These are some questions and observations whittled down and altered from my full commentary on King Lear. They may prove useful for participating in class discussion. If you want to view the full questions and commentary set, just follow the relevant links in the sitewide menu bar above.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Folio with additions from the Quarto. (The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840.)
ACT 1
Act 1, Scene 1. (764-71, Gloucester introduces his “natural” son Edmund to Kent; King Lear unfolds his retirement plans; Regan and Goneril compete for the King’s favor, while Cordelia refuses to flatter him; Kent tries to temper Lear’s rage but gets exiled; France chooses dowerless Cordelia after Burgundy refuses her; Regan and Goneril take counsel how to deal with their irrational father.)
Kent and Gloucester agree that it had seemed most likely the King would favor Albany over Cornwall. But now they aren’t so sure, so the play opens with a note of uncertainty that becomes ominous later when we realize how much better a man Albany is compared to Cornwall. (764, 1.1.1-6)
Gloucester jokes about his “natural” son Edmund, who “came something saucily to the world before he / was sent for” (765, 1.1.20-21), yet to a beautiful mother, so that “the whoreson must be acknowledged” (765. 1.1.22).
King Lear enters promising to make plain his “darker purpose” (765, 1.1.34) and demanding a map of Britain. He has decided to divide his kingdom into thirds among his daughters, and “shake all cares and business” (765, 1.1.37) from his aged shoulders. He will rid himself of these cares, he says, “Conferring them on younger strengths, while we / Unburdened crawl toward death” (765, 1.1.38-39).
Lear’s intention is “that future strife / May be prevented now” (765, 1.1.42-43). The King apparently means to assist the process of generational renewal, passing on matters of state in a fair and public way to younger family members: each daughter will receive a third. The only question is how opulent that portion will be, and even this seems already to have been decided. Lear will wrest for himself the space necessary to practice the art of dying well, ars moriendi. [1]
The King seems sincere, but this whole scheme is too tidy: does anyone really plan to die so rationally? Even an elderly man of some eighty years such as King Lear?
The question of authority is a main item in King Lear. Kent may be responding in part to the King’s unwise demotion of Cordelia, but his line “Reserve thy state, / And in thy best consideration check / This hideous rashness” (768, 1.1.147-49) refers equally to his shock at the notion of an absolute king’s decision to divest himself of unitary power.
Indeed, Lear seems confused: he goes off on a private mission while at the same time trying to retain the symbols and privileges of his authority. The King’s “natural body” is wearing down, and one can feel only empathy for him on that account, but what about his political or corporate body, the one that isn’t capable of death and that “embodies” the nation itself? [2]
Can King Lear abandon his responsibilities the way he does, without causing a disaster? He has given up the “power, / Preeminence, and all the large effects / That troop with majesty” (767, 1.1.127-29). Another way of stating this is that he has ceded the “sway, / Revenue, execution of the rest” (767, 1.1.133-34) aside from what he retains, which he specifies as “The name, and all th’addition to a king” (767, 1.1.133), which addition [3] is apparently to be embodied in the person of the stipulated “hundred knights” (767, 1.1.130).
Lear makes a distinction between the name and pomp of kingship and the executive, effectual power of a king. So how does he expect to give away all his power and yet hold on to the “addition” of a king? Do the symbols, privileges and name mean anything, apart from power?
With respect to Cordelia, Regan and Goneril, what does Lear want? He himself is playing a role that he cherishes—that of a loving father—and so he wants a public declaration of their affection for him as a loving father. We may call this flattery, but to Lear, it’s probably more like an authentic, sanctioned display of both flattery and true love at the same time: his daughters should be able to praise him highly, talk his virtue to the skies, and mean every word of it.
The public and private in Renaissance kingship were of course inextricable; royal absolutism of King James’s sort always cast the King as “the father of his people,” and James’s model was the scriptural patriarchs. He believed his subjects owed him the reverence due to a father. [4]
In practice, as Shakespeare surely understood, the intertwining of public and private in powerful families makes for a great deal of coldness, sterility, and alienation, even in settings beyond the monarchy.
Lear has no trouble demanding in the form of public spectacle what would for most families be a purely private display of affection. Perhaps this isn’t entirely unreasonable on his part. Neither are Goneril and Regan necessarily to be blamed for giving the old man what he wants.
Why can’t Cordelia perform even better than did Regan and Goneril, bearing with her father and making a generous allowance for his weaknesses? Isn’t it sometimes acceptable to be a little insincere when regard for another person’s feelings requires it? Even if there’s an austere beauty in the figure of Cordelia speaking truth to power, she is as brittle and abrupt as her father.
Cordelia tells the stunned Lear that she won’t play his game: “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave / My heart into my mouth” (766, 1.1.89-90). She can’t verbally express the genuine affection she feels for her father. Cordelia isn’t capable of flattery; she lacks Prince Hal’s ability to say to a joker like Falstaff, “For my part, if a lie may do thee grace / I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.” [5]
Learning to be a good ruler involves play-acting and feigning to be what one is not. [6] Cordelia, however, sees both monarchy and marriage as consisting of specifiable bonds and reciprocal obligations. So when Lear demands that she declare her “love,” she understands the term in something like the sense of “obligation, duty, attention.” Obviously, a woman who marries must balance her duties as a wife with her duties as a loyal daughter.
It may be, however, that Lear’s demand isn’t as all-encompassing as Cordelia supposes, and it’s fair to ask how she could rule a kingdom if she is incapable of satisfying the King’s request for affectionate flattery. As Regan later says, “‘Tis the infirmity of his age, yet he hath ever but slen- / derly known himself” (771, 1.1.288-89), and Goneril chimes in with “The best and soundest of his time hath been but / rash” (771, 1.1.290-91). To be a “royal” is to be a politician.
In sum, Regan and Goneril are not deceived: Lear’s supposed retirement is not really a surrender but a shifting of responsibility. He will almost certainly continue to play the tyrant.
Lear’s conduct after giving away power is anything but responsible: he prances about with his hundred knights, behaving like a medieval “lord of misrule.” [7] His residence with either daughter, it seems, would inevitably create a public perception that they are not in charge. Lear wants to retain far more authority than he has any business keeping.
Lear is partly a tragedy about the terrors of growing old, of feeling slighted, neglected, weak, and useless as we make way for the young. Knowing that we must do so when the time comes doesn’t make doing it any easier. In this way, in King Lear as in other of Shakespeare’s plays that involve monarchy, “a king is but a man.” [8]
This broader, more existential frame may account for the play’s fairy-tale quality. We see the disintegration of a “foolish, fond old man” (829, 4.7.56) who doesn’t understand the nature of genuine affection or the power he has been wielding all his life. Cordelia, too, may appear to be a Cinderella figure: surrounded by evil sisters, she cannot make her inner virtue known to the authorities who determine her fate. At least the King of France discerns Cordelia’s purity (770, 1.1.248-55).
Lastly, we find that however badly King Lear has behaved, loyalty to him is not quite dead. The banished Kent says he will pursue his “old course in a country new” (768, 1.1.185). As it turns out, the “country new” is Britain itself. Lear’s refusal of responsibility has created a new dispensation of power, radically transforming the nation he once led into a cauldron of anarchy and unrestricted desire for gratification and self-advancement. If the truly good and loyal Kent would serve the King, he must disguise himself as chaos consumes his master.
Act 1, Scene 2. (771-75, Gloucester’s “natural” son Edmund shows his contempt for the prevailing notions about “legitimacy” and plots to unseat his legitimate brother, Edgar; he turns the old man against Edgar by forging a letter confessing the latter’s supposed desire to murder his father and inherit his title; he then informs Edgar of his father’s wrath.)
This scene begins with Edmund’s soliloquy (771-72, 1.2.1-22), the upshot of which is that Edmund believes he has all the right qualities to rule his own house, and lacks only “legitimacy.” By contrast, King Lear has given his power away and yet expects to hang on to his legitimacy: Lear stands upon rank as if it in itself constituted inner virtue and fitness to rule, whereas the more practical Edmund sees this legitimacy as “the curiosity of nations” (771, 1.2.4).
All the same, Edmund is obsessed with what others think of him: he repeats the word “legitimate” several times, and can’t seem to let it go. [9] A most unhealthy selfishness—”I grow. I prosper” (772, 1.2.21)—also drives him on. Edmund demands that the gods should ally themselves not with custom but rather with natural, material qualities and ripeness for rule.
Gloucester has been taken aback by the King’s strange behavior, which to him seems unnatural—a view that makes him susceptible Edmund’s scheming. In a world turned upside down, what could make more sense than that a man’s legitimate son should betray him?
Edmund declares his father’s belief in astrology “the excellent foppery of the world” (774, 1.2.107) and insists, “All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit” (775, 1.2.162). He will trust in his dark vision of nature as a place that rewards the most savage and cunning predator. Tennyson described this kind of nature as “red in tooth and claw.” [10] Edmund is a human predator, and Lear has given him an opportunity to use his predatory skills.
This is not to say that Lear has made Edmund what he is. Rather, he has given him an opportunity to thrive. If legitimate authority doesn’t know itself, this is what happens.
Lear initially assumes too easily that there is an automatic concordance between the two “bodies” of a king—the perishing and erring mortal one and the immortal and immaterial political or corporate one: he makes unwise decisions and then is surprised to find that his all-too-human decisions have deranged his kingdom. Others in this play see more clearly the Machiavellian point that the exercise of power generates its own authority .
Act 1, Scene 3. (775-76, Goneril grows impatient with Lear and his hundred knights, whose residence with her has grown troublesome; she instructs the steward, Oswald, on how best to put the retired King in his place.)
Goneril is alarmed at the King’s disorderly conduct. She complains that “His knights grow riotous” (775, 1.3.6), and devises a stratagem whereby Oswald will make the King feel his weakness. Goneril calls Lear an “Idle old man, / That still would manage those authorities / That he hath given away! (775, 1.3.15.1-3, Quarto ed.) The old king must learn his new place.
Act 1, Scene 4. (776-83, Kent appears in Lear’s camp disguised as “Caius”; Kent humiliates Oswald for speaking disrespectfully to Lear; the Fool reminds Lear that he was unwise to relinquish power; Goneril threatens Lear over his riotous conduct, telling him to act his age and dismiss half of his knights. Lear curses Goneril and begins to regret his ill treatment of Cordelia; Goneril again demands that he dismiss half his knights; Lear rages, weeps, and threatens to take up his kingship again; throughout, Albany tries to calm the King and moderate Goneril’s severity, but to no avail.
Kent begins to serve the King, professing to the old man that he really is what he seems to be—a trusty middle-aged servant who knows authority when he sees it, which quality he says he “would fain call master” (777, 1.4.25).
The Fool, we are soon told, has “much pined away” (777, 1.4.66) since Cordelia went to France. He is Cordelia’s ally in a more straightforward way than he is Lear’s since, after all, castigation of the King’s errors is part of the Fool’s responsibility.
Kent earns his keep by giving Oswald a rough education in rank, or “dif- / ferences” (771, 1.4.80-81). Lear’s own words begin to speak against him: he had said to Cordelia, “nothing will come of nothing” (766, 1.1.88), and now the Fool responds to a similar utterance by Lear—“nothing can be made out of nothing” (778, 1.4.121)—with “so much the rent of his land comes / to” (778, 1.4.122-23).
Lear has given away not only the executive function of his office, but even the title, according to the Fool, and now retains only the title of “fool” that he was born with. The Fool says the King split his crown in two and gave it to his daughters (779, 1.4.130-33). The implication of this remark is that power is indivisible and cannot be handled in this way. “[T]hou gav’st them the rod and / putt’st down thine own breeches” (779, 1.4.143-44), says the Fool, drawing a clear picture of Lear’s childishness.
The Fool calls Lear nothing when he says, “Now thou art an O without a figure” (780, 1.4.161), and this application may remind us of Hamlet’s similar mockery—”the king is a thing,” says Hamlet, “of nothing.” [11] and [12].
Lear soon begins to ask key questions about identity. ”Are you our daughter?” he asks Goneril (780, 1.4.188), and she tells him to “put away / These dispositions, which of late transport you / From what you rightly are” (780, 1.4.190-92). Finally, Lear asks, “Who is it that can tell me who I am?” (780, 1.4.199) and is answered by the Fool with “Lear’s shadow” (780, 1.4.200).
When Goneril tells him he ought to be surrounded by men who sort with his condition, Lear swears her off. His judgment of Goneril is that she should one day “feel / How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child” (782, 1.4.255-56). But the question of proportion comes into play: what Goneril has done outstrips anything Cordelia may have done.
The first mention of “plucking out eyes” occurs when Lear addresses Goneril as follows: “Old fond eyes, / Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out / And cast you with the waters that you lose / To temper clay” (783, 1.4.271-74). Such imagery haunts the action of King Lear: it will soon become evident that a characteristic of the worst human beings in this play is their tendency to literalize and act upon what others can scarcely imagine.
Lear now transfers his faith to Regan, and threatens to reassume the majesty he has cast off. Goneril refers to her husband Albany’s “milky gentleness” (783, 1.4.313) as ill-suited to the times. His sententiae, such as “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well” (783, 1.4.318), don’t bode well for his ability to manage power, as far as she is concerned. [13]
Act 1, Scene 5. (783-84, Still at Albany’s castle, Lear sends Kent ahead with a letter for Regan at Gloucestershire, where she and Cornwall reside; the Fool converses with Lear while they prepare to visit Regan; by now, Lear begins to see that he has mistreated Cordelia, and is afraid that he will go mad.)
Lear sends Kent to Gloucestershire with a letter intended for Regan. He begins to see that he has done Cordelia wrong (783, 1.5.20), and his anger shifts to Goneril and her “Monster ingratitude” (784, 1.5.33).
The Fool points out something Goneril had said earlier: “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been / wise” (784, 1.5.37-38). Lear is out of joint with the seven ages of man [14] —he has never really attained to wisdom to suit his years, so he is unprepared to practice the art of dying. Now he fears madness (784, 1.4.39-40), and his kingdom is paying the price.
To be continued….
Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93860-9.
Copyright © 2012, revised 2025 Alfred J. Drake
ENDNOTES
[1] See, for example, William Perneby’s 1599 treatise, A direction to death: teaching man the way to die well, that being dead, he may live ever …. This text is representative of the ars moriendi genre in English. As the main speaker says, “a man is to prepare himselfe to die ere euer hee comes to die, because the greatest worke a man hath to finish in this worlde, is to die….” London: Thomas Man, 1599. Oxford Text Archive. Accessed 3/21/2024.
[2] Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton UP, 2016. Orig. published 1957. ISBN-13: 978-0691169231.
[3] The Norton note on pg. 767 glosses this term “addition” as “prerogatives.”
[4] Regarding the theory of the divine right of kings, see King James I’s Basilikon Doron. (EEBO U-Mich.)
[5] Shakespeare, William. The History of Henry the Fourth. Aka The First Part of Henry the Fourth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 629-95. See 694, 5.4.151-52.
[6] Sir Thomas Wyatt’s writings show the struggle to maintain honesty in the court of Henry VIII, or any royal court. His poetry often takes it up as a theme, and his advisory letters to his sons are eloquent and heartfelt: In one of them, he writes, “if you will seem honest, be honest; or else seem as you are. Seek not the name without the thing ….” See the HiddenCause blog’s 8/4/2013 excellent article on Wyatt, “Renaissance Humanism comes to English letters: Wyatt, ‘I am as I am’.” Accessed 7/29/2024.
[7] On the “lord of misrule” tradition in medieval times, see “Medieval Misrule and Mayhem.” (english-heritage.org.uk.) Accessed 7/29/2024.
[8] Shakespeare, William. The Life of Henry the Fifth. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories, 3rd ed. 790-857. Henry V, in disguise, says to the common soldier Bates, “I think the King is but a man, as I am” (830, 4.1.98).
[9] We will see later that Edmund’s undoing will stem from this concern for that which he seems most to despise. If he wants to take up a position within the new social and political dispensation in Britain, he cannot ignore that demands made upon his honesty and legitimacy.
[10] Before composing In Memoriam A.H.H., the Victorian author Alfred Tennyson had become acquainted with the work of Sir Charles Lyell and other pre-Darwinian natural scientists. See In Memoriam A. H. H. See in particular poems LV-LVII (that is, 55-57).
[11] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447. See 416, 4.1.27, 29.
[12] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447. See 435, 5.1.192-93.
[13] Machiavelli’s advice to the Medici rulers in The Prince would be more welcome to Goneril. See The Prince. (Gutenberg e-text.) Accessed 7/29/2024.
[14] Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 673-731. Jaques’s “Seven Ages of Man” speech occurs at 696-97, 2.7.139-66: “All the world’s a stage ….”
Last Updated on March 26, 2025 by ajd_shxpr