To begin with, Lear is clearly lacking in self-awareness. “To know thyself”, the humanists’ rallying cry, is a markedly confusing concept for Lear, who appears unable to fathom its significance in rapport to his individual self (“’Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself”). Furthermore, he fails to see the sincerity that glistens through Cordelia’s speech, and instead is delighted with Gonerill and Reagan’s declarations of love, declarations which are decorated in formal, sophisticated lexus and thus which contrast with Cordelia’s plain and chaste utterances. As Kent reveals, (“Power to flattery bows”), he is doubtful of the two sisters’ blandishments. In reality, Gonerill and Reagan’s flattery serves solely as a hollow and deceitful display of love, but Lear, in his insecurity, arrogance, and excessive pride, must be given proofs of love, a love whose ineffability only Cordelia appears to be aware of. Kent’s words, if brash, ring true and serve to alert the inexorable Lear.
A relevant note to make concerning Lear’s attitude is his desire to unburden himself of the King’s onerous responsibilities, all the while maintaining his power and title, which he shows no sign of planning to give up. In other words, he proves himself naïve in that he doesn’t realize that his authority will leave him together with his responsibility. Samuel Coleridge sees in lines 164-165 evidence of Lear’s “moral incapability of resigning the sovereign power in the very moment of disposing of it”. “This coronet part between you” is a line which reveals a cardinal theme of the play, namely the division of the kingdom, and additionally it features the motif of the coronet. King James I of England, who reigned when King Lear first performed, advises against the division of the kingdom in his treatise of government “Basilikon Doron”. It would ensue that Shakespeare, who was trying to be an artist whilst simultaneously satisfying the demands of the Elizabethan theatre, was aiming to flatter the king by displaying Lear who causes his own downfall by creating a schism in his kingdom.
King Lear’s decisions are largely preposterous. He divides his kingdom between the two unreliable daughters while banishing the virtuous, guileless daughter whose refusal to verbally express her love for him he blearily saw as proof of impudence, pride or iconoclasm. He also banishes his close, loyal friend and advisor, Kent, for the same crime of honesty he finds Cordelia guilty of. This indicates Lear’s incipient decline into madness. The earliest accusation of madness is made by Kent: “Be Kent unmannerly/ When Lear is Mad”, but it is not only he who accuses Lear of grave failures of judgment, Gonerill and Reagan do so as well. At the end of act I, scene 1, the lyrical structure switches to prose, which suggests the exposure of Gonerill and Reagan’s ignoble purposes which were previously concealed, and we learn that they collude to take their father’s authority: “We must do something, and i’th’heat”.
His temperament, as established, is far from being sedate and understanding. When he sees that Cordelia will not succumb to his commands, Lear undergoes a savage transition from the benevolent patriarch he previously embodied by blazing into a paroxysm of fury (“come not between the dragon and his wrath”). He becomes god-like in his nonsensical anger, akin to an enraged pre-Christian prophet. The repeated use of caesura serves to accentuate the extent to which his emotions are affecting his speech. Lear has shifted from considering Cordelia his favourite, whom he “loved (her) most”, to disowning her in a matter of moments (“a wretch whom nature is ashamed/ Almost t’acknowledge hers”). Additionally, Lear’s pre-Christian pagan beliefs (“the operation of the orbs/From whom we do exist and cease to be”) make a Christian reading possible: a Jacobean audience might interpret his beliefs as having determined his downfall.
I have thus attempted to explore several pernicious faults integral to Lear’s character, for Shakespeare had a phenomenal understanding of human psychology, and to pinpoint one sole personality trait or action of Lear’s to his downfall is to be guilty of a reductionist treatment of a writer of such stellar genius as Shakespeare. (On a similar note, King Lear can certainly be called a universal allegory; however, the word allegory does justice to neither the depth nor the dynamicity in the experience it presents. One must be careful with the treatment of language, as that would only be fair considering Shakespeare’s own careful, passionate and inventive use of language that characterizes all his indisputably great works). To conclude, I have above shown the elements which ascribe Lear’s development as a character and I have considered and explored a range of different hubristic facets which together amount to and portend King Lear’s ultimate calamity.
Bibliography
Shakespeare, William, King Lear, Cambridge University Press
Lawrence, D. H. (1950) John Galsworthy in Selected Essays, Penguin Books
Knights, L. C. (1955) King Lear and the Great Tragedies in The Pelican Guide to English Literature (2 - The Age of Shakespeare), Penguin Books
by
rwandavoight (student)
