King Lear = Absurdist theatre?

In class we have been considering how Lear can be labelled as tragic, absurd or grotesque. Ahead of Tuesday's lessons I have been exploring the view that 'King Lear' is ultimately absurdist - that it is a play about man's reaction to the fact that the world is devoid of meaning.

Here are some of the ideas we have already discussed in class in a mindmap:

Useful links:
http://www.philosophy-index.com/existentialism/absurd.php
http://www.stjohns-chs.org/english/shakespeare/STUDENTPAPERS/scully.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings

Below, I have written an essay discussing Lear as absurdist theatre which we will critique and improve in class - this is by no means a perfect essay and I'm sure you will notice some big gaps and issues with it!

‘The existence that confronts Lear is absurd and beyond rational thought and none can escape it.’

By exploring the presentation of the human condition in the ‘King Lear’, evaluate this view.

Although entitled a ‘tragedy’ ‘King Lear’ is, to modern audiences especially, an absurdist piece of theatre. On the surface it appears to portray the demise of a fool-hardy King who fails to realise his tragic flaw until it is too late and thus loses not only his kingdom but also those loyal to him and his dignity. This interpretation of the play, as tragedy, fails to address the fact that so much of the play is about the world not making sense - the play shows not only it’s protagonist going mad but calls to ‘the Gods’ going unheard leaving mankind isolated in a world with ‘nothing’ in terms of meaning.  

An absurdist reading of the play can make sense of a text which otherwise is nonsensical and unwieldy. It is important to note that for centuries Nahum Tate’s revised version of ‘King Lear’, in which Edgar and Cordelia are romantically joined at the end promising a youthful union and future for the kingdom, was performed. Clearly there was a need to provide meaning (that good will overcome evil) to a play which is otherwise so hard to comprehend. For Shakespeare’s and Tate’s contemporary audiences this  nihilistic view of a world where appeals to God go unheard would have been philosophically terrifying. During the strict Christian times of James I, it was against the law to discuss the Christian God on stage - hence the vague reference to Roman Gods and Fortune. However, we can still appreciate the sense of bewilderment the bleak world view illustrated in ‘King Lear’ would have had on these first audiences.

Today’s audience sees the play in a different light: following the World Wars of the twentieth century, the failure and brutality of patriarchal totalitarianism seen across the world and the resulting existential angst the play now holds a mirror of what many perceive the human condition to be. In other words, many would argue that for a modern audience the play makes more sense than it did originally, and if it is not more comforting it at least reflects mankind’s struggle to understand the world. As Lear himself states ‘When we are born, we cry that we are come/ To this great stage of fools’ a quote that paints a picture of despair similar to Munch’s Scream and also highlights the artificiality or rather theatricality of our existence. The use of the word ‘stage’ not only reminds the audience that they are watching theatre but also makes us question our own lives as mere theatre - a show devoid of actual meaning. This clearly links to the overarching themes of madness in the play and whether or not one agrees with National Theatre actor Simon Russell Beale that the character of Lear is a study of dementia we must agree that Lear’s actions at the start and increasingly throughout the play are those of a man who is not of sound mind.

James I was a strong believer in the divine right of Kings - that only God, not the population, could judge the King and that the sovereign’s power came from the ‘Grace of God’. Lear’s decision to ‘divide in three our kingdom’ would seem not only a ‘darker purpose’ in that is was secret but also that is is a sinister and perhaps blasphemous act. This initial moment of madness in Lear could be a sign of his refuting God as meaning in the play as he has taken the power to bestow the right of rule onto others. However, Lear’s desire to ‘unburdened crawl toward death’ might suggest that this denial of God or meaning leaves him ‘unburdened’, lighter or freer. If this is the case, it is clear that this liberation is not a wholly positive thing and signals the motif of nothingness that is woven throughout the play. If the play is a tragedy, this is Lear’s hamartia or weakness - his belief that he can lighten his load of one meaning (his obligation to rule) while still relying on similar codes of obedience from his children. By Lear abdicating he surrenders himself to nothing and, as he soon realises ‘nothing can be made of nothing’. Indeed, it is the fool he points to out Lear that ‘thou art nothing’, ‘an O without figure’. There is a paradox here, the naming of ‘nothing’ or ‘O’ makes Lear at once insubstantial and also a thing or concept of philosophical weight - it is this nothingness that becomes perhaps the most easy thing to be certain of Lear. This is where the absurdity of the play lies.

Two scenes best illustrate an absurdist reading of the play: Lear in the storm and Gloucester’s failed suicide attempt. In the storm, Lear becomes aware of the absurd, meaninglessness of existence. At this point he is exposed and isolated - reduced to mere mortal and his language reflects this reduction. His speech in Act 3, Scene 2 is erratic, spilling over lines and at times leaving lines of verse incomplete - as if Lear is himself running out of steam. Early in the scene he calls not only the storm to be violent but further for it to prevent the continuance of mankind: ‘Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once/ That make ungrateful man.’ Lear’s language is breaking (running over lines and leaving some incomplete) at the same time as he is calling on fertility and reproduction to ‘crack’ and ‘spill’. One could argue that at this point he is still unaware of his own position and the fact his speech is full of imperatives directed at the uncontrollable elements show that although he may describe himself as ‘slave’ to the elements’ he still tries to control them. This futile longing for control or order is what highlights Lear’s madness in this scene. Further, whereas previously he abdicates his own power or meaning now he seeks to do so for humanity itself.

Gloucester another character who can be seen as a tragic hero, is made absurd by Edgar’s trickery. A suicide would have given his life meaning or at least allowed him to give it some meaning and define himself as tragic - a man who realises his grave mistake and the consequences of it. That said, in his speech before his fall his appeal to the Gods is contradictory: he speaks of the futility of ‘quarrel[ing] with your great opposeless wills’ at this point both claiming his right to choose to die now and admitting his powerless to resist their ‘opposeless’ power. Although the audience can see that it is human intervention (on behalf of Edgar) that prevents the suicide, Gloucester continues to believe it is the work of Gods. The audience find this ridiculous and this has already been forewarned by Edmond who mocks the notion that we are made ‘fools by heavenly compulsion’. It could be argued that this ordering of events is used by Shakespeare to prepare us for the demise of the old, superstitious regime in favour for Edmond’s belief that humans are in charge of their own future and not victim to fortune. Indeed, like Lear perhaps Gloucester’s hamartia lies not in his naive trust in Edmond rather than Edgar but instead in his refusal to accept the world as without meaning.

Gloucester’s metaphorical blindness which precedes his actual blinding by Cornwall is a key theme in the play. If his blind belief in fortune and the Gods is his flaw, he only becomes a true tragic character when he realises the true state of the world and this point of anagnorisis comes when he meets Lear later in Act 4. Here he remarks that he sees the truth of the world ‘feelingly’ an adverb that denotes not only how deeply he now understands but also how he does so - he is a blind man who has physically fallen to a realisation and ‘feels’ the emotional consequences of this realisation deeply. Yet again, we return to the motif of nothingness when Gloucester explains ‘This great world/ Shall so wear out to naught’. Here Gloucester predicts the final moments of the play as, as Lear requested, humanity seems to erased in a hurried rush of deaths - interestingly all the women die so hope of reproduction is also removed. The depressing contrast between ‘great’ and ‘naught’ illustrates Gloucester and Lear’s own change in status but also their change of perspective - what they thought was great is worthless and futile. Further, the idea that the world ‘shall so wear out’ suggests that it is not a passive victim of the Gods but rather part of it’s own undoing or ending as Lear and Gloucester are.

If we accept this interpretation of the play it seems to present life as a pointless punishment, a view that Kent’s lines in Act 5 Scene 3 uphold. When Kent describes keeping Lear alive as a cruel act (‘He hates him/ That would upon the rack of this tough world/ stretch him out longer’) he describes Lear’s life as torture, the instrument of the ‘rack’ is something that the Jacobean audience would be well familiar with. This suggestion that life in on ‘this great stage of fools’ is one of pain and endurance has already been suggested by Edgar. For him, the life of one in this absurd position is one of kenoma or spiritual emptiness. Edgar asks ‘Who is’t can say/ I am at the worst?/ I am worse than e’er I was’. Edgar’s question to the Gods will go unanswered and as such he answers it himself. In a world where meaning is lost, where Gods cannot be called on man must answer his own questions and soon realises he cannot. ‘King Lear’ presents us with a world devoid of meaning which is reduced to ‘nothing’ or ‘naught’ and this life is a torture.

As mentioned above this absurd and nihilistic interpretation of the play and the human condition might resonate with a modern audience. However, for Shakespeare’s contemporaries the consequences of admitting this interpretation were blasphemous and too much to bear. This modern reading sees the play as a tragedy but not one of fathers failing to manage their children - this is an absurd tragedy which asks us all to understand our own place in a world devoid of meaning. An absurd tragedy that goes beyond the traffic of the stage and encompasses the audience in it as we too populate ‘this great stage of fools’.