Common Explanation

they all come up with explanations to avoid the suffering of the world -- they do need comfort -- their
intellectual mistakes are part of their defense
mankind also joins them in this
Critics
Aristotle: tragic flaw
Lear is old and obviously makes mistakes -- he deserves to get what he gets
The trouble is that he has realized all of that by the end of Act 1 -- but ghastly things go on happening
to him after that
18c. Poetic Justice
this play does not manifest poetic justice, so they re-wrote the play -- Nahum Tate -- in that version
they win the battle and Edgar saves Cordelia from an attempted rape and marries her at the end (with
not French King) -- this was closer to the original play -- this version held the stage for about 150
years -- they openly evaded it
1930s-1960s
it was very popular to see a Christian redemption in the play -- Cordelia as a Christ figure -- a
purgatory which implies a paradise -- Lear is redeemed by the end
there is an element of this here -- there are some Christian comments (in Act 4) but there are none in
Act 5
Later: Peter Brooks 1964
He was influenced heavily by the theater of the absurd -- borrowed heavily on those techniques -- in
was also an evasion of King Lear as it reduced the play -- made it more uniform and bleaker than it
actually is
There is a hint of optimism that sneaks in to the blinding scene -- the other servants do not obey
Regans order -- they resolve to get some medicine to help Gloucester -- Brook cut the lines and had
them obey Regan -- this is our version of Cordelia marries Edgar -- we falsify things by making them
bleaker -- it consoles us, for if we do believe this we live in a totally imbecilic universe and there is
nothing we can do
If we dont really believe it, we can take a sort of arty interest in the bleakness of his vision
King Lear is as terrible as life can get -- if you make it less terrible or more so then you dont have to
face it.
Lecture 2, Wednesday, November 17
The Road to Chaos
Organization of the Elizabethan universe -- elemental Chaos - strife - love which creates the orderly
universe (God)
In this play we are not so sure about God as it is a non-Christian play -- but the same metaphysical
system is prevailing with the idea that love holds the universe together and strife tears it apart
This system is directly exposed in the play - (1.4.240 p. 2496) - near the climax of his argument with
Goneirl at her house -- Lear is saying his train is well behaved -- then he has a break in his thought and
he thinks of Cordelia and his misbehavior towards her -- beginning of his realization that Cordelias
fault was not as gross as he thought it was when he started, that that small error wrenched Lears frame
of nature: he is a microcosm of the world (nature) when nature gets wrenched, gaul takes its place and
you have chaos rather than the order of love
How do we get there?
By the middle of the play we are in the wild in a raging storm with a naked lunatic - how do we get
there?
It goes in two phases -- people go into wrath and then chaos/insanity
(mad is chaos of the mind)
Lear->wrath->madness
Edgar->dispossed fugitive->"mad" beggar
Britain->family strife->mutilation, murder, war
extended nature->apocalyptic storm
the pattern is moving from the order of love into the chaos of madness
Edgar

more difficult than Lear as it is largely a symbolic progression

The soliloquy in which he decides to pretend to be mad (p.2506, 2.3) --he comments that he has
nowhere to go and that he will dress up as the lowest and rawest personage -- naked --"horrible object"
-- he will "enforce their charity" with his baseness.
The speech is in part exposition so that we know what he is going to do because the next time we will
see him is when he pops out of a hovel later and drives Lear mad.
There are a whole series of thematic statements
Physical actions follow what is happening in the plays -- Lear said he would "divest" himself of
authority (to lose his clothes)
1) he will strip himself -- remove his authority
2) bestiality -- he is becoming the lowest form of life -- Lear and others endure the storm as wild
animals without shelter -- Gloucester describes himself as chained like a bear when being blinded -Albany says we will all become monsters of the deep if we follow his wife -- there are 72 animal
images in the play
3) madness -- Edgar will also be insane -- he will be a Bedlam beggar -- Lear had feared madness, but
Edgar seems to embrace it -- the object as he defines it is to "enforce their charity" sometimes with
lunatic curses and sometimes with prayers he will make unwilling human beings give to their fellows
(that is his goal) -- he will look disgusting, loud voice, scars on his arms, he is obsessed with devil
beating him in his speeches -- he is a horrible thing to look at -- he is repulsive: he is not the sort of
person you give money to for good reasons, you give him money because you want him to go away
4) identity -- the scene ends with "Tom, thats something, Edgar I nothing am" -- the role of Edgar has
been put to nothing -- the disowning of him by his father Edgar is nothing while as Tom he can have
some role and identity
The Character of Edgar
In the first scene he came across as a dummy
Here he is making a decision to assume a role -- why should he chose this role? it is a good disguise,
but it seems unlikely for an Earls son -- he does this because Shakespeare wants him to do so -- he is
the furthest from normal credibility -- he wants a third madman in the storm scenes -- he wants the
more rational beggar of act 4 -- and he wants the knight in shining armor for act 5 -- he is being
sketchy in psychology, but he gets this progression
He seems very sheltered at the beginning and then all of a sudden has a great experience with the raw
underclasses
But he does have a purpose -- to preserve himself -- sanity and identity -- his whole position in life
was largely dependent on his father -- the oldest son of an Earl had most things set out for him
What Edgar is doing is trying to respond to a very sudden attack on his identity -- suddenly uprooted
from his heritage -- his sanity and identity are attacked -- very similar to what Hamlet does -- they
both can conceal themselves and their real ideas, but it also allows them to release their feelings and
express their inner turmoil
Or, Edgar seems to desire self-degradation -- he chooses a role which is inherently masochistic -- he
has been accused of plotting to murder his father (its a lie), but if you follow Freud, then it is true of
all sons and he is punishing himself for a crime he has wanted to commit in fantasy -- but then he
saves his fathers life
The actual disguise (3.4.84, p.2519) when he comes out of the hovel, Lear asks him how he came to
this condition -- whole madness, nakedness, wickedness, bestiality -- all of man at his worse -- add up
all the animals and you get a man -- but there is something more particular here -- it reminds us of
Oswald and Edmund: what does this mean as Edgar dose not know those things -- those are the two
guys Edgar kills -- he must become those things that he eventually kills in order to grow through those
thing -- not a complete idea
Lear
he discovers disposition and powerlessness in a much greater way -- he had all of Britain at his feet
and now he cant even get dinner
1) (1.4) -- 57 (p. 2492) -- Oswald tells him he is his ladys father -- Question: who am I -- he has no
identity of his own -- this is reversed as identity comes from your parents, but not so for Lear -- he has
given the power to his children, so now he is under her -- he had specified that he would keep the

name of a King, but now he is being told no -- he is trying to do the same thing Richard II did -- he is
trying to figure out what if anything is left
2)The fool tells him he is a fool as he has given away all of his other titles -- Question: do you call me
a fool? -- the fool is on Lears side, but very practical -- part of his madness is a compulsion to tell the
truth all the time -- he is saying that if you have given away everything else you are left with what
basic nature is which is folly -- he remembers this at the cliff with Gloucester that we cry that we find
ourselves among fools at birth -- Kent agrees -- folly appears to be our only inherent characteristic
3) 147 -- The fool starts singing when he gave up all to his daughters and they were happy -- Question:
when did you start singing so much -- the fool is telling Lear that he has infantisized himself -- he is
taking a tragic hero and reducing him to a squalling child -4) 165 -- Why do you care about your daughters frown now that you have nothing, and are nothing-Question to Goneril: why do you frown -- an O without a figure -- nothing -- he is not even a fool -[King] Lear -- everything hinged on the King part, now he has nothing
5) 205 -- You are Lears shadow -- a new feeling -- Lear goes into a bit of rhetorical play acting -"does Lear walk thus?" -- Goneril describes it as comical later -- he asks who can tell him who he is,
the fool answers that he is Lears shadow
These revelations that he is a fool, nothing, shadow, Ladys father -- result in rage -- he got angry at
Cordelia and Kent, but now his anger at Goneirl is impotent -- all he has is the power of the word -cursing Goneril to sterility or to squalling brats is horrible -- but even at the height of his attack we see
how impotent it is -- 258 -- he makes his horrible curse and then exits dramatically -- Albany is
horrified, Goneril says dont bother -- but then he comes back and complains that she dismissed half
his knights -- it ruins the effect and makes him look impotent -- he then ends up crying in front of his
daughter -- he threatens that he is going to get it all back and really hurt her -- he cant, we know it, so
this makes him look even more pathetic and horrible
However, even in his rage, impotence, and shame he is capable of realizing his mistakes here -- in the
last scene when he and the fool are waiting for their horses to go to Regans, Lear is half paying
attention to him (1.5.20) -- Lear realizes that he did her wrong -- it is not even a small fault in Cordelia
at this point, it was his fault
But we have to go through the whole thing again with Regan, Cornwall, and Goneril -- this is part of
the effect of the play (2.4) that we go through this pattern over and over again -- (2.4.260) -- they are
trying to reason with him that he does not need all the knights -- they argue that he does not need these
-- he says that it gives him a sense of himself to have these knights -- he turns it into a clothes issue:
with Regan that you dont need fancy clothes yet she has them, not what nature needs, but it is a good
thing -- then he moves 265 onto a bigger sense of need: patience, a moral quality: the ability to endure
(Kent), or Edgars ability to adapt to the misfortunes which befall them -- then he goes into the rage
mode, but he cant even think with what to curse them -- he doesnt have anymore power -- but then
he pulls himself together -- "you think Ill weep" but Ill break my heart first and go mad -- almost a
deliberate decision to go mad rather than to weep and collapse in front of his daughters -- he goes into
the storm (both weather and psychological)
Lecture 3, Friday 19 November, 1999
1. Attempt to reconstitute justice
2. Act charitably to others
3. kill yourself
4. rage against the world
5. weep
6. go on
(see handout on the metaphysical question in King Lear)
Lecture 2 got to the central critical thought of the play -- the two strands of development and
transformation (Edgar and Lear) into madness -- when they meet together in the storm -- the apparition
of poor tomb from outside of the hovel brings Lear to real madness -- he is obsessed that all evil in the
world is caused by evil daughters
More important is that in his madness Lear identifies Tom as the central embodiment of humanity -Tom responds with the serving and loving mistress speech (p. 2519 line 94) -- Tom is "the thing itself"
he is the naked animal man, Lear then wishes to join Tom in his naked state -- for the rest of the scene

he calls him a "learned philosopher" -- he thinks some special source of wisdom comes from Tom,
maybe he can learn from them.
The rest of the play is about the attempt to come back from that extremity -- from Beckett: "What do
you do when we fall far from help?" -- the rest of King Lear is a series of answers to that question.
1. Attempt to reconstitute Justice
The whole play is concerned with justice -- Lears offence was the love test which offended against
both love and justice -- misunderstanding of love as quantifiable
The whole play is full of trial scenes, Gloucester, Daughters -- and (p.2522 3.6) the mad trial scene:
Lear raves with the fool and Tom -- the major action is the attempted trial of Regan and Goneril,
represented by stools
Focusing on this scene partially because it is very difficult to appreciate when just reading -- many of
the lines are mad lines -- perhaps the sound matters more than the sense of the words -- Kent as a
kindly base and the mad Tom and fool -- the show is more important -- the surrealistic trial with Kent
(banished) and the two fools as justices -- this scene is the first opening scene thrown to chaos
(p. 2522 13) -- picked up the hell-fire imagery -- before punishment he gets to a trial -- the Fool makes
a dirty joke -- Lear insists on going on with the trial -- he calls Edgar a "robed man of justice" -- Lears
complaints against Goneril are all reduced to the complaint that she kicked him, childish -- the Fool is
playing back and forth between the mock trial and the absurdity of it all: between the pretense and the
reality -- Lear puts the two of them together and takes the crookedness of the stool as a straight
valuation of Regans heart -- 70 -- "Then let them anatomize Regan. See what breeds about her heart."
-- he wants to know why people are bad -- horrible scene: mixture of madness and folly, hear the case
of evil and collapse without anything having been done -- but at least the right question is asked: what
is the source of evil
(sees the sheet)
Answers to why there is evil:
Gloucester: (Flies and Gods) random acts
Albany: (at Cornwalls death) justice returns to punish our bad actions, there is a justice in the heavens
Kent: (how could the same pair of parents produce evil and good daughters) concludes it is the stars,
pure fatalism -- this is the same view Gloucester took early in the play, but here we are not inclined to
ridicule it -- partly because by the time we get to (4.3) we have been through so much that it is more
reasonable to accept it
Cordelia: (waking up Lear from his madness, he thinks he will hate her) "no cause" to hate him -- it is
just wiped out of his mind -- both she and Edgar are not mad at their fathers -- maybe there is no cause
for fundamental things like love and hate -- they are first causes, they just exist
2. Charity
In Act 4 the daughters are rescued -- the love of the children saves both Lear and Gloucester
Despair is Gloucesters first response, but not his only one -- he is also brought to a recognition for the
need of human tragedy (p. 2528 4.1.) he gives a purse to poor Tom -- "Let the superfurous and lust
dieted man who does not see because he dose feel feel your power quickly" -- the road to social justice
is for the rich to feel what the poor feel -- but the irony is that Edgar is not happy to get the purse -Edgar had begun the scene saying that nothing could get worse -- this reminds us that because one
person is unhappy that someone else must be happier is not true
3. Kill yourself
Edgars purpose is to teach his father patience -- the idea here is that there are people to help us when
we fall
Gloucester thinks things are really bad at the moment and has reached his limit and resolves to suicide
(4.6 p.2534) -- very simple action: Edgar as poor Tom persuades Gloucester that he is at the cliff, lets
him fall, and then pretends he has been saved by the Gods -- this deception and shock treatment gets
him out of his fatality -- this is absurd and weird in a lot of ways
Gloucesters fall does not work on a realistic stage or a screen -- but this was written for an unrealistic
stage where the audiences imagination is made to work -- here Shakespeare is exploiting a part of his
stage -- verbal scenery in all of his plays where a character sets up the scene -- here Edgar does the
same setting the scene for the audience as the top of Dover cliffs so they really believe he is at edge of
the cliff -- the audience does believe the speech and so they think he is at the top of the cliff -- so then
we go ahead and Gloucester falls forward, the only odd thing we get is a line from Edgar that he is

playing with Gloucesters despair, but we dont know how or why -- Gloucester then faints and then
comes in as a different person -- the point is that we discover that there was no cliff at the same time
Gloucester does; we are made to share his shock and we are put in his position to understand his shock
and bewilderment -- but it carries a terrible implication that in order to go on living we must be
deluded to believe a miracle has gone on to save him, a religion must be manufactured for him.
A miracle has happened: Edgar, maybe his and Cordelias love are miraculous
4. Rage against the World
Lear: 105 -- pretending to be a king and hand down his justice -- pretending to pardon someone for
adultery (ironically Gloucester is there) -- he goes on about how everyone does it and that the bastard
son of Gloucester is better than his legitimate daughters -- he then "sees" a court lady who is supposed
to be very chaste, but that he really goes on like a maniac -- this is his current version of love: it is just
sex and it is disgusting
And as for justice (135) -- whipping of a whore, he says that the law enforcers want to commit the
crime as much as the criminal -- he notes that the big con-mans arrange to have the little con-men
punished -- he goes on about how wicked people are in pretending to be just
Aristotle: man is the rational animal
Swift: man is capable of rationality
Lear: man is the animal that fucks and punishes and it is rotten and disgusting
We also weep
5. Weep
Gloucester starts (170) audibly suffering -- he acknowledges Gloucester --a sense of breaking through
this madness to the two old men and one of them reaching out and naming Gloucester
The first thing we all do is to cry when we come out of the womb and that is the defining characteristic
of humans -- we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools -- most daring moment of
Shakespeares stage metaphors by pointing out that we are just as foolish as those on the stage
The tragic flaws have been worked out, both have accomplished great learning, but Shakespeare goes
on and forces the characters to go on
6. Go On
The wicked characters start to turn on each other, but Lear loses the battle
(5.2) the battle takes place off stage -- all we do is see Gloucester waiting for it to be over -- and when
he hears that Lear has lost he gives up again -- Edgar tries once again to tell him he must endure
further -- it is a restatement of Lears "must be patient" lines about being born
We can only hope to achieve some balance or maturity, Edgars "ripeness" -- that is all we can achieve
to echo the great nothings
That "ripeness is all" is close to the meaning of the play -- and then Gloucester replies "that is true too"
-- there are no exclusive things; everything is "true too" we must keep discovering more -- that is the
action of the final scene of the play: Goneril, Regan, Edmund dead; but Cordelia and Lear die.
Closing things up at the end
Cordelias death is not a part of a tragic plot, it is a strike out of the blue -- it is just something more
that the characters have to deal with -- there are more than 6 ways of going on
Worse things keep happening in King Lear -- it is most strongly marked by Albany, Kent, and Edgar
all trying to bring the play to a close 300 -- 317 -- he tries again to set things right by withdrawing
from responsibility by telling Kent and Edgar to rule -- Kent has his own withdrawal -- he says he isnt
going to live much longer as his dead master is calling him -- Edgar withdraws from judgement: he
says there are no more moral judgements but that we should just speak what he feels -- back to the
idea that those who have not felt it must feel it quickly
Albany resigns from rule, Kent from life, Edgar from thinking about it or judging it
Lear has the last vision at the end -- Lear sees something on the lips of Cordelia -- we dont know what
it is -- from the others point of view, Lear is a perdu (a lost man) at the end of the play, in military
sense it is the sentry posted furthest out -- he is almost certainly lost -- he patrols our furthest reach
into threatening territory -- is this what Lear is up to in the end?