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The Unraveling of King Lear Kuldip Pawa, Gentleman Tuesday, December 9, Anno Domini 2003 English 313 The Great Shakespearian Tragedies Professor Torsten Kehler

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The Unraveling of King Lear

Kuldip Pawa, Gentleman Tuesday, December 9, Anno Domini 2003

English 313 − The Great Shakespearian Tragedies Professor Torsten Kehler

And new philosophy calls all in doubt,

The element of fire is quite put out,

The sun is lost, and th’earth, and no man’s wit

Can well direct him where to look for it.

And freely men confess that this world’s spent,

When in the planets and the firmament

They seek so many new; they see that this

Is crumbled out again to his atomies.

’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,

All just supply, and all relation;

Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,

For every man alone thinks he hath got

To be a phoenix, and that then can be

None of that kind, of which he is, but he.

This is the world’s condition now, and now

She that should all parts to reunion bow,

She that had all magnetic force alone,

To draw, and fasten sund’red parts in one;

She whom wise nature had invented then

When she observ’d that every sort of men

Did in their voyage in this world’s sea stray,

And needed a new compass for their way;

John Donne

An Anatomy Of The World: The First Anniversary

(ll. 205-226) [1611]

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magine, if you will, history not as a process but rather as a static course followed by pilgrims journeying toward the City of God. Any and all developments are regressive insofar as they lead this society of spiritual wayfarers to stray from their predetermined destination. Imagine society not as a collection of free and equal individual agents but as an organic whole with social order conceived of as a unified hierarchy; as a Patriarchal Christian Family, a Body Politic, or a Great Chain of Being.

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Enter into this world ominously amorphous enemies of this highly prized Good Order who prey upon the contemporary imagination. This is now a world of ungrateful children choosing romantic love over arranged marriages; of vulgar bourgeois magnates purchasing noble titles; of mischievous little popish imps, upon the demonic bulls of the Evil Bishop of Rome, seeking to subvert his majesty’s just government; of Scripture finding its way into the hands of those too stupid to interpret it correctly; of that dastardly Edward Coke and his ilk seeking to sow contentious divisions between the Commons and the Monarch; of that scandalously homosexual James I arrogantly exhibiting a popish disregard for law while self-servingly claiming to be acting upon an ardent desire to serve God; of perverted Puritan antinomians lusting after martyrdom; of poor serfs displaced by enclosures erected by greedy seigniors; of insufferable sectarians officiously attempting to remake society in their own demented image of Utopia; and of hitherto other subservient groups becoming too assertive. In short, the pilgrim’s holy community of harmony has somehow degenerating into this present world of saucy underlings ungrateful for the benevolent care they’re bestowed and of insolent lords and mistresses who rule contemptuously over their charges. William Shakespeare’s King Lear is this nightmare vision, a horror tale about this once decent moral universe now being invaded by hideously grotesque alien creatures. These monstrosities are everywhere, masquerading as our cobblers, blacksmiths, apothecaries, merchants, priests, vagabonds, upright neighbours, even our most beloved masters, servants, friends, and relatives. These repulsive oddities simply can’t be made to fit into the neat unified hierarchy. In this despairing vision, society seems pervaded by a sense of dread anxiety of imminent collapse. So, the sensible thing to ask is how, why, and what happens, and at whose hands, for things to have gone so amiss. Given this historical background, my project here is to attempt to answer these questions; to anatomize the play to diagnose what calluses breed about the hearts of Regan and her cohorts; to discover wherein the cause of the world’s descent into madness springs; and to arrive at some exegetical understanding of how rebellion in Jacobean England could come about and how it may be avoided. In the opening scene we find King Lear confidently presiding over his magisterial court. Stuart contemporaries would have readily grasped this as a metaphor for the commonplace view casting society as a patriarchal family with the monarch as the father of his people. But here Lear falls shamefully short of the ideal of the kindhearted pater who graciously bends his knee and listens to the objections of his children. This isn’t a moment of exalted communal solidarity—of a doting parent basking in the love of his adoring children—but of stale bureaucratic formality. The king is content to receive the mere feigned effusions of some supposedly immeasurable love. When Cordelia offers a sincere avowal of an unrequited love that can’t meet the demands of the rigid courtly test procedure, Lear misappraises her demure self-deprecation for prideful vanity. By any measure this is an

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awkward position to put someone in, to embarrassingly have to parade their deepest feelings on a very public stage so that they can buy themselves a dowry. But perhaps it would have been advisable for her ladyship to prevaricate for the sake of mere formality, afterall, the king can’t take such hyperbolic profusions seriously. But Lear’s reaction clearly indicates his seriousness and fastidious crankiness about adherence to courtly etiquette. Spewing forth a venomous fury, he objurgates his dearest daughter for refusing to employ overwrought encomiums to pander his vanity. If this scene is any indication of the king’s general rule toward his subjects then he seeks to disown honest sincerity while embracing those adept at practicing the “glib and oily art” (1.215) of flattery. In exercising the judicious authority of upholding his fatherly duties, one would expect the monarch to be resolutely impartial in his commitment to the peoples’ best interests; to accord us the benevolent paternal care and affection we’re all entitled to; and to solicitously address our discontents and disaffections. It’s the patriarch’s sacred duty to watch over society as something akin to a gardener tending to a fruitful coppiced orchard of orderly and well-kept plants, each flourishing in its own assigned sphere. Granted, it’s always prudent to nip the perverse sprout of weedy exemptions before they lapse into a new rules, the gardener has here, however, mistakenly uprooted a rare and beautiful bloom. Perhaps, the authorities, with the Pilgrimage of Grace, Rebellion of the Northern Earls, the Gunpowder Plot, and many other smaller uprisings in mind, have become too eager in ruthlessly extirpating perceived troublemakers. But this doesn’t negate Lear’s neglectfulness in his nurturance of the precious seeds of futurity. Letting his temper get the better of him, the sovereign disowns his fatherly care and in his apostrophe to the elements latter bids “crack Nature’s moulds, all [seeds] spill at once” (9.8). In his lack of self-control over his ire, or histerica passio, if you want to get technical (7.225), he harrows all principles of Good Order, angrily tearing up the fertile sod while he uproots the precious seedling. To his credit, the Earl of Kent, the king’s trusty aide, obligingly fulminates against this injustice and prevails upon his Lordship to reconsider his rash and flagrantly unjust judgment in a more rational light. Kent here seems to be cast as his majesty’s loyal opposition which, one hopes, would serve as a corrective to the king’s policies. Now, someone could reasonably contend that it’s a brash and impertinent effrontery for Kent to so rudely rebuff his king before the court. Perhaps to allow such a display of disobedience may incite other impressionable political children to lose their docility. But, all things considered, while Kent may be here committing a breach of privilege and of good manners by so openly scolding the great man, his impropriety may possibly be justified since the naked emperor is clearly in need of a reminder of his duties to hopefully avert a grave misjudgment. Perhaps Kent exacerbates the situation by so sententiously instructing his king on his fatherly duties in such an abrasive manner. But the norms of civility, politeness, and restraint which dictate that Kent not be so tendentious, indelicate, and confrontational in his opposition also require that the king be more graciously condescending†, merciful, and just and certainly not assuming a snarling hostility. Maintaining cordial relations between patriarch and his kinsmen means striking a felicitous balance between unilaterally imposing a judicious paternalism and yielding to well-advised expostulation. But before Kent even has an opportunity to register his objection, with brusque finality Lear’s already indicated his intention to suppress any dissent. And Kent isn’t

†In a world of equality, it’s considered patronizing for someone to presuppose themselves to be superior and then to talk down to their

interlocutor, to “condescend.” But according to the old meaning, at home in a world of inequality, it’s considered accommodating for thesuperior to “condescend,” to willingly lower herself to address someone accepted to be an inferior on a footing of equality.

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seeking to overstep his own position since we latter learn that he’s content with his station as the king’s noble foot. As the perspicacious Fool proffers, “If [the king’s] brains were in his heels, we’re not in danger of kibes” (4.7-8). Thus, Lear has further shown himself here to be a stickler for punctilious regard for courtly procedure and consequently he’s exhibiting tyrant-like qualities. He acts from his own private, stridently one-sided, arbitrary will and with supercilious contempt he seeks to stifle even constructive dissent. Lear clearly stumbles in walking the fine line between being demanding and being rigid. He has about him the air of a master accustomed to not loving obedience but unquestioning celerity and an insolent regard for his most loyal subordinates who are bravely willing to point out the neglect of his rightful duties. Thus, Lear narrowly perceives that Cordelia and Kent as being truculent instead of being obsequious. He’s now discarded the reciprocity of benevolent paternalism toward loving service to embrace an intolerance that demands unquestioning obedience.

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At the end of the scene, Gonoril confides that, for her father, this isn’t an aberrant act of impetuousness; “The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash” (1.284). From Regan we learn that “he hath ever but slenderly/ known himself” (1.282). And from the opening line of the play it would seem that Lear is willing to openly change his mind. All this suggests that Lear’s need to seem resolute may be an attempt to compensate for his ill-formed and precarious self-conception. But he over-compensates, committing himself a bit too hastily and now apparently feels the need to rigidly adhere to his impulsive decisions. Perhaps he’s now mortified of acquiescing with his humiliating upbraiding by an inferior or of appearing indecisive or fickle if he doesn’t tenaciously cleave to his emphatically stated resolutions. If I may be allowed to indulge a quick digression, I wanted to elaborate on a personal sociological understanding, gleaned from Shakespeare, of how proper obedience may have worked in its heyday. All the world’s a stage with a divinely mandated script for our social roles. We must all endeavor to admirably perform our appointed role in the grand drama of this life. Even if we’re cast in a bit part we must carry off the performance to the best of our abilities. Disorderly types are contemptuously absurd in that they refuse to perform their allotted parts; they abandon the entrenched social script to go play the lead or some other unscripted role. Virtuous subjects, by fulfilling their social obligations, on the other hand, become dignified, even venerable, in the eyes of other social actors and God, the stage director and ever-present spectator. The middling and the affluent classes, just as much as the meaner sorts, gain status and respect by being deft in the performance of their assigned roles. Underlings should be well-versed in the fine art of deference and superiors, in turn, will receive this loving compliance if they should adhere to the prescribed code of noblesse oblige. Obedience is a virtue. Even the meanest mechanic is made venerable by minding his manners and studiously observing these, the most exalted sentiments of civilized society. Now, here’s why I point all this out: Regan finds that Cordelia has “obedience scanted” (1.268), that she’s disrespectful toward her daughterly duties. In consideration of this, I want to amend my “obedience is virtue” formulation by offering two competing accounts of virtue: One: Virtue as simple subordination, which means that the agent mans her post and meets the minimal job requirements. By this standard, one submissively makes her livelihood and exercises an instrumental willingness to displease the powerful.

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Two: Virtue as conscientious obedience, meaning that the social actor exercises a supererogatory concern for the ethically due regard for social civility. Contemporaries sometimes refer to the former as mere servitude and the latter as service. We can fuse the two together and talk of heroic civility, exquisite manners, or wholehearted obedience in meeting the obligations of one’s station. The agent, acting on the second type of obedience, would necessarily have to make an emotional investment in her métier and find the schema of neatly organized subjects into a single hierarchy deeply satisfying as just and right. Servitude can be enforced, service can’t. Paradoxically, choosing to exercise virtue in this system which enforces conformity is to suppress further personal initiative and obediently follow the prescribed behavior. Anyway, Regan’s statement can be taken to mean that her fair sister has failed to comply with even the first definition, the most basic understanding of obedience. Indeed, it would appear from Cordelia’s statement, “I love your Majesty/ According to my bond; no more nor less” (1.83-4), that this is the case.

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Chaste Cordelia towers over her sisters in virtue not by offering punctilious obedience to every whim and fancy of her natural master but by being motivated by a conscientious concern for a more amicable master-servant relationship in meeting future obligations. In all fairness though, her father is here petulantly demanding an unctuously slavish servitude and so Cordelia may be peevishly replying in kind. Or perhaps, we’re to see her response as the only honest and believable answer sitting next to the other two over-inflated, pretentious replies. But it’s not always easy making sense of the complicated politics of obedience. The actions of Gonoril and Regan are clearly incompatible with their stations. Over-assertive women appear an especially absurd imposition since their inferiority was unanimously unquestioned. Accordingly, cultural norms for inappropriate behavior are more readily discernable in females. Albany’s comment, “deformity seems not in the [devil]/ so horrid as in woman,” seems bland by the period’s standards (16.59-60). Thus, the princesses serve here as emblematically subordinate members of the patriarchal family, beneath the king and further, beneath their respective husbands. Fidelity to the traditional norms of gender here clearly dictate that the fairer sex be appropriately feminine, to meekly enjoy their privileges, and deferentially leave their imperial husbands in charge of their prerogatives. But with his earnestly demanding the complete love and devotion of his daughters, Lear has himself arrantly upset patrilineal seniority by abrogating the deference his daughters rightfully owe their husbands. They’re now confusedly misplaced directly beneath him in the chain of command. Fair Cordelia, being more virtuous than the rest of her family, has a better sense of where her loyalties should rightfully lie. By the way, gender isn’t a social construction. It’s a natural fact, divinely ordained to boot. Sure, women in the royal class may have gained the right to rule by the haphazards of historical contingencies. But these exemptions were necessitated by the overriding need for Good Order which, in these two case, complicated by the lack of any qualified legitimate male heirs, meant making exceptions for the peaceful transition of power. It would seem that being a virtuous female meant quietly accepting one’s subservience and hiding in an inconspicuous corner of the domestic sphere. Very minimally, the weaker human vessels—which are perhaps ensouled differently as well—ought to conduct themselves with propriety, decency, and respectability. To do otherwise is to bring shame and dishonor upon the reputation of their menfolk and the household. Angelic Cordelia, the very paragon of feminine excellence, is

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marked above all else by her submissively obedient demeanor. “Her voice was ever soft,/ Gentle, and low—an excellent thing in women” (24.269). And, she “was a queen/ over her passion” (17.15). Like everyone else in society, to become venerable, women must learn restraint and the acceptance of their place in the larger order. 180

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The sapient Fool derides his lord for dividing the kingdom’s egg in half and giving away the meat (the whites) to his elder daughters and so effectively discarding the yolk. The yoke—the “golden one”—could be an allusion to Cordelia. But “yolk” is more likely being used here as a pun on “yoke” since the ass is now on its back in the dirt (4.151-6). And the prostrate potentate now wears an empty crown of eggshells. The king seeks to renounce responsibility and all the difficulties of governance yet he somehow wants to retain the privileges of authority. But with the devolution of power and the retention of position it again becomes uncertain where authority actually lies. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men are now going to be confronted with the formidable challenge of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Lear’s wicked daughters scheme to deprive their father of the remainder of his train of one hundred loyal followers which seems to represent his pride and honor. But Lear also asseverates, “I’ll go with thee [Gonoril]./ Thy [allowance of] fifty [knights] yet doth double [Regan’s] five-and-twenty,/ And thou art twice her love.” (7.416-8). This implies that for Lear the retinue is then also a measure of his daughters’ affection and indirectly testifies to fact that he endorses too instrumentalist an understanding of love. “The man that makes his toe/ what he his heart should make/ shall of a corn cry woe” (9.31-3) seems directed at this requirement of Lear’s first definition of obedience from his daughters. The attempts of these obnoxious brats to wrench the remainder of their father’s power is ostensibly a preemptive strike to forestall becoming victims of his poor judgment like Cordelia and Kent. This, their putative justification for disobedience, may seem a sensible objection to their father’s rule but there’s clearly something reprehensible about their acting upon it as they do. Unfortunately, by not allowing his subjects to vent their frustrations, it seems, has resulted in seditious commotions. Lear reaps the harvest of these coarse outcroppings of ill-bred children of spleen for having himself sowed the seeds of disorder, mendacity, insecurity, and distrust. This isn’t to suggest that this father is in any way deserving of such mistreatment. Regan’s and Gonoril’s actions are the highest acts of ingratitude and disobedience, brashly ignoring the most rudimentary rule of Good Order. Broadly defined filial piety demands that children repay with loving gratitude the debt that naturally arises out of their parents’ act of begetting them and for the loving care and support expended in rearing them. The gospels clearly exhort us to honour our father and mother (Ephesians 6:2, Deuteronomy 5:16, Exodus 20:12, and Matthew 15:3). These “unnatural hags” (7.436), viciously intent on shirking their responsibility, in answer to a kindly reminder of their duties, bray out “prescribe not [to] us our duties” (1.265). It always seems in Shakespeare’s world that those who refuse to take instruction are all the more in need of it. Moreover, the evil sisters’ arguments are of nugatory force since they’re never justified in opposing fatherly authority. Here’s an authoritative contemporary understanding of fatherly prerogative:

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“As for the father of a family, they had of old under the law of nature [ancestral power], which was [power of life and death] over their children or family.... Now a father may dispose of his inheritance to his children at his pleasure...according to his liking; make them beggars or rich at his pleasure; restrain, or banish out of his presence, as he finds them give cause of offence.... So may the king deal with his subjects.” (James I, speech to Parliament, March 21, 1610).

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Elsewhere, His Eminence writes:

“...the duty and allegiance of the people unto their lawful king, their obedience, I say, ought to be to him as to God’s lieutenant in earth, obeying his commands in all things except directly against God...acknowledging him a judge set by God over them, having power to judge them but to be judged only by God” (The True Law of Free Monarchies; or, The Reciprocal and Mutual Duty Betwixt a Free King and His Natural Subjects, 1603).

The accedence to the throne of these vexatious vixens can’t be made to fit comfortably within the relatively well-settled consensus on how to conceive social order. The wise Fool asks, “May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?” (4.215). I take the ass to be the Third Estate, the cart to be the Lords, and the horse to be the Monarch. The daughters’ actions are most definitely behavior unbecoming peeresses of the realm who should simply tarry behind the royal horse. Perversely, Gonoril perceives her domestic lord as her foot in saying, “My foot usurps my body” (16.28). Forsooth, she’s a mere appendage of the unified social body (and a diseased one at that) seeking to usurp the role of the head. Gonoril and Regan have by now betrayed themselves for the swine they are, for “In his [their lord’s/father’s/king’s] anointed flesh stick boarish fangs” (14.55). For saith the Lord: “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you” (Matthew 7:6). Following her father’s example of devaluing honest discourse, Gonoril seeks to silence the “all-licensed Fool” (4.192) for brashly speaking truth. So, tangentially I got to wondering whether it’s appropriate to obstruct deferential servants in the commission of their duties as Lear does with Oswald who in turn had chided the Fool (3.1-2). Perhaps the king’s striking the dutifully obedient Oswald, which is an unequivocal insult to his mistress, should be accounted among Lear’s mistakes. Fortunately, we’re offered a closely parallel situation with Kent’s confrontation with Oswald. Is Kent here possibly being presented as a quixotic paladin willing to brave a duel with the forces of darkness to teach the unmannerly some respect? Hardly, with his characteristic presumptuousness, we find the bumbling earl again seeking to provoke a confrontation, this time by calumniating and ridiculing the lickspittle wretch Oswald with a tongue-lashing that enumerates little more than a petty and risible litany of expletory witticisms. When Cornwall intercedes, Kent retreats to the even more ludicrous sesquipedalian, prolix, and bombastic verbiage and garrulous circumlocutions of courtly language. Having worked himself up into a thick lather with his loquacious outpourings the tactless klutz seems unable to forthrightly explain his chivalric antics. Most revealing of all,

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very much like his master, the silly clown holds “anger has a privilege” (7.67). The cloying minion may be a rat chewing the holy bonds but it’s with the sanction of the noble seal of swine. The clumsy paladin comes out of this exchange looking like a posturing and pretentious buffoon. This is the stuff of slapstick comedy not anguished tragedy and the earl’s affected imposture must have elicited a good chuckle. Oswald, for once, has about him the air of reasonableness, even piety, for showing due respect and deference toward the gerontocracy of tradition by not wishing to hurt an elder. Perhaps the whole point of this rollicking farce is to show that Cornwall has the audacity to so openly obstruct the imperial will without even a modicum of reason by so unceremoniously stocking Kent in the pillory. It’s a similar self-righteousness on Kent’s part to obstruct the business of Oswald’s mistress without justification. Or, so it seems, since the farce modulates to something much more serious when the king, upon learning of the treatment of his messenger is pushed a little further into madness. Most tellingly, the sagacious Fool then takes a critical line with Kent.

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I offer a few morals to walk away with from this episode: Between unquestioning adherence to an evil master and saucy impertinence in opposing such a dutiful courtier, it would seem it’s better to allow the former than the latter. Shakespeare seems to be saying, let’s not lose our own places even if others are irresponsibly stepping out of their own. We ought not to dally and unduly try the patience of our masters in the commission of our entrusted charge. In discharging our obligations, it would seem, that we should further endeavor to be neither overbearing nor fawning toward our rightful masters. Yet, given the choice, it’s better to be the latter than the former; it’s better to simply exercise servitude than to take it upon oneself to improvise service. Interestingly, when Edgar obstructs Oswald, the bootlicking lackey has been retained by Regan and isn’t directly in the service of his rightful mistress. Anyway, to return to the main thread of the discussion: Gonoril now grunts that her lordly father is an “idle old man” (3.16). Disrespect for the elderly is symbolically a discarding of tradition. Lear can thus be seen as an ideologue of a revered past who’s now hatefully perceived by the heretical harlots as outdated. As such, he’s an admixture of a reverential elder statesman and a bit of a senile old man whose palsied grip has fumbled the reins. But we should always allow such established wisdom to supersede the adventurous folly of noxious novelty. This coming brash young generation is without the appropriate appreciation for or comprehension of the dire need for a harmoniously unified community founded on hierarchy and subordination. These wayward daughters are modish followers of faddish ingratitude that’s become all the rage of late. Such newfangled notions go in and out of political style but order founded upon a stratified hierarchy is a universal, timeless, cross-cultural truth. It’s the God-given order of things. We’re now living in a callow age of jejune presumptuousness that presupposes an adequate understanding—much less the profundity—to manage such weighty matters of state. Stability demands constancy, an awed reverence for the institutions bequeathed by our ancestors. But Lear’s jackanape daughters are now eagerly willing to overthrow and dispose of hoary traditions—to hew the mighty oak—without giving due consideration to the baneful repercussions. For as ever-insightful Albany puts it, the “young shall never see so much, nor live so long” (24.321). He also affirms the anguished cry of a timeless conservatism: “Striving to better [everything], we mar what’s well” (4.327). Just leave well enough alone, dammit!

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In navigating their way through their social world, these mutineers refuse to be informed by the traditional interpretive framework that reverential Lear and Albany think can still serve as a reliable map. If we don’t allow this natural obedience—what John Donne called the “magnetic force”—toward our masters to serve as a compass to align our social relations then how are we to sensibly regain our bearings? To switch metaphors, refusing to respect the most loving of all bonds, that between a parent and child, strains the social fabric, tensely conjoined and knit together as it is by a consensus on our fundamental duties toward each other. Society would then simply come apart at the seams into an unraveling ensemble of unruly individual agents. Or, take another metaphor for the organic social whole, one the play harps on, that of the Christian Family Tree. “Truth’s a dog [that] must [be confined in a] kennel; he must be whipped out, when/ Lady, the branch, may stand by the fire and stink” (4.105-7). There are here echoes of John 15:6: “If a man abide [dwell] not in me, he is cast forth as a [severed] branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” Just as an aside, Lear’s disbranching and banishment of Cordelia reeks the fetid odor of injustice. Respecting our earthly lord is to do honor to our Heavenly Lord. In fact, there seems a conscious effort throughout the play to conflate Earthly and Heavenly Creator as in Albany’s worldly remark, “nature which condemns its origin/ cannot be [contained] within itself” (16.31-2). The cuckold Albany also sagely warns his wife who refuses to dwell contently in the heart of our stately patriarchal oak: “She that herself will [cut] and disbranch [herself]/ From her material sap, perforce must wither/ And come to deadly use” (16.34-6). Why would someone then perversely choose to disbranch themselves and not fruitfully gestate within God, within the holy community, and within their loving family? Perhaps we’ll never quite understand such iniquitous devils.

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The King by this point fully redeems himself by condescendingly lowering his royal person before Regan. Kneeling, he seems ready to confess his manifold sins and errors, owning his “undivulged crimes” (9.52). This self-humbling stance closely parallels his later apostrophe to the elements “Here I stand your slave” (9.19). This suggests that the king is offering servitude and not love. Reduced to tears, he now admits that he isn’t infallibly just and right and humbly asks for his bare sustenance (7.313). One clearly discerns here a stymied exasperation. But Lear’s words still seem to resonate with something of an earnest self-reproach. The king now belatedly comes to recognize that his anger is an unnatural emotion saying, “I’ll forbear; /And am fallen out with my more headier will” (7.270-1). Further, he offers another possible mitigation of his earlier behavior: “Infirmity doth still neglect all office/ …We are not ourselves/ When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind…” (7.267-9). He certainly seems pliable again. Lear realizes his calamitous misjudgment and recovers his better judgment but it’s now of no avail. If either Gonoril or Regan had a heart, things may yet have been set aright. Horror of horrors! Just imagine that somehow some perverse putative underlings come into possession of the reins of power and then truculently refuse to buckle under to their rightful authorities! To compound matters, what’s one to do if these impious insurgent are uninhibited by the societal shame that should naturally restrain them and they won’t relent for some mildly justifiable grievance that the rightful authority has inadvertently allowed them? This situation betrays the unrelenting anxieties of the age: that servants are scheming to overthrow the rightful master of the house, that subalterns will brandish a

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flagrant disobedience of their betters and refuse to submit to their stations, that “the offices of nature, bonds of childhood,/ effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude” (7.335-6) will be discarded, that subjects will openly and proudly disobey the will of their sovereign, that womenfolk won’t be meek and deferential nor be brought to heel, that Good Order will somehow be dangerously trifled with and society will degenerate into chaos (Matthew 10:21, Mark 13:12, Luke 12:53-5, 21:16, Micah 7:6). And all this is brought about not merely by the conscious design of traitorous fiends but at least partly by a series of unintended consequences by the rightful authorities themselves. Even the most virtuous, judicious, and well-intentioned of leaders can mishandle matters of state but what if the subjects find they can’t convey their disapprobation of their monarch’s behavior without incurring his infuriated scorn even while he directs society toward ruin? By refusing to uphold their obligations, the sinister sisters have now brought disaster upon their house. And the familial household being the microcosm of society, they’ve now effectively fomented civil unrest. How can someone be as unnatural, mean, and heinous, as these two witches to so trenchantly abuse their well-meaning—albeit a bit rash and erratic—father and to so shamelessly and callously toss the frail old man, their own flesh and blood, out into the cold? One is left to confusedly gape at this strange, disconcerting world where such intensely distressing and lachrymose developments can be so blithely and shamelessly accepted as normal.

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Stricken by his daughter’s betrayal, Lear’s tumultuous mind constrains to make sense of a world apparently gone mad. The social repertoires of order, religiosity, paternal piety, patriarchy, and gentility can’t readily accommodate the general fact. It savages the intellect to attempt to confer some meaning in having to suffer these seemingly purposeless and meaningless indignities. They can only seem the work of putative barbarians storming the strongholds of sanctified feudal institutions. The harrowing maelstrom now swirling about him induces a vertiginous frenzy of dislocation, malaise, and confusion. Reeling in dismay from the bracing slap of his children’s blatant delinquency of a basic obligation, he now finds himself in a world giddy and staggering about him, caught in a whirlwind of change. Lear, like any rationalizing intellect, avidly, instinctively, desperately grasps to recover some conventional meaning from the disorienting gyrations. Fissures are now appearing in the once forbidding Gothic wall of religious conformity, of order maintained by a hierarchical social organization, of absolute moral certainty, and of the resort to stable traditional answers in dealing with everyday problems. But as yet the besieged wall seems reparative. The central appeal throughout seems to be that there would be no need to garrison the boundaries should we all consent to respect them. But the recalcitrant fiends inexplicably refuse to pay the duly mandated attention to the fine gradations of authority. Why? It dolorously unsettles even our imagined thoughts of such a betrayal. To merely think, that we could possibly be treated so abominably, to be besieged by those we valued as our most dearly beloved. We all seek recognition from others to affirm our self-conception as valuable members of our families, our social circles, our society. Such betrayed expectations threaten to undercut our self-understanding, our pride, our very personality with which we address the world. Such a hurtful ingratitude can only induce a pained confusion, neurotic bewilderment, and spiritual anomie. Lear no longer knows who he is. The tempest is at once Lear’s inner uncomprehending, tristful, and agitated disbelief collapsing into anguished tears; the vapours

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of society’s sins sublimating in the ether to pelt down God’s retributiative displeasure; and the disordered state of the kingdom.

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While the more innocent may wish to deny it, there really are such antinomian miscreants among us who conflate right and wrong and are hell-bent on destroying the indispensable gradations of society. They seek to sever the loving bonds of piety out of resentment for being consigned by birth to a humble station. Their moral sensibilities are consequently all contorted, all their virtue is atrophied, but their lustful ambition is cancerously expansive. Some of these fiends are financial upstarts who purchase noble title, as if attaining peership were just another crass transaction in the marketplace. For his rapacious love of lucre, that greedy James I concocted the title of “baronet,” enabling these vulgar parvenus to indulge their vain love of honours. Edmund the bastard, is such a social climber, ever on the move, remorselessly striving to supplant his superiors. For how else is advancement to come about if not by displacing others at a higher stations than one’s own? Promotion and honour is always purchased at the expense of a rival’s ignominy and downfall. For his own shameless purposes, the bastard seeks to subvert our culture of loving deference, to confound the just ranks of society. Actuated purely by vulgar and acquisitive self-interests, Edmund the bastard never scruples any means by which his selfish desires may be gratified. But let’s all remember that should a person of humble origins like Edmund the bastard claw their way to the top and prevail in his bid for noble title, this is liable to excite further resentments, discontents, and commotions. This destabilizes social relations by inspiring more insubordinate misbehavior. Others will perforce likewise want to become their own masters. Servants will refuse to submit to their appointed feudal places and will discharge themselves of their own duties and turn upon their sacred masters. Of course, this empowerment can’t appreciably improve life for long for anyone since the displaced persons will want to reclaim the prerogatives of their natural birthright. A sensible question to ask then is how did jealousy and discontent arise in the bastard’s mind to begin with? Perhaps, he’s simply the incarnation of some blasphemous evil. Indeed, it would seem from his atheistical ravings that the bastard has been born abhorrently bereft of the natural faculties of a conscientious soul. But this hypothesis is apparently disproved by his dying attempt to set aright some of his misdeeds. We needn’t speculate for Edmund himself tells us his prime motive: “I must have [my brother’s] land. Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund as [much as to] to the legitimate” (2.17-8). So, it’s Gloucester’s mistake then for confusedly displacing his illegitimate offspring in parity with his legitimate. In the folly of his dotage, Gloucester’s fostered unrealistic hopes, inciting the bastard to now espouse a reprehensible misconstruction of his place. Unsurprisingly, leaving ranking in question results in a competition for supremacy. Consequently, this latter-day Jacob usurps the birthright of Esau and is granted the blessing of Isaac, who unlike his biblical counterpart doesn’t define the necessary ranking (Genesis). Hence, one learns that equality is pernicious and impossible.

Perhaps, the father here exacerbates the situation by being an easy prey to the bastard’s machinations. But more accurately, I would argue, it’s really a strange mixture of suspicion and credulity that seems to win over in Gloucester. A more accurate explanation might hold that, like Lear, he’s too quick to suppress any possible rebellion, too keenly predisposed to believe that petty treason is afoot. Like Lear, we find this father to be only too ready to facilely

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loosen the moorings of his obligations toward his issue. “I never [be]got him” (6.78) echoes the earlier “I disclaim all my paternal care” (1.105). It would seem that the fathers haven’t made the necessary emotional investments in their fatherly bonds with their children.

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Living in this fantasyland of equality the bastard has the feeling that he’s being cheated out of something he has a natural right to, when nothing could be further from the truth. Stuffing the whoreson’s mind full of such nonsense has a deleterious effect on his family’s well-being and only serves as another pointed reminder of the political stakes of teaching such subversive values. But unimpeachable Edgar, at one point, says, “I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund./ If more, the more ignobly thou hast wronged me” (24.163-4). From this I gather that it’s not that the bastard is manifestly unfit for a more elevated station by his tainted blood or any lack of breeding or polish but that confusion about his rightful place has disrupted the orderly progression of the title and the estate. A moral pattern is by now clearly discernable: To leave place in doubt is to invite tumult and disorder and to abet the advance of sinister interests. Gloucester’s violation of conjugal honor was dreadfully irresponsible and he really ought to be ashamed (Hebrews 13:4). Granting himself a dispensation from the eternal Seventh Commandment, he proudly goes about parading his ignorance and libertinage as if it were commonsense itself. In the opening scene, we find him dilating didactically on how he’s become inured to his vice, for he says he’s become “brazened to it” (1.10). Why, boasting of adulterous affairs only serves to induce a sufferance and apathy among hapless listeners toward such sinful behavior, agitating them to indiscriminately give vent to their own base carnal lusts. Without the legal and social sanctions against fornication, illegitimate children born outside wedlock would be rampant and the sacred bonds of holy matrimony would be worthless. Mongrel persons of tainted blood would be indistinguishable from the proper children of God-sanctioned unions. Thus, adultery is an especially hideous vice for making one’s children suffer for one’s own transgressions (Exodus 34:6). The clearly delineated patrilineal chain of command and privilege must unfortunately bypass tainted bloodlines or else how is bastardy to be discouraged? At the very least, lechers like Gloucester should seek to keep to themselves their private indiscretions and vices and not shamelessly exhibit them publicly. For, we’re told, “fathers that wear rags/ Do make their children blind” (7.223). The john Gloucester seals his own fate by trumpeting the disgusting stains of his dirty linen to Cornwall. “Now a little fire in a wild field [is] like an old lecher’s heart—a small spark, all the rest [of his] body [is] cold” (11.100). The whoremonger still has within him a spark of goodness that wants kindling. It’s our responsibility as caring fellow human beings to seek to correct this lamentably misguided crank’s popish superstitions of miracle and mystery. Sadly, Kent is here derelict in his duty to kindly chasten his Christian brother of the sublimely majestic strictures that may have offered him salvation. This dissipation of concern, exemplified by graceless Kent, creates an uncaring public ethos wherein benighted fools like Gloucester spend their lives blindly stumbling about in the darkness of their depraved miscomprehension, groping confusedly for guidance. People like Gloucester are another skein in the already frayed social fabric that threatens to become an entangled jumble of incoherent individuals meanly preoccupied with their own perverse self-interests. Allowing such differences in fundamental opinions to stand breeds anomic individualism and makes

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social unity an unstable amalgam that can only perceivably result in Armageddon. Let’s all join Edmund Grindal, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, in his prayer: “May God at length grant that we may all of us think the same things!” Or in the words of our beloved former matriarch Elizabeth, “diversity, variety, contention, and vain love of singularity, either in our ministers or in the people, must needs provoke the displeasure of Almighty God” (From a letter written to Archbishop Parker in 1565). And so it does. To enjoy partaking in a communion of interests and feelings of belonging to the loving Christian family is to want to instill conformity of beliefs in others. As well, a common shared understanding serves as a corrective to our own imperfect appreciation of the glorious light of Scripture. A good Christian is advised to “judge ye not what is right” (Luke 12:56). Heedlessly, with a sinful pride and an overestimation of his own meager comprehension Gloucester proudly affirms his superstitious dissentience. Differences in fundamental beliefs bring about a cold and indifferent society wherein we can no longer understand each other, we all adrift apart. Stray sheep like Gloucester become something other, something strange, something demonic, something incomprehensible lurking behind opaque, indiscernible masks of seemingly sincere faces. We can no longer relate to such alien beings. In a sectarian world one’s left to gauge the intentions of these anomalous creatures who’ve now somehow become something incommensurably different. So, why then would someone stubbornly insist on being different? They’re evil!

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We find ourselves instinctively having to giggle at the preposterously inane beliefs that the Roman Gloucester holds so dear. Lear too can be said to be an apostate with his motto “nothing can come of nothing.” All the great proofs of God’s existence from Aristotle, Anselm, Thomas, to Descartes require that God create something from nothing. In Genesis, it’s a given that there was nothing until God made something from the void. To hold bluster as Lear does is to deny God’s existence. And to hold erroneous opinion is to unwittingly aid evil. This confusion between the sacred and profane can only be attributed to a waning veneration of the scriptures. Perhaps someone may contend that it would be anachronistic to say that these are references to Christianity but this is clearly the subtext and if not for the ban on theatrical references to “God” Shakespeare may have been more explicit. Edgar is right when he says that his father has allowed himself be led to plunge from a precipice by a fiend with a thousand noses. Gloucester has wantonly allowed himself to be seduced and conveyed into erroneous opinion by his evil inclinations. He’s been a hedonist, an inarticulately blind follower of his bestial lusts. Even now Gloucester is tempted to commit suicide, to refuse God’s precious gift of his life. According to pious Edgar, we must “defy the foul fiend” (11.88), to hold an indomitable devotion to resisting Satan and all his little imps. The demonseed Edmund was able to weasel into his father’s confidence by abetting him in his popish superstitions. For it is written: “they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matthew 15:14). And, so it has come to pass. Gloucester receives his just punishment. As the godly Edgar promulgates, “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices/ Make instruments to scourge us” (24.166-7). Giving sight to his blind father, still living in sin as he is, without the illuminating knowledge or due fear of God, the good son Edgar commendably contrives to cast off his father’s prideful hubris, to open his spiritual eyes, and make him feel in his heart the jealous love of our prudish

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Heavenly Lord. And hallelujah, the philandering philistine becomes a reconstituted believer in the one true Protestant Deity! “Mark the high noises [thunder], and thyself betray [confess your wrongs]/ When false opinion, whose wrong thoughts defile thee,/ In thy just reproof repeal and reconcile thee” (13.104-6). The lecherous Gloucester comes to see himself clearly for the “lust-dieted man”(15.65) he was. Amazing Grace, the wretch is saved! Let’s all be happy for him.

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Irreproachable Edgar also says, “When we [see] our betters bearing our woes/ We scarcely think our miseries our foes.” (13.95). This is a cheerfully catchy and infectious tune but I want to look past that for a minute to notice that it has a rough correlative with Lear’s lucid consciousness of his own dearly-won self-knowledge which prompts the “I have taken too little care.../ Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel” (11.30-1). A quick aside: There’s a long-standing strain in Christian belief between spiritual equality and social inequality. Medieval philosophy seems to have for the most part reconciled this tension by accepting natural equality without requiring that it be met in this temporal realm. There’s just simply no orderly means of applying this beautiful but impractical egalitarian standard since social order requires a strict hierarchy, for which there’s ample Scriptural support. The poor can, in the meantime, console themselves with the thought that we’ll all be judged equally upon our merits on the day of judgment. Anyway, Lear also seems to have rededicated himself to Christianity, to embracing humility, charity, and commiseration toward all members of our human family; to salving the festering wounds of this world and to make the lives of the unfortunate poor bearable; and, in general, to determining to take a more affectionate regard toward all his subjects. Indifferent to false opinion, the contumacious cabal evinces the sort of conceited and smarmy cleverness that asserts itself by rejecting the hoary wisdom and sober conclusions of long-settled tradition. With prideful assurance of their own self-righteousness these apostles of anarchy and sedition seem to fancy themselves as clear-sighted rationalists with their glib and facile convictions. These zealots seem some sort of vested interest group ready to pounce on any pretext to usurp the power and positions of the rightful incumbents. “Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;/ Filth[y persons] savour but themselves” (16.37-8) and care nothing for their social family. These malcontents conceive themselves as cannily wise to the “plague of custom” (2.3) that supposedly swindles their natural rights and yet the unstable edifice of their unholy community is founded on dishonesty. Regan unquestioningly accepts Gonoril’s lie about “riotous knights” (6.94), Cornwall is carried away by the barking bastard’s dissemblances, Gonoril permits herself to stoop to any measure to wrest control of Regan’s share of the spoils, and on and on. These errant sons and daughters of the patriarchal world now respect no clearly defined pecking order and social relations are nothing but a mad scramble for power, position, and possession. Society seems to have embarked on a troubling voyage into uncharted territory. Allowing themselves to be guided by the self-understanding furnished by the traditional map would have allowed these social seafarers to again correctly reorient themselves and prevent the shipwreck toward which they’re now ineluctably bound. But these brutal schoolmasters (7.460) seem intent on learning the hard way that such attempts to reform things unilaterally from below only make matters worse. It’s now in vogue (11.65) to be bedizened in bold ingratitude. Mutilation and murder have become stylish. Dressed to kill in the latest winter ensemble, looking rakishly brutal and

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stunningly callous as always, welcome the perverse provocateurs! In these vagarious fashionable fits of the political season, the corset of good taste now appears sooo passé. We now find ourselves landed in this grubby world of politics without a stratified social order. Like snarling mutts, the resulting multiplicity of tendentious interests now rancorously compete with each other for control. The bemaddening rule of this many-headed monstrosity is a noisy, disorderly, intemperate business that can’t be contained within decent limits. There’s a simple, clear-cut, single chain of command in a patriarchal power structure. But having refused the authority of their betters and toppled the well-ordered gradations these fractious partisans now attempt to reorder the distinctions of rank by extorting from each other tokens of respect and obedience. Early on, this coterie may fool themselves into thinking that they act unanimously but they soon learn that a world of fractured authority is maddeningly disorderly and insecure. It’s an undifferentiated mess wherein everyone seeks to be her own master, incessantly maneuvering for power, possession, position, and prestige to which each feels as entitled as any of the others. Predictably, they soon grow unruly and seditious with each other. Gonoril tries to pull rank on her husband, absurdly claiming “mine” and “thine” on the ownership of the laws (24.154). Edmund takes it upon himself to imprison Lear and Cordelia and has to be reminded by Albany that he’s a mere subject and not commander. And so on, ad nauseam. This volatile amalgam of divided and self-serving loyalties can only conceivably result in bloody civil turmoil as it does with all the fratricidal and sororicidal internecine madness inherent in such disputes. Their narcissistic and nihilist aims are tersely exemplified by Gonoril’s confession that she’d rather England were overrun with frog-eating Frenchmen than lose Edmund (22.20). Yet, our deliverance from these conniving knaves may well now lie with the massacring papists!

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We’re now in a position to better appreciate the vestiges of order and civility—the niceties of polite society—exemplified by Gloucester toward Lear and his three-man entourage. The world again momentarily becomes decent and orderly, built as it is around affable authority made palatable by the grace and suppleness of the superior and the courteous and solicitous deference of the gracious servant. By so sedulously showing the duly mandated politeness and accommodation due to his king, Gloucester distinguishes himself as a person of decorous demeanor and gentility. We should all aspire to be as noble in suffering what we must to lovingly fulfill the obligations of our duty. To respect our social superiors and our place in the grand scheme is to aspire to more elevated sentiments. For, what afterall, is civilization if not this sort of accommodating kindness toward our child-like servants and giving well-deserved deferential respect to our fatherly masters. These accommodating bonds of love between superior and inferior link together the orders with every member of society generously sharing in warm fellow-feeling of belonging to the Christian Brotherhood. Love, honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feeling, and subtle nuance: These are the hallmarks of a truly civilized people, the splendor of man. The unaccommodating king now comes to understand that “unaccommodated man is no more [than] a poor, bare, [two-legged] animal” (11.96-7). Conversely, the confirmed enemies of decency have deplorably depraved manners and are meanly selfish and stridently one-sided in their thinking. For, how long can civilization survive if we should all seek the wretchedly barbaric inhumanity of unconcern for our fellow man? Is it even remotely possible for subjects to independently pursue their own self-interests in an orderly manner? With only one Ship of State how is it even conceivable to allow every

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pilgrim to chart her own destiny? If we should all be neglectful in our assigned berths we’ll all soon find themselves overboard upon an unforgiving chaotic sea. Gracious deference to the holy strictures is the magnetism that aligns our individual compasses toward a common orientation and makes civilization possible.

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For Cornwall to interlope between an august master and a humble servant dutifully upholding his charge is to seek to lacerate these needful ties of affection and gratitude. So, we needn’t give unquestioning adherence to grandees demanding a degrading and unconditional obedience to such “unnatural dealing” (10.2) that disrupts the natural magnetism by which individuals gravitate toward and adhere into an organic whole. The hypocrites, enamored with their own vacuous pride and a thoughtless devil-may-care temerity, seem to think that they can blithely disregard the prerequisites of rank and yet feel others are still bound by such obligations. There’s just something deeply misconceived about these barbarians assaulting obedience, the bulwark of Good Order. They’re determined to demolish the citadel from which they’ll invariably find to have been invaluable in defending their own governance. To enforce compliance, the multipartite Gonoril-Regan-Edmund-Cornwall regime is characterized by an insensate savagery and finds it necessary to commit a crime so shocking, so evil, so pointless that one’s flesh creeps to descend into the details. These overmighty subjects seem to feel no compunction in tormenting those who they consider to be beneath them in order to force any and all opposition back into line. But these villainous shepherds don’t seek to bring what they perceive to be stray sheep back into the fold. They want to fleece the whole flock and led them to slaughter. The eye-gouging sadist simply bestows the bastard with Gloucester’s estate and title as if it were his own. We’re now living in the time the fool prophesied “When every case in law is right” (9.85). For being illegitimate the tyrannical oligarchy faces effronteries from all sides and finds that it must from necessity tighten further the screws of social control. But this brutal repression only provokes the subjects to further disregard its illegitimate domination. For rule without the reciprocal bonds of loving obedience must need be tyrannical and for being tyrannical they must mete out more appalling savagery to maintain their abusive suzerainty. Eventually, society will become insuperably ungovernable. So, such governance risks destroying itself through its own harshness since attempts to impose control too rigidly may themselves cause disorder. What these insolent insurrectionaries don’t seem to understand is that subjects are woven together into a neatly unified and intertwining social fabric not be force but by consensual bonds of natural loving obligations. And a loving and kindly obliging obedience can’t be enforced by instilling fear. For it is written: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. ...[blah, blah, blah] ...[and] he who loveth God love his brother also.” (John I 4:18-21). The rowdy Gothic punks may now have riven an unmendable rent in the tenuous fabric of social order that may well soon threaten to tear all bonds irreparably. Thus, untrammeled by law, custom, or piety, these seditious sectarians have rudely stripped themselves of any possible legitimate claim to power, exposing their governance as resting on nothing but naked brute force. For the cornball vaunts, “Though we may not pass [a death sentence] upon [Gloucester’s] life/ Without formal justice, yet our power/ shall [yield to] our wrath, which men/ may blame but not control” (14.22-5). With this understanding of

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legitimacy, the gouger is himself openly admitting that their riotous rule is founded on nothing more than mere force. 660

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We needn’t meekly bide such flagitious depredations of such villainous nobility like dumb dogs. We’re justified in resisting such out-and-out tyranny, aren’t we? For the reigning revolting revolutionaries flout every law and custom on the just rights and liberties of freeborn subjects, granted by our ancient constitution which stretches back to before the Norman conquest. In actuality, however, privileges of the peers of the realm weren’t well defined and gentry seem to have abused this loophole with virtual impunity. According to the Magna Carta, Cornwall’s actions can be considered a “lawful judgment of peers.” Here’s the official position on civil disobedience given in church sermons in even the darkest corners of the land for many years after its issue:

“We may not obey kings, magistrates or any other [bureaucrat]. . . if they would command us to do anything contrary to God’s commandments. ...But nevertheless in that case we may not in any wise resist violently or rebel against rulers.... But we must in such cases patiently suffer all wrongs and injuries, referring the judgment of our cause only to God.” (Homily on Obedience, 1547).

For now other “sheep [are now] in the corn” (13.38) and our good shepherd grows steadily and fixedly insane. These coarse oafs and ogres haven’t been setting a virtuous example before their impressionable political children, who are now overheard whispering to each other: “I’ll never care what wickedness I do,/ If this man [Cornwall] comes to good,” says one. To which, replies another, “If she [Regan] lives long/ And in the end [if she] meets [a natural] death,/ Women will all turn [into] monsters” (14.97-100). But “men must endure” (23.9). Few people, I daresay, would have been willing to diffidently endure such abuses for long with the officially mandated stoic apathy, like drudges chafing beneath the burdensome yoke of a brutish vassalage and withholding the obedience of their hearts. “The [human] creature runs from the cur, there thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog obeyed” by its master (20.151-2)! These underlings, who were the once loyal dogs, now “leap the hatch, and all are fled” (13.67). Gonoril was observed earlier sowing the tares of disobedience by explicit exhortation and now we find her and her ilk fueling the burgeoning chaos through their wayward example. For, the peoples’ hostility, seething beneath the surface, awaits the opportunity to boil over into open revolt as it does with Cornwall getting his well-deserved comeuppance at the hands of his own villein. People being what they are, “humanity must perforce prey on itself,/ Like monsters of the deep” (16.48-9). The subjects now suffering the depredations of many tyrants must now wistfully long for a single tyrant: “When misery could beguile the tyrant’s rage/ And frustrate his proud will” (20.63-4). Eye-gouging Cornwall, we’re told, has a reputation for being mechanically unbending; it’s notorious “how unremovable and fixed he is/ in his own course” (7.258-9). With supercilious disdain he abandons his custodial care toward his new subjects and yet we find him preposterously preening himself before his newly adopted mongrel, the bastard Edmund, “thou shalt find a dearer father in my love [than whatshisname]” (12.23). What a joke! These simpering opportunists would just as well hack each other as hug if there were a ducat to be

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had thereby. But wait, there’s something wrong here! The rages and contumelies of a superior sitting atop the status hierarchy contemptuously looking down upon his children and exercising a radically unconstrained arbitrary will is eerily reminiscent of Lear’s unflinching, rigid, and unyielding position in the opening scene. Further, these tyrants also mistake service for servitude, Cornwall calls Gloucester a slave (14.94) and Oswald says the same of Edgar (20.228). To complete this parallel, taken to the n

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th degree, we find a little latter Regan willing to compound Gloucester’s misfortunes to forestall any possible taint of impropriety staining her reputation. It’s been established then that there are only two realistic options for organizing society: deference to consecrated authority and anarchy. The latter is as refractory, cantankerous, and unwieldy as the mannish amazons and the double-dealing bastard. With the accession of these fornicating frondeurs, the coming of the sin-absolved whores of Babylon and their oil-soaked priest is now manifest in all its nauseating and horrid glory. Without the needful guidance that prudent authority provides we shouldn’t be surprised to see this orgied explosion of anarchy, rapine, lasciviousness, impudence, insolence, and massacre. Having escaped the constraints of probity, the weaker nature naturally seeks to gratify its every intemperate sadistic and sexual impulse. This onrushing madness lusts for the profanation of all that’s good and just and sacred, ushering in every manner of pagan debauchery. There’s now a disturbing intimacy between the sexes, a pernicious copulation of superior and subordinate, a licentious interchanging of sexual roles, offensive leakages between the coarse and the refined, a confusing intermingling of the virtuous and the vain, a blurring of all the fine distinctions, all festering in a stagnant, vomit-inducing cesspool of sin and vice. In this new age of lax morality, every manner of filth and corruption abounds, suppurating forth its vile perversity upon our innocent society of blessed pilgrims. This incontinent, ever-widening vortex of filthy sin is spiraling out of control, threatening to wash away and blow asunder all that’s decent and respectable. This is the world turned upside down, where nothing is taboo! May God help us. We now find ourselves upon the desolate purlieus of civilization, the fruitful country has degenerated into an unweeded garden of disorderly types. The precious seedlings of virtuous obedience are blighted by the uncouth tares of vice and depravity. In this topsy-turvy world, orderly deference is shattered and impudence is on the roam. Wantonness unabashedly stalks the earth, strutting itself provocatively in broad daylight. While, honesty, decency, and virtue are forced to flee, disguise themselves, become beggared, and take refuge underground. Good and evil, master and servant, have all dissolved into indiscernible masks and disguises. The bedraggled pauper king, his faithful jester, his disguised loyal servant Kent, and the impoverished Edgar disguised as a Bedlamite must now bear the drudgeries of life wherein all government is dissolved, duties are neglected, and lands are uncultivated. Buffeted by the nauseatingly swirling torrent of upward and downward mobility, society has now been reduced to a shabby and dilapidated hovel with everyone wallowing in the filthy mire like abject beasts. Even sublime Cordelia’s fine regal perspicacity is mislead by the disorder to declare that her father’s been forced “to hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn” (21.37). The lingering image of the crazed and naked emperor is a poignant depiction of this heartrending dehumanization. But this image is full of much richer meanings. In a society

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where a person’s clothes bespeaks her place in the hierarchy, disrobing publicly is akin to shedding one’s social identity. Bereft of the trappings of civilization and without the mortifying consciousness of one’s shame is to be dragged down to the savage level of brute beasts. For the rich pageantry of sovereignty requires that the officeholder be bedecked in royal liveries since such a Person of Consequence needs decent drapery to lend an imposing status to her regal person. Respecting an institution begins with a profound awe for the authority figure. If such a person doesn’t carry herself with dignity and élan, it directly reflects badly on her office. In this case, the grandeur and majesty of the kingship is now founded in this frail, naked wretch, and is indistinguishable from the contemptuously low. Thus, the respectability of the high office is itself now thoroughly in tatters. To “allow not nature more than nature needs,/ [makes] Man’s life [as] cheap as [a] beast’s” (7.424-5).

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But we must be just as careful to not overdress. For “through tattered rags small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hides all” (20.158-9) virtues and vices. We mustn’t allow unseemly bits to peep out through the rents in the thin veneer of civility but we also shouldn’t garb ourselves—nor require others to garb themselves—beneath garish fripperies that make their virtues and vices imperceptible. I read this as an entreaty for us to engage in open discourse but, at the other end, to not parade our vices. In addition to rank and the fulfillment of one’s obligations, in a status hierarchy, reputation also serves as a indication of how much dignity a social actor is to be accorded. By dressing down like Gloucester one demeans herself and lessen the respect they deserve in the eyes of others. These aphorisms can further be read as an argument for more transparency in the rule of government but with the added caution to not rip away the mysterious veils of sanctity enveloping the majesty of monarchy, lest we encourage radicals to claim that God’s lieutenant reeks the stench of a mere mortal. We must seek to strike some felicitous balance between openness and concealment. Perhaps, this metaphor can also be taken as an appeal for the realm’s father to graciously condescend from his frigid eminence and listen to his subordinate brethren. But at the same time he’s admonished to not cause the office to degenerate into a meticulous observance of formal courtesies which serves to conceal honest discourse. Shakespeare’s implied objection with the opening scene then may not have been so much with the monarch’s exacting and fastidious concern for picayune formalities so much as with the king’s encouragement of concealment and his showing preferment to pharisaism without acquainting himself with the personalities and discerning their true virtue. Or perhaps the king ought not to rely too heavily on the words given in loyalty oaths since pretentious hypocrites will just craftily cloak their profane designs beneath the garb of feigned piety. Alas, with a world gone stark raving mad and our savior Cordelia dead, we’re now condemned to nostalgically bemoan the passing of the halcyon days of benevolent paternalism; to wither in the cold disapprobation of a chaotic world of overweening lords and saucy subjects; to come to realize too late the virtues of stratified order and to fecklessly attempt to restitute its return; to wistfully long for those golden days of reciprocal obligations; to lament the dissolution of the bygone world of old-fashioned family values; to reminisce forlornly of the idyllic loving household blown asunder by the churlish scions of a new generation who squandered away their dynastic inheritance. We may well have enjoyed the sweet flower’s last brief bloom, only too soon shaken by grim fate.

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But no, we can’t allow this to happen! We mustn’t suffer the garden to fall into decay and neglect; the flower of virtue, nor the fruitful corn of obedience, to be choked by the barbaric tares. We must be vigilant in our determination and diligently work toward the extirpation of the flagrant evil that conceives of itself as prudent pragmatism and seeks to destroy the neatly unified world of stratified order wherein everything has its own ascriptive God-given sphere. The play has hopefully, in this manner, put us in a better position to appreciate our inherited institutions. If by the grace of God, we’ve imaginatively been allowed this new opportunity, yet another chance to return the world to Good Order, to restore all the chaotic dogs to their orderly places, to mend the holy bonds, then by God, we must count our blessings and avert such a fearful catastrophe from ever happening.

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Accordingly, we must beseech each other to divest ourselves of our invidious preconceptions. Let’s stop the insanity! Even with all its faults our monarchy is still better than the alternative. For the sake of all that’s good and just and decent we must all of us, every one, cheerfully submit ourselves to the prudential governance of our betters. To reaffirm in all our hearts and minds the timeless truth that order and civility is maintained by the regimented strata of social classes. We must follow our natural loyalties to our rightful masters who compel our loving obedience and we ought always to mind our manners and accept as our portion our God given places in the social strata. There’s an object lesson here for masters as well. They must equally fulfill the obligations of their station in life into which they happen to be born by allowing their subjects to press our principled objections and to listen to our concerns attentively and to abide to being restrained by our judicious desires. So, dear reader, pay heed to this woeful story. Having scared up the agony of the lurid prospect of this social horror, be appreciative that this nightmare isn’t already upon us. Take your assigned place beside the valiantly dutiful sons and daughters of our patriarchal world, take up the fine rapier of reason against the cudgels of disorder and tyranny, and beat back the dark forces assaulting the sanity of our world. Our majestic citadel may not weather the next storm but we can only pray that this black vista of futurity may never arrive. And let’s all give thanks to God that this tale is merely a fictional nightmare scenario of a possible future. Or is it? █ Shakespeare, William. The History of King Lear. Ed. Stanley Wells. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. 2000.