King Lear and the True Nature of Love (and maybe even literature)

King Lear is a really good play. Really good. It’s considered Shakespeare’s greatest by many and is universally recognized as one of the greatest tragedies ever written. It is Shakespeare at his best: it is replete with beautiful, powerful language, truthful depictions of complex human beings, and eternal, universal truths about the human condition. It was written four hundred years ago. And it is still being ubiquitously produced. A major production of Lear opens next month in Chicago. The fact that Lear (and the rest of Shakespeare’s work) has survived the “ravages of time”(Sonnet 19) is a testament to its quality and truth. I believe that the reason that Shakespeare’s work and Lear are still around is that they get at overarching truths about humanity that still resound hundreds of years later. And they’re damn entertaining.

Lear is about many things. It’s about age, it’s about government, it’s about madness, it’s about family, it’s about trust, but over and above all it is really (as always) about love. Really all art is. Really that’s all anything is about. Love is a transcendent, essentially human characteristic that we have been striving to gain a grasp of for millennia. (Except that dogs love too, I suppose. Maybe we’re just projecting that on them. Probably.) Anyway, the point is that Lear has survived the centuries because it has an important lesson to teach us about love. That lesson has to do with who to love, how to know when we are loved, and how to express that love.

King Lear asks each of his daughters to tell him how much they love him in order to decide their inheritance. His daughters Regan and Goneril proclaim their undying love for him in an almost comically bombastic and disingenuous fashion. Goneril claims that she loves him “beyond what can be valued, rich, or rare” while Regan professes herself “an enemy to all other joys….and find that I am alone felicitate/In your highness’ love”(Act1, Sc.1). Note: felicitate means “made happy.” Regan and Goneril praise him in this overblown, superficial manner and Lear is flattered. He then turns to his youngest daughter, Cordelia, expecting another flowery speech. Cordelia answers honestly. She tells him that she loves him because he is her father, because he has “ begot, bred, and loved” her. She forswears love based on outward qualities, but professes her love for him purely because he is her father. Lear flies into a rage, banishing Cordelia. Here, one of his advisers begs him “See better, Lear”(Act1, Sc1).

Lear fails to use his vision and distinguish true love from false love. He chooses the overblown, false speeches of his first two daughters and rejects the simple, enduring, soft-spoken love of his youngest daughters. And this is his tragic mistake. This is the decision he makes that destroys his life. Lear chooses love that is over-exaggerated for personal gain. His older daughters profess their love for personal gain. They love him for the physical things he can bestow on them. But once he has given them these things, they have no more use for him or his love. They misuse and abuse him in his old age. Cordelia loves him not for any exterior trappings, but for who he is in her life. This love is enduring. Despite the wrong Lear does her, Cordelia takes him back and nurses him. This is the message of King Lear. True love is simple and honest; not overblown. True love can overcome disputes as Cordelia and Kent show us. This message about the falsehood of bombastic love is slightly ironic coming from one of the greatest love poets of all time, but it is truthful and enduring none the less.

Reading this play was an interesting collision of worlds for me. I spend my life studying and analyzing plays a certain way: I analyze the motivations of characters, I look for clues as to who they are, what made them that way, what they’re hiding, what they’re really saying when they say things, what they really want. And in English class I read looking for symbols, for baptisms, for communions, for vampires. While of course I pay attention to symbolism when analyzing a play as an actor, it is in a more artistic and less academic way. Combining my artistic and academic viewpoints while reading Lear was an interesting and ultimately informing experience. Prose reminded me to pay special attention to the eyes. Foster reminded me that a storm is never just a storm: it is Lear’s inner turmoil, it is the chaos in the country, and it is a transformative experience for him—perhaps the awesome power of God and nature reminds him of his own mortality and fallibility. I was both being moved by the art but also paying attention to details and analyzing the text, so I suppose I was reading with my spine, as Nabokov would have wanted.

            I think I’ve discovered why I disagree with Nabokov’s approach as I’ve been writing this. I think that refusing to feel for the characters in a work of art or literature is actually preventing the work to do its work. Art exists to strengthen and expand our ability to be human and our ability to think, empathize, and feel. Any work of art, no matter how perfectly and painstakingly crafted, is worthless without emotional weight and truth. Maybe that’s what these authors have trouble expressing. Their technique matters, but at the end of the day they are gifted artists, gifted experiencers of human emotion. Literature and art possess something more intangible, as O’Connor hinted at. Shakespeare uses the eyes and the storm and he breaks the verse and does all sorts of wonderful things with the characters, but none of this would matter if the play lacked the power it does. If our hearts did not ache for Lear, the play would not be worth watching, reading, or analyzing. Maybe our literary critics would do well to remember the message I spoke of earlier. We can justify ourselves and our studies with as much complex and extraneous reasoning as we want, but in the end, if the love isn’t there it’s all meaningless.

Scansion in Shakespeare

I love Shakespeare. I have predominately studied Shakespeare’s plays from the perspective of an actor. I have methods of analysis so deeply ingrained into my play-reading habits that they are virtually impossible to cast off. Whenever I read, I am analyzing the objectives and possible tactics of each character. The skills I have learned as an actor of Shakespeare can be incredibly helpful to the general reader of Shakespeare’s plays as well.

Shakespeare gives us secret clues into the state of each character through the meter of the play. The majority of Shakespeare’s plays are written in iambic pentameter. This means that each line contains five sets of unstressed and stressed syllables. This gives each line written in this verse a uniform rhythm. In iambic pentameter, every other syllable is stressed, beginning with the second syllable of each line. For instance, the line “This day is called the feast of Crispian” from Henry V is read “this DAY is CALLED the FEAST of CRISPiAN.” This internalized, built-in emphasis can be incredibly helpful for the actor in discerning the meaning of a line. For instance, knowing that the natural emphasis of the famous line “To be or not to be—that is the question” reads “to BE or NOT to BE—that IS the QUEStion” can change the interpreted meaning greatly. In this instance the contrast provided between BE and NOT is of great importance and is naturally accentuated by the verse.

So that’s how verse in Shakespeare often works. So why does that matter other than helping actors to find meaning in the words? Scansion, or the study of the verse, is important because it provides great insight into the characters. And this is true because not all characters speak in this verse and those that do do not always. And this tells us volumes about who they are. As a general rule, nobles in Shakespeare speak in iambic pentameter. Often, uneducated, lower-class characters speak in prose. This difference in style has a subconscious effect in our perception of the characters.

But this becomes all the more interesting when we encounter characters who fluctuate in between verse and prose. This can provide us with great insight into the minds of the characters. For instance, if a character suddenly drops out of verse, they may be emphasizing a point, they may be lying or bluffing, or they may be overcome by emotion. In Hamlet, Hamlet speaks in verse most of the time, but speaks in prose when he is feigning madness. Edgar in King Lear speaks in verse as himself, but in prose as the mad “Poor Tom.” When Lear is driven mad, he speaks almost entirely in prose. When he awakens, he returns to verse.

Scansion can provide us with insight into the subtext of Shakespeare’s characters that cannot be gleaned by their text alone.

Vision in Lear

Francine Prose loved to talk about the symbolism of the eyes in Shakespeare’s King Lear and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Rather than focus on the parallels between Oedipus and Lear, I will focus purely on the use of the eyes as a symbol within Lear. Still, I am interested in thinking about if any legitimate parallels exist between Oedipus and the Duke of Gloucester, both of whom have their eyes put out (perhaps the Gloucester’s adultery somehow connects to Oedipus’ incest?). I believe the connections may be tenuous.

Anyway, some context: King Lear is about an aging king who decides to split his kingdom between his daughters. He asks them to tell him how much they love him in order to decide how much of the kingdom they deserve. Two daughters expound upon their undying love for him in a completely disingenuous. One daughter is honest and tells him that she loves him because he is her father. He banishes her and goes to live with his other daughters. They mistreat him horribly and he leaves to wander the heaths in the middle of a tempest. Throughout the play, Lear realizes how horribly wrong he was to trust the empty praise of his two daughters. And very often this conflict between truth and perception or deception is expressed with the use of the eyes as a symbol. The eyes also appear in other contexts with other characters, but with the same basic significance.

The first major use of eyes and vision as a symbol appears after Lear rejects his daughter Cordelia. After Lear declares her banishment, blind to the fact that she is the one most deserving of his love, his friend Kent urges him “See better, Lear”(Act1,Sc1). This associates Lear’s unwillingness to see his daughter’s worth to literal blindness. Gloucester’s inability to truly judge which of his children truly loves him is too associated with literal blindness. Walking on the heath, Gloucester meets his son, but fails to recognize him, only seeing him as “Poor Tom.” Gloucester also fails to see which of his sons really cares for him. But as Foster tells us, sometimes characters can only truly see when they have been struck blind. Much as Oedipus did, Gloucester is only able to discern the truth once he has lost his physical sight. Gloucester recognizes this, saying “I stumbled when I saw”( Act 4, Sc1). Just after acknowledging his improved perception of the truth after his blindness, Gloucester admits that he has wronged his rightful son, crying “O dear son Edgar/ The food of thy abused father’s wrath;/ Might I but live to see thee in my touch,/ I’d say I had eyes again!”(Act 4, Sc1). Throughout Lear, the eyes are intimately and inextricably  involved with the truth.  

Shakespeare's Psychopaths: Edmund and Richard III

The character of Edmund in Shakespeare’s King Lear bears a striking resemblance to one of Shakespeare’s other great villains, Richard III. Both Edmund and Richard are manipulative and cunning, almost psychopathic. Both of them betray family members and friends, ruthlessly cutting their ways into the seats of power.

The parallels between Richard and Edmund begin in their first appearances onstage. Both begin with a direct address to the audience, explaining their motivations and the specifics of their plot. Richard’s infamous “Now is the winter of our discontent…” soliloquy opens the play that bears his name, whereas Edmund’s introductory soliloquy opens the second scene of Lear. There are incredible similarities in the tone and language of these introductory soliloquies. Both Richard and Edmund are deeply bitter with their station in life. Richard bemoans his deformity, so unseemly “that dogs do bark at me as I halt by them—”(Richard, Act1, Sc.1). Edmund rages against his outcast status in society, crying “Why bastard? Wherefore base?”(Lear, Act 1, Sc 2).

Both Richard and Edmund unveil their plots to gain power in their opening soliloquies. Richard famously declares “ And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover/ to entertain these fair well-spoken days/ I am determined to prove a villain/ and hate the idle pleasures of these days”(Richard, Act 1, Sc 1). Likewise, after establishing his inability to succeed in his present condition, Edmund declares his sinister ambitions, saying “ Well then,/ Legitimate Edward, I must have your land…/ Edmund the base/shall top the legitimate: I grow, I prosper”(Lear, Act 1, Sc 2). Both Richard and Edmund seem to entirely lack concern or inner conflict about their villainy; both are morally compromised, perhaps leading to their diagnosis as psychopaths by many critics.

One interesting difference between the two is their opinion on the ever-present “nature.” Edmund is clearly a great lover of nature, declaring “ Thou, Nature, art my goddess: to thy law/ My services are bound….”(Lear, Act1, Sc2). It can also be inferred that Edmund is a physically healthy and attractive person, well endowed by nature, from his seemingly effortless seduction of the two sisters (Richard also seduces women, but in a more cunning, devious way). In stark contrast to Edmund’s devotion to nature stands Richards absolute loathing. Richard rages against Edmund’s goddess, describing himself as “cheated of feature by dissembling nature/ deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this world scarce half made up….”(Richard, Act1, Sc1).

The exact specifications of the plots of Edmund and Richard are strikingly similar as well. Edmund incriminates his brother by planting a letter declaring him a possible rebel. Edmund then pretends to sympathize with and advise his brother before attempting to seal his fate. Richard too plants evidence against his own brother, Lord George Clarence, causing him to be imprisoned. Richard too pretends to comfort his brother before ensuring his death.

Richard and Edmund share many similarities in their motivations, tactics, and actions. They are Shakespeare’s two greatest psychopathic characters. Richard is one of Shakespeare’s earliest tragedies, and Lear is one of his latest. No doubt the writing of Richard informed the writing of the character of Edmund in Lear.