King Lear

 

King Lear

 

King of Britain, had three daughters. They were Goneril, wife of the Duke of Albany, Regan, wife of the Duke of Cornwall, and unmarried Cordelia. The King of France and the Duke of Burgundy each wanted Cordelia to be his wife, and, at the time of this story, were staying at Lear's court.

The old king, more than eighty years of age, was worn out, and had decided to take no further part in the government of his country, but to leave younger ones to manage it. He called his three daughters to him to know from their own lips which of them loved him best, so that he might divide his kingdom among them according to their love for him.

Goneril, the eldest, declared that she loved her father more than words could tell, that he was dearer to her than the light of her own eyes, dearer than life and liberty. Such talk is easy to pretend where there is no real love, but the king was delighted to hear it. Thinking that her heart went with her words¹, he gave to Goneril and her husband one-third of his kingdom.

Regan, his second daughter, who was like her sister in character, declared that what her sister had said was far less than the love which she felt for her father. She found all other joys dead compared with the pleasure, which she took in the love of her dear king and father.

Lear was proud that he had such loving children, as he thought, and now to Regan and her husband he gave another third of his kingdom, equal in size to that which he had already given to Goneril.

Then turning to his youngest daughter Cordelia, whom he called his joy, he asked what she had to say. He thought no doubt that she would delight his ears with the same loving speeches as her sisters, or even that her expressions of love would be stronger than theirs, as she had always been his favourite. But Cordelia was filled with shame at the untrue words of her sisters, which she knew only meant to get a large part of their father's kingdom. So she gave no other answer but this that she loved her father according to her duty, neither more nor less.

The king, shocked at these words from his favourite child, desired her to consider her words and to mend her speech, lest it should spoil her fortunes².

Cordelia then said that the king was her father that he had brought her up and loved her. So she obeyed, loved and honoured him. But she could not make such fine speeches as her sisters had done, or promise to love nothing else in the world. If she ever married, she was sure that her husband would want at least half her love, half her care, half her duty. She would never marry, like her sisters, to love her father best of all.

Cordelia really loved her father almost as greatly as her sisters pretended to do. At any other time, she would have told him so in more daughter-like and loving words. But when she saw how her sisters' deceitful words had won such rich prizes, she thought the best thing she could do was to love and be silent. This showed that she loved her father, but not to gain a kingdom like her sisters. Her words simple as they were, had much more truth in them than those of Goneril and Regan.

Old age had so changed Lear that he could not tell truth from untruth, nor a gay painted speech from words that came from the heart³. He was so angry at Cordelia's plainness of speech, which he called pride, that he gave away the third part of his kingdom, which he had kept for Cordelia, and shared it equally between her two sisters and their husbands, the dukes of Albany and Cornwall. He now called them to him, and, in the presence of all his court, he gave them a crown between them, together with all the rights and power to govern the country. For himself he kept only the name of king, and it was agreed that he, and a hundred knights to serve him, should live a month in each of his daughters' palaces in turn.

Such an unbelievably foolish division of his kingdom, made more in mad anger than by reason, filled all his nobles with astonishment and sorrow. None of them, however, had the courage to interfere except the Earl of Kent. He was beginning to speak a good word for Cordelia⁴ when the angry Lear commanded him to stop or he would be put to death immediately. To this the good Kent paid no attention. He had always been faithful to Lear, whom he had honoured as a king, loved as a father and followed as a master. He had been ready to give his life in battles against the king's enemies, or when the king's safety was in danger. Now that Lear was his own greatest enemy, this faithful servant stood up against him to do Lear good.

He begged the king to follow his advice, as he had so often done in the past, and undo what he had so unwisely done. Kent said that he would answer with his life that Lear's youngest daughter did not love him the least⁵. As for Lear's threats, they could not frighten him whose life was already at the king's service. That should not prevent him from doing his duty and speaking.

The honest words of this good Earl of Kent only made the king more angry. Like a madman who kills his own doctor, he ordered this true servant to leave the country forever, and gave him only five days to prepare for his departure. If, on the sixth day, he was found within the kingdom of Britain, that moment would be his death.

So Kent said farewell to the king, and, before he went, he recommended Cordelia to the protection of the gods⁶. He only hoped that her sisters' fine speeches might be answered with deeds of love; and then he left, as he said, to try to fit his old life to a new country.

The King of France and the Duke of Burgundy were now called in to hear what Lear had decided about his youngest daughter, and to see whether they still wanted to marry Cordelia, now that she had nothing but herself to recommend her. The Duke of Burgundy refused to take her for his wife on such conditions, but the King of France understood why she had lost the love of her father. He took her by the hand and said that her fine qualities were worth more than a kingdom. He told her to say farewell to her sisters and to her father, though he had been unkind to her, and said that she should go with him and be his queen and rule over a fairer kingdom than her sisters.

Then Cordelia with weeping eyes said goodbye to her sisters, and begged them to love their father well. They told her that they knew their duty, and advised her to try to make her husband happy, for he had taken her almost as a beggar. And so Cordelia left, with a heavy heart, for she knew the deceit of her sisters, and she wished that her father could be in better hands than theirs.

No sooner had Cordelia gone than her sisters began to show their true characters. Even before the end of the first month, which Lear spent with his eldest daughter Goneril, the old king began to find out the difference between promises and actions. This wicked lady, having got from her father all that he had to give, soon became unwilling to let him have his knights, who made him feel he was still a king. She could not bear to see him with his hundred knights. Every time she met her father, she showed him an angry face. When the old man wanted to speak to her, she pretended to be sick, so as not to see him. It was plain that she thought his old age a useless load, and his knights an unnecessary expense⁷. Not only did she herself stop showing any respect to the king but, by her example and even by her orders, her servants also began to neglect him, and either refused to obey his orders or pretended not to hear them.

Lear could not help noticing this change in the behaviour of his daughter, but he shut his eyes against it as long as he could, just as most people are unwilling to believe the unpleasant results of their own mistakes.

Meanwhile, the good Earl of Kent had chosen to stay in Britain as long as there was a chance of being useful to the king, his master, although he knew that, if he was discovered, he would be put to death. In the disguise of a servant, he offered his services to the king. The latter did not recognize him as Kent in his new dress, but was pleased with his plainness of speech; and so an agreement was made and Lear took his once great favourite into his service by the name of Caius.

Caius quickly found a way to show his faithfulness and love to his royal master. That same day one of Goneril's servants was disrespectful to Lear and spoke rudely to him, as no doubt he was secretly encouraged to do by Goneril herself. Caius quickly knocked -him down, for which friendly action Lear liked him all the more.

Caius was not the only friend Lear had. It was the custom of kings at that time to keep a fool (or jester, as he was called) to make them laugh after serious business. The poor fool who had once lived in Lear's palace stayed with him after he had given away his crown, and, by his merry words, often made him happy. But the fool could not prevent himself sometimes from laughing at Lear for his foolishness in giving away everything to his daughters. Once, in Goneril's presence, he even said that a donkey will know when the cart draws the horse (meaning that Lear's daughters, who ought to go behind, now came before their father) and that Lear was no longer Lear, but only the shadow of Lear.

Goneril now plainly told the king that he could not continue to stay in her palace if he still wished to keep his hundred knights. She said that such a number was both expensive and useless, and only filled her court with noise and feasting. She begged him to lessen the number and to keep none but old men with him, like himself and suitable for his age.

Lear at first could not believe eyes or ears. He did not think that his own daughter could speak to him so unkindly. But when she repeated her demand, the old man became angry and said that she spoke an untruth. And this was true, for the hundred knights were all men of polite behaviour and excellent manners, and not accustomed to feasting or making a noise, as she said.

Then Lear ordered his horses to- be prepared, for he said he would go to his other daughter, Regan, taking his hundred knights with him. He spoke of Goneril's ingratitude, and cursed her in words terrible to hear. He prayed that she might never have a child, or, if she did, that it might live to show her the disrespect and hate that she had shown to him. Then she would know that a thankless child is worse than the bite of a snake. The Duke of Albany, Goneril's husband, began to make excuses, but Lear would not listen to him. He set out with his followers for the house of Regan. He thought to himself how small the fault of Cordelia (if it was a fault) now seemed, compared with her sister's, and he wept. Then he was ashamed that such a creature as Goneril had enough power over him to make him weep.

Regan and her husband were living splendidly at their palace. Lear sent his servant Caius with letters to his daughter to prepare her for his arrival, while he and his knights followed. But Goneril too sent letters to her sister, saying that her father was bad-tempered, and refused to listen to reason. She advised Regan not to receive him with such a large number of followers.

This messenger arrived at the same time as Caius, and they met. It was the servant whom Caius had formerly knocked down for his rude behaviour to Lear. Caius suspected what he had come for, and spoke angrily to him. He asked him to fight, but the servant refused. Caius then gave him a good beating. When Regan and her husband heard of this, they ordered Caius to be put in the stocks⁸, even though he was a messenger from the king and should have been treated with respect. Thus, the first thing the king saw when he entered the castle was his, servant sitting in that shameful situation.

This was a bad sign; but a worse one followed. When he asked for his daughter and her husband, he was told that they were very tired after travelling all night, and could not see him. He demanded angrily to see them, but when at last they came to greet him, the hated Goneril was with them. She had come to tell her own story and set her sister against the king, her father.

The old man was much moved by this sight, and still more so when he saw Regan take Goneril by the hand. He asked Goneril if she was not ashamed to look upon his white beard. Regan advised him to go home again with Goneril and live with her peacefully. He should dismiss half his knights, she said, and ask Goneril's forgiveness. She said that he was old and unwise, and that he must be ruled by persons who had more wisdom than himself.

Lear asked if he should go down on his knees and beg for food and clothes from his own daughter. He said that he would never return with Goneril but would stay with Regan, he and his hundred knights, for she had not forgotten the half of the kingdom which he had given her, and her eyes were not fierce like Goneril's, but mild and kind. He also said that, rather than return to Goneril, with only half his knights dismissed, he would go over to France and beg assistance from the king there, who had married his youngest daughter when she had nothing.

He was mistaken, however, in thinking that he would receive kinder treatment from Regan than he had done from her sister Goneril. Regan now declared that she thought fifty knights were too many to wait on him⁹, and that twenty-five were enough. Then Lear, nearly heartbroken, turned to Goneril and said that he would go back with her, for her fifty was double twenty-five, and so her love was twice as much as Regan's. But Goneril excused herself and asked why he needed so many as twenty-five, or even ten, or even five, when her own servants or her sister's might serve on him.

So these two wicked daughters each tried to be more cruel than the other to their old father.

From a king to a beggar is a hard change, and it was his daughters' ingratitude which struck this poor king to the heart. His mind became disturbed, and though he did not know what he was saying, he declared that these unnatural creatures should be punished.

While he was threatening what his weak arm could never carry out¹⁰, night fell, and a fearful storm of thunder, lightning and rain broke out. His daughters still refused to let his followers enter their palaces, and Lear called for his horses, saying that he would rather face the fierce storm outside than stay under the same roof with these ungrateful daughters. They, saying that the actions of foolish men bring their own just punishment, let him go and shut their doors upon him. The wind was high, and the rain and storm increased, when the old man set out over the heath¹¹ to fight against them. For many-miles there was hardly a bush for shelter. King Lear wandered about, shouting in anger against the wind and the thunder. He commanded the wind to blow the earth into the sea, or make the waves so big that they drowned the earth, so that no sign might remain of such an ungrateful animal as man. "Blow, winds! Rage! Blow!" cried he. The old king was now left with no other companion than the poor fool, who still stayed with him.

This once great king was found in this condition by his ever-faithful servant Caius, who was really the good Earl of Kent, now changed to Caius. He told to Lear: "O good sir, are you here? Creatures that love night love not such nights as these. This dreadful storm has driven the beasts to their hiding places. Man's nature cannot bear it." But Lear told him that these smaller evils were not felt when there was a greater trouble. "When the mind is at ease, the body has time to feel ill, but the storm in my mind took away all other feeling from me but the thought of my daughters' ingratitude!"¹²

He said it was as if the mouth should tear the hand for lifting food to it¹³; for parents were hands and food and everything to children.

Caius still continued to beg the king not to stay out in the open air, and at last persuaded him to enter a miserable little hut they came to on the heath. The fool entered first but ran out in terror, saying that he had seen a spirit. It proved, however, to be nothing but a poor beggar. He had crept into the hut for shelter, and who had frightened the fool by talking about devils. When the king saw him, with nothing but rags to cover his body, he was sure that he was a father who had given away everything to his daughters. He thought that nothing could bring a man to such misery except unkind daughters.

From this, and from many wild speeches which the king made, the good Caius saw clearly that he was not in his right mind, but that his daughters' ill-treatment¹⁴ had really made him mad.

And now the loyalty of this worthy Earl of Kent showed itself in better services than he had ever done before performed in the person of Caius. With the help of some of the king's knights who had remained true to him, he had the king taken to his castle at Dover, where most of his own friends were. Kent himself set sail for France, where he hurried to the court of Cordelia. He told her of her father's pitiful condition and how it had been caused by the cruelty of her sisters. This good and loving child begged her husband to let her sail to England with an army large enough to overthrow these cruel daughters and their husbands and put Lear back on the throne. The king having agreed to this, she set out, and, with a royal army, landed at Dover.

Lear had by some chance escaped from the knights in whose care Kent had left him. He was found by some of Cordelia's army, wandering about the fields near Dover, in a sad condition. His rich clothes were in rags; he was quite mad, and singing aloud to himself, with a crown on his head which he had made of straw and weeds that he had picked up in the cornfields. Cordelia greatly desired to see her father, but the doctors persuaded her to put off the meeting until sleep and medicine should have made him calmer. With the help of these skilful men, to whom Cordelia promised all her gold and jewels if they helped her father to recover, Lear was soon in condition to see his daughter.

It was a tender sight to see the meeting between the father and daughter. Lear was torn between joy at seeing his child and shame at receiving such kindness from her whom he had sent away in his foolish pride and anger. His half-mad brain sometimes made him unable to remember where he was, or who it was that kissed him so kindly and spoke to him. Then he would ask those who were with him not to laugh at him, if he were mistaken in thinking this lady to be his daughter Cordelia. He fell on his knees to beg his daughter's forgiveness, but she, good lady, kneeling all the time to ask him to bless her, told him it was not fitting for him to do so. It was her duty, for she was his child. She kissed him (as she said) to kiss away all her sisters' unkindness, and said that they ought to be ashamed of themselves for fuming their kind old father with his white beard out into the cold air. Even her enemy's dog, she said, though it might have bitten her, should have stayed by her fire on such a night as that, and warmed itself.

Cordelia told her father that she had come especially from France to bring him help. He said that she must forget and forgive, for he was an old man and a foolish one, and did not know what he did. Indeed, she had good reason not to love him, but her sisters had none. To this Cordelia replied that she had no reason not to love him, and neither had they.

We can leave this old king in the care of his loving child. With the help of sleep and medicine, she and her doctors at last succeeded in bringing some peace to that troubled mind, so disturbed by the cruelty of his other daughters. Let us now go back to say a word or two about them.

These ungrateful creatures, who had been so false to their own father, could not be expected to be more faithful to their husbands. They soon grew tired of showing even the appearance of love and duty, and plainly let it be seen that they had given their love to another man. And it so happened that they were both in love with the same man. It was Edmund, a natural son of the dead Earl of Gloucester¹⁵. By his wicked deeds, he had removed his brother Edgar, the lawful heir, from his possessions, and was now earl himself.

It happened about this time that the Duke of Cornwall, Regan's husband, died. Regan at once declared her intention of marrying this Earl of Gloucester. This excited the jealousy of her elder sister, to whom this wicked earl had at different times spoken of his love, and Goneril killed her sister by giving her poison. But her husband, the Duke of Albany, discovered her wicked deed and put her in prison where she soon put an end to her own life. Thus, the justice of heaven at last punished these wicked daughters.

A sad fate, however, was waiting for Cordelia, whose good deeds seemed to deserve a better fortune. The armies which Goneril and Regan had sent out under the command of Edmund, the bad Earl of Gloucester, were successful in a great battle. Cordelia was taken to prison and killed there. Lear did not live long after her.

Before the king died, the good Earl of Kent tried to tell him that it was he who had followed him under the name of Caius. Lear's troubled brain could not understand how that could be, or how Kent and Caius could be the same person, so Kent thought it unnecessary to try to explain. This faithful servant to the king, old and full of grief, died soon after his master.

We need not tell here how Edmund, the bad Earl of Gloucester, was killed in a single fight with his brother, or how Goneril's husband, the Duke of Albany, who had never encouraged his lady in her wickedness, became the King of England after the death of Lear. Lear and his three daughters are dead, and our story ends with them.

 

HISTORICAL DATA

The main plot of King Lear has its origin in the folklore of many countries. It may be found in various forms and under different names. Perhaps the most direct source used by Shakespeare was a drama The True Chronicle of King Lear and His Three Daughters¹⁶, an anonymous play presented in 1594. Shakespeare's tragedy is generally supposed to have been written in 1605.