This Great Stage of Fools
Christian Orthodoxy in Shakespeare’s King Lear
by Peter J. Leithart
Today, King Lear is widely considered Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy and even his greatest achievement. Elements of the play that made it unpalatable to earlier generations are viewed as peculiar strengths by modern critics. Especially in the mid-twentieth century, when absurdist theater was in its heyday, Lear was seen as an important precursor.
Though absurdism now looks positively quaint, critics commonly interpret the world of Lear as if it were Elizabethan absurdist theater. Judah Stampfer concludes that the play is a “tragedy of penance” that takes place in an “imbecile universe” in which there is no hint of “charity, resiliency, or harmony.”
Similarly, Nicholas Brooke argues that the play makes “it impossible to retain any concept of an ordered universe” and promotes “the reflection that any system of order results in very strange notions of justice.” In Brooke’s reading, the play directly challenges Christian notions of salvation: “In the end the subtlest and most tempting order of all is undone—the order of repentance, forgiveness, redemption and regeneration is reversed in unregenerate Lear’s tottering broken-hearted into madness and death.”
Some have found a more hopeful note in the final scenes, claiming that Lear dies happily, thinking that Cordelia is still alive. As William F. Zak points out, even if this is true, it only serves to thicken the darkness. The gods have toyed with Lear throughout his life, and as he breathes his last breath, they play yet another cruel trick. Similarly, S. L. Goldberg argues that taking Lear’s “delusion” as a sign of “final optimism in the play” is “so visibly at odds with the impersonal dramatic facts as to be both gratuitous and sentimental.” Whatever Lear’s hopes, the play begins and ends in a world without hope of resurrection.
Frustrated Hope
Critics seem to have strong grounds for taking Gloucester’s comment as the play’s theme: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for sport” (4.1.37–38). As some have pointed out, Lear never moves far from its first scene. It begins with Lear divesting himself of all the accouterments of kingship, renouncing his daughter Cordelia because she can say “nothing” to express her love for her father, and sending faithful Kent, who defends Cordelia, into exile.
The play ends on the same note. Shortly before the final scenes, Lear impatiently drives Kent from his sight (“Prithee away”) and weeps over his beloved Cordelia, who is again silent, this time in death. And, significantly, Lear dies calling out for someone to help him unbutton his robe (5.3.307). The wheel turns. The tide moves in, the tide moves out. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
In other respects the design of the play consistently raises hope only to frustrate it. Gloucester’s son Edgar, disguised for his own protection as “Poor Tom,” a homeless and insane wanderer, no sooner finishes saying “things could not get worse” than he sees his father tottering across the heath with bloodstained bandages on his vacant eyes (4.1.1–12). Near the end, Albany prays for Cordelia’s safety; then, immediately, “Enter Lear with Cordelia in his arms,” howling at the heavens (5.3.254f). Every time we feel that things might at last turn around, our hopes are sadistically dashed.
Lear’s use of comic conventions has similar effects. There are comic elements in Shakespeare’s other great tragedies. Hamlet lurches toward farce at several points and has inspired zany offshoots like Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Even austere Macbeth has its drunken porter. But no tragedy has so much in common with comedy as Lear.
Peter J. Leithart is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and the president of Trinity House Institute for Biblical, Liturgical & Cultural Studies in Birmingham, Alabama. His many books include Defending Constantine (InterVarsity), Between Babel and Beast (Cascade), and, most recently, Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor University Press). His weblog can be found at www.leithart.com. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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