King Lear Moves On

 Shakespeare’s plays are divided into comedies, histories, and tragedies because that was the way they were labelled when they were first published in 1623, a mere seven years after the bard’s death, and the publisher’s technique for categorizing them is easy to discern even after all these years: the ones about real people were called histories, the ones in which the protagonist dies at the end were called tragedies, and the ones with happy endings were labelled comedies. But there’s clearly more to it than meets the eye at first, and particularly as regards the distinction between tragedy and comedy.

In Shakespeare’s tragedies, the play is generally “about” a flaw in the protagonist’s character that leads directly, if not always inexorably, first to his downfall and then to his death. That notion is obvious enough in the most famous tragedies: Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet. But there are also comedies like The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice that also feature that “fatal flaw” concept at the core of the narrative and plays that combine those two elements are sometimes called “tragicomedies” since they feature fatally flawed protagonists and relatively happy endings. (I remember in this regard once challenging my English teacher in high school, Mr. Bergman—who was also my college counselor—to explain how it could be even remotely possible to describe The Merchant of Venice, with its deeply anti-Semitic tropes, as a comedy. And I remember his response too: if you’re not too overly identified with Shylock (which he clearly thought I was), he said gently, it’s a pretty funny play. Hardy-har-har!

Perhaps I’ll write some other time about Shylock or about Mr. Bergman (whose major claim to importance in my life as a young man, aside from the terrible advice he offered about colleges, was that he introduced me to the novels of Thomas Hardy), but today I’d like to write about the greatest Shakespearean tragic figure of them all, King Lear.

His story continues to captivate. Jane Smiley’s bestselling 1991 book, A Thousand Acres, sets Lear’s story on a farm in Iowa. More recently, Christopher Moore put Lear’s story at the center of his very funny novel, Fool. But best of all, at least in my opinion, is Edward St. Aubyn’s terrific novel, Dunbar, that tells the same story rivetingly as the author imagines how Lear’s story would play out among the upper 1% of the upper 1% in London and New York. All good books worth looking for and at, particularly St. Aubyn’s.

Lear is the title character because the play is about him…but the play is even more about the people all around who conspire, as the time has finally come for Lear to relinquish both his throne and his power, to profit from his departure. And, as he plummets through rage into madness, it is finally realizing that the love and respect showered endlessly upon him was all phony and false that grants Lear some version of absolution at the end of the play as the single one of his daughters who loved him enough not to lie about her emotions dies and Lear, genuinely grief-stricken, is able finally to experience some version of emotional clarity before he too dies and the play quickly wraps up. More than anything, King Lear is about having the courage gracefully to let go of the world when your time is up and it’s time to go.

The play opens almost benignly with Lear taking a long look at himself and understanding—but only mostly believing—that, even despite his many accomplishments and successes, his reign is over and the time has come to allow governance of the nation to pass to a worthy successor. To decide how best to accomplish this, he summons his daughters—both of whom have husbands who would like very much to be the new king—and asks them to tell him how much they love him. Two, seizing the fact that the kingdom itself is in play, lie through their teeth and profess unending admiration and love, while the third, Cordelia, insists on showing her father respect specifically by not lying to him. And that enrages him—he who claims to value honesty cannot actually stand to hear the truth spoken aloud.

And so we begin our descent into a kind of topsy-turvy 1984-ish world in which nothing is as it seems. Lying is telling the truth. Flattery is honesty (and this is so even if even the flatterer her or himself doesn’t actually believe a word of what he or she is saying and the flattered party fully understands as much).  Justice has nothing to do with the impartial adjudication of disputes and everything to do with the pursuit of revenge for even petty insults. And madness is the ultimate lucidity, which aspect of things is illustrated by the fact that only the king’s Fool—a court jester who makes his living by pretending, dissembling, and lying—only the Fool comes anywhere close to seeing things as they really are.

And now, as he sees power slipping from his fingers, King Lear—who was an able monarch for a very long time—surprises by displaying no particular interest in the future of his kingdom. Indeed, he decides to divvy up its territory among his daughters and invites them to flatter him with proclamations of love and respect merely so he can decide who is going to get the best parts.  Their worthiness, their competence, their insight or intelligence—nothing matters: only that they flatter him so convincingly that he comes away from the interview certain that he is loved.

Nor, even when he does plan to go, does he plan to go gracefully. Indeed, he insists on bringing a huge entourage with him, a kind of power base that will presumably be there intact if he decides to try to regain power later on. This enrages his daughters who realize that none will rule effectively until Lear has stepped into the shadows…and that that simply isn’t going to happen if their father can’t accept that he not only no longer sits on the throne but that, by leaving the throne decisively and publicly, he is signaling to the public that he will not again sit on it. Ever. And that he cannot bring himself to do.

And so Lear himself becomes the embodiment of the greatest paradox of them all: as he descends into madness, he finally sees the world—and his place in it—clearly: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! / You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout / Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! / You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, / Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, / Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, / Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! / Crack nature’s moulds, and germens spill at once, / That make ingrateful man!.../ Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain! / Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: / I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; / I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children, / You owe me no subscription: then let fall / Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave, / A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man....”

And so, at least at the end, the tragedy of King Lear has a deeply moral core: when the hurly-burly’s done and the bluster vanishes, when the man finally has no bile left to spew out at the world, when the man at last sees himself clearly for what he is, when he understands that any ruler’s most powerful act is his dignified participation in the transference of authority to a worthy successor, when he finally realizes that honesty is the ultimate virtue and that only fools are soothed by false compliments and phony protestations of respect and love—when he is through being a complete choleria and the time has come, finally, to reconcile with the single one of his children who loved him enough not to lie to him, Lear—mad, ancient, and defeated—turns unexpectedly into a mensch and dies an honest man awash in a sea of honest emotion and possessed of a clear vision of the world and his place in it. No normal person would wish for that journey. But which of us would not like to arrive at that destination?