Shakespeare and King Lear

1. Shakespeare and King Lear

2. William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 • Grammar school • Married at 18 to Anne Hathaway (shotgun marriage) • Three children (Hamnet, only son) • Started in the theatre around 1590 • Referred to in 1592 publication • Closing of London theatres between 1592-1594 • Part of ‘King’s players’ from 1594 at Globe theatre • Coat of arms granted to Shakespeare’s father in 1596 • New Place, 1597 (‘second-largest in town’) • Retired to Stratford in 1612

3. Shakespeare • Sharer, ‘one of ten owners of the company’ • House-holder, ’one of the owners or lease-holders of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres’ • Dramatist • Actor • Wrote 2 plays per year until 1602, and thereafter 1 play per year • ‘He did act exceedingly well’ – ‘he was a much better poet than player’ • ‘After 1603, he dropped out of his company’s actor-lists’ • (Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare)

4. Investments / Purchases • 1597: buys three storey-house (New Place) • 1597: owns 80 bushels of corn and malt • 1598: A Stratford man asks Shakespeare for a loan of £30. • 1602: pays £320 for 127 acres of land and pasture • 1602: buys title to a cottage and garden near New Place • 1605: Paid $440 for a lease of tithes in neighboring villages • 1613: Purchased Blackfriars Gatehouse • (Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare)

5. Shakespeare’s Will • ‘Item, I give unto my wife my second-best bed with the furniture’ • Shotgun marriage; no children post-1585; annual trip to Stratford; stories about women and Shakespeare (inc. Dark Lady); ‘my wife’ instead of ‘my loving wife’; not executor of will • (Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare)

6. History plays • Henry IV, parts 1-2; Henry V, Henry VI, parts 1-3; Henry VII; Henry VIII • Richard II, Richard III • King John • Julius Caesar

7. Comedies • The Two Gentlemen of Verona • The Comedy of Errors • Love’s Labour’s Lost • Taming of the Shrew • A Midsummer Night’s Dream • The Merchant of Venice • Much Ado about Nothing • As You Like It • Twelfth Night • Merry Wives of Windsor

8. Tragedies • Titus Andronicus • Romeo and Juliet • Hamlet • Othello • King Lear • Macbeth • Antony and Cleopatra • Timon of Athens • Coriolanus

9. Romances (Tragicomedies) • Pericles • The Winter’s Tale • Cymbeline • The Tempest

10. Problem Plays • All’s Well that ends well • Measure for Measure • Troilus and Cressida

11. Poems • Sonnets • Venus and Adonis • Rape of Lucrece • Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton

12. Sources for Shakespeare’s Plays • Plutarch • Ovid • Plautus / Terence • Boccaccio • Chaucer • Raphael Holinshed • Bible • Contemporary writers (Sidney, Marlowe)

13. Influence on English • Coined 2,000 words (OED)

14. King Lear

15. Dating of King Lear • 1603-4: Othello • 1604-5: All’s Well that Ends Well • 1605: Timon of Athens • 1605-1606: The History of King Lear • 1606: Macbeth • 1606: Antony and Cleopatra • (Oxford Companion to Shakespeare)

16. Dramatis personae • King Lear and his three daughters: Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia • Duke of Gloucester and his two sons: Edgar and Edmund • Duke of Cornwall (Goneril’s husband) • Duke of Albany (Regan’s husband) • King of France (suitor and then husband to Cordelia) • Fool • 5 acts

17. Plot (1/2) The aging King Lear decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, allotting each a portion in proportion to the eloquence of her declaration of love. The hypocritical Goneril and Reganmake grand pronouncements and are rewarded; Cordelia, the youngest daughter, who truly loves Lear, refuses to make an insincere speech to prove her love and is disinherited. The two older sisters mock Lear and renege on their promise to support him. Cast out, the king slips into madness and wanders about accompanied by his faithful Fool. He is aided by the Earl of Kent, who, though banished from the kingdom for having supported Cordelia, has remained in Britain disguised as a loyal follower of the king. Cordelia, having married the king of France, is obliged to invade her native country with a French army in order to rescue her neglected father. She is brought to Lear, cares for him, and helps him regain his reason. When her army is defeated, she and her father are taken into custody.

18. Plot (2/2) The subplot concerns the Earl of Gloucester, who gullibly believes the lies of his conniving illegitimate son, Edmund, and spurns his honest son, Edgar. Driven into exile disguised as a mad beggar, Edgar becomes a companion of the truly mad Lear and the Fool during a terrible storm. Edmund allies himself with Regan and Goneril to defend Britain against the French army mobilized by Cordelia. He turns his father over to Regan’s brutal husband—the Duke of Cornwall, who gouges out Gloucester’s eyes—and then imprisons Cordelia and Lear, but he is defeated in chivalric combat by Edgar. Jealous of Edmund’s romantic attentions to Regan, Goneril poisons her and commits suicide. Cordelia is hanged on the orders of Edmund, who experiences a change of heart once he has been defeated and fatally wounded by Edgar but is too late in his attempt to reverse the death order. The Duke of Albany, Goneril’s well-meaning husband, has attempted to remedy injustice in the kingdom but sees at last that events have overwhelmed his good intentions. Lear, broken, dies with Cordelia’s body in his arms. (David Bevington)

19. ‘Lear's story had often been told and Shakespeare appears to have known several versions. He treats it with great freedom, especially by adding Lear's madness and giving it a tragic conclusion.’ (Oxford Companion to Shakespeare)

20. Ending of Lear: who reigns? • Folio: Edgar • Quarto: Albany (‘the unfortunate life of Edgar’, title page) • ‘The two endings are irreconcilable; scholars may argue that one or the other is corrupt, but that is a judgement, not a necessary conclusion from the evidence. Each is justifiable theatrically and intellectually’. • Cambridge Companion to Shakesperean Tragedy

21. Language • Most of play written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) • Difference between speaking in verse and prose • Characters can shift between verse and prose • High-status characters speak in verse; comic/low-rank/mad characters speak in prose

22. Rhyming • ‘InKing Lear are 37 rhyming five-stress iambic couplets, used chiefly for the following purposes: (1) to give a certain amount of emotional pitch and intensity, as in the king of France's farewell, I, i, 248-255, Lear's reply, I, i, 256-259, and Edgar's speech, III, vi, 100-111; (2) to give epigrammatic effect to a sententious generalization, I, iv, 335-336; and (3), as so frequently in Elizabethan plays, to mark an exit or round off a speech.’ • Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Ed. Henry Norman Hudson. New York: Ginn and Co., 1911. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2009. 

23. Metrical forms • Fool: Verses with 2/3/4 stresses • Edgar: Ballad rhythm (4 stresses)

24. Lear to daughters, 1.1 Meantime we shall express our darker purpose. Give me the map there. Know that we have divided In three our kingdom; and ’tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths while we Unburdened crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall, And you, our no less loving son of Albany, We have this hour a constant will to publish Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife May be prevented now. The two great princes, France and Burgundy, Great rivals in our youngest daughter’s love, Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn, And here are to be answered. Tell me, my daughters - Since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state - Which of you shall we say doth love us most That we our largest bounty may extend Where nature doth with merit challenge? Goneril, Our eldest born, speak first.

25. Cordelia to Lear, 1.1 Good my lord,You have begot me, bred me, loved me: IReturn those duties back as are right fit,Obey you, love you, and most honour you.Why have my sisters husbands, if they sayThey love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carryHalf my love with him, half my care and duty:Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters,To love my father all.

26. Lear to Cordelia, 1.1 Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower:For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;By all the operation of the orbsFrom whom we do exist, and cease to be;Here I disclaim all my paternal care,Propinquity and property of blood,And as a stranger to my heart and meHold thee, from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian,Or he that makes his generation messesTo gorge his appetite, shall to my bosomBe as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,As thou my sometime daughter.

27. Lear to Kent, 1.1 Peace, Kent!Come not between the dragon and his wrath.I loved her most, and thought to set my restOn her kind nursery. Hence, and avoid my sight!So be my grave my peace, as here I giveHer father's heart from her! Call France; who stirs?Call Burgundy. Cornwall and Albany,With my two daughters' dowers digest this third:Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.I do invest you jointly with my power,Pre-eminence, and all the large effectsThat troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly course,With reservation of an hundred knights,By you to be sustain'd, shall our abodeMake with you by due turns. Only we still retainThe name, and all the additions to a king;The sway, revenue, execution of the rest,Beloved sons, be yours: which to confirm,This coronet part betwixt you.

28. Lear to Kent, 1.1 Hear me, recreant!On thine allegiance, hear me!Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow,Which we durst never yet, and with strain'd prideTo come between our sentence and our power,Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,Our potency made good, take thy reward.Five days we do allot thee, for provisionTo shield thee from diseases of the world;And on the sixth to turn thy hated backUpon our kingdom: if, on the tenth day following,Thy banish'd trunk be found in our dominions,The moment is thy death. Away! by Jupiter,This shall not be revoked.

29. King of France to Cordelia, 1.1 Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglectMy love should kindle to inflamed respect.Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:Not all the dukes of waterish BurgundyCan buy this unprized precious maid of me.Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:Thou losest here, a better where to find.

30. Act 1, scene 2

31. Edmund, soliloquy, 1.2 Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy lawMy services are bound. Wherefore should IStand in the plague of custom, and permitThe curiosity of nations to deprive me,For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shinesLag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?When my dimensions are as well compact,My mind as generous, and my shape as true,As honest madam's issue? Why brand they usWith base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, takeMore composition and fierce qualityThan doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:Our father's love is to the bastard EdmundAs to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,And my invention thrive, Edmund the baseShall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

32. Gloucester, 1.2 These late eclipses in the sun and moon portendno good to us: though the wisdom of nature canreason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itselfscourged by the sequent effects: love cools,friendship falls off, brothers divide: incities, mutinies; in countries, discord; inpalaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt sonand father. This villain of mine comes under theprediction; there's son against father: the kingfalls from bias of nature; there's father againstchild. We have seen the best of our time:machinations, hollowness, treachery, and allruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to ourgraves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shalllose thee nothing; do it carefully. And thenoble and true-hearted Kent banished! hisoffence, honesty! 'Tis strange.

33. Edmund, 1.2 This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeitof our own behavior,--we make guilty of ourdisasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: asif we were villains by necessity; fools byheavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, andtreachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience ofplanetary influence; and all that we are evil in,by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasionof whoremaster man, to lay his goatishdisposition to the charge of a star! Myfather compounded with my mother under thedragon's tail; and my nativity was under Ursamajor; so that it follows, I am rough andlecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am,had the maidenliest star in the firmamenttwinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar--

34. Act 1, scene 4

35. Fool, to Lear, 1.4 Mark it, nuncle:Have more than thou showest,Speak less than thou knowest,Lend less than thou owest,Ride more than thou goest,Learn more than thou trowest,Set less than thou throwest;Leave thy drink and thy whore,And keep in-a-door,And thou shalt have moreThan two tens to a score.

36. Lear and Fool, 1.4 KING LEAR: When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah? Fool: I have used it, nuncle, ever since thou madest thydaughters thy mothers: for when thou gavest themthe rod, and put'st down thine own breeches, Singing Then they for sudden joy did weep,And I for sorrow sung,That such a king should play bo-peep,And go the fools among.

37. Lear, 1.4 Doth any here know me? This is not Lear:Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?Either his notion weakens, his discerningsAre lethargied--Ha! waking? 'tis not so.Who is it that can tell me who I am?

38. Lear, 1.4 O Lear, Lear, Lear!Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in,Striking his head And thy dear judgment out! 

39. Lear, 1.4 Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intendTo make this creature fruitful!Into her womb convey sterility!Dry up in her the organs of increase;And from her derogate body never springA babe to honour her! If she must teem,Create her child of spleen; that it may live,And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;Turn all her mother's pains and benefitsTo laughter and contempt; that she may feelHow sharper than a serpent's tooth it isTo have a thankless child! Away, away!

40. Act 1, scene 5

41. Fool and Lear, 1.5 Fool: If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I'd have thee beatenfor being old before thy time. KING LEAR: How's that? Fool: Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadstbeen wise. KING LEAR: O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heavenKeep me in temper: I would not be mad!

42. Act 2, scene 2

43. Kent and Oswald, 2.2 KENT: Fellow, I know thee.OSWALD: What dost thou know me for?KENT: A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniestthe least syllable of thy addition.

44. Act 2, scene 3

45. Edgar, soliloquy, 2.3 I heard myself proclaim'd;And by the happy hollow of a treeEscaped the hunt. No port is free; no place,That guard, and most unusual vigilance,Does not attend my taking. Whiles I may 'scape,I will preserve myself: and am bethoughtTo take the basest and most poorest shapeThat ever penury, in contempt of man,Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth;Blanket my loins: elf all my hair in knots;And with presented nakedness out-faceThe winds and persecutions of the sky.The country gives me proof and precedentOf Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare armsPins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;And with this horrible object, from low farms,Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills,Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod! poor Tom!That's something yet: Edgar I nothing am.

46. Act 2, scene 4

47. Regan to Lear, 2.4 REGAN: O, sir, you are old.Nature in you stands on the very vergeOf her confine: you should be ruled and ledBy some discretion, that discerns your stateBetter than you yourself. Therefore, I pray you,That to our sister you do make return;Say you have wrong'd her, sir.

48. Lear, 2.4 O, reason not the need: our basest beggarsAre in the poorest thing superfluous:Allow not nature more than nature needs,Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;If only to go warm were gorgeous,Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,--You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,As full of grief as age; wretched in both!If it be you that stir these daughters' heartsAgainst their father, fool me not so muchTo bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,And let not women's weapons, water-drops,Stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,I will have such revenges on you both,That all the world shall--I will do such things,--What they are, yet I know not: but they shall beThe terrors of the earth. You think I'll weepNo, I'll not weep:I have full cause of weeping; but this heartShall break into a hundred thousand flaws,Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

49. Act 3, scene 2

50. Lear, 3.2 Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!You cataracts and hurricanoes, spoutTill you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,That make ingrateful man!