King Lear Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
in the Storm" by William Dyce (1806-1864)]]King Lear is generally regarded as one of William Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. It is believed to have been written in 1605 and is based on the legend of Llyr, a king of pre-Roman Britain. His story had already been told in chronicles, poems and sermons, as well as on the stage, when Shakespeare undertook the task of retelling it.
After the Restoration, the play was often modified by theatre practitioners who disliked its nihilistic flavour, but, since World War II, it has come to be regarded as one of Shakespeare's greatest achievements. The part of King Lear has been played by many great actors, but is generally considered a role to be taken on only by those who have reached an advanced age.
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2 Plot 3 Sources for King Lear 4 Points of debate 5 Film adaptations 6 Notes 7 External links |
The play begins with the earl of Gloucester commending his bastard son Edmund to the Earl of Kent. Thereafter we find King Lear taking the decision to abdicate the throne and divide his kingdom equally between his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. The eldest two are married, but Cordelia is much sought after as a bride, partly because she is her father's favourite. However, when Lear attempts to auction off his kingdom to the most admiring bidder of his daughters, the plan backfires. Cordelia refuses to outdo the flattery of her elder sisters, and Lear, in a fit of pique, divides her share of the kingdom between Goneril and Regan, and Cordelia is banished. The King of France, however, sees value in her honesty and insists on wedding her, even after she has been disinherited.
Almost as soon as Lear abdicates the throne, he finds that Goneril and Regan have betrayed him, and arguments ensue. The Earl of Kent, who has spoken up for Cordelia and been banished for his pains, returns disguised as the servant Caius, who will "eat no fish," in order to protect the king, to whom he remains loyal. Meanwhile, Goneril and Regan fall out with one another over their attraction to Edmund -- and are forced to deal with an army from France, led by Cordelia, sent to restore Lear to his throne. Eventually Goneril poisons Regan over their differences, and stabs herself when Edmund is wounded.
Another subplot involves the Earl of Gloucester, whose two sons, the good Edgar and the evil Edmund, are at loggerheads, the bastard Edmund having concocted false stories about his legitimate half-brother. Edgar is forced into exile, affecting lunacy. Edmund engages in liaisons with Goneril and Regan, and Gloucester is blindeded by Regan's husband, but is saved from death by Edgar, whose voice he fails to recognise.
Lear appears in Dover, where he wanders about raving and talking to mice. Gloucester attempts to throw himself from a cliff, but is deceived by Edgar and comes off safely, encountering the King shortly after.
Besides the subplot involving the Earl of Gloucester and his two sons, the principal innovation Shakespeare made to this story was the death of Cordelia and Lear at the end. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this tragic ending was much criticised, and alternative versions were written and performed, in which the leading characters survived and Edgar and Cordelia were married.
King Llyr was a semi-legendary king who reigned in Cornwall and Devonshire in present-day England. According to the Historia Britonum, Llyr may have been taken as a prisoner to Rome, and this traditional lore may be the origin of Shakespeare's play. Lear may also be Lir, a god of the sea in Celtic mythology; there, Lir's children include Bran and Mannanan, eponymous creator of the Isle of Man.
One of Shakespeare's sources was an earlier play, King Leir. In this play Cordella and the King of France serve Leir disguised as rustics. However, the ancient folk tale of Lear had existed in many versions prior to that, and it's likely that Shakespeare was familiar with them. One of them is the Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century.
Shakespeare's most important source is thought to be the second edition of The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande by Raphael Holinshed, published in 1587.
The name of Cordelia was probably taken from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, published in 1590. Spenser's Cordelia also dies from hanging, as in King Lear.
Other likely sources are A Mirror for Magistrates (1574), by John Higgins; The Malcontent (1604), by John Marston; The London Prodigal (1605); Arcadia (1580-1590), by Sir Philip Sidney; Montaigne's Essays, which were translated into English by John Florio in 1603; An Historical Description of Iland of Britaine, by William Harrison; Remaines Concerning Britaine, by William Camden (1606); Albion's England, by William Warner, (1589); and A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures, by Samuel Harsnett (1603).
The modern reader of King Lear could benefit from the demystification of some subtleties in the text, as Shakespeare often brushes over details that are made clearer in his sources, and were perhaps more familiar to Elizabethan theatregoers than to modern ones.
Scene one features King Lear testing the extent of his daughters' loyalty and love for him. He is preparing to abdicate. Lacking a male heir, he decides to divide his land between the sisters and, for two of them, their husbands. He devises a test for them, asking "Which of you shall we say doth love us most?". This may strike us as somewhat senile, because if Lear has already made up his mind as to how the land is shared, the trial appears pointless. On the other hand, Shakespeare may have intended Lear's statement ("Which of you shall we say doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend / Where nature doth with merit challenge") to have been a mere formality or piece of rhetoric. Shakespeare has overlooked (purposely or absent-mindedly) the crux of the situation, which is that in another version (the anonymous play The True Chronicle History of King Leir) Cordelia has already vowed to marry for love, not whoever her father should choose, and Lear assumes that his youngest daughter will play along with his game. On receiving her proclamations of devout love and loyalty, he plans to force her into a marriage which she could not possibly object to after claiming such stolid obedience. Of course, the trap fails disastrously for all parties. It is not clear whether or not Shakespeare intended his audience to be aware of this subtext, or whether he assumed the details of the situation were not relevant.
The adaptations that Shakespeare made to the legend of King Lear to produce his tragic version are quite telling of the effect they would have had on his contemporary audience. The story of King Lear (or Leir) was familiar to the average Elizabethan theatre goer (as were many of Shakespeare's sources) and any discrepancies between versions would have been immediately apparent.
Shakespeare's tragic conclusion gains its sting from such a discrepancy. The traditional legend and all adaptations preceding Shakespeare's have it that after Lear is restored to the throne, he remains there until "made ripe for death" (Edmund Spencer). Cordelia, her sisters also deceased, takes the throne as rightful heir, but after a few years is overthrown and imprisoned by nephews, leading to her suicide.
Shakespeare shocks his audience by bringing the worn and haggard Lear onto the stage, carrying his dead youngest daughter. He taunts them with the possibility that she may live yet with Lear saying, "This feather stirs; she lives!" (Act V, scene iii, line 265). We then have the most devastating line ever written by The Bard: "Never, never, never, never, never!" (Act V, scene iii, line 308)
This was indeed too bleak for some to take, even many years later. Samuel Johnson wrote in his The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765) that, "Cordelia, from the time of Tate, has always retired with victory and felicity. And, if my sensations could add anything to the general suffrage, I might relate that I was many years ago shocked by Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor." Later yet, Charles Lamb wrote, "To see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting."
The character of Lear's Fool, important in the first act, disappears without explanation in the third. A popular explanation for this is that the actor playing the Fool also played Cordelia. The two characters are never on stage simultaneously, and dual-roling was popular in Shakespeare's time. Without going that far, the play does ask us to at least compare the two; Lear chides Cordelia for foolishness in Act I, and chides himself as equal in folly in Act V.
A more elaborate suggestion is that Cordelia never went to France but stayed behind disguised as Lear's Fool, serving her father in much the same manner as Edgar served his father Gloucester in the subplot. It has been suggested that Cordelia was aided in this service by the King of France who was disguised as a Servant/Knight/Gentleman. However, the fool was in Lear's service long before Cordelia was dismissed, and one of Lear's knights observes, "Since my young lady [Cordelia]'s going into France, sir, the fool hath much pined away."
This is an Article on King Lear. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About King Lear Characters
Plot
Sources for King Lear
Points of debate
Confusing opening
Tragic ending
Cordelia and the Fool
Film adaptations
Notes
External links