The Fall Is Going

The Fall Is Going Essay, Research Paper

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. — Edgar

If you are a student assigned to read or see King Lear, or an adult

approaching it for the first time, your experience will be special. These

notes will help you get started.

If there was ever a historical King Lear, his memory has faded into

mythology. Llyr and his son Manannan are Celtic ocean-gods;

Manannan reappeared in Yeats’s plays and the “Dungeons and

Dragons” games. The “children of Lir / Llyr” were transformed into

waterbirds in another Celtic myth.

Legend remembered Lear as a pre-Christian warrior king in what is now

southwest England. This area now includes Cornwall (origin of cornish

game hens.) In the old story, Lear asked his three daughters whether

they loved him. Two claimed to do so extravagantly, while the third said she loved him only as a daughter should. Lear

disinherited the honest daughter. The story appears elsewhere in world folklore; there is an Eastern European version

in which the honest daughter says she loves her father as much as she loves salt. Lear went to live with his first

daughter, bringing a hundred followers. She demanded that he reduce his followers to fifty. Lear then went to live with

the other daughter, who reduced the number to twenty-five. Lear went back and forth between the daughters until he

was alone. Then the third daughter raised an army, defeated the other two, and restored him to his kingdom. (The

story appears in Holinshed, who adds that Cordelia succeeded her father as monarch and, was deposed by the sons

of her sisters.) This tale about how actions speak louder than words had recently been played on the London stage in

“The True Chronicle of King Leir.” We have seen the essential story once again in the Japanese Ran, and more

recently in A Thousand Acres, an intelligent feminist tale, with the two older daughters as incest survivors who have

spent their lives cajoling a crazy, abusive father and protecting their youngest sister. A bit of the fourth act made it into

the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour” for some reason.

Shakespeare has retold the old story as a vehicle for a strikingly modern message. Many people consider

King Lear to be his finest work. Whether or not you agree with his vision of a godless universe in which our

only hope is to be kind to one another, you will recognize the real beliefs of many (if not most) of your

neighbors.

To find Shakespeare’s intent, look first for:

changes in the plot sources made by the author;

passages which do not advance the plot or have obvious appeal to the intended audience.

Shakespeare took a story which had a happy ending, and gave it a sad ending. He transformed a fairy-tale about

virtuous and wicked people into something morally ambiguous. He took a story of wrongs being righted, and turned it

into the story of painful discovery. He included passages which deal with ideas instead of advancing the plot.

The main plot

Lear is king of Britain. He is an old, highly successful warrior king. (War is an institution which we

despise, just as Shakespeare clearly despised it. But before birth control or real personal security,

population pressures made war and even genocidal conflict a fact of life.) King Lear has decided to

retire and to divide his kingdom among his three daughters and their husbands. His stated intention

is to prevent future conflict. This is stupid, since it actually invites war between the heirs.

Shakespeare’s audience (having just been spared a civil war following the death of Elizabeth) would

have realized this.

King Lear has staged a ceremony in which each daughter will affirm her love for him. Whether this

has been rehearsed, or the daughters forewarned, we can only guess. Goneril and Regan may

have been embarrassed. Goneril says she loves her father more than she can say. King Lear

thanks her and gives her Third Prize. Regan says that she likes her father so much that she doesn’t like anything else.

King Lear thanks her and gives her Second Prize. Cordelia says that she loves her father exactly as a daughter

should. King Lear goes ballistic and disinherits her, and banishes the Earl of Kent for speaking in her defense. First

Prize is divided between the other two daughters.

Cordelia has been courted by the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France. Burgundy says he will

not marry a woman with no property. France is more clever. He swears that he loves Cordelia, and

marries her. This is an obvious plan to make a claim on the British throne, and Shakespeare’s

audience would have realized this. France may or may not be sincere in loving Cordelia. We won’t

know.

As the basis of his retirement agreement, King Lear has stipulated that he will live alternately with his

daughters, who will support him and 100 followers. When he leaves, Goneril and Regan express

their understandable concern about hosting a mentally-imbalanced father and his personal army.

King Lear goes to live with Goneril. The first daughter’s steward Oswald yells at Lear’s jester, and Lear punches the

steward. Goneril decides to assert control. When the play is staged, a good director might have Lear’s retinue

disrespecting Goneril — whistles, catcalls, lewd remarks, or whatever. Kent returns in disguise to serve Lear, and we

meet the jester (”Fool”). A court jester might be a comedian-entertainer, or simply a retarded person kept as an object

of amusement. Lear’s jester is specially privileged to speak the truth, which he does ironically.

Oswald is rude to Lear, and one of Lear’s knights makes an indignant speech about the king

not being cared for properly. (This knight, and all the others, will soon abandon their king.) Lear

yells at Oswald, Kent trips Oswald, and a scene ensues in which Goneril demands that Lear

reduce the number of his followers — evidently to 50. Goneril (rightly) points out that her own

people can care for him just as well. Lear curses her and departs for Regan’s. He sends Kent

before him, and Goneril sends Oswald.

Regan and her husband have gone to visit the Earl of Gloucester, and when Kent and Oswald meet at the Earl’s

castle, Kent picks a fight and Regan’s husband puts him in the stocks. This is a serious breach of protocol, and when

Lear arrives, he is furious. Goneril arrives and Lear curses her again. Regan says she will allow him only 25 followers.

Since Lear no longer has a source of income, his followers are leaving en masse anyway, but Lear evidently does not

realize this. Lear says he will return to Goneril, but now she will not even allow 25, and the daughters re-enact the

fairy-tale plot by alternately reducing the numbers, and asking “Why do you need even one follower, when we can care

for you ourselves?” Of course, they are right, but Lear says that he measures his personal worth in terms of his

possessions. “Reason not the need! Our basest beggars are in the poorest things superfluous. Allow not nature more

than nature needs, Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.” Vanities give meaning to life and this is what raises us above the

level of animals. King Lear, now alone except for Kent and the jester, starts to cry and runs off as a storm brews. The

daughters lock him out of the castle to teach him a lesson.

Lecturers who enjoy talking about “The Elizabethan World Picture”, in which orders of nature reflect

human law and its breakdown, will tell you that the ensuing storm mirrors the chaos in Britain. The

Elizabethans paid lip-service to the idea that kings were magic, and actually knew that a stable

monarchy was better for everybody than civil war. (Lawful democracy would be devised later.) King

Lear yells back at what proves to be a preternaturally severe storm. His whole retinue have

abandoned him except the jester, who begs Lear to go apologize to his daughters and seek shelter,

and Kent, who sends to Dover, where the French army has landed in expectation of a British civil

war. In the first storm scene, which is difficult, Lear is going crazy. He:

first calls on the power of the storm to sterilize the human race;

then accuses the storm of taking sides with his daughters against his dignity and being their degraded slave;

then, realizing that people have deceived him, says the storm must be “the gods”’s way of finding and punishing

secret evildoers, and that he is “a man more sinned against than sinning”;

then comments, “my wit begins to turn”, i.e., he realizes he is going crazy — in literature, becoming insane is often

a metaphor for changing the way you look at yourself and the world;

notices the jester is cold, and comments that he is also cold; this is the first time Lear has been responsive to the

needs and concerns of someone else;

accepts Kent’s suggestion to take shelter in a hut.

Already inside the hut is “one of the homeless mentally-ill.” The play is probably better if,

as it is sometimes staged, there are several lunatics all ranting together. (This one lunatic

is actually a sane man in disguise, seeking refuge from private injustice.) When he sees

the hut, and before seeing the lunatic(s), King Lear realizes that what is happening to him

now is what he has allowed to happen to the poor throughout his reign. “Oh, I have taken

too little care of this.” He suddenly realizes that his luxuries have been maintained at the

expense of his poorest subjects, and that justice is only now being served on him.

When he sees the lunatic(s), Lear cracks, and says he/they must have given everything to

their daughters and been turned out also. But the onset of madness confers a deeper

insight. Lear sees in the naked lunatic someone who has taken nothing wrongfully from

anyone, and is the essential human being. Saying that “unaccommodated man is no more

but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art,” the king rips off his clothes.

In the third storm scene, King Lear holds a trial of his two daughters, evidently mistaking a stool for Goneril, something

else (I’ve seen a chicken used) for Regan, and so forth. The good Earl of Gloucester comes and urges Kent to take

the king (who has passed out) to Dover, since his daughters’ people are planning to kill him. At the end, Kent tells the

jester to follow Lear. As often played, Kent discovers the jester to be dead. The jester has no more entrances or

lines, and probably the same boy-actor played Cordelia and the jester in the original production.

Kent and Lear reach Dover and Cordelia, who loves him. Cordelia accompanies an

invading French army. She may not realize this, but sending her is probably a cynical,

no-lose move by the King of France. If his forces win and kill the other heirs, he is now

also King of Britain. If his forces lose, the heirs will kill Cordelia and he will be rid of a wife

who is no longer of any political value.

Kent tells a friend that King Lear, in his more lucid moments, is too

ashamed to see Cordelia. The king reappears in a field where the Earl of

Gloucester lies, his eyes having been gouged out by Regan and her

husband. King Lear is now crowned and decorated with weeds and wild flowers. He wavers between

hallucinations and accurate perception. At the same time, he talks about his world, focusing on how fake

ordinary human society is. When he coins money, only his royal title makes him other than a

counterfeiter. People pretend to be modest and virtuous, but even the animals commit adultery. The law

is concerned with protecting the rich and concealing their misbehavior, not with promoting justice and

fairness. Regan and Goneril have played and humored him. He learned the truth only in the storm. He says that “when

we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” Cordelia’s people come to bring him back to their

camp, and they chase him down.

We next see King Lear asleep under the care of Cordelia. He awakes, and thinks — correctly — that he recognizes her.

But he thinks that they are both dead. “Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound upon the wheel of fire, that mine own

tears do scald like molten lead.” Cordelia kneels, Lear tries to do the same (as in the older play), but Cordelia

prevents him. Lear says he knows he is not in his “perfect mind”, and that he is bewildered, and that if Cordelia wants

him dead he will drink her poison. When Cordelia says she has no cause to be angry, but merely wants to help him,

Lear says “Pray now, forget and forgive. I am old and foolish.”

King Lear is not about wrongs being righted. If Shakespeare were a Hollywood writer, his king might have returned to

rulership and (”having learned to be sensitive, and that it is all right to cry”) become a champion for the poor in his own

country and set up a social agency to deal effectively with other dysfunctional families. In contrast to the happy ending

in the source, Shakespeare has the French army defeated by the British, and Lear and Cordelia are captured. King

Lear looks forward to happy time with his daughter in prison, merely laughing at the rest of the world. As the subplot

concludes, all the villains are dead, but Cordelia has been hanged in prison. King Lear kills the hangman with his bare

hands. He comes onstage, carrying Cordelia’s body and howling. King Lear’s surviving heir, Goneril’s good husband

who is now sole head of the victorious army, returns Lear’s royal power, but Lear does not notice. Suddenly uncertain

whether she is alive or dead, King Lear bends to examine Cordelia, believes she is alive, and falls dead himself. The

good survivors see the passing of a man who was larger than life.

The secondary plot

King Lear’s story is paralleled by the story of the Earl of Gloucester. We meet him at the

beginning, introducing his illegitimate son Edmund with some smutty jokes. We do not need to

see Edmund’s face to imagine how often this must have happened, and how Edmund’s feelings

must have been hurt by it. Edmund soliloquizes that he is as talented and as loved as his

legitimate brother Edgar, and that the accident of his birth is unjust. He professes allegiance to

“nature” rather than law or love, and decides that he will try to gain

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