There's so much to talk about with each play that doesn't fit into the synopsis or into its own episode, so we've decided to cover several topics in this episode. In this episode, we discuss major thematic elements in Shakespeare's King Lear as well as topics that are usually covered or talked about in reference to this play.
Kourtney Smith (KS): Hi, Elyse. How's it going?
Elyse Sharp (ES): It's going well, Korey. How are you?
KS: I'm doing really well. I am a little bit tired, but you know, aren't we all these days?
ES: Yes, I think we all are. But I'm excited to get to dive into our show today. We've got our Lear stuff to chew on.
KS: Yes.
ES: Fun facts and things about the show that you discuss when discussing it in a high school or college class.
KS: Exactly. So it's going to be a lot of themes, motifs, factoids, a lot of surface level topics so that as we're moving forward discussing our entire series, these are in the back of your mind.
ES: Right.
KS: So my first bit of research on stuff to chew on that I found for King Lear are some factoids about King Lear. And I want to start with those before diving into what people talk about, like themes and motifs, just because I want to center like this play in context with like performance.
ES: Yeah.
KS: For a long time, this play was thought to be unactual in theaters, and that's either because of its display of cruelty and suffering—remember, there is a scene where Gloucester's eyes are plucked out. At least one of them we see plucked out. So it's incredibly graphic. You know, I think of Titus as the most graphic play in the canon, but this one definitely brings it.
ES: It’s up there. Yeah.
KS: And so there's that aspect. And it's also thought of as being unactual for a really long time because of its vastness and scope. This play is huge, talking about kings all the way down to beggars, talking about cruelty, purpose, fate. So there's just a large scope of things going on in this play.
ES: Yeah, you've got interior castles, you've got a storm outdoors, you bounce in between the two for a while, and then you have a battle. And I mean, other plays, you're in a location for an extended period of time. Like if we think back to Macbeth, sure, we also have some outdoor scenes, we're in a castle, near a castle, and then battle. But once we're in a location, we're oftentimes there for quite a while instead of back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
KS: Exactly. And especially thinking back to how early modern players and theater makers created plays on the stage, they were very minimalistic. So if you have theater makers that are making theater where it's like, we don't have intricate sets necessarily, maybe the most we have for the storm scene is thunder and lightning with metal and cannons and those elements. A lot of knowing where we're at is through the lines. So it can be very confusing if you miss the part where they are on a cliff or you miss the part where they're in, uh, Dover. It can be hard to track.
ES: Right.
KS: But because of both of these elements, between 1688 and 1838, Nahum Tate's reworking with a happy ending formed the basis of all stage representations and the idea of the play as too huge for the stage persisted into the 20th century. So I guess for 150 years, if Lear was done, it was usually done with a happy ending.
ES: Wow.
KS: But Lear has come to be accepted as a great stage play since World War II. And that's partially because theater scholars say the play has similar qualities to the Theater of the Absurd, which came out of World War II. So I guess you can tie those traits to King Lear that made it much more tangible to those theater makers and audiences.
ES: Especially because Theater of the Absurd, for anyone who hasn't studied theater, it deals a lot with critiques of modern society being presented on stage. Absurdism is taking things to an extreme. And Lear, I think, does that in an early modern way. We have a king who wants to trade places with a beggar by the end of it.
KS: Right.
ES: The whole world is topsy-turvy. Everybody is reduced to...
KS: Probably their worst traits.
ES: Their worst traits. Yeah. To an extreme point. So Theater of the Absurd, coming out of World War II, was dealing with a lot of, what is our purpose as human beings? What is the purpose of a government?
KS: What was this whole war for? Everything's... Yeah.
ES: Why do we have to suffer? Why is there suffering? You can definitely pick up on those themes inside of Lear.
KS: Exactly. I thought that was really cool. Elyse, I know you found some stuff about the text.
ES: Oh, yes. Another, I guess, fun fact is that there are two versions of this play as written by Shakespeare. There's the quarto of 1608 and the first folio of 1623, which are very, very different versions of this play. Each text has lines that are not in the other. So the earlier version in the quarto claims to present the text “as it was played before the King's majesty at Whitehall” on St. Stephen's night, which is December 26, 1606. But it might also derive from a manuscript that was never actually performed. Versus the First Folio appears to have been made for revival by Shakespeare's company in 1610 and suggests that there were revisions and Shakespeare did some revising in between the two versions. Also, King Lear in 1608 in the quarto was titled Shakespeare's True Chronicle History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his Three Daughters. Go ahead.
KS: Oh, I'm just laughing at Shakespeare's true as if this playwright didn't take, you know, Hollingshed or History of Great Britain and have liberties with some of the stuff. But, you know, I don't know who was fact checking during early modern England like we fact check now. So I'll give Shakespeare credit for saying this is true.
ES: Yes. Right. That title does also come from an earlier anonymous play that Shakespeare would have known about and also possibly could have acted in. That was probably first performed around 1590.
KS: Ok
ES: So not Shakespeare's version, but a potential source of inspiration for him and why he may be titled that first version identically.
KS: OK, that's fun.
ES: But Shakespeare's version of this anonymous play. There are about 300 lines in the quarto that are not in the folio and about 100 in the folio that are not in the quarto. So there's also about 850 verbal variants between the two texts. For example, some speeches are assigned differently or lines are assigned differently. And there are also some pretty significant differences in characterization, particularly with Edgar and Albany.
KS: Yeah.
ES: Most modern editions that you will see are kind of conflated versions where editors choose what they consider to be the best from each and make their own version of King Lear. Many scholars now, however, think that the quarto is the original and the folio is a revision, like I was saying earlier, and that the differences between the two texts are substantial enough that picking and choosing your favorite part from the quarto versus the folio kind of makes it not Shakespeare's Lear, but whoever's-editing-its Lear. Scholars kind of feel like it messes with the integrity of...
KS: Shakespeare's version, separately folio and quarto.
ES: Yeah, like both versions are good to kind of make a mashup of the two kind of...
KS: Says, I know better than Mr. Shakespeare. Yeah.
ES: Misrepresents the integrity of each one. So it's a thing to consider when you are going to go see a production or maybe if you're going to read it, you know, what version are you reading? Is it clear? The Arden third series does a really good job where they don't remove anything, but they do note where something is directly from the quarto versus the folio if it doesn't match.
KS: I think half of the footnotes in the Arden third edition of Lear is indicating what was where and how changing it would make a difference. That was most of my footnotes that I was reading while reading this play.
ES: When they've had to make a choice, especially when there's a change in who says a speech, it's noted in theirs. This is given to Albany. We chose it to go with Albany because of this. It makes sense. But sometimes this will be given to Goneril instead.
KS: Yeah. And a lot of that makes such a big difference for the actors and for the audience, because like you said, Albany, one of the things that the Arden third edition noted was this choice makes him a weaker character and this one makes him a more assertive character against Regan and Goneril. So it makes such a big difference.
ES: Yeah. So it's something to be aware of and be careful and thoughtful about when going to look at this play and what sort of story is being told through it, because they're just so different.
KS: Yeah. Just so cool. Especially because publishing was different in early modern England.
ES: Right.
KS: It might seem weird to us that there's two versions. So Shakespeare would have gone back and been like, I'm going to make this revision after it was already on the stage.
ES: Yeah. I would also say that we do still see it when shows are revived.
KS: That’s true.
ES: Like on Broadway, like there's like four different versions of Cabaret. So I think that it's something that we don't see often. And I think we don't think about with Shakespeare, but it happens.
KS: Yeah, it just from the way that scholars talk about this play, it sounds like it makes such a big difference in a way that maybe a modern revision wouldn't make as big of a deal. But I'm sure there's a play out there that would prove me wrong. So yeah, I'm not making this as a holistic generalization of all modern theater.
ES: Yeah, I think Cabaret is a good example, because there are versions that are much darker than others, depending on where Kander and Ebb were when they revised it.
KS: Proven wrong. Okay.
ES: Sorry.
KS: Other than that, another factoid I found was that apart from 1608 and 1610, there are no further records of performances of King Lear until after the restoration of Charles II in 1664. So I mean, we do know that after 1642, the plays were closed. But if Lear was being performed sometime after those two versions, we just don't know about it. It wasn't written down. And—
ES: Yeah
KS: That seems to be a trend with Shakespeare stuff.
ES: I have one more. And this is something that you texted me about when you were reading. I think it's a really interesting thing to note. The Fool in King Lear shares a song with—
KS: Feste
ES: —with Feste in Twelfth Night, “The Rain It Raineth Every Day.” King Lear's Fool sings a much shorter version. It's most likely because both Fools were played by Robert Armin, who we've talked about. And I know we talked a lot about Twelfth Night being influenced by the fact that Robert Armin was now part of the company. It's also highly likely that this is why we can say, oh, we think that Robert Armin played both of them.
KS: Played both Fools. Yeah, I thought that was so cool. I was like, I can wait to tell Elyse or I could text her right now because I'm geeking out over it. So those are fun factoids surrounding King Lear. Similarly to Macbeth, this story is based on sources. Before we go into your English class’s themes and motifs, I wanted to do a quick breakdown of the myth of King Lear so we have context for where this myth came from.
So Lear, often spelled L-E-I-R, was a legendary king of the Britons. And the Britons were an indigenous Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from the British Iron Age into the Middle Ages.
ES: Question: King Arthur is also a king of the Britons.
KS: Yes.
ES: He's also a legendary king of the Britons. Just to keep in the brain, what does this time period mean? Lear's kind of an Arthurian legend.
KS: Yes.
ES: Just not as popular.
KS: Not as popular, yeah. And his story was recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical 12th century History of the Kings of Britain. And according to Geoffrey's genealogy of the British dynasty, Lear's reign would have occurred around the 8th century BC, so around the time of the founding of Rome. So much older than Shakespeare. Geoffrey claimed that Lear was the eponymous founder of Leicester in England. The myth itself, from what I found online, does sound very similar to Shakespeare's. But he did take creative license. And I did a very surface level look at the myth. So I'm sure there are many, many differences that I'm missing.
But the basic structure is pretty similar except for some creative license. One difference from Geoffrey's myth to Shakespeare's play is that after Goneril and Regan and his son-in-laws perished, Lear ruled for three years and then he died. He would have gone back to being the king and then Cordelia seceded him and then buried him in an underground shrine beneath the River Soar near Leicester. So Cordelia would not have died.
ES: Cordelia survives.
KS: Cordelia survives.
ES: To put it into a modern idea, this myth exists. It seems probably pretty well known. This is a little bit like Shakespeare doing his version of Robin Hood or Arthur.
KS: Exactly. And I can see why he would want to change the play, especially depending on what Shakespeare wants to tell through this myth.
ES: I think it's also super interesting to consider that this was performed at court, right?
KS: Whitehall, I believe.
ES: Whitehall. So this would have been performed for King James. The last two plays that we've done have also been court plays. One of them was a play for James. And so to just think of what might this play have said to a ruler, considering plays for the court were a discourse between what's happening for the common people in London and the royals and court inside of Whitehall Palace. Considering that this is a play about a king who falls from grace, realizes that he should take better care of beggars and the poor in his country. He should have taken the time to do that. It's interesting to think about what is the message that was trying to be driven home to a royal audience with this play.
KS: Especially considering poor Tom is a character that would have been representative of Bethlehem, a psychiatric hospital of sorts, similar to the American asylums.
ES: Right. And probably physical hospital for people who today we would consider disabled.
KS: Bedlam is a symbol of Bethlehem in London.
ES: Yeah. And the hospital still exists.
KS: I wonder if that's the same as the Sweeney Todd.
ES: It is.
KS: It is?
ES: Yeah. So now that we've done factoids and fun facts and the history of the myth of King Lear, let's dive into some themes and motifs from, you know, your English class.
KS: One of the first ones is justice. The question is, is there any possibility of justice in the world? Or the other question is whether the world is fundamentally indifferent or even hostile to humankind. And there are characters that have opposing views on that. For example, Gloucester and Edgar have two different opinions on whether the world is fundamentally just or unjust. The question at the end of this play, if you're thinking about this theme, which triumphs? Which philosophy?
ES: We also have the theme of authority versus chaos, both political authority and family dynamics. Lear is a father and a king who gives away his authority to Goneril and Regan. And when he does that, he delivers not only himself and his family, but all of Britain into chaos and cruelty. And then witnessing the powerful forces of the natural world, Lear comes to understand that he, like the rest of humankind, is insignificant in the world. And it causes him to reprioritize his values.
KS: Another theme is reconciliation. And we see that between the characters of Lear and Cordelia.
ES: We also see, or at least we hear, Edgar and Gloucester do have a reconciliation offstage. We don't see it, but it is reported to us.
KS: So if you think about the beginning of the play, where these fathers and their children stand, they're able to come to reconciliation by the end.
ES: Next, we have the unreliability of speech and appearance versus reality. Characters' speeches and words are not always reliable and trustworthy. The tragic events of Lear are set in motion because Lear believes the loving speeches that Goneril and Regan make, even though they are pretty deceitful, and trying to play the game that he's set up. Goneril claims her love makes speech unable, which is empty of meaning because she's in the middle of a long speech. We also have Kent, who argues that simple speech like Cordelia's is more trustworthy: “Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sounds reverb no hollowness.”
But Cornwall argues that simple speech can be just as unreliable as elaborate flattery. Edgar suggests that language can never reliably express suffering. And at the end of the play, Lear's behavior suggests that Edgar is correct as he howls in suffering.
KS: Yes.
ES: We also see appearance versus reality come to a very strong point when Gloucester, who finally realizes, can see clearly who Edmund, Regan, and Goneril and Cornwall are, actually physically loses his eyes. And when he can no longer rely on the appearance of what other people appear to be, he has to trust wholly in someone who he believes to be a stranger to him.
KS: Yeah. A lot of symbolism in Gloucester's fate. Another theme is madness. Insanity occupies a central place in the play, and it's associated with both disorder as well as hidden wisdom. The Fool, who offers Lear insight in the early sections of the play, offers his counsel in a seemingly mad babble. And then later, when Lear himself goes “mad,” the turmoil in his mind mirrors the chaos that he has descended upon his kingdom. He also has this revelation during a storm, which is also chaotic and a sense of natural turmoil. We also have Edgar, and his time as a supposedly insane beggar hardens him, and it prepares him to defeat Edmund at the close of the play. What can insanity do to you, and what can these characters gain out of it at the end?
ES: Next, there is a theme of betrayal. The workings of the wickedness in both the family and political realms, where brothers betray brothers, and betrayal between children and fathers in both directions.
KS: Oh, 100%.
ES: Lear's blind, foolish betrayal of Cordelia's love for him sets the entire play into motion. However, these betrayers inevitably turn on one another. We see how Goneril and Regan fall out when they both become attracted to Edmund, after they have joined together to betray Lear. And then we also see how their jealousies of one another ultimately lead to mutual destruction.
KS: Yeah, so much betrayal.
ES: Yeah, and in the political realm, we see as Cornwall, Goneril, and Regan betray Lear in order to gain politically, and Edmund joins them. All of them end up dead at the end of the play.
KS: Yeah, to be quite frank.
ES: Very frank about it. Whereas Albany, who wavers in his support of Goneril, Regan, and Edmund, and basically goes, I'm not going to betray Lear, because he's the king, and stop a French invasion. He lives and becomes essentially king.
KS: He's also one to advocate for fair trials, instead of taking action into your own hands, because you feel betrayed personally or politically, where some sort of punishment doesn't really fit the crime. So those who don't betray end up on top. Those who show immense betrayal end up on the bottom.
ES: Correct.
KS: Another theme is age. When a person starts aging, he starts losing his significance. As Lear starts aging, he starts making decisions about his kingdom and makes a bet on the persons expressing the profound love for them. So King Lear's age heralds— ends up heralding a new social circle that forms around him where he is not the kingpin, but a commoner having no authority as he did in the past. However, he does want to retain the same authority even in his old age, but that seems impossible. Many characters comment on that, how he is not fit to be a king, not fit to be in his authority position. And this is why he admits of being old and the desire for retirement without having to abandon his privileges.
ES: Last one, the theme of loyalty. King Lear tests the loyalty of his daughters and their husbands through a test. The king is so enamored by this superficial realization of the love of his daughters that he instantly considers both of them worthy of the heritage to share his kingdom. However, he does not take care of Cordelia. Instead, he instantly disinherits her. And despite this treatment, she stays loyal to her father, demonstrating that the relationships of father-daughter is an enduring bond of loyalty. We also see this echoed in Gloucester and Edgar, where Gloucester believes that Edgar is disloyal to him. He is led astray by Edmund. Right? He puts all of his trust in Edmund. And then at the end, he learns that Edmund is actually trying to destroy him. He is ruined. And we see Edgar's loyalty to his father, even though he has been cast out.
KS: Cast out into the world, banished.
ES: Has been in hiding. He can't abide seeing his father suffer and takes care of him and tries to get his father to not be so melancholy anymore.
KS: Right. And yeah, as Gloucester is like begging to die, Edgar's like, no, let's keep going. Let's keep moving.
ES: Yeah.
KS: So many yummy, I don't know if that's the right word that I want to use. So many delicious themes, motifs, and things to consider.
ES: And yeah, that's what there is to chew on. We're going to, we've definitely been thinking about things that we're going to dive into more deeply.
KS: Mm-hmm.
ES: But get excited about what else we're going to talk about in Lear.
KS: Yeah. After all, it is said to be in the canon of Shakespeare, one of his greatest plays. So there's a lot of stuff to really, to sink our teeth into and we...
ES: Chew on?
KS: To chew on. Yeah. And we are looking forward to this. I'm looking forward to this five course meal that is King Lear.
ES: Me too. And thank you for listening. Shakespeare quote for you.
Quote of the Episode:
ES: From Julius Caesar, Act 4, Scene 2. Said by Cassius: “When Caesar lived, he durst not thus have moved me.”
Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp.
Note: When this episode was recorded, Kourtney Smith was "Korey Leigh Smith".
Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander.
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Works referenced:
“Introduction.” King Lear, edited by R.A. Foakes, The Arden Shakespeare, 1997, pp. 1–11. Third. Accessed on 27 Nov. 2021.
“Leir of Britain.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 31 Aug. 2021, Accessed on 29 Nov. 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leir_of_Britain.
SparkNotes Editors. (2005). “SparkNotes: King Lear.” SparkNotes.com, SparkNotes LLC, 2005. Accessed 29 Nov. 2021, from https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/lear.
