spite or the injustice of the gods. It does not
make him innocent, but it hallows him as if he had passed through flame.
Hence there is in the final moments of great tragedy, whether Greek or
Shakespeare or neo-classic, a fusion of grief and joy, of lament over the
fall of man and of rejoicing in the resurrection of his spirit No other poetic
form achieves this mysterious effect; it makes of Oedipus, King Lear and
Phedre the noblest yet wrought by the mind.26

King Lear is a profound tragedy. The entire life of Christ was tragic as he

subjected himself to the fate of man when he submitted himself to the ignominy
with open eyes and walked the tragic path. That means, the very fate of man is

tragic; so is all human existence. It is this tragic paradigm which we witness in

Lear. The good suffer more not because there is not any justice but because the

good ones are made heavenly here on this very earth through suffering. Only the

26 George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy, (Faber and Faber, London, 1961), p. 8-10.

182
good are seen suffering while the evil ones just disintegrate. Those who are good
are further transformed through their sufferings, like gold thrown in fire. The
lesson of either life or of tragedy is a hard one. The favour of the gods is forceful

wisdom, the privilege of being educated through suffering. The sufferings on

earth are divinely imposed in order to refine and purify human character.

’Tis Zeus alone who shows the perfect way

O f knowledge; He hath ruled,
Men shall learn wisdom, by affliction schooled. (Agamemnon: 215-17)

It is only God who leads mortals on the way of understanding where wisdom
comes through suffering. Even as by the law of gravity things must fall, so men
must suffer to gain wisdom. One who suffers alone can be wise as experience

teaches. Life is a path through tribulation towards perfection: moral and spiritual

enlightenment is forged in a furnace of suffering. Punishment is inflicted by Zeus

not in exercise of vengeance or in the interest of an abstract justice but for the
instruction and improvement of the doer. This type of tragic vision can redeem all

Shakespearean tragic heroes. When they die they become more beautiful.

‘A terrible beauty is born’ to use W B Yeats’s words. They are enriched by

tragedy and so they enhance our sense of joy because we do feel that they have
not died in vain. This should be applied to all the tragedies whether Greek or
Shakespearean. Any conventional or formal questions on the existence of justice
on the earth become irrelevant when the protagonist almost reaches the shore of

spirituality. Nobody can question the greatness of these tragic protagonists as

their greatness is released by the entire tragic programme, call it discipline or

cross, whatever you like. So in that sense all great tragedies are Christian

because it was Christ who first taught men that they must suffer not because they
are guilty of any particular sin but because only on the cross they can be reunited
to divinity.

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 As we have noted before a happy ending has been contrived for this play,
which is approved by Dr Johnson. For them the “Truth and Virtue shall at last

succeed”. According to them the deaths of Edmund, Goneril, Regan is justified

but Lear and Cordelia should be allowed to escape death and spend the rest of

their lives together happily. Dr Johnson writes that “all reasonable beings naturally
love justice”27 and according to him this is what the play denies. Lear according to
him is denied restoration with the death of Cordelia and he is made to suffer
beyond any human expectations and limits of pain. His point is to some extent
justified as we tend to expect some justice from the gods above us for the pain
and anguish experienced by Lear. Cordelia’s death shatters all the hopes of
justice in this world but we should not forget that Lear is “bound upon a wheel of
fire” (IV. vii.46-47) and only death can bring peace to him. Death is said to be

necessary and absolute. Unamuno De Miguel puts it as the “tragic sense of life”.
Walter Benjamin writes that:

. . . the determination of the tragic character to die is also only apparently

heroic.. . Death thereby becomes salvation.26

Moreover what Lear wants is not his royal robe and sceptre but forgiveness from

Cordelia for the wrongs he has done to her and peace and happiness by her side
which finally redeems him and he dies with the hope that Cordelia is still alive.
Lear no longer wishes to live is clear from the words of Kent:

O! let him pass; he hates him

That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer (V. iii. 312-314)

Bradley rightly comments:

27 op. cit., p.222.

28 Walter Benjamin, Trauerspiel and Tragedy, included in Tragedy, ed. by John Drakakis & Naomi
Conn Liebler, (Longman, London, 1998), pp. 116,110.

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 There is nothing more noble and beautiful in literature than
Shakespeare's exposition of the effect of suffering in reviving the
greatness and eliciting the sweetness of Lear’s nature...there is no
figure, surely, in the world of poetry at once so grand, so pathetic, and so
beautiful as his. Well, but Lear owes the whole of this to those sufferings
which made us doubt whether life were not simply evil, and men like the
flies which wanton boys torture for their sport. Should we not be at least
as near the truth if we called this poem The Redemption of King Lear,
and declared that the business of the gods with him was neither to
torment him, nor to teach him a ‘noble anger', but to lead him to attain
through apparently hopeless failure the very end and aim of life? 29

(Italics mine)

The most important thing to notice is that Lear does not shirk his
responsibility and he accepts the wrong he had done to Cordelia. This

acceptance of the reality is the mark of a great human being, who unlike any
ordinary person does not deny or try to shift the blame on anyone else. It is their

goodness only that makes Shakespeare’s tragic characters accept the wrongs
they have done to others and makes them at once admirable as moral giants.

There is something Christian in King Lear as he recognizes that he bears

responsibility for both his own sufferings and for those of others too, and suffers
with deepening humility. His understanding of the fact that no one is above God’s
justice is a very important value. In accepting responsibility and in acknowledging
that he is not incapable of any failure or error in life redeems a Shakespearean

tragic hero at once. Lear’s humility is as authentic as Hamlet’s own before

Laertes, though in a far different context.

Shakespeare’s tragic characters grow so tall in their stature by the end of

the play that they become epitomes of goodness. They, in fact, reach to such
moral stature that by the catastrophe we can comment that Aristotle’s remark

29 op. cit., p.246.

185
about the tragic hero taken as ‘not being eminently good ’30 should be modified to
mean ‘not being eminently good to begin with’. King Lear, in fact, forces every

spectator to believe that through his sufferings and by enduring them patiently
Lear by the end of the play has become an enlightened soul. Marilyn French

rightly argues:

. . .at the penultimate moment of the play, Lear seems very large
indeed... he does not drown in guilt, he retains wQl, he retains prowess
enough to kill Cordelia’s killer, he renounces power-in-the-world, and
desires only felicity, love, harmony. He has achieved full humanness.31

So finally, we can say that Tragedy is a spectacle of the growth of a great but

erring soul which is overwhelmed by forces far beyond his understanding and
control, but rising in greatness to stand finally firm in the teeth of an ali-devouring

calamity. If Lear had been handicapped by an innate flaw, he would not have
risen to his fullness in the end. The tragic hero, is not 'pre-eminently good’, in the
sense of perfection but, he has the potentiality to rise to the fullest stretch of his
arete, excellence, by the end of the tragic course. Precisely because they rise so
high the fall of the tragic characters is so awesome.

* B

VII

Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are thought to be ‘slaves of passion’ by

Lily B Campbell. She thinks that in them there is domination of passion over

reason and writes that:

30 S H Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 1 9 0 7 ,4th ed., (Kalyani Publishers, New
Delhi, reprinted in 2002), Xlli-2, p.45.
31op. cit, p.256.

186
 Shakespearean tragedy made concrete Elizabethan moral teaching, and
that teaching was central about the conflict of passion and reason in
man’s soul. When passion rather than reason controls his will, man errs
or sins. And the punishment for error and for sin is first of all seen in the
turbulence of soul created by passion. . . [Then] the disintegration and

turmoil grow.32

All that we can say is that all the actions of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are not
controlled by a calculative reason. But there is always some or the other reason

behind what the tragic protagonist does. He walks on a double-edged razor path
as whatever he does he is bound to cause his faB. He is caught in the web of

fate, chance and many other circumstances and the divine factor also pays its
part. W e see in Othello how the unsuspecting frankness and open nature of the
Moor is played upon and exasperated by the artful dexterity of lago. What
aggravates the sense of pity and terror in us and anguish in the case of Lear is

not so much his lack of reason but the petrifying indifference, the cold and
calculative selfishness of his daughters. Shakespeare’s Hamlet explores the

steep and thorny way of self-realization from this very capacity to reason. There

is a ‘method’ in the ‘madness’ of the great heroes. To borrow from Pascal, they
have a reason, which Reason does not know.

The reason which the tragic hero takes as his subject is always that which

strikes him as proper. His follies are rooted deep in the human heart whose bond
is the hardest to loosen. There is a tug and war in the tragic heroes who possess
noble nature. The mind of Lear, staggering between the weight of attachment and
the hurried movements of reasoning, is like a tall ship driven about by the winds,

buffeted by the furious waves, but that ship still rides above the storm though

having its anchor fixed in the bottom of the sea; or it is like the sharp rock circled
by the eddying whirlpool that foams and beats against it, but can not cut the rock.
Such are the characters that Shakespeare has drawn who are wrenched from all

32 op. cit., p. 248.

187
its accustomed holds but still are great souls. Shakespeare’s characters are
masterpieces in the age of restless inquiry; they contain the highest examples of
the force of individual reasoning. The great soliloquies of either Hamlet or Othello
are, to borrow Wordsworth’s definition of imagination ‘reason in its most exalted

mood’.

Bradley’s observation is significant:

If we confine our attention to the hero, and to those cases where the
gross and palpable evil is not in him but elsewhere, we find that the
comparatively innocent hero still shows some marked imperfection or
defect- irresolution, precipitancy, pride, credulousness, excessive

simplicity to sexual emotions, and the like. These defects or

imperfections are certainly, in the wide sense of the word, evil, and they
contribute decisively to the conflict and catastrophe.33

But it was this kind of view that really made critics search for some defect in the
hero. For centuries this tag of hamartia unfortunately misled people to a flawed

vision of tragedy so that scholars and critics consciously started digging into the
tragic protagonist to find some fault in him to explain the cause of such an

enormous suffering, heart-rending calamity and fatal disaster. A relevant

objection to Bradley’s approach to the Shakespearian protagonists could be that

he does not isolate the realm of great art enough and see that what is perhaps
desirable to handle the actual complexities of real life is not possible in the realm

of art which is guided by the internal laws specific to the creation of art. The

tragic protagonist is said to possess all the virtues and only one fault, flaw or
mistake of judgment. One frailty seems to tar their image and for critics one frailty

is enough to label such enormous characters, but tragedy is not brought about by
this one frailty. Evidently the virtues which he possesses should be enough to
save him and avoid the tragic catastrophe. Here I would like to refer to the story of

33 Op. Cit., p.26.

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E v e r y m a n w h e r e h e trie s to s a v e h im s e lf b y a n a ly z in g h is p a s t d e e d s a n d b y

a c c e p tin g a ll h is s in s . J u s t o n e v ir tu e o f h is , fa ith in G o d , s a v e s h im fro m a ll th e

m is e r ie s o f life a n d u ltim a te d e a th . B u t S h a k e s p e a r e w a s w ritin g a t t h e t im e o f a

h u g e c h a n g e in t h e R e n a is s a n c e E n g la n d w h e r e it w a s im p o s s ib le f o r h im to

b e lie v e t h a t t h e u n iv e r s e w a s ru le d b y a n o r d e r a s t h e r e w a s a lo t o f tu r b u le n c e

a n d c h a o s e v e r y w h e r e . S h a k e s p e a r e w a s s e n s itiv e to t h e e x p lo s io n o f n e w id e a s

a ro u n d h im . T h u s a S h a k e s p e a r e a n p la y w o u ld n o t tu r n o n ly o n a p a r tic u la r,

s in g u la r s h o rtc o m in g o f a tr a g ic c h a r a c t e r a s t h e p la y h o ld s a m ir r o r to a c o m p le x

s o c ie ty a n d a w h o le c o m p le x a g e . A p la y is a m ic r o c o s m . S o , w h e n t h a t is s o h o w

can w e p in t h e p r o ta g o n is t d o w n to o n e fra ilty ? W e h a v e to r e a liz e t h a t a n y

s itu a tio n , e v e n in life , is n o t u n i-c e n tr e d b u t p o ly -c e n tr e d . T h o u g h t h e w o rld o f a rt

h a s v e r is im ilitu d e , it h a s its o w n c o m p le x itie s w h ic h s h a p e it.

W hat needs to be a p p re h e n d e d is we s h o u ld do ju s t ic e to th e

S h a k e s p e a r e a n tr a g ic h e r o ’s m o r a l fib r e in a w o r ld o f g o o d a n d e v il a n d a ls o to

u n d e r s ta n d t h e c o n tro llin g f a c to r s th a t w o r k in e a c h p la y to c r e a t e a k in d o f h o s tile

e n v ir o n m e n t f o r e a c h h e r o . S in c e w h a t t h e tr a g ic p r o ta g o n is t o f e a c h t r a g e d y

fa c e s m u s t b e e n t ir e ly d u e to t h e o u tc o m e o f h is a c tio n s , it m u s t s e e m to b e r e a lly

b e c a u s e o f h is e r r o r , t h a t w h ic h e v e r o t h e r fa c to r s w h e t h e r it is lu c k o r c h a n c e o r

a c c id e n t o r s u p e r n a t u r a l o r e v e n t h e g o d s s e e m to b e s u b s u m e d under one

c ru c ia l e r r o r . W h a t is r e q u ir e d o f u s is to s e e t h e c o n c e p tio n o f tr a g ic h e r o a s

m o r e t h a n a s e t o f r e a d ily n a m e a b le d e f e c t s w h ic h s e e m to m o t iv a te t h a t h e r o ’s

c h o ic e s a n d a c tio n s in a w e ll-n ig h p r e - d e s t in e d w o r ld . O u r r e s p o n s e t o t h e tra g ic

h e r o s h o u ld b e to id e n tify h is fu n d a m e n ta l a n d b a s ic p e r s o n a lit y w h ic h r e m a in s

t h e s a m e t h r o u g h o u t t h e p la y f o r it c o n s is ts in a p a r tic u la r o r in d iv id u a l w a y o f

h a n d lin g t h e in tr ic a c ie s o f life . B o th t h e w o rld t h a t s u r r o u n d s h im a n d h is o w n

in d iv id u a l s e lf s h o u ld b e t a k e n in to c o n s id e r a tio n , f o r a n y f u lle r u n d e r ta k in g o f th e

d r a m a tic s itu a tio n .

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 With Shakespeare’s tragic heroes their words and their actions are enough

to communicate their thoughts and their beliefs or whatever they say and do.
Shakespeare wanted to present his tragic characters not as persons with vices
but virtues. The reality of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes lies precisely in what they
acknowledge their confronting of any situation or relationship, in what they take
their world to be. For example, Lear takes his daughters by their words and does

not doubt them as no father has any reason to believe that his children will treat

him with filial ingratitude and thus anger overtakes him when he is even refused
basic amenities of life by his two ungrateful daughters. And as for his banishing of
Cordelia, Lear accepts the wrong he has done to her and does all that he can to
ask for forgiveness of her and gods above us. No tragic hero can be viewed
separately from his basic noble nature and the wrongs that others have done to

him, the sufferings he has undergone, the majestic way in which he

acknowledges his responsibility and then accepts death ultimately as a

consummation. That is what Shakespeare means to say in the play.

One more basic reality to which Shakespeare wants to draw our attention
is that he seems to include his tragic vision and endorsement of the fact that the
protagonist eventually comes to terms with the truth of life as he has encountered
it and reaches his spiritual heights within the given situation, at the end of the

play. Only when the tragic heroes are conceived in this way where their total
moral strength is counted we can say that we can do justice to such

masterpieces. W e would have done justice to the tragic vision only when we
honour their integrity unfractured by the so-called hamartia. Hamartia seems to

be the excuse; their integrity is the truth.

190