Now she’s gone forever

King Lear’s fall is an obvious one to point out. When we first meet Lear he is an aging yet still power-wielding monarch, and at the play’s conclusion we wave goodbye to an old man once king heading to kingdom come sans crown. And that’s just the tip of the peripatetic iceberg. Tied to every royal is the fate of a nation (which is why today’s Britons prefer their fate in the red-hot hands of William the Dashing and not in the pale hands of Charles the Bore). Despite his attempts at fostering otherwise, Lear’s nation has fallen into political madness due to the selfishness of the very people to whom Lear reasoned he should bequeath Britannia. Put together Fortune’s fun with man and country is relatively easy to pin point. But what concerns this blog post is not the question of Lear’s unfortunate fortune, but instead what I’m interested in is pin pointing Lear’s point of recognition and its implications. Now to this point, we point.

“A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all! I might have saved her!” If the object of Lear’s vitriol were indeed singular and directed only at the Captain then at least his words would half-truth be -- the other half being the half he himself would contribute to the current plagued state of events. But Lear directs his condemnation at the tragedy’s least guilty and inarguably its most redemptive and still living characters (tear drop, Cordelia. Tear drop, lowly classed brave heart): the honorable Kent, the redeeming Edgar, and the judicious Albany (an ironic and funny anachronism, don’t cha think). Lear’s condemnation is of course woefully, or more to our meta-theatrical play, pitifully ignorant. Murderers? Traitors? He might have saved her? Puh-lease. About the only thing he saved was defeat from the jaws of victory (Oh! Two snaps and a crown in yo' face!)

Here Shakespeare leaves little room for audiences to expect that in the tragedy’s final moments Lear will explicitly recognize his culpability in Cordelia’s death. So what do we get instead? In the opening scene, Lear doesn’t recognize Cordelia’s honesty and the true simplicity of her love for him. Telling his daughter to refit her words to fit his fancy, Lear says “Nothing, will come of nothing, speak again” and when she does not modify her speech he banishes her from his sight, court, and royal fortunes. So I’m interested in interpreting Lear’s recognition as an implicit one. Perhaps the moment when, after he brings in his daughter’s dead body, he mistakenly thinks Cordelia might still be alive. Here, Lear can’t recognize Cordelia in life or death. He doesn’t know her beating heart. Lear does finally recognize his daughter fully, but unfortunately for him it’s too late: “Now she’s gone forever!”

Poor guy.

All of a Sudden, I Love You

I love Shakespeare's tragedies. They're pretty good at setting up a finale that looks like everything will work out and then the ultimate blows are dealt and everyone is left crying. King Lear is probably the best example, with Goneril and Regan killing each other, Edmund being killed by his noble brother, and Lear and Cordelia being reunited. You want to believe that Cordelia will take car of her father and rule the land (and rule the land she does, in the original version of the legend. Shakespeare loves his unhappy endings, I suppose), but instead she is killed, leaving Lear to die of madness and a broken heart. This kind of reminds my of Othello, except Desdemona was already dead when Iago was (finally!) exposed.

What I love about the ending of Lear is what happens between Lear and Cordelia. Lear at this point is completely bonkers, but he is still able to recognize Cordelia for who she is: the pure, noble daughter. Or, does he? If the tearing of the clothes and the flower crown are any indication, Lear has just given up on sanity. Broken and destitute, he accepts the help from Cordelia and rests at France's camp. Is it just because she's a nice lady and looks like Cordelia? I think the text indicates that he does recognize her (stating "I think this lady to be my child Cordelia") but he still has issue with her ("I know you do not love me"). So, the first meeting indicates that Lear recognizes Cordelia, but his insanity keeps him from forgiving.

Jump to the end of the play: Lear and Cordelia are captured, prompting Lear to wish nothing more than to be with his daughter and "kneel down, and ask of thee [Cordelia] forgiveness." It seems that the insanity of war snaps Lear out of it, if only temporarily. After Cordelia is killed, Lear only sees the possibility of her still being alive. Kent tries to reveal himself to Lear, but Lear's babbling prompts Albany to state "He knows not what he says: and vain it is that we present us to him." I think that line is the key to the entire play. From the very beginning, it was completely vain to speak up to Lear, reason with Lear, bring Lear to different places, get Lear to recognize someone, and really get Lear to do anything. He threw his "love" around like he was throwing M&Ms, causing both Kent (or Caius) and Cordelia (in the final act) quite a bit of trouble. Cordelia, especially, is a good example of this insanity: after everything that happened in the play and Lear's unwillingness to forgive, all of a sudden, he loves Cordelia again. It's not because of everything Goneril and Regan did, it's because he thinks he recognizes her in his insane cloud. Only after Cordelia dies does Lear feel true sadness, and even then he is completely bat crazy.

I want to believe Lear knows as soon as he wakes up that Cordelia is there for him and loves him deeply. But, there is so much build up in the heath that I have to see the dramatic reunion as dramatic for Cordelia, and confusing for Lear. Death reveals all, and for Lear, Cordelia had to die so he could realize her purity. I suppose that's tragedy for ya.

-Sarah Bras

Albany, Tellin' It Like It Is

If you ask me, Regan is more horrific than her sister--just because she witnesses and endorses the eye-gouging in Act III and has the audacity to suggest Gloucester smell his way to Dover--but Goneril is pretty awful too. By virtue of being the eldest of Lear's daughters, it stands to reason that Regan takes cues from her. (We see in 2.4 how they collaborate to strip Lear of his train. It's as if they feed on each other's nastiness in snowballing the matter.) But I wanted to take a look at what Albany has to say about his beloved wife in 4.2, as the language is particularly graphic and condemning.

Allow me to preface this reading with two thumbs up for Albany, who defies his "monster" of a mistress though she bests him as a soldier (4.5.5). He is the only character who has changed allegiances thus far, the only one who as opted for action over passivity. If Goneril and Regan are "unnatural" for all but disowning their feminine sides--that is, their innate desire to nurture and keep the peace--then Albany is "natural" for performing the more masculine function of maintaining order by at least giving Goneril a piece of his mind and refusing to fight her battle against Lear and his French allies. I hope he doesn't die in Act V.

"O Goneril!...I fear your disposition," Albany cries upon accosting his wife (4.2.30-2). "Disposition" here is a particularly apt pun, denoting mood, physical condition, and displacement, according to the OED. This one statement, therefore, foreshadows Goneril's fall from power (which we sense is inevitable; she is a villain after all) and the deterioration of her physical self (her "body," or following of soldiers). A little close reading, and we know she's going to get creamed by the French.

That nature, which contemns it origin,
Cannot be bordered certain in itself.
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use. (4.2.33-7)

The imagery here speaks to Goneril's unnaturalness as a creature that bites the hand that feeds it. Sap here, to continue to the extended tree metaphor, symbolizes blood; and material sap may be considered flesh. Disbranching, then, is dismemberment. This alludes to the gouging of Gloucester's eyes (which Goneril, admittedly, has nothing to do with) and to the dismissal of King Lear from his status as king and father. He who bestowed upon Goneril her royal blood, her life, and her legacy is cast off, but not without repercussions.

Albany continues by calling Goneril and her sister "Tigers" (41)--predatory, carnivorous--then "barbarous," "degenerate," and "vile." Perhaps this is Shakespeare demonstrating through his word choice that self-predation, a tendency to attack oneself via one's kin, is what separates man from beast or at least that which is humane from that which is barbaric. To show his humanity, Albany resists the urge to dismember her ("dislocate and tear/ They flesh and bones" (66-7)) because she is a woman in form and must therefore harbor some of that womanly essence he has been taught to respect. I think Shakespeare realizes that his female villains are all the more provoking for being so far from what we expect a woman to be by her nature.