King Lear by William Shakespeare

*contains spoilers*


The themes of Shakespeare’s plays are more often than not deeply aligned with the social and political feeling of their times, and this can very much be said of this particular play, The Tragedy of King Lear. Over the last forty-or-so years, King Lear seems to have apparently overtaken Hamlet as the undisputed king of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and not without good reason (however true or false you or I might claim this assertion to be – and it’s FALSE, yes), as it deals with a jungle of themes, such as genuine and affected madness, filial relationships, life, death, blindness, folly, responsibility, loyalty and honour; all of these themes are interchangeable and quite often converge, and that’s exactly how Shakespeare manages to both confuse and enlighten in equal measure. But that’s where the fun is, right?


Around the time of its initial performance on St. Stephen’s Day, 26th December, 1606, King James I was already making attempts at unifying the isle nations, and it is more likely than not that Shakespeare wanted to use his unabashedly similar plotline of Lear foolishly dividing the union (and consequently handing its broken pieces to his three daughters to rule separately) as a buffer before attempting to address some of his more controversial themes, which otherwise would have probably met with a fair bit of trouble when presented to the Censor and Master of the Revels. King Lear is practically a conglomerate of a number of classic works of fictional literature and theatre as well as real life events garnered from a variety of historical sources.


The main plot, to start with, was supposedly taken from the true story of Sir Brian Annesley, obviously alongside the catalogued history of the ancient British king, Leir. As it is recorded, Annesley, a wealthy Kentishman and avid follower of Queen Elizabeth I, promised in his will most of his estate to his youngest daughter, Cordell, and as a result was met with expected ire from Cordell’s eldest sister, who, in reaction, tried to nullify the will’s stipulation by claiming Annesley to be mad. The real life legend of King Leir: Shakespeare very likely used Geoffrey of Monmouth’s historical account of the real life King Leir, in his Historia Regum Brittaniae, who actually did have three daughters, Gonorilla, Regan and Cordeilla, and whose lives all went pretty much exactly as Shakespeare depicts in his tragedy.


Following this is the anonymously submitted, but not printed, The Most Famous Chronicle Historye of Leire King of England and his Three Daughters, registered in 1594, and supposedly featuring a performing William Shakespeare in its billing. Additionally, Shakespeare clearly took pieces of stories from elsewhere for the alarmingly prominent subplot in the play involving the character of Gloucester and his two sons, Edmund and Edgar, from the likes of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, primarily, and happily referenced Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popishe Impostures in Edgar’s speeches as he talks of devils during his periods of feigned madness; “This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet”. As you can see, Shakespeare was a man who did his homework, and this doesn’t even include the wealth of classical gods to which his characters alluded, and information garnered from works available, at the time, only in Latin.


It’s probably a bit late to tell you now (I’ll stick with this conceit, as it’s nice adding these cheeky little points in my blogs), but I studied this piece at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education, and most of it was an absolutely pleasure to analyse and enjoy. I’ll keep this short and end it here, but these little historical, political, social, contextual elements play very well into the two plots that run almost equally in terms of prominence and, like many of the themes within the play, converge beautifully. Look out for the character of The Fool, who acts as the audience’s anchor, and who is quite sweetly mistreated, both by its author and the characters.

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