King Lear, like all of Shakespeare’s plays, is fundamentally about the tension between image and nature, appearance and reality. Of course, each play deals with a different aspect of that tension and to a different degree, but I feel that King Lear is perhaps the most potent expression of the pure conflict. Lear seems to be an entirely dark vision of that conflict, being, after all, a tragedy, but I must suggest that just as image does not always properly represent the nature it is tied to, so the play of Lear does not present a pessimistic vision of the ultimate outcome of that tension. In short, the seemingly pure tragedy of King Lear points not towards Lear’s self-destruction, but rather to his ultimate acceptance of Cordelia, and the hope that she represents.
Harold Bloom suggests that the death of Cordelia is the death of hope, but I cannot agree. Rather, I would suggest that the death of Cordelia is necessary for the resurrection of hope. Cordelia is the ultimate character of self-knowledge; embodying the understanding that outward or societal image is not and cannot ever truly be the same as inward or inherent nature. In the very first scene of the play, Cordelia shows us that she can delineate between nature and image, something that Lear cannot do. We immediately see the test of love that Lear presents his daughters with as foolish at best, and we realize that Lear desires for the outward expressions of love that his daughters speak to be some true and accurate representation of the actual emotion. Yet we know, as Cordelia does, that what Lear seeks is impossible. Cordelia, who expresses the closest approximation to how she truly feels, is least believed because her expression is plain. And she expresses the personal peace that this understanding brings:
I yet beseech your majesty,
If for want of that glib and oily art
To speak and purpose not—since what I well intend,
I’ll do’t before I speak—that you make known
It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
No unchaste action or dishonoured step
That hath deprived me of your grace and favour,
But even the want of that for which I am richer—
A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue
That I am glad I have not, though not to have it
Hath lost me in your liking.
(I.i.223-233)
If, as Sean Harris has said in seminar, the play will tell us what it is about when we ask it, it seems that this speech of Cordelia’s is what the play is ultimately about. “[T]he want of that for which I am richer” is a potent statement of the power that self-knowledge and understanding of the fallibility of symbols can have on one’s experience of life.
So if we look at the play from this perspective, Cordelia’s perspective, the other characters and their actions fall into place, and the meaning we can draw from the outcome of the play surfaces. Lear, clearly the dominant figure of the play, is the ultimate expression of inability to delineate the boundaries between image and nature. He sets in motion the destructive force that this lack of understanding creates through his “love test.” So from the beginning we see Cordelia and Lear in opposition—one is thoroughly aware, the other completely blind. And because Lear bases his actions on this blindness, allowing an important decision that will affect his environment to be made on the basis of outward show, his environment takes control of him; he is subject to nature. In other words, he releases himself to the ravages of a nature that he cannot see, one that is nothing like his artificial conception of it and does not follow any human imposed rule.
As the reality of Lear’s situation begins to dawn (that neither Regan nor Goneril are true to their professed love), he moves further from the artificial social construction that he believed was real into the natural, animal world. In Regan and Goneril’s denial that he should have any soldiers in his retinue, they ask “What need one?” to which Lear responds “O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars / are in the poorest thing superfluous. / Allow not nature more than nature needs, / man’s life is cheap as beast’s.” (II.ii.437-441) Lear is beginning to realize that for all of man’s artifice and reason, allowing nature more than it needs, man is no better than an animal, being subject to the same forces of nature.
At the end of the speech containing the quote above the storm begins, and Lear, forced into it by his initial blindness and the recent realization thereof, embraces that storm. He says:
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, called 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…
(III.ii.14-20)
The elements are not unkind because they have not professed to be anything other than they are; they do not have any outward show other than their actual nature. In the storm Lear can begin to experience what he had hoped to find in his daughters from the test: reality. Only in nature can Lear experience reality because only nature is not subject to the artificial constructions that are the basis of human interaction. The force of naked nature creates the “tempest in [his] mind [that] doth from [his] senses take all feeling else save what beats there: filial ingratitude.” (III.iv.12-14) In short, Lear’s experience of nature leads him to glimpse the truth obscured behind his daughters’ outward show.
But Lear cannot begin to accept the reality of nature until he meets Tom, the “unaccommodated man [that] is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal…” (III.iv.100-112), who is exposed completely to nature. Lear strips himself so that he may feel the full and unadulterated force of nature as
Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cowdung for salads, swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog, drinks the green mantle of the standing pool; who is whipped from tithing to tithing, and stocked, punished, and imprisoned; who hath had three suits to his back, six shirts to his body,
Horse to ride and weapon to wear;
But mice and rats and such small deer
Have been Tom’s food for seven long year.
(III.iv.121-131)
Lear’s journey towards acceptance of nature can only really begin when he releases his grip on the artificial reality of the human social world and bare himself as animal to the elements. Only then can he accept the human animal that he is and comprehend the sheer fallibility of human social constructs. And though this journey seems to lead him deeper into madness, it allows him to speak “reason in madness” (IV.v.171), telling Gloucester “when we are born, we cry that we are come / to this great stage of fools.” Lear is finally opening his eyes to the reality of the world, learning to delineate between nature and image.
But it is only when he is reunited with Cordelia that he can receive the peace that acceptance of the failure of human constructs to accurately represent nature can bring. He awakes to Cordelia’s voice and is shortly thereafter capable of saying “I am a very foolish, fond old man,” recognizing what he really is. He can accept what his own foolish nature has brought him to and offer to drink what poison Cordelia might have for him. Yet Cordelia must still lead him into true realization and acceptance. He mistakenly assumes that she, having cause not to love him, does not love him. She must tell him that she has no cause. Only then can he ask for forgiveness: “You must bear with me. Pray you now, forget / and forgive. I am old and foolish.”
When we see Lear before he is borne to prison, he is at peace:
…Come let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i’th’ cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness; so we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—
Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out,
And take upon ‘s the mystery of things
As if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out
In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by th’ moon.
(V.iii.8-19)
His self realization has lead him to peace, and his statement that they will sing like birds in a cage seems to echo Cordelia’s earlier sentiment “[T]he want of that for which I am richer.” Lear has cast off his attachment to dissembling images and is ready, with a willing heart, to join Cordelia as one of “God’s spies,” capable of seeing nature behind the image and accepting the inconsistency between the two.
So when Cordelia is killed, it seems that hope dies. The fact that she was full of self-knowledge and an understanding that brought peace could not save her from the ultimate end: death. And yet Lear, who “know[s] when one is dead and when one lives” (V.iii.235), cannot help but hope she might live: “Lend me a looking-glass. / If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, / Why, then she lives.” (V.iii.236-238) However he might express his disgust for the destructive nature of his previous lack of self-knowledge, he is filled with hope that she might still be alive. He dies with the words: “Do you see this? Look on her. Look, her lips. / Look there, look there.” In his final moment, he understands the fragility of a world based on nothing more than perception of outward image but embraces the hope, Cordelia’s hope, that through self-exploration and knowledge one can find peace in that world.
In conclusion, we see that Lear has redeemed himself, and therefore Cordelia, by realizing and accepting his folly at the beginning of the play. And though he realizes too late to save Cordelia’s life or his own, there is hope for the other characters. Lear could not stop the forces that brought destruction on himself and his realm, but he leaves behind his hope and his kingdom for Edgar. Cordelia and Lear had to die so that hope could be carried into Edgar. By witnessing the pure destructive folly of Lear’s lack of understanding, and his own experience thereof, Edgar can tell us in the final lines of the play: “The weight of this sad time we must obey, / Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” Edgar realizes that we must seek to understand our own nature (“what we feel”), not subjugating ourselves to the demands of imperfect social structures (“what we ought to say”). In short, what we can finally learn from Lear is that although we are born onto “this great stage of fools” by acknowledging as much we can seek knowledge, ultimately living wisely and in peace with ourselves.
Micah Krabill
Composed for the course "Shakespeare's Truth"
May 20, 1999