At the start of the
play, we see King Lear in power. While he is still king, he represents the traditional
order of society. As soon as he decides to divide the kingdom between his
daughters, however, he upsets the expected order of things. The implication is
that going against the structure of society is exactly what leads the play to
be a tragedy. Instead of avoiding quarreling
among his daughters and their husbands after his death, the divided kingdom
brings violence between the family members and war to England while Lear is
still alive. Likewise, Gloucester’s favoring over his bastard son Edmund over
his legitimate son Edgar is his downfall, and the exact opposite of how fathers
in Elizabethan society regarded their sons. Defying tradition is a foolish
thing to do in this story.
The more Lear loses,
both in the number of knights he is allowed to have, representing his power and
influence, as well as his sanity, the closer he appears to become to nature. Nature
in this play is a force of destruction. The storm Lear, Kent, Edward, and the
Fool are caught in is said to be dangerous to wreck a ship, if it were on the
sea. The longer Lear stays out in the storm, the more he begins to entertain
unconventional ideas, such as how a king ought to be concerned for the most wretchedly
poor of his subjects. This would not have been a typical concern for nobility! Eventually,
Lear begins to braid weeds and wildflowers together. I think this is meant to
be an interweaving of his character with nature and unconventional (mad)
thoughts, similar to Ophelia’s preoccupation with flowers in Hamlet. Edmund
also illustrates the idea of nature being dangerous and unconventional, as
being a ‘natural’ child was slang for being illegitimate. Like the storm, Edmund
is a destructive force, causing the antagonism between Goneril and Regan, and between
his father and Edmund.
The idea of
inversion in this play is very interesting to me. King Lear’s abdication sets
the stage for the accepted order of civilization to be completely reversed. Cordelia,
the youngest child, is expected to inherit the greatest share of wealth, while
usually the youngest child of a family got very little. Lear becomes a
subordinate child figure to Goneril and Regan, Edmund the illegitimate son is
honored over his honest, legitimate brother, and the fool is wiser than the king.
2 comments:
Well said! I really like your examples of how straying from order is what leads the play in such a tumultuous direction. Had Lear just stuck to tradition and left a will for his kin to sort through after his death, he could have spared his own life and the lives of many others. And because Edmund decided to go against the law and order, he tore his family apart as well as the two sisters, Goneril and Regan. I definitely agree that it was the breaking of tradition and order that directly lead to death and destruction in this play.
Your post made me think about a question that always puzzles me in this play--does Lear set into action the disorder that we witness as the play unfolds, or has the disorder already been set up from before the time the play began? Lear's decision is clearly a catalyst to the tragedy, but are there indications that the seeds of disorder are there all along? This is of course, all hypothetical (Shakespeare never wrote the prequel to Lear!), but fun to ponder nonetheless.
Post a Comment