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.
King Lear seems like a great novel to read and try to focus on the great amount of detail or the two parallel characters that actually stand on the complete opposite spectrum of the good and the bad. King Lear does seem like an interesting character to look into deeper and find the meanings behind the various symbols or objects that seems to symbolize or be a part of the greater whole, such a theme or a message that Shakespeare is trying to deliver to his audience. I know that my experience in reading King Lear will completely different as I have no background in acting and I view plays as more of novel, but just a weird format. I think that reading the novel from a different perspective reveals more clues and Foster even suggested to try to read the book as a member of the audience in that time period, most of which would not have a lot of acting experiences, but on the other hand great writers, such as Shakespeare stand the test of time and any new interpretations creates more questions and themes or messages to study and explore their true meaning and how they fit as part of the whole. There is a great amount of inter textual connections between the different Shakespearean plays as many of them have a similar basis, but since Shakespeare had such a great influence on writing. In the novel I read, Brae New World by Aldous Huxley there was a struggle between the good and the bad side. One of the posts talked about the great parallel connection between Richard III and Edmund, but the difference is that they are seen from a different perspective. In my novel, Lenina and John shared many common qualities, but one came from the savage group and one from the civilized world and obviously the irony made the savage a more well-rounded person and knowing what true love actually looks like and feels like. I think that Shakespeare includes many twists to stay away from a linear story and try to create a more fluctuating and adapting story that any new view point can change the meaning and add more information about a theme or a symbol. The study of a text in depth is an interesting process that reveals the irregularities, symbols and parallels between characters. I have not read King Lear, but I hope to one day. I wonder, how do all of these small pieces fit into a greater theme a message that a reader could take in his or her life? Also how would a differnt view point change it, since everyone is only given one way to view the play or any piece of literature?
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