CONTEXT - SHAKESPEARE

CONTEXT - SHAKESPEARE

1. RELIGION

   • "Deeply concerned with religious ideas concerning our place in the universe, free will and the role of gods in human life" - Allan
   • Father and teachers Catholics - fined for their refusal to attend Protestant services
   • Probably a 'tolerant' Anglican, with some sympathy for Catholics
     • Buried at an Anglican church
   • King Lear - interesting clash between sacred and secular

2. QUARTO/FOLIO

   • Quarto: each sheet of paper folded twice to making four leaves, or eight pages Folio: sheets that have been folded only once, each sheet thus making four pages
   • Folio: Edgar has the last lines to speak, reinforcing enhancement of his role, suitability to govern
     • Quarto: Albany speaks last (highest-ranking survivor)
     • Edgar speaking last (rather than higher status Albany) - emphasises devastation of the natural order

3. SOURCES

   • Many other versions of the story before Shakespeare's time
     • "The True Chronicle History of King Leir" - first published 1605, around since 1594. Unknown author.
       • "Love trial" appears
   • "Love trial" - a common motif in many folk tales
   • Gloucester plot came from Sir Philip Sidney's 'Arcadia' (1590)
     • Man is dethroned and blinded by his illegitimate son
       • Shakespeare gave it an unhappy ending

4. PERFORMANCE CONTEXTS

   • Seventeenth century: discontent and religious anxiety over Cordelia's death
     • 1681: Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear, made Cordelia and Edgar a couple, lived happily ever after
       • Met with great success - King Lear no longer threatened the audience
   • Shakespeare's "cruellest" play - Frank Kermode (2000)

5. NATURE, THE COSMOS, HUMANKIND

   • Great Chain of Being - developed in Ancient Greece by Plato and Aristotle - important theme in Renaissance thought
     • Belief in movement in the chain was growing in popularity, but also considered to verge on heresy
       • King Lear: characters move up and down the chain
         • "The younger rises when the old doth fall" - Edmund
   • Renaissance questioned comfortable 'truths'
     • Shakespeare plays are dramatic manifestations of these tensions - between old, conservative beliefs and new liberating discoveries

6. FREE WILL

   • Edmund shapes his own destiny, believes in free will, makes no superstitious excuses for his own behaviour
     • A modern character in a play of medieval characters
     • Initially trapped by circumstances beyond his control (illegitimacy) - feels this is unfair, embarks on a quest of self-actualisation powered but the force of his own free will
   • Regan and Gonerill's rebellion against their father is powered by free will, but not (lke Edmond's) an authentic desire for self-realisation, but merely a selfish quest for status and power

7. POLITICS

   • Jacobean audiences would have seen links to their own world
     • Troubled and uncertain times under Queen Elizabeth I
       • Poverty, food shortages, unemployment - many riots - BEDLAM BEGGARS (POOR TOM) were common
     • Similarities between King James I and King Lear - belief in Divine Right of Kings, expected obedience from subjects, susceptible to flattery
       • "They told me I was everything" - Lear
       • Desired for the union of England and Scotland - some argue James I commissioned performance of King Lear in 1606 to show that division led to instability, tragedy, and civil war
   • Cordelia's arrival with French army - Spanish Armada, 1588

8. SOCIAL CHANGE

   • Shakespeare experienced changes which challenged all social assumptions
   • Political thinking changed: feudal society with strong hierarchy virtually vanished, discoveries in science, increasing wealth from commerce = new ideas about value, merit, status
     • Political factions were rife, reflected in King Lear by rivalry between Albany and Cornwall
   • Social mobility became a reality - gentlemen could be "made", James sold knighthoods for cash

9. JUSTICE

   • King Lear reflects passionate interest of Jacobeans in justice and the processes of law
     • Lear's 'love trial'
     • Gloucester is denied the "form of justice" of a proper trial"
     • Kent and Edgar are cross-examined
     • Edmond is defeated by trial in combat
   • Litigation (taking someone to court) - a common feature of Shakespeare's England
   • Distinction between earthly and divine justice, human justice and justice meted out by the Gods, commonly understood by Shakespeare's contemporaries
     • Seems to equate earthly justice with the law of the land
     • Neither returns an answer to Lear's question - confirms Gloucester's bleak view of the human predicament
       • "As flies to wanton boys we are to th'gods; They kill us for their sport"

10. MADNESS

    • Reactions to mental illness were harsh and unsympathetic
      • Possessed by the devil, should be confined in a dark place and whipped
    • Most evident in Lear
      • Also reflected in natural chaos and social disturbance
        • Storm - Act 3
      • Abdication - political madness
      • Moral blindness leads to madness
        • "Oh fool, I shall go mad"
    • Poor Tom - madness of a bedlam beggar
    • Fool's 'madness' - professional
    • Cornwall and Regan: almost mad in their evil obsession with Gloucester's torture