A r m s t r o n g   A t l a n t i c  S t a t e  U n i v e r s i t y
E n g l i s h   3010

Introduction to Literary Studies (part two)

Cracking Lear


Speeches by

1.  Cordelia  (see article by Catherine S. Cox)
2.  Edmund (with analysis by Wendy Howard; see article by Shupack)
3.  Goneril (with analyses by Lorna Balser,  Breanne E. Lane, & Heather Benton)
4.  Lear (with analyses by Robert Rockett and Alex Atkinson)
5.  Kent
6.  Fool
7.  Lear

1.  CORDELIA: {(to Lear)
215. I yet beseech your majesty,
216. If for I want that glib and oily art
217. To speak and purpose not since what I well intend,
218. I'll do 't before I speak that you acknow
219. It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
220. No unclean action or dishonoured step
221. That hath deprived me of your grace and favour,
222. But even the want of that for which I am rich
223. A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue
224. As I am glad I have not, though not to have it
225B. Hath lost me in your liking,  (pp.111-112)

SEE "'An Excellent Thing in Woman': Virgo and Viragos in King Lear," by Catherine S. Cox
 1998 Modern Philology Vol. 96, No. 2, pp. 143-157.  Feminist criticism and rhetorical analysis.
_______________________

2.  EDMUND .
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are
sick in fortune,--often the surfeit of our own behaviour,--we
make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as
if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion;
knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance;
drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine
thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his
goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded
with my mother under the dragon's tail, and my nativity was under
ursa major; so that it follows I am rough and lecherous.--Tut! I
should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the
firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.  (123-124)

Wendy Howard
Deconstruction

Edmund and Deconstruction

            To deconstruct Edmund, one must read between the lines and find information that contradicts the overt message of the text. In Edmund’s speech, he pokes fun at his father for blaming the stars regarding his misfortune. Then Edmund says with sarcasm that he must be “rough and lecherous” because of the stars under which he came into the world. In the last line, he reverses this and says he would have been the way he is no matter which star he was born under, though he never completely proves this. He ridicules the idea that we are villains out of necessity, but afterwards, he becomes just that in order to get his brother’s land, essentially blaming his lot in life on others rather than on himself. With this attitude, Edmund seems to disprove his own theory, becoming the villain that his star had planned for him all along. If planetary influence did not make him evil, then he is a villain intentionally. Either way, regardless of his belief, the prediction of the star is still fulfilled. However, later in the play, he has a change of heart, proving that he is not all bad, which parallels Edmund’s original opinion that one is what he is of his own accord, and not because he was born under a bad sign. While Edmund seems to be a realistic demonstration of Shakespeare’s good bad guy, a deconstructive look at his vacillating speech leaves one wondering if he is not a bad good guy as well.

SEE ALSO "Natural Justice and King Lear," by Paul M. Shupack
Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature Vol. 9, No. 1, 1997. pp. 67-105.  
(note in particular pp. 80-83.)
__________________________

3.  GONERIL
By day and night he wrongs me; every hour
He flashes into one gross crime or other,
That sets us all at odds: I'll not endure it:
His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us
On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,
I will not speak with him; say I am sick:
If you come slack of former services,
You shall do well; the fault of it I'll answer. . . .
Put on what weary negligence you please,
You and your fellows; I'll have it come to question:
If he dislike it, let him to our sister,
Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one,
Not to be over-ruled. Idle old man,
That still would manage those authorities
That he hath given away! Now, by my life,
Old fools are babes again; and must be used
With cheques as flatteries,--when they are seen abused. (124-125)

Lorna Balser
3. Goneril
Archetypal Criticism 

            Goneril purposefully displays herself as the archetype of victim.   She begins with this statement: “By day and night he wrongs me; …That sets us all at odds…”  Certainly this also makes King Lear appear to be the archetype of villain.   Goneril’s true intent quickly becomes evident.  She acts as co-antagonist with Regan.  Goneril directs her help to turn King Lear away and to send him to like-minded Regan.  In doing this Goneril is directing the plot action to create the riches to rags archetype for Lear.  This motif is only in the physical sense.  King Lear will experience a dramatic personal growth in part because of this cruel treatment by his daughters.  This personal enrichment comes to light later in the play through a rag to riches storyline.  This storyline advances King Lear into a deep and caring person.   Obviously Goneril’s and Regan’s treatment of the King is important to advance the plot in these directions.

Breanne E Lane
Passage #3
Psychoanalytic/Reader-Response 

            When reading over this passage, I can not help but to see Goneril as cold.  She says that she has been wronged, but from what?  Remember, she gave a good enough answer to receive an inheritance.  One has to ask if she meant what she said or had ulterior motives.  Perhaps, since she is the oldest, when she was younger she was treated as if she always knew better.  However, now that she is a grown up she wants to teach her father a lesson.  Goneril says, “If he dislike it, let him to our sister”, which appears as her unconscious making her remember all the things that went on when she was younger.  Goneril wants to hurt her father in a way that he will not forget, even if that means hurting a sister.   In many families, one child feels like they have been left out or he/she has been mistreated.  However, most of the time the feelings are due to a sibling, and the child tends to see the parents favoring another sibling.  Goneril may see this, which makes her not want to keep all of Lear’s men.

Heather Benton
Psychoanalysis

Although I may not necessarily agree with the psychoanalysis on this passage, it is entirely plausible. To the psychoanalyst, Goneril’s speech, not just only in this passage, could be read as a reaction to her jealousy of her father’s love for Cordelia. This is one example of her determined ill will for her father, which some critics might simply say is consistent with her character throughout the play and does not reflect anything erotic, but Freudian psychoanalysis would not be so naive. Goneril’s commitment to breaking down Lear, as she demonstrates in this passage, is a result of the Electra complex, and all of the action she and Regan take on this course is a result of it as well. We don’t ever hear Cordelia speak like this—we don’t ever hear her speak badly of her father because she is the favorite and she has no reason to be bitter like her sisters. Goneril makes herself into a victim: “By day and night he wrongs me;” This is how she justifies her feelings toward her father, or rather how she projects her jealousy. She manifests this image of Lear’s insanity as dangerous to her so that she can cut him off from any ties of love she might have still had. She expresses that she is united with her sister on this, (“whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one”) and we know that she is not talking about Cordelia. Cordelia is her competition, and their solution for this is to make their father into a helpless fool.

______________________________________

4.  LEAR:
It may be so, my lord.
Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child! Away, away!  (138-139)

Robert Rockett

Enclosed is the latest of attempted undergraduate  criticisms of passage 4 Lear in the fashion of a liberal humanist with a side of rhetorical sauce:
This passage gives us an illustration of how diminishing the sense of one’s identity can cause inherent instabilities in character and emotion to reach epic proportions. In line 265, the king diminishes his own importance saying “my lord.”  Contextually, he addresses Albany but this also echoes the shift in his authority.  The use of anaphora with “hear” in line 266 stresses the outcry of further damnation.  Low addresses to high when calling out to “goddess” and “nature” showing further sublimation of Lear’s identity to the crown he split up and gave away.    Lear curses Gonoril with “sterility” that she (Gonoril) may “never spring a babe to honour her (270-271).”  Lear draws heavily on the fact that his own child does not “honour” him at all.    His calling for her to have a “child of spleen” draws heavily on the Elizabethan belief that the spleen was the cause of all base emotions regarded as brutish and unmannerly.   This draws a comparison of Gonoril to a person ruled by such selfish base emotions. The metaphor of motherhood and sterility carried through the rest of the passage shows the depth of rage Lear reaches, as his own sense of self is being discounted and destroyed.  The metaphor in the passage shifts to an almost biblical sense with the serpent in the garden in lines 279-280.  The serpent’s tooth could be a direct comparison to the evil serpent faced by Adam and Eve.   It could also be read as an echo of the asp Cleopatra used in her famous death scene from another of Shakespeare’s tragedies, calling for Gonoril to be victim of a similar tragic end.  This base curse uttered by the former King, shows us how easily he abandons his initial notions for paternal love for the depths of hate when confronted. The instability he suffers is a true weakness suffered throughout the play.

Alex Atkinson
Archetypal criticism
#4 Lear 

This speech happens at a critical moment in the play, what Aristotle would call the anagnorisis, or moment of realization. It comes fresh on the heels of some well intentioned badgering by the Fool about the nature of Lear and his daughters’ new arrangement. When Goneril enters, she confirms everything that the Fool has just spoken; and Lear is finally forced to deal with the situation that he has put himself in by dividing up his kingdom while he was still alive. In the speech Lear invokes the forces of nature to punish his “thankless child”, perhaps hoping that the divine right of kings to command all things can help him set to right some of the things he’s done wrong. Also with his petulant sense of royal obligation, Lear fits neatly into the mold of a fairy tale monarch; where parallels can be drawn between him many other mythic kings, even those so well known and revered as the God of the Old Testament.     
________________________________________________

6.  Fool
We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee
there's no labouring i' the winter. All that follow
their noses are led by their eyes but blind men; and
there's not a nose among twenty but can smell him
that's stinking. Let go thy hold when a great wheel
runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with
following it: but the great one that goes up the
hill, let him draw thee after. When a wise man
gives thee better counsel, give me mine again: I
would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it.
That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm,
But I will tarry; the fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly:
The knave turns fool that runs away;
The fool no knave, perdy (165-166)

7.   Lear
O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous:
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,--
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both!
If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women's weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall--I will do such things,--
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep
No, I'll not weep:
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad! (175-176)