255
sense of waste that it might
have possessed in another
Shakespearean tragedy.
Lear as tragic hero
Lear’s description of himself
as “a man / More sinned against
than sinning” (3.2.59–60) hints
at his passivity in the play.
In comparison to Edmond, who
plots his father’s death and orders
the deaths of Lear and Cordelia,
Goneril, who will use her lover to
kill her husband and who poisons
her sister, and Cornwall, who
plucks out Gloucester’s eyes,
Lear’s acts of banishment (although
they constitute a kind of social
death) will come to seem relatively
mild. Throughout acts three and
four, when Hamlet or Macbeth
are acting furiously to bring about
their own destruction, Lear exists
on the margins of the plot, in the
liminal space of the heath. In his
mental confusion, he identifies
the behavior of a mad beggar as
the pattern for his own paternal
betrayal, and muses on the dangers
of female sexuality and the
hypocrisy of the powerful. In this
respect, King Lear is a remarkably
philosophical tragedy, in which the
plot pauses whenever it encounters
the protagonist. Nothing that Lear
does after the opening scene has
any real impact on the action.Sins of the father
So what “sins” might Lear be
blamed for in that opening scene?
For Shakespeare’s audience, his
act of “unburdening” himself by
giving up his throne would have
been deeply suspect. In a society
with no expectation of retirement,
the voluntary renunciation of power
would have seemed to undermine
the respect for age and male
authority that was so deeply
embedded in the culture. Kingship
was also believed to be divinely
appointed—hence it was an act
of sacrilege to attempt to sever
king from crown. Also potentially
damaging is Lear’s decision to
divide the kingdom. Myths
abounded about the catastrophic
consequences of such division,
leading to bloody civil war and
fratricide, and Shakespeare was
writing during the reign of James I,
a king seeking to strengthen ties
between his two hostile kingdoms,
England and Scotland.
Ultimately, however, it is Lear’s
disavowal of Cordelia that brings
the King to his knees. Lear
estranges himself from the one ❯❯THE KING’S MAN
Meantime we shall express
our darker purpose.
Give me the map there.
Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom
King Lear
Act 1, Scene 1Paul Scofield
In a 2004 poll of RSC actors,
Paul Scofield’s Lear was voted
the greatest Shakespearean
performance of all time. Then
aged 40, Scofield appeared in
Peter Brook’s 1962 staging
of King Lear. Critic Kenneth
Tynan described Brook’s
production as revolutionary
in its depiction of Lear not as
“the booming, righteously
indignant Titan of old, but
an edgy, capricious old man,
intensely difficult to live
with.” Scofield’s Lear was a
very human depiction of the
king, for whom our pity is not
automatically to be granted.
In 1971, Scofield played
Lear in Brook’s film adaptation
of the play, and in 2002,
having himself reached the
age of 80, he starred in an
acclaimed radio version.
Lear was one of many
Shakespearean roles that
Scofield took on in a career
that spanned 65 years.
He appeared infrequently
on screen, despite many
approaches from Hollywood,
preferring the relative
anonymity of the stage and
radio, but won an Academy
Award for his portrayal of
Sir Thomas More in the 1966
film A Man for All Seasons.O madam, my old heart is
cracked, it’s cracked.
Gloucester
Act 2, Scene 1