Structuralist Shakespearean Analyses: King Lear

King Lear First Impressions

            I very much enjoyed King Lear, and it has long been a play that I’ve wanted to watch and read – however, I had never gotten around to it until now. While I appreciated both the plot arc and plenty of dialogue, I found this play comparatively challenging to follow along. I think that this is mainly because the eponymous character is deep in the throes of madness or senility for the bulk of the play. More specifically, from what is perhaps the work’s most iconic scene: Act III, scene ii, until Lear is reunited with Cordelia at the end of Act IV, wherein he seems to awake from his insanity as if from a dream, asking, “Where have I been? Where am I? Fair Daylight? ... I will not swear these are my hands. Let’s see. / I feel this pinprick. Would I were assured / Of my condition!” (IV.vii.59-64). The fact that his speech in the intervening time can be somewhat difficult to decipher is compounded by the fact that Shakespeare writes nearly all of his dialogue in strict iambic pentameter – a truly remarkable feat! However, given that Lear, among other characters such as the Fool, adheres to such rigid metrical constraints (and occasionally rhyme, as in much of the Fool’s dialogue), clarity sometimes gets obscured. However, I should note that this is not a criticism of the work, merely an obstacle that I faced in comprehending it.

            The aforementioned dynamic reminds me of 2 other works, the first of which is Ophelia's mad scene in Hamlet. As I noted in my essay on the subject, it can be incredibly difficult to piece apart how much of Shakespeare’s “mad” dialogue conveys hidden messages (let alone what they might be) and how much of it is just a complete breakdown of the collective symbolic order. And oftentimes, there may be references embedded in the text that Elizabethan audiences would have picked up on more readily, such as Shakespeare’s homage to the Walsingham ballade in Ophelia’s scene, but which require additional research on the part of modern audiences

The other phenomenon that Lear reminded me of was Bach's final compositional period. Like Shakespeare is in the field of English literature, I consider JS Bach to be probably the greatest genius in the genre's history. Despite, or perhaps because of this, he was actually quite conservative musically – something that became more pronounced the older he got. Consequently, he wrote his most formally rigid and most complex works like The Art of the Fugue, The Musical Offering, and the Goldberg Variations during his late period. I see a parallel with King Lear, for even though I know it wasn't one of his very last plays, it's interesting that Shakespeare similarly moved towards the formal rigidity of things like rhyme and meter rather than away from it in this work, which he similarly wrote towards the end of his career. It's taken me a while to really gain an appreciation for this corresponding period in Bach's compositional output, as these works are not as emotionally immediate as his previous, nor, in my opinion, is the dialogue in this play when compared to, say, Hamlet or Othello. However, I suspect that I will continue to gain an appreciation for King Lear as time progresses, as both Shakespeare and Bach, in their late works, display an unparalleled mastery of their medium. And while their effects might be puzzling at times, it is likely because no one has ever written something in a similar idiom again.

As the last play in this set of analyses, King Lear also presents an incredibly fitting recapitulation of some of the themes present in the first work I covered. As I noted in my essay on Touchstone’s verse, one of the many messages of As You Like It was that words can be hollow ornaments that convey but a glimpse of our actual intrapsychic states. In other words, at the risk of using a cliché: talk is cheap. It’s what we do in surrendering predication that life’s ultimate sustenance can be found – a theme that I’ve noted throughout Shakespeare’s works, whether it be Othello, Hamlet, etc. This sentiment is made the more profound given that Shakespeare was arguably the greatest commander of words in the history of the English language, so if he’s making this comment, there’s little hope that any of us could use words in a deeper way.

However, all this is not to say that words are useless, as I personally don’t believe this and I don’t think Shakespeare did either – after all, as his work proves, they can provide inestimable pleasure and are perhaps the most remarkable tools we have to shape our lives. They are just that, though: tools, not life and all the meaning it affords in and of itself. Poignantly, this could be what Richard gets at when he says that the world affords him no pleasure, so he’ll make it his pleasure to dream – a dynamic that I said encapsulated the artistic drive but which also led to his ruin. In other words: the theme that words are ultimately shallow may be a comment on Shakespeare’s part about how, like Othello, he got everything he ever wanted and gained the greatest mastery over his craft that anyone could imagine, but it still left him feeling empty. (This is pure speculation on my part, but I think it’s a valid interpretation of the message conveyed in these works).   

The way that this dynamic plays out in King Lear is that the entire play’s action is set into motion in Act I, scene I, when Lear’s daughters, Regan and Goneril, fawn all over him to get him to bequeath them the throne. Their speeches are in contrast to that of his youngest daughter, Cordelia, who expresses precisely what I just mentioned when she replies, “I cannot heave / My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty / According to my bond, no more nor less” (I.i.100-102). It is because Lear foolishly trusts what Hamlet would call “but the trappings and suits of” (I.ii.89) love over Cordelia’s less sycophantic and verbose but genuine expression that the play devolves into what is perhaps the most gruesome tale of woe and misery in Shakespeare’s output.

In drawing more parallels between As You Like It and King Lear, it is interesting to note that Cordelia might even share elements of the “wise fool” archetype, even though she doesn’t ever come across as satirical or confusing. However, like the actual Fool in Lear and Touchstone in As You Like It, she has no compunction in speaking truth to power. And Lear even says while mourning over her dead body, “My poor fool is hanged” (V.iii.269). This moment was a particularly gut-wrenching one, but I also found this play, on the whole, to be probably the most emotionally visceral of those that I’ve covered. This dynamic most evidently comes into relief in Act III, Scene Vii, when Cornwall puts out Gloucester’s eyes at the sisters’ behest, act IV, Scene Vii, when Lear and Cordelia are reunited, and Act V, scene iii, wherein everyone dies.

While on the subject of the last scene, it very much reminded me of the finale of the opera Tosca, by Puccini, which I also consider to be one of the most emotionally raw and moving in the (operatic) canon. I draw this connection because the male love interest in Tosca, Mario, dies similarly to Cordelia: the plot’s main action has resolved itself, and the antagonist(s) is dead. However, it’s too late, and his execution order is followed through on before Tosca can belay it. She consequently kills herself out of grief, much like Lear dies when the same thing happens to Cordelia. This plot device is quite surprising and devastating because the authors of these two works play with the audience’s expectation for resolution. At the last moment, they turn the work into a profound tragedy, which is made starker because of how emotionally invested the audience becomes in the murdered characters, both of whom are quite noble and likable.

The aforementioned connection I drew with one of the themes at play in Lear and Richard III is not the extent of the ways that these two plays overlap. While reading Lear, I also drew several parallels between Regan/Goneril and Richard. Specifically, like Richard, their lack of morality and desire for power eventually implodes, leading to their destruction. Richard's evil machinations alienated him from the rest of the kingdom, resulting in an uprising that deposed him, whereas the sisters eventually grow jealous and too power-hungry to divide both England and Edmund between one another and kill each other out of a desire to centralize power and have Edmund all to themselves. The fact that this dynamic plays out in this way is interesting enough in and of itself, but it is also an instance of what happened to Othello (and, as I mentioned, perhaps even Shakespeare himself). Namely, neither Regan nor Goneril could be content with what they had, which was enough, and, to use Iago’s terminology, their desire for more eventually proved to “fordo” them.