Back when I was reading God’s Secretaries, I noticed that Adam Nicolson frequently referred to the King Lear as being a necessary contemporary comparison to the King James Bible. I was uncomfortably aware that I hadn’t read Lear in twenty years, since the Olivier version was on TV. I remember being unimpressed with Olivier’s performance, but blown away by the great Leo McKern as Gloucester (note: I hadn’t remembered that David “Smike” Threlfall was Edgar, which explains quite a bit).
Anyway, I picked up a Signet Classic edition from the library, because the Riverside edition on the shelf is a trifle cumbersome, and sat down to it. At the end of act one, I made the comment that although the character of Lear was moving and provocative, I was perplexed by the play’s reputation as the most poetic of Shakespeare’s plays. “It’s no Richard II” was my exact comment, I think. I was advised to keep reading, as I might well change my mind.
And I did.
Boy, is this a marvelous play. Oh, like many of Shakespeare’s plays, the construction is loose, and although I could attempt to derive intention or at least connotation from some of the muddle, I just think he wasn’t very good at making tight plays. I mean, Neil Simon, on the whole, makes plays that could stop a tank; you could bounce a quarter off Philip Barry’s plays (or at least the ones I read). But I think the muddle works to advantage here: characters dropping in and out or changing motivation or acting irrationally or accepting implausible rumors just adds to the sprawling world in which Lear and Gloucester stumble.
Gloucester, it turns out, is a better part than Lear, his vivacity shattered is as sad as Lear’s impotent rage, and his dreadful blind walk to Dover with his disguised son is just about the most brutal thing I’ve ever read. When Edgar, in his third or fourth disguise, tells his father (untruthfully) that he has survived a fall from Dover’s cliffs, and shouts “Look up a-height ... Do but look up!” I wanted to reach into the book and hold Gloucester, and tell him ... what? That it would be OK? It won’t. His eyes are gone, his king is gone, his belated choice of loyalty won’t bring justice or peace to the land. And although, in the end, he will have cause to be proud of one of his sons, still one son will kill the other, and perhaps better not to have eyes to see it.
As for its reputation for poetry, well. It’s ... deserved. It’s all about rhythm, and sound, rather than metaphor, though. Or in addition to, anyway. When Lear, near the end, blown-out and almost used to his madness, says
Pray, do not mock me:There are no metaphors, no high flights of fancy, just hollow words of defeat and abject, dismal humility. But the poetry of this is not the poetry of Hamlet, or of Richard II, either. It’s the “as I am a man” that I find the best and trickiest, snuck in there at the end, where the recognition has already taken place. It heightens the sense of wandering in the passage, as well as its sense that Lear’s world has shrunk to his own mind. There are five repetitions of “I am” together with the “I fear” “I should” “I know” “I have” “I did” and “I think”, yet it doesn’t come out as self-absorbed, but as clinging to the only thing he has a chance at knowing, himself. Of course, this only works because we know that Lear used to say things like “We have this hour a constant will to publish our daughters' several dowers, that future strife may be prevented now.” His arrogance and rage degenerates into this simplicity, which is the simplicity of absence, of emptiness. Whew.
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
And he has yet further to fall. His hopes for a pleasant prison term with Cordelia (if he can persuade himself it is Cordelia) are dashed. Cordelia is dead, he has roused himself to kill once more, and is subsiding. And after the famous stuff
And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!He doesn’t so much die as wind down
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!
Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.
Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
Look there, look there.
In general, what I like about Shakespeare’s language is his talent for metaphor, which he eschews here. Here, he takes up another style of poetry altogether, becoming more Vaclav Havel or Tom Stoppard or even Harold Pinter than Shakespeare, but doing it incredibly well, and with incredible sadness. Read it like this:
Pray, do not mock me: I am a very foolish fond old man, fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less; and, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you, and know this man, yet I am doubtful, for I am mainly ignorant what place this is, and all the skill I have remembers not these garments, nor I know not where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me; for, as I am a man, I think this lady to be my child Cordelia.Anyway, if you haven’t re-read Lear in a while, my advice is do it. It may be even better than you remember.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.