King Lear: The Power of Language/The Language of Power.
King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s darkest plays; darker than Measure for Measure, darker perhaps even than Titus Andronicus. So dark is it, that from 1681-1838 it was performed only in a tamed, even sedated version by Nahum Tate. The particular cruelty of King Lear is indicated in Shakespeare’s alterations to his sources; in Holinshead’s Chronicles Cordelia wins the war and restores Lear to the throne (although she does later hang herself). This darkness of tone is accompanied and indeed reinforced by a studied vagueness of time and geography.
The relationship of power and language is prominent from the beginning. Lear is at the height of his power, and plans two final acts which will settle the future of the Kingdom, of his youngest and favourite daughter Cordelia, and himself. As might be considered typical of family events, tensions are exposed, and Lear’s plan to divide the Kingdom between his daughters, marry Cordelia to the Duke of Burgundy and settle down to retirement in their third of the Kingdom is shattered. The power of language to deceive is the first and most obvious point made: Goneril and Regan are willing to say whatever they feel necessary to obtain their promised share, their empty flattery receives its reward, but Cordelia’s honesty precipitates disaster.
Goneril claims to love Lear “more than eye sight”, “A love that makes breath poor and speech unable, Beyond all manner of so much I love you.” (1:1:62-63). Regan declares “I am alone felicitate in your dear highness’ love” (1:1:77-78). In successive asides Cordelia allows the audience access to her greater integrity (or resistance) “What shall Cordelia speak? Love and be silent” (1:1:61) “Then poor Cordelia, And yet not so, since I am sure my love’s more ponderous than my tongue.” (1:1:75)[1]. Cordelia gives her own comment on the deceptive power of language: “that glib and oily art to speak and purpose not” (1:1:213-214).
Her fears are justified when her Father turns to her and asks: “What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.” Her reply is not best calculated to please him: “Nothing my Lord” (1:1:84-85). Cordelia’s inability (or unwillingness) to join with her sisters in this charade so angers Lear that he disinherits and banishes her. His loyal servant Kent, who defends her, is also banished. Lear’s power is total, and, as many commentators have noted, used unjustly. Part of this power is his ability to name effectively: his word is law. This power to name is expressed in his offer of Cordelia to the Duke of Burgundy: “Unfriended, new adopted to our hate, Dowered with our curse, and strangered with our oath” (1:1:206-207). Lear combines here the authority of the father with the (similarly regarded) authority of the King[2]. He has already delivered the ‘curse’ to which he refers:
Let it be so. Thy truth then be thy dower,
For by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecat, and the night,
By all the operation of the orbs,
From whom we do exist and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from me for ever. (1:1:106-114)
Lear clearly and confidently employs language to exercise power, invoking the goddess Hecat[3], the sun, night and the stars in his support. At this stage, and for the last time, Lear is in control of the world through his use of language. Over the course of the play, Lear’s language becomes decreasingly able to shape reality. While Lear exercises the language of power from a position of power his language can impose his will on the world. Once he abdicates power his language is powerful only in its emotional resonances. It can excite the pity of his companions and of the audience, but not direct, or even accurately describe, the course of events. When Lear says ‘by the power that made me, I tell you all her wealth’ (1:1:205-206) he refers to ‘the Gods’, but the power that made him could be construed as Royal, not Divine. Kent has already denied Lear’s access to the Gods: ‘Now by Apollo, King, thou swear’st thy gods in vain’ (1:1:158). Soon Regan will say ‘I pray you, father, being weak, seem so’ (2:4:190).
As he had cursed Cordelia, so he is driven to curse Goneril (1:4:244-275). Regan is sure that he will do the same to her ‘when the rash mood is on’ (2:4:158). By 2:4:267-275 his anger has become a futile, childish rage in the face of his daughters’ resistance:
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 what; 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.
It is during this speech that the storm begins. Lear’s power of naming things as they are having been already removed or given away, he can no longer frame in words or even imagine the ‘revenges’ he desires.
Words still exercise their power to control the perception of the world over the blinded Gloucester (who states frankly that “‘tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind” (4:1:47)). Edgar, his loyal son, impersonates a madman through a series of linguistic tics which may have been recognised by the audience as parts of a hoax[4]. Edgar convinces Gloucester that he is at the edge of a cliff through a descriptive passage which is among the most remarked in the play. This feat of linguistic power is entirely and visibly mendacious[5]. The audience is shown the deception, and Gloucester prepares to plunge to his death in the most extraordinary of several moments in which King Lear veers perilously close to black comedy. Edgar still continues to deceive his father, convincing him that he has been saved miraculously. He soon adopts a ridiculous yokel accent in order to dispatch Oswald, and does not recover his identity until he challenges his half-brother Edmund, now Earl of Gloucester:
What’s he that speaks for Edmund, Earl of Gloucester?
Himself. What say’st thou to him?
Draw thy sword,
That, if my speech offend thy noble heart
Thy arm may do thee justice; here is mine. (5:3:116-119)
Edmund responds in defence of his lies:
This sword, this arm, and my best spirits are bent
To prove upon thy heart, whereto I speak
Thou liest. (5:3:131-133)
The conflict is expressed in terms of speech, it is what is said to whom and by whom that is in question, it is a matter of honour. Edgar’s deceptions were forced upon him, and most critics see them as ‘redemptive’ in their effect on his father. Edmund’s, on the other hand, which start as soon as we meet him alone in 1:2, are solely the machinations of the Elizabethan/Jacobean ‘malcontent’, directed towards his own advancement. Even Kent, who repeatedly offends through his bluntness, is forced by circumstances to disguise himself, deceive about his identity, and negotiate with the invading French forces. Perhaps the play does take place in a time of astrological upheaval as Gloucester states in 1:2:95-108, a time in which even the honest are driven to deception in order to preserve the good. For Jonathan Dollimore ‘King Lear is above all a play about power, property and inheritance.’[6] While Lear is about power it is also about ‘human nature’, the influence of the ‘Gods’, social and familial duty, sight, and renunciation. Shakespeare often works with competing imperatives, and in Lear the various relationships between language and power, and the use of language to do harm and to deceive seem frequently in play. In his madness, Lear realises ‘they are not men o’ their words. They told me I was everything; ‘tis a lie’ (4:5:101-102).
As George Orwell wrote:
Lear renounces his throne but expects everyone to continue treating him as a King. He does not see that if he surrenders power, other people will take advantage of his weakness: also that those who flatter him most grossly, i.e. Regan and Goneril, are exactly the ones who will turn against him.[7]
King Lear challenges the audience’s expectations of divine or poetic justice, and significantly interrogates the relationship of language with power. In Lear’s last scene, mourning for Cordelia, he achieves a simplicity of expression wholly touching, and entirely lacking the bombast of previous speeches. In the final speech of the play, Edgar (in the Quarto, Albany) enunciates reaction against the false language which has poisoned the body politic. Now we must ‘Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.’
[1] In the Quarto (1608) ‘richer’ for ‘ponderous’. This makes a difference; dropping the more obvious rich/poor opposition and indicating love as being weighty (with a hint of thoughtful) and difficult to express; also that her tongue is slow, awkward, heavy. All citations are from Rene Weis, (ed.) King Lear: A Parallel Text Edition, Longman, London, (1993). Act, Scene and Line numbers from the Folio version (1623) unless stated otherwise.
[2] For a good discussion of patriarchal authority in the play, see Kathleen McLuskie, ‘The Patriarchal Bard’, in Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism, (eds) Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, Manchester University Press, Manchester, (1996), (pp. 88-108).
[3] Sometimes ‘Hecate’, associated with witchcraft, also the goddess of the moon and hunting (like Diana), and Hades, or Hell.
[4] ‘Poor Tom’ seems to be an authentic cry of the Bedlam beggar. The names of Edgar’s demons derive from Samuel Harsnett, A Declaration of Several Popish Impostures, London, (1603), an exposure of a fraudulent case of spirit possession.
[5] See also Sheldon P. Zitner, ‘King Lear and its Language’, in Some Facets of King Lear, (eds) Rosalie L. Colie and F.T. Flahiff, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, (1974), p.21.
[6] Jonathan Dollimore, Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York and London, (1989), p.197.
[7] George Orwell, ‘Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool’, in King Lear: A Casebook, (ed.) Frank Kermode, MacMillan, London, (1969), p.160.