University of Groningen
King, Master, and Father:
Social Roles, Duty, and Madness in King Lear
by Bianca Seinen S2543958 Supervisor: Dr J. Flood 4 December 2019 Word Count: 16,309
Master’s Thesis Literary Studies Track: English Literature and Culture
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Abstract
This thesis explores the madness of Shakespeare’s King Lear and adds to the critical discourse by focussing on contemporary perspectives on the old king’s mental health problems. In addition to King Lear, this thesis draws upon other primary sources, most notably King James’s extensive works on the duties of kings, Robert Cleaver’s Godlie form of Householde Government (1598), the anonymous Office of Christian Parents Shewing How Children are to be Gouerned throughout All Ages and Times of their Life (1616), and Robert Burton’s seventeenth-century seminal work on madness, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). By linking early modern ideas about social order and mental health to the way in which Lear deals with his social roles and their pertaining duties, I
demonstrate that his madness cannot be disconnected from the manner in which he
discards his responsibilities as king, master, and father. Furthermore, the way in which his daughters and his liege Kent, in particular, handle their respective roles has a marked effect upon Lear’s well-being. While Goneril and Regan’s attitudes fuel Lear’s already rising anger and ultimately push him out into the cold, dark night, where he completely loses his mind, Kent and Cordelia’s true friendship provides the old monarch with the opportunity to experience a short-lived recovery. As I contextualise Lear’s madness and connect it to early modern idealised views on social- and mental order, it becomes evident that it is superfluous to impose modern medical diagnoses on the mad old king; it is more appropriate to consider him as part of his own context and his melancholy as a
consequence of the chaos and disorder that find their ultimate cause in the selfish streak of an old man.
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Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter to notice and admit what we
expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.
Maya Angelou – Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now (1995, p. 66)
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Table of Contents
Abstract
... 1Table of Contents
... 3Introduction
... 4Chapter One: Critical and Literary Context
... 111.1. Critical Context ... 11
1.2. Literary Context ... 15
Chapter Two: The Order of the World and the Old King Lear
... 212.1. Order, Social Roles, and Duties ... 21
2.2. The Old King ... 24
Chapter Three: The Master and His Servants
... 313.1. The Angry Master ... 31
3.2. The Loyal Servant ... 35
Chapter Four: The Father and His Daughters
... 384.1. The Stubborn Father and His Three Daughters ... 38
4.2. The Furious Father and His Two Daughters ... 41
4.3. The Mad Father and His Caring Daughter ... 47
Conclusion
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Introduction
When James VI of Scotland published his Basilikon Doron in 1599 it was intended to advise his son, Prince Henry, on a king’s Christian duty towards God and his people (148, 155). As the son of Mary Queen of Scots, James himself had been raised in the theoretical awareness of a king’s duties and, in the honoured tradition of other European monarchs, he put them into writing (Croft 132). Together with The Trve Lawe of Free Monarchies (1597), dedicated to his fellow Scotsmen, Basilikon Doron forms the basis of what is known today about James’s views on how to behave as a king. Although he often ignored his own advice, and his works ‘must not be read as an accurate guide to the king’s
politics’, they provide us with a glimpse of his stance on royal obligations (135). The fact that Robert Cecil probably masterminded Basilikon Doron’s reprint in London in 1603 in a large print run of approximately 14,500 copies at around the same time that James
ascended the English throne (135) shows that it conveys ideas that would support James’s position as English monarch and strengthen the image of the newly crowned king.
One of the things that James strongly recommended was that his son made sure he was ‘well versed in authentick histories, and in the Chronicles of all nations, but specially in our owne hisories the example whereof most neerely concernes you’, so that Henry could learn lessons from the past and apply them to the present (Basilikon Doron 176). The story of the British King Lear, first recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regium Britanniae (c. 1135), had been retold time and again and brought a wealth of moral lessons for a prince growing up (Stern ‘Editor’s Introduction’). When Shakespeare appropriated the story in the beginning of the seventeenth century, he added the king’s madness and death, and foregrounded the concept of duty. It is this unique combination of
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a mad, old monarch and the prominent place of duty on stage, together with James I’s ideas about the usefulness of ancient histories that produced the focus for this thesis.
Duty in its early modern perception proved to be a useful tool to dissect and analyse the development of the elderly monarch’s madness. While sixteenth- and seventeenth-century advice literature provided contemporary ideas on social order, social roles, and duties of kings and subjects, masters and servants, fathers and children, Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) was predominantly consulted as a source for thoughts on the causes and cures of madness. By comparing the ideal situation of the advice- and knowledge literature to the development of Lear’s madness, this thesis shows that his mental health problems cannot be fully comprehended or explained by modern medical labels. Instead, by linking early modern ideas about social order, duties, and mental health, it demonstrates that Lear’s choice to abdicate and discard his royal duties has
repercussions on the order of all levels of society and is inextricably linked to the disorder within Lear’s head. As a corollary, this thesis presents a possible reason why a ruling monarch would want to be entertained by watching an elderly king go mad.
As Shakespeare’s King Lear was written and performed in 1605-6, this thesis focusses on advice literature and conduct manuals that were printed between 1585 and 1625 to provide a glimpse into early modern thought on these matters. These years saw Shakespeare as a grown man, putting his thoughts into writing, and James I ascend the English throne and rule the country until his death in 1625. Ideas in this period took their time to materialise into print, thus these forty years provide ample room to find significant information about the various views that were present in society. For contemporary, dramatic context of King Lear, this thesis puts the spotlight on plays written by Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights and performed by the King’s Men from the
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While unravelling Lear’s duties, his roles are divided into those of king, master, and father, and it is in this sequence that they will be discussed, descending from the largest circle of the common weal to the smallest entity of the family. This discussion is, furthermore, limited to the relationships between the king and his subjects, the master to his hundred knights and Kent, and the father to his three daughters. Lear’s position as servant to the heavenly king will be touched upon but not dissected as its description could be the topic of an additional master’s thesis.
Over time, an impressive number of scholars from various disciplines have given their opinion on King Lear and still the fascination with the ageing king and his descent into madness continues. One of the latest arguments in this area can be found in an essay by Maginess and Zeilig from 2017, ‘“Poor Bare Fork’d Animal”, The Representation of Dementia in King Lear’, that claims that Lear is affected by a form of dementia. Linking the monarch’s age to the decline of his cognitive functions, they connect the twenty-first-century focus on old age and its related diseases to seventeenth twenty-first-century literature and argue that during the play ‘Lear undergoes a profound change which demonstrates the potential for growth and the re-construction of the self’ (53) in an attempt ‘to offer solidarity to people with dementia’ and their support network (2). While this is a noble goal, their approach to King Lear assumes ‘that early modern language about madness can be more precisely explained by twentieth-century psychological categories’ (Salkeld 15) and tries to fit early modern ideas into modern-day straightjackets. Moreover, social roles and duty in King Lear gained little attention from critics until the early 2000s. For instance, duty, or more specifically, service in the relationships between master and servant was ‘almost completely ignored’ because it ‘seemed too obvious to deserve commentary’ (Schalkwijk 3-4). In the last twenty years scholars have tried to amend this neglect and more detailed accounts of the critical ideas about social roles and duty are discussed below.
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In the early modern period, people’s lives were divided into different stages and Lear with his four-score years found himself in the winter of his earthly existence: old age. Robert Burton (1621) claimed that there were ‘four ages in man’ by analogy with the four seasons, the four humours, and the four elements (I:148). Whereas Burton reserved one stage for old age, William Vaughan (1612) discerned two: the first one started at fifty years of age and lasted until sixty-two; this was the more vital and happy part of senescence. The last stage ended at eighty and ‘causeth man to be drooping, decrepit, froward, cold, and melancholick’ (113-114). This image is reinforced by Henry Cuff (1607) who described the elderly as increasingly apathic as their bodily strength declined and their interest in the world around them waned (120). The Bible, however, and its preachers, like John Reading (1621), paint a more optimistic picture of old age in which senior citizens would come to a mature sense of wisdom after having led a god-fearing life (e.g. Job 12.12, Prov. 16.31, Reading 6, 10-11, 25).
As people progressed into the last stage of their lives, both physical and mental problems were likely to increase. Early modern humanists who tended to centralise the position of the individual human being in relation to the rest of the world increasingly tried to explain maladies and madness by focusing on internal causes. They found a plausible explanation of how the body and mind functioned in humoral theory which was already present in Hippocrates’ works (Porter 37-38, 40, 123). While not completely discarding the religious perspective which claimed that either God or the devil and his consorts caused physical and mental disorders (e.g. Burton I:177-180, James VI and I Daemonologie 43, Porter 17), humoral theory professed that the four bodily humours, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile, and choler, influenced a person’s temperament and determined their well-being. Black bile, which was the dominant humour of old age, was thought to cause an increasing coldness and dryness of the body (Cuff 98, Burton I:210). Physically, this would cause
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stiffness of the limbs and a degeneration of the organs. One of its mental consequences was melancholy (Burton I:210).
Around the time of King Lear’s performance, melancholy signified ‘a certayne fearfull disposition of the mind altered from reason’ (Bright 1), so the definition is broader than the twenty-first-century sense of the word which tends to comprise only the gloomy, depressive side of the concept (OED ‘melancholy, n.1’). According to humoral theory, there was order within the microcosm, a person’s body. Burton compares its functioning to the workings of a clock: ‘if one wheel be amiss,’ he claims, ‘all the rest are disordered, the whole fabric suffers’ (I:171). As the balance within their body had already shifted, elderly people were especially vulnerable and only a little nudge was needed to push someone over the edge of reason. Yet, as personal characteristics and circumstances differed, they would have a different impact on everyone. ‘That which is but a flea-biting to one, causeth insufferable torment to another,’ Burton asserts, with which he makes the early modern perspective sound surprisingly modern (I:145).
When discussing duty in an early modern context, the connotation of the word appears to be more positive than it is today. Whereas in the twenty-first century duty is often linked to the burden of doing things that oppose one’s personal freedom and choice, in the early modern period ‘performing the duties appropriate to one’s place in society’ was generally deemed to be integral to leading a virtuous and good life (Thomas 15). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the meanings of the word duty that prevailed in the early modern period are: ‘the action and conduct due to a superior’, the ‘action which one’s position or station directly requires’, and the ‘action, or an act, that is due in the way of moral or legal obligation’ (‘duty, n.’). Cicero, whose De Officiis formed part of the grammar schools’ curriculum and was prescribed reading at most universities in this period, stated that duties regulated everyday life and, if followed, ensured that order and
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propriety prevailed in society (‘Introduction’ xliv-xlv, 8, 18). Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English author and statesman, claimed that duty was ‘the good of man which respecteth and beholdeth society’. If these duties were properly executed, they would enhance social cohesion and further the greater cause of the common good (252).
The ties that bind people to one another in a social network determine which duties are expected from them. Bacon distinguishes between two kinds of duty: one is ‘the
common duty of every man, as a member of state’, and the other is a person’s specific duty according to his or her ‘profession, vocation, and place’ (252). Thus, adapted to the
context of King Lear, duty is an obligation resulting from the relationship between a king and his people, a master and his servant, or a father and his child, that ensues from their respective social roles. Although it is a reciprocal action, it is not dependent on the other person’s deeds, but on the moral obligation that flows from the particular social bond between the two parties.
King Lear as it can be read and seen today is often a conflated text, based to varying extents on the printings of both the 1608 quarto and the 1623 folio manuscripts. Equally, most critics found their discussions on an edition that combines both texts, although there is a trend to use a two-text edition and pay attention to the differences between Q and F in critical analyses (c.f. Schalkwijk, Small). For my thesis both the quarto and the folio texts are used as they are rendered in the parallel text edition edited by René Weis because their basis is closer to what Shakespeare wrote than editions of the two versions combined. Encouraged by the debate surrounding Brian Vickers’s One King Lear (2016), the two texts were compared regarding the concept of duty and Lear’s social roles, yet no significant differences could be found, except in three specific instances which are
discussed below. When quoting King Lear, the wording and line numbers from Q are used; differences with F are noted between square brackets when necessary.
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After elaborating on the critical and literary context in chapter one, the early
modern world view and, with it, its ideas about order, social roles and duty are discussed in chapter two. This same chapter sees an exploration of Lear’s role as king and links his choice to abdicate which he apparently made because of his old age to the onset of his madness. Furthermore, in chapters three and four the focus is on Lear’s roles as master and father, their pertaining duties, and their contribution to his madness, while the influence of his daughters and Kent on his mental health is also examined. In the concluding chapter, the various stadia of Lear’s madness are connected. A clear picture thus arises of the significance of social roles and duties, and the impact of their proper execution or neglect on Lear’s mental health.
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Chapter One: Critical and Literary Context
1.1. Critical Context
King Lear and its portrayal of madness have been a frequent object of discussion for critics from various backgrounds. When Nahum Tate (1681) decided that the play needed to be adapted, it was not the mad king that inspired him to tamper with Shakespeare’s tragic tale, but the unhappy death of Cordelia. The madness for Tate had ‘so much of extravagant Nature ... as cou’d never have started but from our Shakespear’s Creating Fancy’ (Ioppolo 169). Initially, scholars, like Gildon (1710) and Theobald (1715), dwelt on the aesthetic value of Lear’s madness, but gradually the psyche of the maddened king drew more attention (Salkeld 12). In 1765, for instance, Samuel Johnson wondered whether Lear’s madness was caused by the horrible conduct of his daughters or the loss of his kingdom and concluded that Lear’s offspring was at fault (Ioppolo 172). Furthermore, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, Hazlitt (1817), supporting a return to the original Shakespearean ending, described Lear as an old, vulnerable man whose daughters had turned ‘against his age and weakness’ (126). The causes of Lear’s insanity were not discussed in great detail by the critics of the day, which Coleridge’s lectures on
Shakespeare (1819) also prove. He discussed ‘the aged sufferer’ with great compassion and described Lear’s mad ramblings as ‘an eddy without progression’. The crucial act three, scene four with the mad monarch on the heath received his paean of praise as the epitome of English literature (172-174).
In the century that followed, psychological criticism, investigating the causes, kinds, and consequences of madness, drew scholars to King Lear who ‘looked to Shakespeare, as the most perceptive analyst of human nature, for guidance in the understanding of madness’ (Salkeld 12). Doctor George Farren (1833), for example,
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diagnosed Lear with ‘mania furibunda’ or ‘raging madness’ (12), while the psychiatrist Donnelly (1953) thought Lear was afflicted with delirium, ‘or an acute schizophrenic-like episode’ (Truskinovsky 347). The renowned Shakespeare-critic, A.C. Bradley (1904), however, discerned a purging aspect to the madness that taught Lear ‘how power and place and all things in the world are vanity except love’ (284), while the founder of
psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1930, 1934) believed that the root of Lear’s madness, could be found in his ‘repressed incestuous claims on his daughter’s love’ (Holland 169). Some years later, the existentialist Jean Paul Sartre (1971-1988) posited that Lear’s madness was ‘a way of doing something about his problems’; it was ‘a neurosis or psychosis ... the best means available to the person for coping with a situation that allows no rational solution’ (Barnes 216). In the last half of the twentieth century and the
beginning of the twenty-first, new medical insights and contemporary social developments shed a different light on the workings of the human psyche, and scholars responded to this by discussing and analysing Lear’s madness through different lenses (e.g. Truskinovsky, 2002, Maginess and Zeilig, 2017, Bertinetti, 2018).
One specific lens in this strand of criticism has been the one that foregrounds old age mainly in relation to Lear’s mental problems. Hesitant at first, the topic was brushed over in most of the twentieth-century criticism. In 1946, Draper, for instance, discussed how Lear’s ‘physical and mental decay [was] brought on by misfortune and advancing years’ without discussing specific symptoms and diagnoses (50). Some thirty years later, Smith touched upon the same topic when he discussed Lear as one of Shakespeare’s ‘variations on the theme of old age’ and concluded that ‘it is Lear’s age which makes him doubt his sanity, makes him uncertain whether what he sees is reality or illusion’ (247). In the course of the twenty-first century, the subject increasingly gained momentum with more in-depth studies by Charney (2009), Martin (2012) and Harkins (2018).
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Whereas both Charney and Martin label Lear’s mental health problems as related to old age, Harkins is more inclined to link them to the hardships that Lear has suffered (11, 18, 19). Firstly, Charney explicitly sees Lear as a man affected with Alzheimer’s disease who is forced to acknowledge that ‘he is no longer capable to rule his kingdom’ because of the limitations that are caused by his age and affliction (13, 28). In Charney’s view, the play depicts Lear’s vain ‘struggle to recover his status and his integrity’, even though he himself is reduced to nothing (16). Secondly, Martin simply assumes that the old king is affected by some kind of ‘elderly dementia’ (165, 167). Identifying the tragedy as a postlude to Queen Elizabeth’s reign that asks ‘what it means to grow old in power’, Martin considers the power struggle between Lear and his eldest daughters to be a battle between the generations with the elderly men in the play attempting to ‘sustain or reclaim dominion’ over their own destiny (140, 146, 150, 172). This twofold generational divide is dismissed by Harkins who advocates a more fluid classification of age based on the ability to participate in and contribute to society. With this assumption as a springboard, Harkins proceeds to show how both Lear and Gloucester are framed as dotards in order to serve their off-spring’s lust for power. Neither Lear nor Gloucester ‘is senile from a biological perspective’, Harkins claims, but, at different points in the play, both are purposefully redefined as doddering, decrepit old men ‘in order to provide a culturally accepted justification for stripping away their political agency’ (5, 11).
While interesting arguments of Charney, Martin, and Harkins all put old age in King Lear in a political perspective, neither of them explicitly mentions duty as part of the social context even though it formed an important part of the social rules of the day. Although the critics Barish and Waingrow claimed as early as 1958 that ‘to expostulate ... what duty is, and other questions of this order need not, in the interpretation of
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critical evaluation of King Lear. Wasserman (1976), for instance, discusses duty in connection with relationships. Yet, the only conclusion he reaches is that in light of the absent gods, ‘man must love one another above and beyond the duties and obligations demanded of them in their societal roles’ (30). His colleague, Boose (1982), similarly, draws attention to relationships and duty in King Lear, foregrounding the bond between father and daughters. In her article, she argues that Lear confuses his ‘kingly role in the hierarchical universe and his domestic one in the family’ by linking Cordelia’s possible marriage to the division of the kingdom. This, she asserts, causes the ensuing disorder on all fronts (203). Others, like Parvini (2018), connect duty to care and the moral foundations of Shakespeare’s work. In King Lear, Parvini argues, every moral premise is violated, yet, despite all this, human nature is capable of restoring itself with the use of empathy and the duty of care (289-291).
Another particular strand that can be untangled in the extensive body of King Lear criticism is the one that considers the link between King Lear and service. From the early 2000s onwards, this particular topic has been approached by quite a few scholars, with Weil (2005), Evett (2005), and Schalkwijk (2008) as its main proponents. Service in this context represents duties and tasks performed within the particular relationship between a master of a household and his servant, although ‘it may be more generally applied to the allegiance paid to another person as an act of respect’ (Clark 308). Weil, who suggests that the term should be used flexibly (3), devotes a chapter to ‘the tragic dependencies’ of Kent and Cordelia. Evett, on the other hand, tackles the issue while investigating the level of the dependent’s volition. Departing from the Christian perspective that Christ chose to lead a life of service and, in doing so, served as an example for his followers, Evett examines the various levels of service in King Lear with the monarch’s band of retainers and the trusty Kent as his focal point. Schalkwijk, then, specifically discusses the dynamics between
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service and love in the representation of servants in Shakespeare. As the topic of his work is directly related to Lear’s statement to Kent, ‘thou serv’st me, and I’ll love thee’ (King Lear 1.4.80), Schalkwijk analyses to what extent Lear’s request for his daughters’ love influences ‘the bonds of service’ between them (214).
In conclusion, madness, old age, and duty have been discussed in various gradations by scholars across the ages. Their discussions have ranged from specifically diagnosing Lear and considering the influence of old age to the distinct duties of servants in their broadest definition. Some of these scholars and their viewpoints will be heard in the next chapters as this thesis first dissects and then connects the intricate interaction between early modern ideas on duty, social relations, old age, and madness in King Lear.
1.2. Literary Context
Books such as Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Robert Cleaver’s Godlie Forme of Hovseholde Government (1598), and King James’s Basilkon Doron (1599) all belong to a particular strand of literature that was extremely popular in the early modern period: conduct manuals and knowledge – and advice books. This genre of books, dealing with diverse topics ranging from household government and the roles of its individual participants to the causes and cures of melancholy, was hugely popular (Richardson 485). Basically, its purpose was to advise people on how to behave and to let them know what they needed to do in their specific role in order to live a good, Christian life (486). Cleaver, for instance, poses that he writes his book on household government so that people can start disciplining and reforming their household instead of blaming the church for insubordinate children and servants (‘Dedicatory letter’). Robert Burton, however,
confesses in a disarmingly honest way that he writes on the topic of melancholy in order to avoid the illness himself (20). The physician Timothie Bright (1586), on the other hand,
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who also wrote on the topic of melancholy claims that his main goal is ‘to satisfy the reasonable and modest enquiry’ of those ‘that seek to be informed’ (ii). It makes sense that a society that had the means of the printing press at its disposal would use this technique to convey knowledge and, additionally, capture its rules and regulations to try to preserve order and provide clarity in a changing world.
Contrarily, another genre of the period, the drama, offered the possibility to
experiment with changes in different social roles and circumstances as actors could act out on stage what could only be imagined in real life. Social roles and duty implicitly played a central part in most of these works since it was often the negligence of the characters’ proper duties that prompted the action and drove the plot. Besides providing entertainment, these plays stimulated their audiences to think about the topics they dealt with and they offered them the opportunity to ‘see enacted ... a refracted image of their own desires and anxieties’ (Shapiro 13). For a playwright such as Shakespeare, his works enabled him to enter into a dialogue with the issues of his time and address, either openly or covertly, their possible consequences.
After his ascension, King James chose Shakespeare’s company as his official group of players that was ‘authorised to perform, not only at the court and the Globe, but also throughout the realm, if they wished to tour’ (Shapiro 25). Now dubbed the King’s Men, they performed twenty-nine times during the Christmas seasons of 1603-4, 1604-5, and 1605-6, and it is estimated that two-thirds of their plays were by Shakespeare’s hand (29). Apart from reviving older Shakespearean plays, such as The Merchant of Venice and Love’s Labour’s Lost, and performing new ones like Othello and Measure for Measure, they additionally enacted works by other playwrights like Beaumont, Marston, and Jonson to satisfy the court’s increased demand for drama (Grote 129, 183, Shapiro 29).
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In most works that Shakespeare wrote between 1603 and 1606, alone or in
collaboration with others, failing leaders and disregarded duties are omnipresent, and never without serious consequences. In Measure for Measure, for instance, performed before the king during the holiday season of 1604-5 (Shapiro 29), the exemplary position of a ruler is debunked: how can he enforce the law and say one thing, yet do another and not abide by his own words himself? As all was wrapped in the festive foil of comedy, there is no telling whether a link would have been detected between James’s advice to his son and his people, and his own behaviour as ruler, yet a case could be made for one.
Two other Shakespearean works that were probably produced in the same year as Lear and quite likely staged before the king, Macbeth and Anthony and Cleopatra, also contained leaders who failed to fulfil their duties each for their own pertinent reasons (Shapiro 10, 223, 298, 361-363). In Macbeth, its protagonist kills the ruling king Duncan while feigning to be a dutiful subject and talking about ‘the service and the loyalty’ he owes him (1.4.22). When he himself is king, Macbeth is a tyrant and displays the opposite of what Duncan calls the ‘the king-becoming graces - as justice, verity, temp’rance, stableness, bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, devotion, patience, courage, fortitude’ (4.3.91-94). Of course, having flouted all the rules in the book, Macbeth gets his due in the last act and is killed. In Anthony and Cleopatra,it is the lovestruck Mark Anthony, tied by what he calls ‘these strong Egyptian fetters’, who struggles with his love for Cleopatra and the demands of the position he holds within the Roman empire (e.g. 1.2.116, 1.3.43-44). His battle between reason and will results in the collapse of the Roman empire and, ultimately, his own death (4.16-5.1).
The demanding relationship between master and servant is present to some degree in most works of the period. As ‘there could be many grades of servants, with different levels and areas of responsibility’ from various social and economic backgrounds, their
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representation is equally omnipresent and varied (Clark 308). For instance, Jonson’s Volpone (1606), performed by the King’s Men in 1606-7, sees a parasitic Mosca bound to his master ‘in conscience no less than in duty’ (2.4.15-16). Additionally, Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, co-authored by Thomas Middleton2 and dated probably 1605, has Flavius who remains loyal to his master even in his misadventure (Shapiro 3, 6, 266).
Foreshadowing the relationship between Kent and Lear, the loyal Flavius, driven by ‘love, duty, and zeal’ (14.514-515), stays close to his master Timon, ‘a mad lord’, who is swayed by ‘nought but humours’ (12.108-109), when he retreats into a cave in the Athenian woods (17). Lastly, in Anthony and Cleopatra, Anthony’s advisor Enobarbus, unlike Lear’s Kent, displays his inner conflict of whether to stay loyal to his near-defeated master (3.13.41-46). When his ‘Roman values prevail’ (Shapiro 280), Enobarbus decides to defect to Caesar and leave his master (4.2.24-33, 4.5.1-9). When Enobarbus finds out his master is still true to him, he dies a tragic death (4.5.10-17, 4.6, 4.11).
The tensions between father and daughter and their duties are aptly expressed by Desdemona in Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello which was performed before King James in November 1604 at the Banqueting House, Whitehall Palace (Wiggins 133). In her speech to her father Brabantio, after she has married Othello without his consent, Desdemona observes, ‘I do perceive ... a divided duty’, as she refers to the duties she owes to her father and those that are due to her husband. ‘To you I am bound for life ... I am hitherto your daughter: but heere’s my husband’, she pleads with her father, asking him to allow her to give to the Moor what is rightfully his (3.466-474). While Desdemona enters into a
conversation with her father, the disobedient Jessica in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, performed for the king between Hallowmas Day 1604 and Shrove Tuesday 1605, silently
2 Middleton is explicitly mentioned here as he was apparently directly involved as a junior writer with the
creation of Timon of Athens, whereas he probably adapted other works such as Macbeth, Measure for
Measure, and All’s Well That Ends Well between 1616 and 1623, after Shakespeare’s death (Jowett 5-6,
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leaves her father, the Jew Shylock (Shapiro 29). ‘My own flesh and blood to rebel!’ Shylock exclaims after he has discovered that his one and only daughter has eloped, and, more importantly, taken his gold and several heirlooms (3.1.29). Jessica, who is ashamed to be her father’s daughter, on her departure, explicitly severs the bond between her and her father and sets off with Lorenzo to start a new life (2.3-2.6).
Given the negative image of old age and Goneril and Regan’s fervent attempt to pin that same image on their father, one would expect a to see a similar representation of doting old men on stage. Yet, Shakespeare’s other tragedies written around the same time as King Lear hardly comment on old age or have doddering men on stage. Only Timon, backed by his friend Alcibiades, in the eponymous tragedy Timon of Athens, discusses old age to a certain extent when he accuses the Athenian senators, ‘these old fellows’, of lacking human kindness and gratitude because of their senescence as ‘their blood is caked, ‘tis cold, it seldom flows’ and they are on the verge of death and their nature ‘grows again toward the earth’ (4.208-213). Shakespeare’s comedies, however, prove to be a better medium to play with the ideas about old age and a decline of the senses. Nevertheless, Shakespeare’s elderly men often belie the established prejudices about old age, as does, for example, the nobleman Lafeu in All’s Well That Ends Well, presumably written in 1605 and performed by the King’s Men (Wiggins 194-5). Accused by his foil Parolles of having ‘the privilege of antiquity’ (6.1048), the feisty Lafeu is genuinely annoyed by the younger man whose attitude leaves much to be desired, so much so that he exclaims that Parolles is ‘a generall offence’ and that if he himself ‘were but two houres younger’ he would beat him (6.1090-1094).
As the power of the Master of the Revels’ scrutinising pen and verdict were omnipresent, the combination of monarchs and madness is difficult to trace in early modern drama. Almost a decade prior to the first production of King Lear, Shakespeare
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had portrayed the fifteenth-century king Henry VI as a rather sentimental and peace-loving man (c.f. Henry VI Part Two 3.1.198-200, 3.2.32-33, Part Three 2.5.19-20), whereas historical chronicles described the distant, Lancastrian ancestor to the Tudors and Stuarts as mentally instable and mad (Griffiths par. 52-54). Yet Lear is specifically presented by Shakespeare as a mad, old king who distorts the order on all levels by putting his personal comforts before his duties to the common weal. His acceptability, however, is
predominantly based on two aspects: firstly, that there was no direct connection between the original monarch from the eighth century BC and King James, and, secondly, that there was a definite lesson to be learned from the on-stage ramblings of a raving ruler.
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Chapter Two: The Order of the World and the Old King Lear
2.1. Order, Social Roles, and Duties
On St. Stephen’s night in 1606, the King’s Men, Shakespeare’s acting company, performed King Lear in front of their patron and monarch, James I, at Whitehall Palace (Ioppolo vii). James had ascended the English and Irish thrones only three years prior, in March 1603. During this short span of time, he had not only consented to the preparation of a new Bible translation under pressure of the Puritan faction of the Anglican Church, he had also been confronted with a huge Roman Catholic plot to blow up the House of Lords with him and his parliament in it. The social order within his newly adopted kingdom was under threat and it could only be maintained if everyone stayed in their allocated place and did what they were supposed to do: their duty, first to God, then to the king, their parents, and/or their master.
Order in the early modern period was based on the idea that there was coherence within the entire universe which was best pictured as a chain of being or a series of corresponding planes (Tillyard 33): ‘Every speck of creation was a link in the chain, and every link except those at the two extremities was simultaneously bigger and smaller than another: there could be no gap’ (33-34). The chain contained the inanimate objects of the earth, such as the elements and metals, and ascended unto the invisible angels and God in the heavens through the plants, beasts, and man (35-36). Every class excelled in one particular aspect: stones, for instance, were superior in hardness and durability. In each class there was a superior sort, the best of its kind, that linked its class to the next (37-38). So, God was the superior being among the angels; the sun was the chief of all the stars; the king was the most excellent being among his people, and the head was the best part of the body (38).
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Whereas the chain of being focused predominantly on the vertical world order, ‘beginning on high with the noblest and descending to the meanest things of creation’, the idea of the corresponding planes ‘was largely horizontal’ (91). From this point of view, God’s creation and all that belonged to it consisted of several planes,
arranged one below another in order of dignity but connected by an immense net of correspondences. ... The different planes were the divine and angelic, the universe or macrocosm, the commonwealth or body politic, man or the microcosm, and the lower creation (91).
The various levels were thought to be organised according to the same principles with a ‘head’ leading each entity (Greenleaf 40-41). The relation between the head and the rest of the body would be similar in all sets with God himself as the ultimate ‘head’ at the top (39). The analogies that can be found in early modern literature, such as James I’s description of the relationship between himself and his people, claiming, ‘I am the husband, and all the whole isle is my lawfull wife; I am the head, and it is my body; I am the shepherd, and it is my flocke’ (‘A Speach in the Vpper House’ 488) and Robert Cleaver’s (1598) comparison between a household and the commonwealth (13), served to clarify the description of a social position and its function, and ‘were solemn evidence of an ordered universe’ (Greenleaf 41).
Each social role had duties attached to it and the ultimate object of the fulfilment of these duties was to help create and maintain order in the universe. As such, duties formed the work arrangements that made society function properly. A choice made on one level had repercussions on other planes. This coherence between the separate links of the system, like the gears and wheels of a complex machine, would dictate that a person’s decisions and actions should be aimed at the well-being of the common weal, not at individual longings or pleasures (Thomas 25). The rationale behind this was that each
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living being had a designated place in the system as ‘designed for it in the divine plan of creation’ (Greenleaf 41). So, unless they had extremely good reasons to leave their role, each member of society was expected to stay in their allocated spot and perform their duties to prevent the system from malfunctioning (17, 85-87).
With the parallels between the different levels of creation and the corresponding planes as his basis, Cleaver (1598) presumes that there are ‘two sortes’ of people: ‘the gouernours and those that must be ruled’ (15). The general duty of those who ruled was to care for their inferiors, and by analogy this social obligation applied to all who found themselves in a similar position, such as the father of a family and the master of a household (James VI and I Trve Lawe 61, Basilikon Doron 166). The responsibility of their dominant position was great because they were expected to use their authority not only ‘for their own private profit, credit, or pleasure, but also for the good of those whom they are to gouerne’ (Cleaver 16). A kingdom, a family, and a household should all be ruled with wisdom and discretion, and God, as the primary source of this, was the ultimate, heavenly master who ruled the rulers with no ‘respect of person’ (Bishops’ Bible Eph. 6.9, Cleaver 14, Fosset 50-51).
In contrast, the main duty of the subjects, servants, and children was to obey, with the explicit expectation for children to also love and honour their parents (James VI and I Trve Lawe 69, Basilikon Doron 158, Office of Christian Parents 224, 229, 230, Fosset 6, Exod. 20.12, Eph. 6.1). Even though they were based on covenants, promises, and oaths and not a blood relationship like the bond between father and child, the ties between master and servant, and king and subject were not easily severed and thought to last a lifetime (Cleaver 18-19, James VI and I Trve Lawe 80-81, ‘A Most Excellent’ l. 17,19). What, furthermore, stands out in the literature of the time is that no matter how evil their monarch, lord, or parent would behave, it was paramount that their subordinates remain
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loyal and dutiful. The sole weapon that they were permitted to use was a heartfelt prayer in which they could ask the Lord that their superior amend their wicked ways. In the end, the celestial father would judge the trespassers and make sure that justice prevailed (James VI and I Trve Lawe 68-69, 77, Cleaver 18-19, Office of Christian Parents 225, 230, 232).
2.2. The Old King
On stage as in real life, every character has various roles to play. In these different roles, they have a variety of relationships with numerous people and so, invisible strings tie Lear the king to his subjects; Lear the father to his daughters; and Lear the master to his
retainers. Next to the general assumption that people in leading positions, like Lear, should care for their inferiors, there were specific ideas on the duties of a monarch. These ideas were based on centuries of philosophising on the topic and King James himself added to their corpus by declaring that, in his view, kings were ‘iustly called Gods’ because ‘they exercise a manner of resemblance of Diuine power vpon earth’ (‘A Speach at Whitehall’ 529). This so-called divine right of kings entailed that royal rulers, as God’s chosen ones (Deut. 17.15), should never abdicate of their own free will, but were bound to their country for life, like a father to his children, and a god to his people.
There were both long- and short-term rewards for staying in one’s allocated place during one’s life. In this world, public honour and esteem were gained when one
performed ‘the duties appropriate to one’s place in society’ (Thomas 15). As such, honour, which constituted the general ‘recognition of superiority’ based on a person’s ‘exceptional moral qualities’ (154), provided the social incentive to make sure people fulfilled their duties (177). A long-term, celestial stimulus would be provided by the Eternal King in heaven who would reward his subjects when the job was well done (13-15).
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Lear, however, seems to care little for his good name and honour, nor for a divine prize, when he puts the pleasure and comfort of his natural body before his duty. The personal freedom that Lear expresses when he chooses to renounce the throne was quite uncommon and did not form an integral part of society as ‘social roles and norms of behaviour were strictly prescribed and freedom of human action was often very limited’ (13, 17). Ideally, people would remain in the social place that they were born into during their entire lifetime, fulfilling their duties to the best of their abilities for as long as possible. Even if there was ‘no doubt about ... the importance of individual choice’ (42), someone’s social position set limits to their individual freedom (43). While retirement without any apparent justification would have been unacceptable for ordinary people at that time, it would have been unheard of for a British monarch whose job was for life (‘An Act for the Relief of the Poor’, Thane 89). And so, Lear’s decision to abdicate is an
extreme one. As king, he was obliged to be a good example to his people so that ‘they may read the practise of their owne Lawes’ and know ‘what life they should leade’ (James VI and I Basilikon Doron 166). A sovereign stepping down from his appointed position in the universe would be a bad role model indeed.
In his position as ruler of the nation, Lear is obliged ‘to maynteine concorde, wealth, and ciuilitie’ among his subjects (James VI and I Trve Lawe 61). Yet he jeopardises the stability of his country, the order within his land, by abandoning his divinely ordained place in society. Within the chain of being, that represented the hierarchical structure in which all of creation was ordered, man played a pivotal role, linking ‘matter and spirit’, heaven and earth (Tillyard 73). As the king was the ‘head’, or ‘best exemplar of its kind’, he was ‘highest in the scale and related to the form of being next above’; the main link between the seen and the unseen (Greenleaf 41). When either king or subjects would no longer ‘follow the callings and stations to which God had appointed them’ and failed to
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obey the will of their superior unconditionally, social unrest would arise (43, 44). So, when Lear the king decides that he will step down, the most important person of the sort is deserting his position, disturbing the entire chain of being. As the main cause of
obstruction, Lear affects the entire system. What is more, the key link between heaven and earth has been replaced by two new ones, Albany and Cornwall, while the old one is still alive: something which is bound to cause unclarity and trouble.
The primary motivation of Lear’s desire to lay down his duties as king appears to be the decay of his natural body, even though his political body could not be affected by the influences of old age (Plowden 213). The idea was that the king had ‘in him two bodies; viz. a body natural and a body politic’ (Plowden 213, Carroll 126). The king’s natural body was the mortal form of the person who ruled which was ‘subject to all infirmities that come by nature or accident’ like the bodies of all men and women (Plowden 213). Thus, a ruler would feel what Montaigne calls ‘the impuissance and extreme alteration that age doth naturally bring’ in their natural body (124-125). The body politic, however, the monarch’s capacity in which they effectuated their policy and government and managed the public weal, was ‘utterly void of infancy, and old age, and other natural defects and imbecilities ... and for this cause what the king does in his body politic cannot be invalidated or frustrated by any disability in his natural body’ (Plowden 213).
Consequently, a ruler was irreproachable ‘no matter how incompetent or diseased’ they were (Carroll 128). However, when Lear uses the excuses of age and the heaviness of the burden of kingship, he clearly has the well-being of his own natural body in mind, and not the happiness of his subjects. These selfish motivations are at the root of both the external and internal chaos that develops during the play.
Compared to the quarto text, the folio lines in this part emphasise Lear’s selfishness in the different wording that the departing monarch uses to articulate his motivation and in
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the additional lines he employs to express his wish to abdicate. Firstly, in F, Lear claims that it is his ‘constant will’ [not in Q] to settle his affairs at that particular moment (1.1.42). This indicates that he has thought long and hard about his decision and that he had not acted on impulse. Secondly, Lear uses the words ‘from our age’ [F] instead of ‘of our state’ [Q], and ‘on younger strengths’ [F] instead of ‘on younger years’ [Q] to make clear what ‘cares and business’ his wants to shake and to whom he wishes to transfer his power (Q and F 1.1.38-39). While Q’s state draws attention to Lear’s occupation as monarch, F’s age in combination with strengths puts more emphasis on the frailty Lear experiences. Furthermore, additional lines in the folio text express that it is Lear’s objective to ‘crawl toward death’ in an ‘unburdened’ manner and that, by distributing his lands and power before his demise, he wishes to prevent ‘future strife’ among his offspring (1.1.40-44). Where crawl and unburdened both suggest a return to a carefree childhood, they also hint at the infirmities of Lear’s age and highlight his longings to be released of the heavy, royal load. The wish to prevent a possible conflict in the time to come may seem noble and wise, considering the quarrelsome dispositions of Goneril and Regan, but it is grounded in the emotion of fear and is not based on reason, ‘the supreme human faculty ... by which man is separated from beasts and allied to God’ (Tillyard 79). Basically, Lear’s political spin is only a way to sugarcoat his self-centred urge to abdicate. Lastly, F adds two extra lines in which Lear claims that he ‘will divest’ himself ‘both of rule, / interest of territory, cares of state’ (1.1.48-49), thus foregrounding his egotistical wish for a carefree life before asking his daughters the pivotal question about love.
Another action in which Lear confuses his social roles and their duties is when he steps out of his body politic into his natural, paternal part and wants to distribute his lands among his three daughters. While distributing the inheritance before one’s actual death was controversial at the time but not unusual (Montaigne 124-126), Lear the father could
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bequeath his lands to his three girls who, in the absence of any sons, would have been entitled to an equal share (Spring 10-11). Yet, from James I’s royal point of view, Lear the king should keep his country unified and leave it to his ‘nearest & lawfull heire’,
preferably the eldest (Trve Lawe 80, Basilikon Doron 173, ‘A Proclamation’). What is more, the way in which Lear transfers his lands to his offspring equally belongs to the body natural (Foakes 279). In his capacity as king, Lear could not ‘part with land as if he were a private person’ (278) but had to use ‘the formal authorization of letters patent, required by common law’ to transfer property (279). The division of his lands by marking the appropriate parts out on the map is thus the act between a father and his children, but not one that belonged to a king (280). From a Jacobean point of view, therefore, Lear mixes up his public and private roles and, in doing so, he cannot fulfil his duties as he should. It is as if, after Lear decided to leave his post as king, the actions and meanings belonging to his royal character have been discarded to reveal the natural person underneath.
As it was Lear’s explicit wish to retain the title of king, friends and foes alike seem to be honouring this agreement as they address him. Kent shows exemplary behaviour in the way that he nearly always refers to his master with all the deference that is due to him (e.g. 2.2.151, 3.1.3, 4.3.37). Throughout the entire play he alludes to Lear by naming him ‘the king’ or ‘my king’ whether Lear himself is present or not. Gloucester, similarly, proves to be a loyal subject and mostly refers to Lear by using his royal title (e.g. 2.2.132, 2.4.266). For Regan, Oswald, Edmund, Cornwall, and Albany, Lear remains the king in name as they discuss him during their conversations (e.g. 2.2.45, 2.2.108, 113, 3.5.17, 3.7.13, 4.2.93). While both Foakes (280) and Harkins (5) explain these royal forms of address as expressions of Lear’s ‘latent political authority’, this thesis takes them as proof of the confusion that is present within the social system. For, if Lear is still addressed as
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‘the King’, with the definite article in front of the noun, within the society that he used to rule, then there is no room for any other person to step up and fill his position, at least not while he is still alive.
Divested of this rule, Lear himself no longer seems intent upon wielding any political authority, and while people still pay him lip service through their forms of
address, their actions defy their words. Even though Lear is still living in the kingdom that he gave away, he is not seen to be discussing state business with either of his daughters, their spouses, or his former advisors. Lear’s upbraiding activities, that Goneril denounces in act 1.3, seem to be more connected to Goneril’s home-management skills than to affairs of state (1.3.6-7). Her subsequent wish to avoid him and her instruction to her servants to ‘put on what weary negligence you please’ display a lack of respect for her former king and insult her father (1.3.7-13). A similar attitude is taken by Regan and Cornwall when he arrives at Gloucester’s place and finds Kent/Caius in the stocks. When the Duke and his wife refuse to speak with their father and, in Lear’s perception, king under pretence that they are weary and unwell, Lear is adamant that they come and see him, threatening that he’ll ‘beat the drum / till it cry sleep to death’ (2.4.66-80, 92-94). Heeding Lear’s threats, they finally emerge from their hiding place and talk to Lear. Their rebellious attitudes, though, testify of Lear’s altered status as it proves to be difficult to be king only in name without the corresponding executive authority.
And so, the consequences of Lear’s choice to abdicate and to leave his position in society become noticeable, even more so because his daily activities change. After having discarded his crown, Lear appears to be enjoying a life of leisure (1.3.3-10). Burton, however, is strongly convinced that executing one’s proper duties would prevent a bout of melancholy as it ‘would distract’ a person’s ‘cogitations’ (II:70). He, moreover, fiercely objects to idleness as he observes it in some members of the better classes: they are merely
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spectators and live only to eat and spend ‘their days hawking [and] hunting’ (70). Burton underpins these ideas with a description of how the bodily humours respond to work and exercise (I:71), but stresses that body and mind, work and pleasure all must be enjoyed ‘in mediocrity’, ‘otherwise it will cause great inconvenience’ (99). Especially in old age, balance is of the utmost importance (98-99). Yet, this equilibrium is gone when a ruler like Lear, after having ‘had great employment, much business, much command, and many servants to oversee’, leaves his office ‘ex abrupto’ and resigns ‘all on a sudden’. According to Burton, people in these precarious circumstances will be ‘overcome with melancholy in an instant’ (210).
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Chapter Three: The Master and His Servants
3.1 The Angry Master
While the consequences of his actions on his mental health are not immediately noticeable, Lear’s social role as master of his household starts to fall apart soon after his disastrous decision to abdicate has been effectuated. This is not surprising as, ‘given the interrelated nature of the whole chain of being, a disorder in one plane was inevitably followed by a corresponding confusion elsewhere’ (Greenleaf 42). And so, angered by Cordelia, Lear gives up his home, the physical place that provides him and his household with a roof over their heads, making him not only a king without a kingdom but also a master without an actual residence. ‘Ourself by monthly course, / with reservation of an hundred knights / by you to be sustained, shall our abode / make with you by d.ue turn’, Lear declares, thus making himself dependent on his daughters and their spouses by moving into their sphere of influence (1.1.122-125). Contrarily, Lear’s ageing peers in the early modern period, especially those who could afford to do so and still enjoyed good health, either ‘remained in and headed the households in which they had lived when younger’, or they would set up their own household with their own servants (Thane 123).
Although Lear is left with a train of knights, his role as their leader is a ceremonial one, as with no income of his own, the former monarch tells his daughters to sustain his men (1.1.122-125). While he does not actually cede his authority over them, the question of who has control over the troop becomes a rather pertinent one when Goneril
admonishes Lear to get his ‘disord’red’, ‘debauched and bold’ bunch of men in order and strongly advises him to ‘disquantify’ his train (1.4.223-239). From Lear’s point of view, though, his knights are ‘men of choice and rarest parts, / that all particulars of duty know’ (1.4.250-251). As know does not necessarily mean that they also execute and show these
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duties, it is up to any individual director of the play to decide how to showcase Lear’s men (Hattaway 120-121). It is difficult to ascertain who is right here, as the play itself gives no further clues apart from the occasional dutiful knight who acts loyally towards Lear (e.g. 1.4.57-59). This is one indication that the hundred knights probably still thought of Lear as their master, even though his daughters paid their wages and gave them food and shelter. On the other hand, their sense of obligation and the content of their duties may well have changed with the altered position of their liege, and with no active tasks to perform there is every chance that Lear’s knights had grown as ‘riotous’ as Goneril perceives them to be (1.3.6), even though her reliability leaves much to be desired.
Before Lear decides that he will stay with Goneril and Regan, the dutiful servant Kent feels obliged to intervene between Lear and his youngest daughter. ‘Good my liege’, Kent calls Lear, thereby laying claim to their relationship as master and servant (1.1.110, OED ‘liege’ B.n.1.). Immediately, Kent is rebuked by his superior and told not to comment on his actions or to intervene (1.1.111-112). When Lear continues to divide the third and best part of his kingdom between his daughters’ husbands and to settle his living
arrangements, Kent intensifies his address, appealing to Lear as king, father, master, and patron, but to no avail (1.1.118-132). When that attempt is also without effect, Kent switches to ‘old man’ and the familiar, ‘and possibly angry and disrespectful’ (Weis 61), ‘thou’, ‘thee’, and ‘thy’ (1.1.136-144). The sequence that Kent employs in addressing Lear follows a logical pattern in that he first approaches Lear in his capacity as master, the literal, physical role in which he is attached to Kent. Then, Kent goes on to describe what Lear means to him by laying bare the connotative, emotional aspects of the term master. In his last address, Kent exposes Lear for what he really is, the person who remains after Lear has discarded all his roles and their corresponding duties: an old man.
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It is Kent’s sense of duty that compels him to speak up and raise his voice to his master. ‘Thinks’t thou that duty shall have dread to speak / when power to flattery bows?’, he asks Lear when, for the second time, his master warns him not to interfere (1.1.137-138). Kent, ‘the one courtier careless enough of his own interests to challenge Lear’ (Small 72), disobeys his liege’s admonishing words and plainly tells Lear he has misjudged his daughters’ actions. His disobedience to his master, as Schalkwijk rightly concluded after reading William Gouge’s Of Domestical Duties (1622), did not run contrary to his duties as Lear’s advisor, but formed an integral part of them, as pleasing Lear meant ‘betraying a higher order, of which the hierarchies of service [were] an inextricable part’ (224).
Gouge’s contemporary Thomas Fosset (1613) gives the example of King David’s servant Joab who was the ‘worker and finisher’ of his master’s sinful actions. Joab, Fosset asserts, was not a good servant as he should have pointed out the consequences of his evil plans to his master (33). All obedience unto one’s lord must be dependent on the laws of God: if a master does not comply with them, a servant is obliged to be disobedient (35). Kent’s defiance of Lear thus stems from his utter devotion to him and his own sense of honour in fulfilling his duties as he should. As his master casts off his paternal care for Cordelia as if it is a coat that no longer suits him, Kent discerns that he chooses flattery and current comforts over duty and long-term benefits.
Lear, who, clearly, does not like to brook opposition, fails in his duties as master when he decides to banish Kent from his court. Even though he calls on Kent and their ‘allegiance’, the bond that ties them together and that determines their reciprocal obligations, Lear refuses to be admonished by his servant. Cleaver (1598), however, declares that it is a master’s duty to hear their servants speak and adds that masters should not be quick to be angry with their servants when they do pluck up the courage to discuss something with them (367). Furthermore, according to the Bible, ‘a poore chylde beying
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wise’ is better than ‘an olde kyng that doteth’ who ‘wyll not receaue admonition’ (Eccles. 4.13), so Lear would have been sensible to listen to his trusty advisor Kent who had probably served him for most of his life and had, undoubtedly, proven his worth and reliability. In addition, Fosset warns masters to treat their servants as their brothers, because they would need their advice as a second opinion (46). Yet, Lear accuses Kent of seeking to break Lear’s vow and of coming between his judgement and the executive authority to act on his decision, something neither Lear’s ‘nature’, nor ‘his place’ can bear (1.1.156-159). Even though Lear’s character has perhaps always found it difficult to cope with criticism, at this moment in time, the master is unable to endure his servant’s
confronting words. Consequently, Lear banishes him, and removes him from his house that is already a contested area with shifting boundaries where unclarity and uncertainty rule.
Kent’s banishment is accompanied by Lear’s rising anger, attacking his mental health on yet another front. Anger, Burton holds, prepares ‘the body to melancholy, and madness itself’. When it occurs frequently, it overheats the body and, in the end, ‘breaks out in manifest madness’. Older people were thought to be especially vulnerable to the effects of anger on their mind as their humours increasingly became ‘adust’ (I:210, 269), meaning that they ‘were considered to be abnormally concentrated and dark in colour’ due to extreme hotness and /or dryness of the body (OED ‘adust’ adj. 1). The effects of these ‘humours adust’ were more ‘violent’ than the mild, cold and dry form of melancholy that proceeded from a natural decline of the body: ‘If hot, they are rash, raving mad, or inclining to it’, Burton contends (I:174, 398-399). The extreme anger that Lear expresses when he encounters Kent’s opposition is but the one of the first examples in the play of the irascible and hot-tempered ‘dragon’ who has to vent his wrath (1.1.110-167). When the audience encounters Lear next, he strikes Goneril’s servant Oswald (1.4.76) and lashes out
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at Goneril in a torrent of verbal abuse (1.4.239-297). By the end of the first act, Lear is already in such a state that he moans, ‘O, let me not be mad, sweet heaven! / I would not be mad. / Keep me in temper; I would not be mad’ (1.5.41-43). Sensing that his mental balance is disrupted, he wishes to retain command over his emotions, knowing that to continue in such an angered state endangered his mental well-being (OED ‘temper’ I.3). In act 2.4, however, Lear is unable to control his rage when he finds his servant Kent/Caius in the stocks and hurls his emotional ammunition at his daughter and son-in-law who have no wish to answer his call (2.4.73). When his daughters then try to cut down the number of men in his train, Lear’s anger reaches its climax and, in the end, the furious old man takes off into the dark, stormy night.
3.2. The Loyal Servant
As the mad Lear raves against his off-spring and wanders around aimlessly, the
foundations for his short-lived recovery is already present Kent’s steadfast conduct. Even though Lear has de-mastered him Kent’s loyalty proves to be a lifeline to Lear in his darkest hour and can be classified as an act of true friendship. Friendship, in the early modern period, was a ‘flexible and capacious’ term that could refer to relatives, ‘allies, backers, associates’, and neighbours in general (Thomas 190-191). It was predominantly a practical, yet valuable alliance based on a degree of usefulness, rather than mutual
sympathy (191-193). Leonard Wright (1616) wrote that a true friend ‘is always willing and ready to comfort his friend in adversity, to help him in necessity, ... to beare his infirmities patiently, and reprove his errors gently’ (10). Furthermore, Burton (1621) elaborates that friends are vital in the process of recovering from any form of melancholy as they could provide counsel and companionship (II:107-109). ‘A faithful friend’, therefore, ‘was a strong defence’, a loyal ally in ‘a hostile world’ (Thomas 191).
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After his gentle rebuke of Lear and his subsequent dismissal, Kent, as the epitome of a dutiful servant, returns to Lear in the form of Caius, perceiving that his master has made some crucial mistakes. In this guise, Kent promises Lear that he will ‘serve him that will put me in trust, to love him that is honest’ and that he will do so without any fancy flattery (1.4.11-22). His unshakeable tenacity to hold on to his place in society and to perform his duties no matter what are a textbook example of the one-sided devotion that early modern duty required. According to Wright (1616), a true friend becomes visible in necessity just as pure gold is tried by a touchstone (10). Kent’s decision, then, not to break the bond with his master, because that ‘is a thing neither good, honest, nor lawfull by the lawes of God and men’, shows the mettle that he is made of (Cleaver 19). He understood that if he would not stay in his assigned place, he would endanger the order of things on a larger scale even more and any chance of recovery or restoration would be limited (c.f. Fosset ‘To the reader’). As such, Kent’s explicit defiance of his master’s command to leave him and his selfless devotion is ‘the very embodiment of [his] duty’ to serve (Schalkwijk 215).
While Lear’s Britain plunges deeper and deeper in turmoil, Kent stays in touch with Cordelia in France and their alliance forms a safety net for their increasingly mad master and father. Kent sends Cordelia word ‘of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow / the King hath cause to plain’ (3.1.22-34). Incited, in Kent’s opinion, not by ‘ambition’, but by ‘dear love’, and her ‘aged father’s right’, Cordelia and her French king take up arms and head to Dover to fight her sisters and their husbands (3.1.28, 38, 4.4.22-29). As far as it is within his power, Kent does not leave Lear’s side and treats him with the utmost care. When he is not with Lear, he will ‘go seek the King’ (3.1.42) or he makes sure that someone else attends him in his absence (4.3.51-52)5. Kent, furthermore, addresses Lear in a gentle way,
5 Act 4.3. is not in F. Weis assumes that this was because of a reference to French occupation in the first lines
and because it was ‘the obvious candidate for pruning’ (229). For Kent’s character, though, the scene is important as it amplifies his image as his master’s loyal and caring servant.
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calling him ‘good my lord’, and admonishing others to ‘soothe him’ and to ‘trouble him not’ when it is already clear that he is not in his right mind (3.4.1-20, 3.4.161, 3.6.76, 3.6.80). Burton advises that ‘gentle speeches and fair means must first be tried’ before one resorts to ‘harsh language’ or ‘uncomfortable words’ when speaking to a melancholic person (II:110). Kent’s way of dealing with Lear is a textbook example of this; the act of a true friend on whom one can rely in one’s hour of need.
