King Lear
Simplicity and Duplicity
Dating the Play
Shakespeare wrote King Lear in late 1605 or
1606 (RSC)
 The first performance was for King James VI/I at
Whitehall on December 16, 1606.
 Burbage and Armin were the main actors of
Shakespeare’s company, The King’s Men, at that
time. Most likely, Richard Burbage (c. 15671619) played Lear and Robert Armin (15681615) played the Fool.

Sources of the Legend of King Leir
British and Irish mythology refers to a king called Ler,
Leir or Lyr.
 A tale in which a daughter tells her father Leir she loves
him as much as salt (and demonstrates that this means
he is essential to her) first appears about 1136 in
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae.
According to Monmouth, Lear ruled for 60 years.
 Raphael Holinshed retold Monmouth’s story of Lear in his
Chronicles of England, Scotland, Ireland (1577).
According to Holinshed, Lear ruled Britain for 40 years
around 800 BC.
 Edmund Spenser included the story of Lear in Volume II
of The Faerie Queene, published in 1590 (RSC).

The Court of King Lear
King Lear
Goneril
Regan
Cordelia
married to
married to
marries
Duke of Cornwall
King of
France
Duke of Albany
Duke of
Gloucester
Edgar
Earl of
Kent
Edmund
The
Fool
In theory, there are but two
classes of people: Nobles
and Commoners. In practice,
there are a huge number or
gradations of both classes.
These gradations are
thought of as parts of a
Great Chain of Being, which
extends from God down to
the lowest forms of life, and
even to the trees and stones
of the earth.
The Great Chain of Being
This Great Chain, first described
by St. Thomas Aquinas, is what
holds the world together.
The Great Chain is as follows:
The Great Chain of Being
"This metaphor (of ‘the vast chain of being')
served to express the unimaginable plenitude
of God's creation, its unfaltering order, and its
ultimate unity. The chain stretched from the
foot of God's throne to the meanest of
inanimate objects. Every speck of creation was
a link in the chain, and every link except those
at the two extremities was simultaneously
bigger and smaller than another: there could
be no gap.... “
God
Angels
Kings/Queens
Archbishops
Dukes/Duchesses
Bishops
Marquises/Marchionesses
Earls/Countesses
Viscounts/Viscountesses
Barons/Baronesses
Abbots/Deacons
Knights/Local Officials
Ladies-in-Waiting
Priests/Monks
Squires
Pages
Messengers
Merchants/Shopkeepers
Tradesmen
Yeomen Farmers
Soldiers/Town Watch
Household Servants
Tenant Farmers
Shephards/Herders
Beggars
Actors
Thieves/Pirates
Gypsies
Animals
Birds
Worms
Plants
Rocks
(Tillyard)
Lear and Fool
Lear’s Fool
The nameless Fool of King Lear is a natural, a simpleton
inspired with the intuitive wisdom of nature.
His stock joke is to engage another character in dialogue
and demonstrate the folly of the other. He tries to help Lear
recognize his folly with his raillery and common sense.
The fool’s relationship with Lear, touchingly personal at
times, vanishes with Lear’s sanity in the storm. The fool’s
disappearance may indicate his sanity, or at least his
survival instinct.
Parallel Plots

The Shakespearean practice of complementing
the main plot with a subplot reaches its fullest
development in King Lear.

The source of the overplot is a Celtic tale about
a father with kind and unkind daughters.

The underplot, about a father with kind and
unkind sons, is drawn from Sidney’s Arcadia
(Levin).
Lear and Gloucester
The juxtaposition of these two characters
develops the following themes:
 Authority
 Folly
 Eyes, sight and insight
 Loyalty and ingratitude
 Parents and children
 Inheritance
 Justice
 Nothing
Edgar, Lear and Gloucester
Edgar and Edmund
The contrast between Gloucester’s two sons
illustrates these themes:
 Inheritance
 Identity
 Nature and nurture
 Parents and children
 Fortune
 Loyalty and ingratitude
 Love, self-love and false love
 Justice
Regan, Goneril and Cordelia
The differences and similarities among Lear’s three daughters develop
additional themes:
Authority
 Loyalty
 Crowns
 Division
 Civil disorder
 Politics
 Hospitality
 Warmth and cold
 Parents and children

Corruption of servants
 Inheritance
 Ingratitude
 Love: Self-love, false love
 Age and youth
 Sin
 Truth
 Guilt
 Folly

Why teach King Lear?
many critics, King Lear is the greatest
of all tragedies (Kermode 1297)
 The trial scene and Gloucester’s attempted
suicide seem modern to playgoers used to
Theatre of the Absurd.
 The themes touch the essence of what it
is to be human, here and now as well as
in Elizabethan England.
 To
Themes in King Lear range from youth to age, wealth to
poverty, authority to vulnerability, sanity to madness,
cruelty to kindness, loyalty to ingratitude, everything to
nothing.
Authority
 Crowns
 Legitimacy
 Division
 Civil disorder
 Justice
 Fortune
 Politics
 Religion
 Loyalty
 Hospitality
 Warmth and cold
 The poor and poverty
 The elements
 Parents and children

Corruption of servants
 Inheritance
 Ingratitude
 Nature and nurture
 Identity
 Love: Self-love and false love
 Age and youth
 Eyes, sight and insight
 Madness and sanity
 Sin
 Truth
 Guilt
 Nothing
 The worst







“First there is mere existence, the inanimate class: the elements,
liquids, and metals.
But in spite of this common lack of life there is a vast difference of
virtue; water is nobler than earth, the ruby than the topaz, gold
than brass….
Next there is existence and life, the vegetative class, where again
the oak is nobler than the bramble.
Next there is existence, life and feeling, the sensitive class. In it
there are three grades….The three classes lead up to man, who has
not only existence, life and feeling, but understanding: he sums up
in himself the total faculties of earthly phenomena.…
But as there had been an inanimate class, so to balance it there
must be a purely rational or spiritual. These are the angels, linked to
man by community of the understanding, but freed from
simultaneous attachment to the lower faculties….
Now, although the creatures are assigned their precise place in the
chain of being, there is at the same time the possibility of change.
The chain is also a ladder.…There is a progression in the way the
elements nourish plants, the fruits of plants beasts, and the flesh of
beasts men. And this is all one with the tendency of man upwards
toward God“ (Tillyard, 23, 25-6).
Works Cited
Kermode, Frank, ed. King Lear. The Riverside Shakespeare.
Ed. Herschel Baker and others. 2nd ed. 1297-1302.
Levin, Harry. “General Introduction.” The Riverside
Shakespeare. Ed. Herschel Baker and others. 2nd ed. 125.
Royal Shakespeare Society. “King Lear: Shakespeare’s
Sources.” http://www.rsc.org.uk/lear/about/sources.html
“The Great Chain of Being.”
http://jackytappet.tripod.com/chain.html
Tillyard, E.M.W. The Elizabethan World Picture. London:
Chatto, 1960.