Shakespeare, and the Madness of King Lear Exposed

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In this paper, I will give a biography on Shakespeare's life, a plot summary of King Lear, and critical analysis of various aspects of the play.

William Shakespeare was baptized on April 6, 1564, and probably born three days earlier, on April . He was the third of eight children to John and Mary Shakespeare. John Shakespeare was a substantial citizen of a busy market town named Stratford-Upon-Avon. John Shakespeare was an alderman of Stratford and was entitled to send his son to the grammar school free.

Not much is known of Shakespeare's childhood, probably because no one expected that he would be a great writer in the centuries to come. What we do know about his childhood is that he probably received an education in the grammar school of Stratford. These schools provided the basic education in Latin learning and literature.

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The most important record we have of Shakespeare's early years is a marriage license issued by the Bishop of Worcester on November 8, 158, permitting William Shakespeare to marry Anne Hathaway.

The christening of Susanna, daughter of William and Anne was on May 6, 158, in Stratford. On February , 1585, the records show the birth of twins Hamnet and Judith.

By 154, Shakespeare was a member of Lord Chamberlain's Men. This company came to be known as the King's Men after King James I came to power in 160 (Wright xxi). Shakespeare was both an actor and a shareholder in the company.

In 156, Shakespeare was given the name of gentleman. He had seen to it that the College of Heralds grant his father a coat of arms. In one step, he became a second-generation gentleman.

On May 4, 157, he bought New Place, next to the largest dwelling in Stratford. As Shakespeare called it, a "pretty house of brick and timber," (Wright xxiii).

Shakespeare's first play may have been The Comedy of Errors, acted in 151. The three parts of Henry IV were acted out sometime between 150 and 15. Richard III was probably written in 15.

Shakespeare now had three sources of income from the sale of his plays to his companies, from his wages as an actor, and his share of the profits of the theatrical company (Wright xxiv). In May 160, Shakespeare used his newfound wealth to purchase one hundred and seven acres of fertile farmland near Stratford, and a few months later bought a cottage and a garden across the alley from New Place. His wife and children lived there while he busied himself in the London theatres.

The summer before he bought New Place, Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet, died at ages eleven.

In 1611, Shakespeare returned permanently to Stratford. He wrote plays in rapid succession including Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear, and nine others before retiring around 161. Most of his best comedies, his great historic plays, and some of his finest tragedies were behind him. Only Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Pericles, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, The Tempest, and Henry VIII were yet to be written.

On March 5, 1616, Shakespeare made his will. Giving his property to Susanna, 00 pounds to Judith, certain sums to other relatives, and his second-best bed to his wife, Anne.

On April , 1616, on his birthday, Shakespeare died. He was buried on April 5 at Trinity Church as an honored citizen. On August 6, 16, a few months before the publication of the collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, Anne Shakespeare followed her husband in death.

King Lear, the King of Britain, has planned to rid himself of worries by dividing his kingdom among his three daughters, Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia. Lear plans to divide his kingdom between Goneril and Regan and their husbands, the Duke of Albany, and the power-hungry Duke of Cornwall. Before making his decision, he asks each daughter to proclaim her love for him. Cordelia refuses to flatter her father, and is disinherited. When his old courtier, the Earl of Kent, protests, Lear banishes him also. The King of France recognizes Cordelia's sincerity and accepts her after the Duke of Burgundy has refused to take a penniless bride.

Meanwhile, Edmund, the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester, tricks his half brother, Edgar into fleeing Gloucester's anger. He also frames Edgar when he would not assist in the murder of their father. Edgar, on Edmund's advice, goes into hiding. He disguises himself as a mad beggar, Tom of Bedlam.

Lear decides to spend alternating months at the houses of Goneril and Regan. The two vicious sisters plot how to handle the old man and diminish his power in his kingdom. While staying at Goneril's castle, Lear curses her, and storms out of the castle to seek shelter with Regan. Both Lear and Goneril send messages to inform Regan of his approach. Regan and her husband, Cornwall, have gone on a visit to Gloucester's castle. Kent, who has returned from banishment disguised, carries Lear's message. When Kent arrives, he beats Oswald, Goneril's servant, for his former insolence to Lear. Cornwall and Regan punish Kent by putting him in the stocks. Lear discovers this, and questions Regan, but she is on her sister's side, and tells Lear to return to Goneril until his month with her is up. Goneril arrives, and Lear curses them both, and rushes out into a storm. In a crude shelter Lear meets the Fool, Kent, and Edgar disguised as a mad beggar.

Gloucester's eyes are put out by Cornwall; who thinks that Gloucester is a traitor to Britain because he has had dealings with the French Army. Cornwall is in turn killed by one of his servants, for his great cruelty. Gloucester learns the truth- that Edmund has plotted against him, and that Edgar is innocent. Gloucester makes his way to Dover, where Lear has gone to meet with Cordelia and the rescuing French Army after the storm. On the way to Dover, Gloucester meets Edgar again, but doesn't recognize his son, who has disguised his voice. Gloucester wants to leap off the cliffs of Dover and commit suicide. Edgar fools him into thinking he is on the cliffs. Gloucester jumps off of what he thought were the cliffs, but only falls a few feet. Edgar tells him he has had a miraculous escape from death; now he ought to treasure life.

Goneril plans to have Albany killed so that she can marry Edmund. Edmund is now the new Earl of Gloucester, now that his father is branded a traitor.

Cordelia sends soldiers to find her father after Lear finally reaches the French camp at Dover.

The armies of Albany and Cornwall, now led by Edmund, meet to attack the French. Cordelia is reunited with her father and bears no grudge. Then Oswald, on orders from Regan, tries to kill Gloucester. Edgar prevents this by killing Oswald. Edgar finds Albany in the British camp and hands him the letter that tells of Goneril's plans to murder him and marry Edmund.

In the battle between the French and English armies, the French lose, and Edmund captures Lear and Cordelia. He orders that they be executed.

Meanwhile, Goneril and Regan have been arguing over who is to get Edmund. Albany accuses Goneril of adultery and challenges Edmund to a duel. Edgar enters, disguised, and mortally wounds his brother, and then reveals who he is. On the point of death, Edmund tries to save the lives of Lear and Cordelia, but his message is too late. Edmund dies soon after Goneril, who poisons Regan, and then stabs herself.

The play ends with Lear holding the corpse of Cordelia, who was hung on Edmund's earlier orders. After recognizing Kent, Lear dies of a broken heart, and Edgar is left to rule the kingdom.

In 1681, Nahum Tate, a popular hack playwright of the day, and the poet laureate of England, revised King Lear on the theory that it was "a Heap of Jewels, unstrung, and unpolisht," (Shuettinger 1). He completely rewrote the play, giving it a happy ending, with Lear, Gloucester, and Cordelia all surviving and Edgar marrying Cordelia and ruling Britain happily forever after. Tate's version held the stage until 188, when the great actor, Macready, restored the original text throughout. If Tate's revision seems absurd to us today, it may be because the extremes of human cruelty, which he glossed over, have become everyday realities in the twentieth century. Given the evil forces set in motion at the beginning of Lear, we are unable to imagine any less tragic an outcome than Shakespeare provides (Shuettinger 108).

Cordelia's death strikes many readers of Lear as gratuitous and unnecessary. After all, if Edmund had remembered just a moment earlier to cancel his death warrant, she might have been spared. Edmund has several opportunities to remember, but never seems to get around to stopping the fatal order. By allowing Cordelia to die, then Lear soon after, Shakespeare seems to be saying that only in death can we achieve peace. To continue to live in the world of King Lear is no blessing, and that tragic and evil things do often happen by mere chance (Shuettinger 108).

A later 1th century critic, A.C. Bradley, said that although Lear is Shakespeare's greatest work, it is not the best of his plays, nor is it the most popular of the four great tragedies- Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth- with audiences. Lear's "comparative unpopularity is due, not merely to the extreme painfullness of the catastrophe, but in part to it's dramatic defects," (Shuettinger 110). These defects are that Edgar would be unlikely to write to Edmund when he could speak to him, and that Gloucester had no need to go to Dover for the purpose of committing suicide. It is strange that he could show no surprise when Edgar drops into dialect during his encounter with Oswald; there is also no good reason why Edgar should not reveal himself to his father. Or why Kent should preserve his disguise until the last scene; that Edmund, after he has received his fatal wound, delays unnecessarily in telling of the danger to Lear and Cordelia. It is also absurd for Edgar to return from his hiding-place to stay in his father's castle (Muir 1). Reasonable answers to all these points can be found in defense of Shakespeare's dramatic technique, but they are beside the point. In King Lear, Shakespeare is dealing with an unreasonable, irrational world. It is a world, which includes the animal savagery of Cornwall gouging out Gloucester's eyes, and the divine compassion of Cordelia forgiving her father. In short, it is our world, and, as G. Wilson Knight points out, "the tragedy is most poignant in that it is purposeless, and unreasonable. It is the most fearless artistic facing of the ultimate cruelty of things in our literature," (Muir 16).

King Lear takes place at a time when Britain was not yet fully under the influence of Christianity. Most of the characters in the play, therefore, worship a set of pagan gods rather than the one God of Christianity (Muir 151). The attitudes in the play range from Gloucester's superstition to Edmund's mocking disbelief in any supernatural forces. Gloucester believes that "These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us," and attributes the disinheriting of Cordelia in the first scene to supernatural heavenly interference. Edmund immediately mocks this attitude, singing "O these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi," (Shuettinger 1). To Edmund, man merely uses supernatural forces as an excuse for his own viciousness. Gloucester's shallow faith is tried in the scenes after his blinding when he attempts to commit suicide. This is a sign of his religious despair. Gloucester is prevented from committing suicide by Edgar; who is the most devout male character in the play. Edgar believes that there is a moral significance to what the gods do to us. The torment Gloucester has undergone has been just punishment for his moral laxity in "begetting Edmund illegitimately," (Shuettinger 1). Edmund expects the gods to "Stand up for the bastards!" This seems to be true for a while, as his evil plot prospers, but ultimately he is destroyed by his own evil.

The other characters in the play do not seem to be affected by religion as much as the Gloucester family. Lear is always praying to the gods to save him, and punish his ungrateful daughters, but he feels the universe is all awry. When on rare occasions human beings behave well, "The gods themselves throw incense," and worship such saintlike people as Cordelia (Muir 17). Cordelia is a figure who seems to embody the Christian ideal, and she may have been destroyed because she is one of the few really devout souls in an essentially cruel and irreligious world (Muir 140).

King Lear is the only major Shakespearean tragedy in which a highly important subplot is interwoven in with the main plot. This accounts for the richness and complexity of the play. In the beginning of the play, the fortunes of the Gloucester family are compared with those of the Lear family, and as the play goes on, the two plots merge together. Like Lear, Gloucester is an old widower who doesn't know enough about human nature to realize which of his children is good, and which is evil. Just as Goneril and Regan plot to reduce Lear to beggary, so Edmund schemes to get Edgar disinherited and Gloucester killed as a traitor. Just as Cordelia brings about Lear's spiritual redemption through her unselfish love, so Edgar saves his father from Edmund's plot, from Oswald's sword, and ultimately, from suicide. Throughout the play, the Gloucester plot serves as a commentary on the Lear plot, and one enriches the other by showing that what happens in each is not unique, but the common fate of mankind.

Works Cited

Muir, Kenneth, Introduction to the New Arden King Lear. Cambridge Harvard University Press, 15.

Shuettinger, Robert, Monarch Notes-King Lear. New York Macmillan Publishing USA, 17.

Wright, Louis B., and Lamar, Virgiana A. King Lear. New York Washington Square Press, 157.

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