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King Lear: Moral Example or Tragic Protagonist?Author(s): Francis G. SchoffSource: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring, 1962), pp. 157-172Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2866785Accessed: 18/09/2010 08:29

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King Lear: Moral Example or Tragic Protagonist?

FRANCIS G. SCHOFF

AY, but this dotage of our general's", cries Philo at the opening of Antony and Cleopatra, "O'erflows the measure"; and from this point on Shakespeare's lines recurrently insist not only upon the dotage, but upon its direct relationship with the de- cdine of Antony's generalship, statecraft, and power. From the inimical Octavius Caesar through Enobarbus to Cleopatra,

one or another character guides, with clearly pointed remarks, our interpre- tation of what we see. Hence it is easy to provide copious evidence from the lines of the play to support the view that Antony is not a tragic figure, but a warning for sinners: that he brings on his downfall by surrendering to passion. This interpretation is open to dispute. As Willard Farnham has pointed out, the world of later Shakespearian tragedy sometimes tempts us to find "a neatly working key" to itself in "moral responsibility which is there allotted without question.... And it deserts us after we have done so."' Nevertheless, evidence for such a reading of Antony's career is easily found in various passages of the play. Similar treatment of Macbeth enables the interpreter to offer him too as a model of how not to live: as the cause of his own well-deserved fall. In both plays, furthermore, the text is dotted with references to the effect which the protagonist's doings have upon the state in which he is a dominant figure, while in Macbeth there is evidence that the thane's murder of Duncan is to be considered a crime against the laws of nature. This is the manner of Shake- speare's working from Love's Labor's Lost and Titus Andronicus to The Tem- pest. What opinion we are to hold concerning characters of any importance and what they do is made clear to us by what is said about those persons and their deeds. Dissenting opinions may occur, like Shylock's of Antonio and Emilia's of Othello; but against them Shakespeare sets a weight of evidence more than adequate to prevent confusion. Dramatists in general, for that matter, have been following this procedure from a long time before Shakespeare to our own day; we are told what to think of Creon and Andrew Undershaft as care- fully as what to think of Macbeth.

Now many scholars have offered interpretations of King Lear which make its protagonist serve a purpose as sternly didactic as that attributed to Antony and Macbeth. He brings on his own downfall, we are told, because he is tem- peramentally wrathful and arrogant; or because he is stupid and senile; or because in dividing up his kingdom and resigning power he is derelict in duty; or because he sins against natural law in doing so. Most commentators prefer

1 The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy (University of California Press, I936), p. 444.

158 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

a combination of two or more of these points to reliance upon a single one; and here and there someone adds love of flattery to the indictment, or attacks the King as self-centered and ungenerous. Thus Lear too becomes an obvious morality figure. If this were a matter of romantic subjectivism, there would be little point to overt disagreement. But these theses have been propounded by major figures in the study of historical backgrounds for the dramatist: men whose work has helped all of us to understand Shakespeare and avoid the dangers of a subjective approach. It appears none the less that they have here fallen into a trap set by their special field of interest; for King Lear offers virtually no evidence to support such interpretations. Because this trap faces all of us who study the plays and their background, I should like to demonstrate this point if I can; then to indicate how the dramatist appears to have tried to control our response to the play's first scene, which of course has caused all the trouble; and finally to suggest what the trap is and the importance of avoiding it. For the first of these efforts, since this is not to be a book, I shall consider only the four principal lines of thought I have mentioned, which are the chief ones in our own time, and shall hope that if I can prove them un- founded the reader will accept the assertion that others of similarly derogatory tendency are, too.

I

When Lear divides his kingdom, Hardin Craig tells us, he sins against nature and God's law; and the play shows the results of the sin.2 If this is indeed a central thesis of the drama, we should find a sizable number of comments by a variety of characters insisting upon the point. Certainly a causal relation- ship between Gloucester's adultery and his sufferings is shown to be important by being worked over in Shakespeare's usual manner when he wishes to impress something on an audience. In fact, the strongest, clearest statement of this relationship comes patly near the end, in Edgar's "The dark and vicious place where thee he got / Cost him his eyes." Yet when we seek material pointing out an unnatural or sinful element in Lear's initial actions, we find just one very vague comment, having to do strictly with the disowning of Cordelia. It is tucked into the middle of Gloucester's speech to Edmund about "these late eclipses": "the king falls from bias of nature; there's father against child" (I. ii. i20-i2i). With some effort of imagination, we can add his sequent remark that the banishment of Kent for honesty is "strange" (I25-I27); and we may toss in the fact that France, marveling at the turn of events in the opening scene, says that such a complete reversal of Lear's attitude toward Cordelia must mean she has done something monstrous (I. i. 22i-226); for we may find an impli- cation here that without such justification it is actually the disowning which is. These are the only lines in the play which even appear to support the idea that Lear has done anything sinful or unnatural.' Weak even in relation to

2 Cf. An Interpretation of Shakespeare (New York, 1949), pp. 207-208. Cf. also Irving Ribner, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (Princeton, i957), p. 249; James L. Rosier, "The Lex Aeterna and King Lear", JEGP, LIII (I954), 578; and Theodore Spencer, Shake- speare and the Nature of Man (New York, 1942), p. 142. Virgil Whitaker varies the thesis by making it Lear's disowning of Cordelia that is unnatural (Shakespeare's Use of Learning [San Marino, California, '9531, PP. 303-304).

3Kent's line in the opening scene itself, "I'll tell thee thou dost evil", as will appear below,

KING LEAR: MORAL EXAMPLE OR TRAGIC PROTAGONIST? 159

Cordelia, they obviously do not refer at all to the division of the kingdom. There is eventually a good deal of comment about unnatural actions; but all is directed against Regan and Goneril, or Cornwall; nothing else concerns Lear. Consider, on the other hand, the opportunities for such comment which Shake- speare passes over. There are Gloucester and Kent, for instance, at the play's opening, referring to the division: how easy to slip in a worried or horrified aside from either! There is Kent, later, in the stocks, with time enough to say a good deal, no matter how regretful and loving his tone. And there are Edgar and Albany in the closing scene, ideal interpreters ready to be used as potently against Lear as Edgar is against Gloucester. But there is nothing, from the side of either good or evil. Thus the play offers virtually no evidence in its lines that Lear does anything sinful or unnatural in disowning Cordelia; and none whatever that he does in dividing the kingdom and resigning power.

Closely related to violation of natural law is the slightly narrower thesis that Lear is derelict in duty and shows lack of political wisdom in this resignation of rule.4 For this point too evidence is in effect non-existent. Kent brings us close to it with his angry "when power to flattery bows" and "majesty stoops to folly" (I. i. I49-I5), and-Gloucester adds a startled "subscribed his power! / Confined to exhibition!" (I. ii. 24-25). We observe, too, that when Kent as Caius seeks employment with the King (I. ii) he gives as his reason for wanting to serve him the authority in Lear's face. We should find these phrases signifi- cant indeed if they were joined elsewhere in the play by a series of related comments. But there are none. Any other possibilities are strictly personal and narrowly limited to their contexts. Thus Goneril in the epilogue to the opening scene tells Regan that Lear will be a nuisance if he should "carry authority with such dispositions as he bears" (3o8-3o9). To Oswald she speaks of his wanting still to "manage those authorities / That he hath given away" (I. iii. i7-i8). Later she tosses in "the tender of a wholesome weal" as part of her excuse for reducing the number of Lear's knights (I. iv. 226-233); and Lear in return threatens that with Regan's help he will "resume the shape" he had (33I), to punish her. But clearly, though we find dramatic irony in the King's assertion, none of these remarks in its context carries philosophical implications about Lear, kingship, or national government.s It is again noteworthy, too, that Shakespeare does not utilize opportunities he has to drive home such a point. Apart from those mentioned in connection with natural law, there are two striking chances. One comes when we hear rumors of schism and possible strife between Albany and Cornwall (II.i. 1-M4; III.i.ig-2i; and elsewhere): excellent openings, these, for someone to observe that a strong central power,

refers to the possibility of harm to Lear himself. Lear is everywhere his "good king" without qualification. Cf. II. ii. i67, and his words and actions throughout.

4 Cf. in addition to the scholars named above Harold S. Wilson, On the Design of Shake- spearian Tragedy (University of Toronto Press, 1957), p. i9i; John W. Draper, "Political Themes in Shakespeare's Later Plays", JEGP, XXXV (i936), 6i-93, especially pp. 80-82; and Clifford Leech, Shakespeare's Tragedies and Other Studies in Seventeenth Century Drama (New York, 1950), p. 77. Oscar J. Campbell, in "The Salvation of Lear", ELH, XV, (1948), lo[, makes a related point.

5 Richard H. Perkinson has pointed out that by the end of the play national affairs have receded farther into the background than in either Hamlet or Macbeth. See "Shakespeare's Revision of the Lear Story and the Structure of King Lear", PQ, XXII (I943), 325.

i6o SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

,or Lear's having remained on the throne, would have avoided the dread danger of civil war; but no one does. Again, France invades the country, and the cruelty of war could easily be referred to, with Lear's dereliction pointed out, however mildly, as a cause of the sufferings it will bring upon the nation. Instead, the affair is kept almost completely in the background. Scenes which bring in soldiers (IV. iv; V. i, ii, iii) provide a chance for a bit of pageantry, but otherwise scarcely refer to the war. The crucial battle is handled off stage during a ten-line scene whose center of interest is the blind Gloucester's relapse into despair at the bad news. And that, far from being tied back to any fault in Lear, brings only Edgar's tart "What, in ill thoughts again?" and the famous "Ripeness is all." (V. ii. 5-Il). At the same time the invasion itself is virtually blessed as coming to the aid of Lear (IV. iv. 22-29). Albany is even hesitant about helping to repel it (V. i. I-4, 23-29). Finally, no one, friend or foe of the King, comments at any time on the duties of kingship; on a king's responsi- bility to keep his throne and his power; on any danger likely or certain to result from the division of a kingdom; or on the division of this one as cause of the troubles we see. The play, in short, fails completely to support any such thesis.

It will seem, I fear, startling when I assert that the evidence for Lear's being a wrathful man is no more satisfactory than that for these religio-political views. Since Lily B. Campbell apparently settled the matter in her Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes back in i930, the idea has been almost a commonplace.6 Yet the fact that no one in the play except Regan and Goneril makes such a point about the King should have given us furiously to think. So should the fact that Lear, humbling himself to the dust before Cordelia in the fourth act, and naming the defects he sees in himself, does not mention one so obvious as this. We might also have remembered Kent's "the old kind king" as he instructs the Gentleman in III. i, and considered whether such devotion as that of Kent, Cordelia, and the Fool was likely to have been aroused by a wrathful man as described in Renaissance studies in faculty psychology or elsewhere. We do of course see Lear angry, and angry with fearful violence; and Oscar J. Campbell argues that his being so proves that he fails of true virtue.7 But our question is whether he is wrathful by temperament; and from no one save the two wicked daughters do we get even a hint to that effect. Another objection to such a conclusion is that in each instance there is adequate cause for his anger. His fury with Cornwall, for example, comes after he finds his messenger in the stocks and the Duke has refused to speak with him. Goneril, in I.iv, attacks the decency of his attendants, threatens himself (she is his daughter!) with censure and other offence, assures him that (in exchange for half his kingdom) she will "take the thing she begs"-the reducing of his train-and has, he then discovers, already sent away fifty of its members: all this within two weeks of his coming to live with her. But even this much illustration is scarcely necessary. The King, from Goneril's first attack, finds himself in a psychological straitjacket

6 Rosier (p. 579) and Spencer (p. I40) bring in this thesis. Cf. also John F. Danby, Shake- speare's Doctrine of Nature (London, I949), passim; D. A. Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare (Garden City, N. Y., i956), p. i84; and C. F. Tucker Brooke, "King Lear on the Stage", in his Essays on Shakespeare and Other Elizabethans (Yale University Press, I949), pp. 57-70.

7 P. Io2. He is here setting Lear against the pattern of Stoic virtue. That his thesis is of doubt- ful merit will, I believe, be shown inferentially in this discussion.

KING LEAR: MORAL EXAMPLE OR TRAGIC PROTAGONIST? i6i

,established by his powerlessness before his daughters' treachery and cold-heart- edness. It is drawn tighter and tighter as the full import of his situation is driven home, and the internal tensions thus set up drive him to the edge of madness. It needs no inherent wrathfulness of character to account for an explosion of fury with each step of revelation. To find such a temperament behind his outbursts-and hence behind his conduct in the opening scene-we need clear guidance from Shakespeare: comment from someone we can trust. Instead, we find that not merely are the incidents fairly provocative of such a response, but that evidence accompanies them to make sure we realize that they are. Thus Cornwall's stocking of Kent is attacked in advance as grossly beyond propriety and decency (II. ii I34-I39, I47-I54), and Oswald's servile defiance in I. iv infuriates Kent as well as Lear. In addition, as this scene progresses, the Fool functions similarly as we hear more of Goneril's attacks on her father. His caustic remarks insist on the unnaturalness and evil of her conduct: "The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, / That it had it head bit off by it young"; "May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?" (I. iv. 235-236, 244-245); and so on. It would seem unnecessary-yet apparently it is not-to point out that exactly those words are put into the Fool's mouth right here, right now, because Shakespeare the dramatist wanted to tell his audience that Goneril's conduct was out of all reason vicious, and that all sympathy belonged with her father. Yet the only evidence in the play that Lear is irascible of disposition comes from this woman and her equally vicious sister. No one else-absolutely no one-says or implies such a thing. We observe, too, that the two together are handled with similar care at the end of the opening scene, when they plan to attack the prerogatives their father has retained almost before his voice has finished echoing in the air. For their dialogue here is preceded immediately by Cordelia's pointed remarks to them before leaving (I. i. 272-277), which are thus at once confirmed. Hence we know that their lines are meant, as H. B. Charlton pointed out, not to reflect back on what has happened, but to prepare for the future :8 specifically, for a future in which their hard egoism and ingrati- tude will justify Cordelia's fears. In addition, of course, if we are to accept the ver- dict of witnesses like these, we must see Albany as a "milk-liver'd man", and Cor- delia as in the first scene having "scanted obedience"; for so says Goneril. And of course Regan's charming husband calls Kent a "reverend braggart" and "knave" as he orders him into the stocks. No. To the evidence of such persons as these must be joined that of someone reliable-Kent, Albany, even Edmund in soliloquy-before they can be believed. And there is no one. There is thus no evidence worthy of the name that Lear is by disposition a wrathful man.

Finally, we must consider the thesis that the King is stupid or senile or both.9 On this point we observe first that with a single exception the only testimony against him comes again from the wicked daughters, and conse- quently is as worthless as the rest of their comments on good characters.10 The

8 Shakespearean Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, I949), P. I97. 9 "Vieillard imbecile" is Henri Fluchere's term (Shakespeare: Dramaturge 1lisabeithain [Paris,

1948], p. 79). O. J. Campbell (p. ioi) calls Lear the "typical unwise man". Draper devotes to his senility "The Old Age of King Lear", JEGP, XXXIX (1940), 527-540. Cf. also William Empson's "'Fool' in Lear", Sewanee Review, LVII (0949), I77-2I4, for a refreshingly unusual slant. But no sampling can do justice to the size of this chorus.

10 The Fool once, while embroidering the theme of Lear's folly, says, "Thou shouldst not have

i62 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

sole exception is Lear's famous set of comments to Cordelia when he humbles himself in Act IV. Here he calls himself "a very foolish fond old man", and "old and foolish" (IV. vii. 6o, 84). Upon these words critics of this group are prone to leap. But none insists upon his intimately related remark in line 63, "I fear I am not in my perfect mind". The reason is apparent: no one claims that he was mad when he divided the kingdom and disowned Cordelia, and consequently the line is treated as irrelevant to this argument. But surely it is sophistry to bring up, of three remarks which Lear makes about himself in the same twenty-five lines, the two which fit one's argument, and to pass over the one which does not. If, on the other hand, we take this exchange with Cordelia simply as it comes, what Lear says of himself is virtually a conventional sign of wisdom linked with absolute humility. Is it necessary to argue that no fool, no dotard, ever spoke of himself thus? Surely not. No doubt Lear means what he says. So, no doubt, did Hamlet when he called himself pigeon-livered because the region's kites had not yet fed on Claudius. But what hearer, what reader, not hot on the trail of a thesis, can agree in either instance? And there is, bar what Regan and Goneril say, nothing more to be found. Can we, then, argue that Lear has only now become wise? Not unless Shakespeare tells us so, and he does not. That the King has committed an act of folly, the Fool insists and he himself early admits. But a lone act of folly does not prove a man either stupid or senile. At the same time, if the dramatist wished us to assume for the purposes of this play that it did, he had several reliable witnesses available to testify for our information. But he did not use them. On the other hand, the play's action offers evidence which, since no spoken testimony anywhere contra- dicts it, weighs fairly heavily in the other side of the scale. For one thing, of course, Lear has been governing a kingdom with success. One writer, in fact, has said that when the play opens he is Shakespeare's greatest king, having England unified, peace abroad, and nothing left to accomplish except to per- petuate this happy condition of affairs through establishing the succession.11 It appears also that Kent has been Lear's intimately trusted adviser (I. i. i6o-i6i), and-to add the obvious-that the loyal daughter has been preferred to the other two. Further, the King is quickly aware of the quality of Kent in disguise. Again, when he first notices a slackening of respect from Goneril and her ser- vants, he has the breadth of vision to accuse himself of being over-sensitive (I. iv. 72-76). When the facts about her come out his mind works rapidly, not sparing himself for his moment of folly any more than the Fool does, and adding admission of his unfairness to Cordelia. He sees, too, the danger of madness, and it is of course in desperation that he tries not to accept the full truth while any hope of Regan remains. Through all these scenes, as on the heath and afterwards, Lear shows high intelligence and greatness of spirit completely outside the definition of such a term as dotard. And there is no one apart from the wicked daughters to deny it. He goes mad because he has these qualities: is not, like the Leir of the old play, senile; and least of all stupid.

been old till thou hadst been wise" (I. v. 48-49). I think the remark in its context needs no discus- sion; but we shall (if the reader's patience hold) come to the Fool in due course.

11 Harry V. Jaffa, "The Limits of Politics: an Interpretation of King Lear, Act I, Scene i", American Political Science Review, LI (I957), 407. Though by someone outside our field, this essay stays close to the text and, if over-ingenious, is yet interesting.

KING LEAR: MORAL EXAMPLE OR TRAGIC PROTAGONIST? I63

Thus if we follow the guidance of Shakespeare in the lines of his play, we find no evidence that Lear is to be considered a horrible example of stupidity, senility, or wrathfulness, nor yet a man who sins against his responsibilities as king. It remains true that in the opening scene his actions could easily be interpreted in any of these ways if the dramatist had wished us to do so: if, that is, he had provided guide-posts in the way of appropriate commentary. I should like to show now, if I can, that on the contrary Shakespeare not only avoids giving such cues, not only presents us on two occasions with cues which point in a quite different direction, but primarily does everything in his power to prevent us from analyzing the scene at all in terms of motivation or a logical accounting of any sort. To do so I must consider what occurs in some detail.

He opens very quietly. Kent and Gloucester exchange a few words on the division of the kingdom. I have already indicated that, like Philo, they might easily have indicated awareness of a flaw in what the King was proposing to do: some fear, perhaps, of possible dangers, or a hint at least that some lack of wisdom was involved. Instead, beyond Kent's slight surprise that the King has shown no partiality toward Albany, the two men appear unconcerned. They turn immediately to Edmund; and, though Gloucester's speeches will offend a sensitive palate and initiate a pattern of thought about his adultery which will not be dropped, everything sounds commonplace. Then we hear the sennet and see the entrance in full panoply of the King and court. Its pageantry stirs; its contrast with the flat opening carries us from everyday living into a different world, elevated, outside our own. An air of formality, of ritual, takes possession of the stage, with Lear dominating all like a "magnificent portent", an "Olym- pian", as Granville-Barker has it.12 For Shakespeare uses all his skill as metrist and master of language-again I must mention the obvious-to make Lear's lines mark him out a Titan. Their great sweep and magnificent breadth now carry us along in a sort of spell while lesser beings, themselves speaking with ritualistic formality, flatter upon request and receive-their flattery useless- what we know they were in any event to get. Interruption comes with "Nothing, my lord." For a moment the portent looks almost human, appears surprised and displeased; the stately movement hesitates. Then, with "Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower", it moves on as massively as before, though on a different track. The speech is not a curse, observe, and shows no violent passion through any shift of rhythm. It rolls as smoothly as what preceded. Compare

Of all these bounds, even from this line to this, With shadowy forests and with champains rich'd, With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads, We make thee lady (64-67)

with 12 "More a magnificent portent than a man", to quote exactly. (Prefaces to Shakespeare [Prince-

ton, I946], I, 285.) For intensive consideration of ritual as a structural element in developing themes of the play, see William Frost, "Shakespeare's Rituals and the Opening of King Lear", Hudson Re- view, X (Winter, I957-58), 577-585. One may feel that he carries his thesis too far; but his dis- cussion is most valuable.

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For, by the sacred radiance of the sun, The mysteries of Hecate, and the night; By all the operation of the orbs From whom we do exist, and cease to be; Here I disclaim all my paternal care (III-II5)

and-for contrast-

Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful! Into her womb convey sterility! (I. iv. 297-300)13

to hear the evidence for my point.14 Kent's "Good my liege" scarcely breaks the flow or is noticed by us. France and Burgundy are called for, the rest of the kingdom turned over to Albany and Cornwall, and the coronet given them to part. Now Kent succeeds in getting attention, and we are given definite guidance for our interpretation of what has just happened. He tells us, not of injustice to Cordelia, not of injury to the kingdom or anything of the sort, but of an imprudent precipitation which threatens danger to the King:

in thy best consideration, check This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgement, Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least; Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound Reverbs no hollowness....

My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it, Thy safety being the motive. (052-I59)

Everything in his speeches here shows that his mind is fixed solely on the King; when he ends with "I'll tell thee thou dost evil", that evil is clearly the bringing on of danger to Lear himself. Thus our first piece of guidance is an outburst of concern for his safety.

But what Kent says is almost less important than how he says it. For he breaks loose in language shockingly remote from the picture before our eves: "be Kent unmannerly, / When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man?" "A blasphemous outrage" is Granville-Barker's term for the epithet."5 In fact, if Lear were the wrathful man sometimes pictured, the Earl might well be dead before his speech is out. Certainly, as his words slash like a knife through the ritual atmosphere, we must leap to startled attention, all thought about what has just happened set aside: what will happen now? will the portent tolerate such language? can the courtier speak thus with safety? And unquestionably sparks fly. The portent becomes clearly furious; almost, as Kent's clamors- his own term-continue, its sword is out to strike indeed. But still the spell is

13 These and other quotations from the play are taken from Hardin Craig's The Complete Works ol Shakespeare (Chicago, I95I), which uses the Globe line-numbering.

14 Lear, at line 207, says Cordelia is "dower'd with our curse"; but we have heard his speech, and know that she is not. (So does Kent, by the way at IV. iii. 43-46.) No need for Lear to curse here; he could act, and he did. Such a twist on Shakespeare's part when he wants a ringing line is not uncommon. For such a purpose, Lady Macbeth even acquired a baby!

15 P. 284. As almost invariably, Granville-Barker saw the all-important thing: whatever else Lear is, he is gigantic. This fact alone makes the attribution to him of petty vices like vanity, or a weakness like senility, automatically absurd.

KING LEAR: MORAL EXAMPLE OR TRAGIC PROTAGONIST? i65

not finally broken; the announcement of Kent's banishment has the same solidity and breadth of line as the speeches we heard before the outburst. It quiets the Earl, who returns for the time to colorlessness. Thus simultaneously we have been given a point of view-possible danger to the King-and our minds have been distracted, through the momentary outburst of passion, from any careful analysis of what has earlier occurred. Now, before we can weigh Kent's words or ponder his warning, a flourish strikes our ears and more pageantry our eyes as France and Burgundy enter, they too in processional panoply. Completely new matter comes with them: which ruler, if either, will take Cordelia? We are given, too, an opportunity to compare them, and this further diverts our attention. Incidentally we discover that the portent, whatever else, is an honest portent; for when Cordelia asks that she be freed from the imputation of having committed some monstrous crime, it replies grimly with simple fact: "Better thou / Hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better." Then France is speaking and our minds are again elsewhere. Mo- ments later, with a final assertion of his rejection of Cordelia, the King is gone. And now? Why now if ever Shakespeare has the perfect opportunity to tell us if we are to find meaningful significance in terms of his own character, in what Lear has done: to point out a basic defect of character; to bring up Pro- fessor Rosier's "lex aeterna" and prepare us to respond like Job's comforters; or what you will. He has only to let Regan and Goneril follow the King and give the stage to an unhappy Cordelia and a sympathetic France. These ob- viously worthy people, without injuring themselves in an audience's eyes, can respectfully, even lovingly on her part, tell each other, and so us, that Lear's conduct has been the logical result of years of irascibility; or that his mind is losing its grip; or that-alas, alas!-the event bodes ill for the now divided kingdom; or whatever of the sort the dramatist wants us to think about the affair. And this, let me remind you, is Shakespeare's regular procedure, whether it be the gardeners discussing Richard II's mistreatment of his kingdom, Mac- beth brooding over his plan to murder Duncan, Camillo attacking Leontes' base- less jealousy, or Volumnia and others cautioning Coriolanus against his touchy pride. With respect to an important incident in his action, Shakespeare always makes some reliable character tell the audience what to think about it. So it is here, but the guidance we are given by Cordelia points completely away from such conceptions as I mentioned. She presents the same point of view as Kent's: an intensely personal concern for Lear as her father, predicated on her evident knowledge of Regan and Goneril as at least potentially evil. "Use well our father", she says to them:

To your professed bosoms I commit him: But yet, alas, stood I within his grace, I would prefer him to be a better place. (274-277)

That is our only guidance: distrust the other two daughters and fear trouble for the King. And she and France are no sooner off stage than Regan and Goneril live fully up to her comments by attacking Lear's character and initiating plans to deprive him of such position as he has kept for himself. The flat prose of their dialogue is like that of the play's opening; and it is as if the main body of the scene has been some gorgeous fairy-tale vision which, it appears, is to have

i66 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

repercussions in the real world. But again there is no time to sort things out; in a moment Edmund is on stage to explain his feelings about bastardy and his plan to dispossess his brother of his inheritance; and the opening of the sub- plot pushes the events of the first scene completely behind us.

Now, what have we in our minds, assuming that we can snatch time in scene ii to reflect at all on scene i? Surely no more than an impression of pomp and pageantry dominated by a hugely commanding figure; a reasonable cer- tainty that that figure, in a moment of anger, has made a serious mistake in judgment by discarding one of his three daughters; and expressions of fear for his future, strengthened by our glimpse of the two evidently undesirable daughters planning to do just what the good one suggested they might. That is the impression Shakespeare invites us to have, and the only one for which he provides testimony. If we have known the old tale in advance, we recognize here a vivid retelling of it, elevated and given magnificence by Shakespeare's verse. Of underlying motivation for Lear, however, we have none, nor any reliable comment that might explain his conduct. Consequently if we think like Tolstoy we shall be troubled, and may start devising matter to fill in the gap. This is quickly done; reasons thus sought actually are "as plentiful as blackberries". The difficulty is that they are almost certain to be wrong, as we have seen; for they are based not on what Shakespeare wrote, but on what we think it logical for him to have meant. But if we are to understand his play we must base our thinking on what in fact he set down. And the corollary is almost more important: if Shakespeare omitted material, our aim must be not to fill the gap, but to understand why it exists: why in this first scene of Lear, that is, his dramaturgy is so planned as to keep a stream of varied events rushing past us without explanation of the central occurrences.

Nor will it do to say that Shakespeare had no time here for motivation, or that he would count on his audience to supply such theoretical background in politics or other fields of thought as was needed to account for events. He always had time for what he wanted to do, and he always supplied theory. For yet more instances, consider Shylock on the reasons for his hatred of An- tonio, musing while the merchant and Bassanio stand waiting; or Iago on his urge to injure Othello. Or consider Ulysses on reputation, or Malcolm and Macduff in England, or Menenius' lengthy parable of the belly and the rest of the body-sixty-five lines of it forced by the dramatist down the throats of riotous citizens in his opening scene! Of course Shakespeare had time to motivate Lear's action if he wanted to; and equally of course he would have supplied theoretical background if it were relevant to the theme of his play. The con- clusion seems inescapable: he was not interested in either. As to theory, the remainder of the play, as we have observed, shows that it would indeed be irrelevant. As to motivation, his reason for passing over that is our next prob- lem. To treat of it, I must first indicate hastily what I think Shakespeare's Lear is like.

That he is intelligent is already, I hope, proven. That we are shown him wise and broad of vision in Acts IV and V, few will deny; and we have noticed earlier that Shakespeare has given us evidence of his being so long before then. One observes in addition that he has a sense of humor, though the action offers little opportunity for it to appear. To the disguised Kent's self-description, "as

KING LEAR: MORAL EXAMPLE OR TRAGIC PROTAGONIST? i67

poor as the king", he replies not with the anger of hurt vanity, but with "If thou be as poor for a subject as he is for a king, thou art poor enough." And it will be with a smile that he closes the interview, "if I like thee no worse after dinner, I will not part from thee yet" (I. iV. 22-23, 43-44). Even in scene v of this act, with Goneril self-revealed and his own position clear, he can laugh when the Fool jests about the futility of the move to Regan (8-03). Furthermore, he shows the same pitiless integrity in commenting on himself that Antony will: "Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in", he cries during the break with Goneril; and a little later, of Cordelia, he is murmuring to himself, "I did her wrong." So on the heath the wonderfully phrased generalization about the danger of selfish- ness in a life of pomp and ceremony is preceded by attack on himself: "O, I have ta'en / Too little care of this!" Then his dialogues with the Fool show, even granting a jester's license, a certain magnanimity in his acceptance of the attacks. If he threatens him with the whip, it is but once, when Goneril and Regan, not yet exposed, are included in the Fool's harsh joke (I. iv. II7-I23); for the rest, he may tell the disguised Kent that the Fool is "a pestilent gall"; but he endures whatever is said without complaint. Magnanimity shows another way. He is often credited with learning humility and selflessness through his suffering; but I have not seen it pointed out that, the immediate cause of that suffering being treachery, ingratitude, and heartlessness, such lessons could hardly be learned without a greatness of spirit able to look searchingly for his own flaws and to see beyond himself. Stupidity, vanity, egoism do not learn thus; they are too busy with self-pity and self-exculpation. Lear pities himself some- times-why not ?-but he early admits his error and the injury done to Cordelia; and he offers no excuses for his share in the situation. Furthermore, he can look beyond it to awareness of others' sufferings: the Fool's in the storm, say; and those, as we have just noticed, of "houseless poverty". Finally we observe that Lear can win affection. I need instance only Kent, who considers him a good kind king, and a master he loves well enough to die for, and Cordelia. And here I must enter a caveat. It is all very well to make of Cordelia a symbol of Christ because words like redeem and holy water are used in connection with her;'6 doing so must not blind us to the fact that in Shakespeare's play she is first of all a devoted daughter, no more; and Shakespeare nowhere causes a good person to be thus devoted to an unworthy one.17 She may or may not be presented also as part of a complex of Christian symbolism; with this issue we are not here concerned. But whether or not she is, her devotion to her father is a characteristic Shakespearian sign-post to his quality: he must be someone who deserves her love.

Lear, then, is shown to us through action and reliable report as a man of intelligence, integrity, and at least a degree of magnanimity, capable of seeing

16 Cf. Paul N. Siegel, "Adversity and the Miracle of Love in King Lear", SQ, VI (I955), 332-335, following S. L. Bethell. Cf. also 0. J. Campbell, p. 107, and Robert Heilman, This Great Stage (Baton Rouge, La., 1948), p. 33I, n. i, and elsewhere. For opposition, cf. F. C. Kolbe, Shakespeare's Way (London, 1930), pp. 144-145; Roger Lloyd, "The Rack of This Tough World", Quarterly Review, CCLXXXV (I947), 530-540; Charlton, pp. 8-i2; and W. B. C. Watkins, Shakespeare and Spenser (Princeton, 1950), pp. 104-Io6.

17 Troilus will serve as exception to test the rule. One observes that in her exchanges with him Cressida is given for the nonce a touch of Juliet and Portia; the air is sweetened in spite of Pan- darus; and she appears veiled in romance. His eyes are quickly opened to her later duplicity.

I68 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

himself as he is and learning of the world's agony through his own; as a man who inspires great love; and as a man with a sense of humor. That he is also a man of power and of titanic passion when aroused goes without saying. He is, thus, a person of such value and stature as can well subsume in his own tragedy the recurrent defeat of goodness and nobility by evil, one of the domi- nant themes in the poet's work from the days of the sixty-sixth sonnet:

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, As, to behold desert a beggar born ... And right perfection wrongfully disgraced And captive good attending captain ill.

And how-to return to the lack of motivation and with it reach at last the central problem-how should this person do what Lear does in Act I, scene i? Having magnanimity and a sense of humor, devise the love-test and disown Cordelia for failing to please him? Being intelligent and knowledgeable about people, fail to know Regan and Goneril, and be thus easily blinded to Cordelia's love? The answer to these and similar queries is the same: he could not. I can hardly overstress the point. The Lear that Shakespeare was envisioning could not do what according to the story he must do. Not wrathful, not stupid, but in- telligent and at least somewhat magnanimous of temper, he could not be given satisfactory motivation for his critical error. Yet in the situation, once past the initial postulate"8 that he did do these things, there lay what Shakespeare ap- parently wanted: opportunity for his supreme dramatic embodiment of "captive good attending captain ill"; for a vision of the power of evil in the world that should indeed tear at its spectators with a dreadful fusion of pity and terror. Consequently he chose the only path open to him. He handled the critical inci- dent in such a way as to prevent the audience from thinking it through in terms of Lear's character; got it out of the way as swiftly as possible; and got on to what mattered to him.'9

That this thesis is sound is further indicated by the care with which Shake- speare works in the first i50 lines of his getting on with it. Scene iii of Act I, you will remember, shows us Goneril in a brief dialogue with Oswald, instruct- ing him to make occasions to anger her father and "have it come to question."20 In the first place, the terms of her complaint are absurdly beyond belief: "By day and night he wrongs me; every hour / He flashes into one gross crime or other"; and so on. In the second, she speaks of him in a manner which would have set on edge the teeth of any self-respecting Elizabethan observer, and should of any self-respecting modern one: "Now, by my life, / Old fools are babes again; and must be used / With checks as flatteries." This, of the father who has just turned over half his kingdom to her! We need here no other guidance

18 E. E. Stoll's term for a point which the dramatist must have his audience accept uncritically in order to get his play going. I cannot now give him more precise credit.

19 My idea is obviously neither new nor original. From Coleridge on, a certain small number of critics has made some such point about the opening scene. Cf. for instance Charlton, pp. I96-I97, and Alfred Harbage's impressive introduction to the Pelican edition of the play (Baltimore, 1958). No one, however, seems to have tried to prove the point with detailed analysis.

20 That he has these instructions, is carrying them out as offensively as he dares, and thus de- serves what he gets from Lear and Kent is forgotten, along with a number of other sign-posts we have considered, by E. A. Block in "King Lear: A Study in Balanced and Shifting Sympathies", SQ, X (I959), 499-512.

KING LEAR: MORAL EXAMPLE OR TRAGIC PROTAGONIST? I6X

than so horrifying a revelation of what Goneril is. But it is possible that in a few moments we may. For the Fool is soon to enter, to jeer at his master's folly and by his twisting of the knife help along innocently the unsettling of his master's mind. If we accept his comments completely, Lear is done for as tragic protagonist; the Fool will cast such an air of the ridiculous over what happened that we shall laugh at the King and perhaps even believe Goneril. Clifford Leech, in fact, taking the love-test and the episode of the hundred knights on a strictly literal level, actually found the King growing absurd.2l But as always Shakespeare provides necessary guidance. Against Goneril and her absurd charges, already accounted for partly in advance by Cordelia's fears, he now sets the banished Kent, who comes on stage immediately after Goneril and Oswald leave, saying to himself,

If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn'd, So may it come, thy master, whom thou lovest, Shall find thee full of labours. (I. iv. 5-7)

Such devotion casts a glaring light upon the daughter. Next, as I mentioned earlier, we see Lear showing humor and good judgment as he interviews and hires Kent; and a moment afterwards the latter's fury against Oswald fully matches Lear's, and tells us exactly what to think of this debased version of Osric. Then, and only then, the Fool enters. To do what? Why, to offer Kent his coxcomb and cry, "Let me hire him, too." That is, to call Kent a fool, as he will again later (II. iv. 87-88), for supporting Lear and thus living up to the principles of right! Now the Fool's chief attack on Lear is to concern the King's folly in assuming that Goneril and Regan would live up to those principles. Hence any danger of an audience's taking the Fool's jibes at face value would appear nullified. Besides, there is also to start immediately the overt brutality of the two daughters and Cornwall to demand from an audience sympathy for Lear, and there will soon be the expansion and development of his own nature. It may well have seemed to Shakespeare-if, of course, he thought in such terms at all-that the King was now safely placed above ill thinking in the audience, or for that matter in a reader, if the dramatist thought of such people. He could not forsee a time-to note a parallel-when Satan would be made the hero of Paradise Lost and the right perfection of God and Christ brought under attack. If he had, he might have set an example for George Bernard Shaw, or followed his own in Romeo and Juliet (though even this has not in the end availed him) by using a preface or a prologue to make sure no misunder- standing was possible.

I would add one more point. Shakespeare does, as a matter of fact, once offer an explanation of Lear's disowning of Cordelia. During the moments of his first realization of his position, the King cries out,

0 most small fault, How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show! That, like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature From the fix'd place; drew from my heart all love,

21 pp. 77-78. G. Wilson Knight also finds a comic element in the love-test (The Wheel of Fire [Oxford University Press, 1930], pp. 176-177). For a rich and revealing contrast, cf. Watkins on the hundred knights, pp. 90-95.

170 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

And added to the gall. 0 Lear, Lear, Lear! Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, And thy dear judgment out! (I. iv. 288-294)

"That ... wrench'd my frame of nature / From the fix'd place": this is the sole motivation of Lear's initial conduct offered in the play. It applies solely to Cor- delia-another indication of the dramatist's complete indifference to the dividing of the kingdom as such-and it offers a reason anyone with a layman's under- standing of Elizabethan ideas about psychology would find acceptable. We can have it now, when we are not concentrating on Lear's error, but are intent upon the way his daughter is treating him, and upon his response to that treat- ment. I assume that the dramatist felt it could not be risked in or close to the opening scene. Set against conduct so flagrantly absurd if considered rationally, it might be worse than useless, for it might start us thinking; and reasoned anal- ysis would make short work not only of Lear but of the entire affair. It may not have been intended, even, as delayed motivation; the lines fit perfectly with the working of Lear's mind at the moment, and they add to our good opinion of him by implying a sharp, penetrating self-appraisal. It is interesting, never- theless, that this comment seems often to be overlooked. For the deterministic element in humours psychology, with its theory that almost any shock, de- livered at the right moment, might throw a man's personality out of balance, is widely known. Concerning this play, too, a number of critics have insisted upon the rightness for Elizabethans of Gloucester's interest in eclipses and Kent's outcry that the stars govern our conditions. Characteristically, Lear is blaming himself in these lines; yet if we put them together with the references to astrol- ogy in the play we shall be able to piece together stronger evidence that he is a victim of uncontrollable circumstance than is available for the points of view we have considered earlier. But of course Shakespeare was not expounding this thesis either; he was at most adding a final touch to the job he had to do: prevent us from judging Lear by his deeds in Act I, scene i. That his action there was a great error, even a piece of folly, we are encouraged to believe. Such an opinion will not necessarily prevent our accepting him as a great and worthy person, fit to be a tragic hero. At the same time, even this conception is some- what confused by the brief reminder that circumstances beyond his control might be involved. In this manner Shakespeare, to get the situation he wants, has seen his protagonist through the performance of an action which, as he is shown else- where in the play, he would manifestly never perform; and he has done it with the virtuosity and tact of a master technician.

III

It would be interesting now to consider how Gloucester is used not only to ex- pand our horizon, but by contrast-l'homme moyen sensual, his past immorality insisted upon, and his stature little greater than our own-to magnify the King and emphasize his nobility. But perhaps I have said enough to show that our most popular critical approaches to Lear lack validity. It follows that even his- torical criticism, most reliable of our attempts to get at the working of Shake- speare's mind, can mislead us as badly as unrestrained image juggling or any other type of subjective analysis if we use it without constantly checking it

KING LEAR: MORAL EXAMPLE OR TRAGIC PROTAGONIST? 171

against what Shakespeare has written into his play. We are by now fairly ex- pert on a good deal of the thinking of the Elizabethan world and its predecessors. We can trace the theory of humours psychology back before the time of Peri- clean Athens, and the concepts of Fortune and her wheel to similarly antique eras. We can see continuity in the writings of men like Boethius, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, and follow threads from them down to Hooker and Bacon. Some of us know the Tudor homilies better, I suspect, than many of the people who drowsed through the reading of them. And we can find in Shakespeare's plays passage after passage which shows that he was familiar with many of the ideas we have been examining. All this is interesting and valuable. It gives us a setting for our jewel, helps prove that he was not a unique and artless phenomenon, helps us understand why he wrote the way he did, and sometimes helps us to interpret him. But here lies the trap. Everyone knows it, but sooner or later almost everyone forgets it. Shakespeare's familiarity with an idea does not necessarily mean his acceptance of it; and still less need it mean that it is the controlling thesis of one of his plays. This is true even of ideas that are given strong expression there. Few scholars today, if any, would take as Shake- spearian theses Gloucester's "flies to wanton boys" speech or Macbeth's "To-mor- row and to-morrow and to-morrow", in spite of their being memorable statements of significant human attitudes. How then can we venture to apply to a play themes that are not thus clearly presented? That a king divides his kingdom and resigns power, and that the success of evil follows it, may mean that Shakespeare wants us to recognize a necessary relationship of cause and effect, and to remark an illustration of Renaissance or Tudor political or religious doctrine. And it may not. Shakespeare, who regularly hammers home overtly the points he wants to make, will tell us if this is his purpose. If he does not, we cannot reasonably at- tribute it to him. By the same token, it makes no difference how many authori- ties we can quote to show how a wrathful man was described by Elizabethan or medieval writers on human nature; nor how much Hooker and like thinkers had to say about the sin of violating natural law and the dangers of failing to follow right reason; nor how much advisers and would-be advisers of the first Elizabeth insisted upon the dangers inherent in a divided kingdom. Unless we can show in the lines of his own play that Shakespeare meant us to apply one or another of such concepts to it, we must not do so.

A generation ago Elmer Edgar Stoll summed up thus the antithetical dangers he found present in criticism of long-dead poets:

The anachronistic fallacy is that of looking upon the dramatist like Shake- speare, the poet like Dante, as a philosopher or seer who anticipated our ways of thought and sentiment, and of cheerfully attributing them to him; the historical fallacy is that of treating him as a mere puppet of the Zeitgeist, without artistic or poetic autonomy, and the age itself as so entirely disclosed to us that we can positively say, here he got this, here that.22

As we contemplate the achievements of Hardin Craig, Lily B. Campbell, T. W. Baldwin, E. M. W. Tillyard, and many others, it seems almost as if the age were indeed thus thoroughly disclosed to us. But the more we know, the more cau-

22 "Certain Fallacies and Irrelevancies in the Literary Scholarship of the Day", SP, XXIV (1927), 490.

17;2 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

tiously must we move, lest we do reduce Shakespeare to "a mere puppet of the Zeitgeist" by failing to test theories derived from our knowledge of his world against the lines he wrote. The problem confronts us not only in King Lear, but in all the great tragedies and in others of the plays; and it is the more serious that in almost every instance the result is a cheapening of the protagonist: a cutting down to size. He is reduced to a man like ourselves, of whom we can say comfortably, "If he had had more sense, or more sound balance, or less emotionality; or if he had been really good; he would never have had to suffer what he did." Thus Hamlet becomes an exemplar of sloth; Othello a Moorish primitive, subject to brutal passions thinly repressed; and Romeo and Juliet a rather silly couple from whom we can learn not to fall too deeply in love.23

I hope this study has shown that in one instance at least we wrong the dramatist and belittle his thinking when we do this. For King Lear is not a play about Tudor political philosophy; nor does it offer its protagonist's career as a moral exemplum, teaching us to go and do otherwise. It is a play about the fearful power of evil, into whose grip, through some misstep or accident, even the wisest and noblest man may plunge himself and us; and its protagonist is a tragic hero whose experience, thus vicariously shared, enables us to gain strength and understanding for what we may one day face ourselves.

North Dakota State University

23 From Shakespeare's tragic vision, wrote Sir Walter Raleigh, "we take refuge in morality, from motives . . . of fear, because morality is within man's reach. The breaking of a bridge from faulty construction excites none of the panic fear that is produced by an earthquake" (Shakespeare [London, I907], p. i96). Cf. also Harry Levin in The Question of Hamlet (Oxford UniversityPress, i959), pp. I3I-I36, and W. Macneile Dixon's Tragedy (London, I924), passim.