How did the court audience of 1606 respond to Shakespeare’s most disturbing tragedy? This engaging book provides in-depth discussion of the various influences a contemporary audience would have brought to interpreting ‘King Lear’. How did people think about the world, about God, about sin, about kings, about civilized conduct? Historical, literary, political and sociological backgrounds are explained within the biblical-moral matrices by which the play would have been judged. This book links real life in the 1600s to Lear’s world on the stage. Learn about the social hierarchy, gender relationships, parenting and family dynamics, court corruption, class tensions, the literary profile of the time, the concept of tragedy – and all the subversions, transgressions, and oppositions that made the play an unsettling picture of a disintegrating world in free fall.
How did the court audience of 1606 respond to Shakespeare’s most disturbing tragedy? This engaging book provides in-depth discussion of the various influences a contemporary audience would have brought to interpreting ‘King Lear’. How did people think about the world, about God, about sin, about kings, about civilized conduct? Historical, literary, political and sociological backgrounds are explained within the biblical-moral matrices by which the play would have been judged. This book links real life in the 1600s to Lear’s world on the stage. Learn about the social hierarchy, gender relationships, parenting and family dynamics, court corruption, class tensions, the literary profile of the time, the concept of tragedy – and all the subversions, transgressions, and oppositions that made the play an unsettling picture of a disintegrating world in free fall.
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Overview
How did the court audience of 1606 respond to Shakespeare’s most disturbing tragedy? This engaging book provides in-depth discussion of the various influences a contemporary audience would have brought to interpreting ‘King Lear’. How did people think about the world, about God, about sin, about kings, about civilized conduct? Historical, literary, political and sociological backgrounds are explained within the biblical-moral matrices by which the play would have been judged. This book links real life in the 1600s to Lear’s world on the stage. Learn about the social hierarchy, gender relationships, parenting and family dynamics, court corruption, class tensions, the literary profile of the time, the concept of tragedy – and all the subversions, transgressions, and oppositions that made the play an unsettling picture of a disintegrating world in free fall.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783083749 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Anthem Press |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2015 |
| Series: | Anthem Perspectives in Literature |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 306 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Dr Keith Linley is an academic, educator and experienced A-level examiner. He has taught English at both secondary and post-secondary levels.
Read an Excerpt
King Lear in Context
The Cultural Background
By Keith Linley
Wimbledon Publishing Company
Copyright © 2015 Keith LinleyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78308-374-9
CHAPTER 1
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT: AN OVERVIEW
Elizabeth I died in 1603 and James VI of Scotland became James I of England. King Lear was written between 1603 and 1606, so falls into the Jacobean period (after Jacobus, Latin for James). In the wider European literary and political contexts, the period is the waning of the High Renaissance. Historians today call it Early Modern because many features of it are recognizably modern while being early in the evolutions that shaped our world.
The new king, ruling until 1625, was of the Scottish family the Stuarts. They were a dynastic disaster. None was an effective king and kingship is a key theme in Lear. James, a learned man but flawed king, shirked the routines of work government involved, disliked contact with his people, drank heavily, was extravagant, impulsive and tactless, constantly in debt, and in perpetual conflict with Parliament. He was a hard-line right-winger in religion and backed the repression of Catholics and Puritans. Sir Anthony Weldon, courtier and politician, banished from court for a book criticizing the Scots, dubbed him 'the wisest fool in Christendom'. The epithet captures something of the discrepancy between his writings on political theory and his practice as a lazy man only intermittently engaged with his role. London celebrated with bonfires when he succeeded peacefully. His apparent engagement with regal duty generated hope, reflected in the mass of appalling, sycophantic eulogistic verse published. During the 15 March 1603 royal procession through the city two St Paul's choristers sang of London as Troynovant (New Troy), no longer a city but a bridal chamber, suggesting a mystical union and new hope.
This sense of promise soon evaporated as his failings and inconsistencies emerged. King Lear is underpinned by concerns about kingship and rule (or misrule) of self and others. Misrule of self is a theme running through all Shakespeare's plays, and in Lear the major characters, even Cordelia, are guilty of misrule of themselves; each transgress in some way.
The previous monarch, Elizabeth I, a Tudor, was much loved and respected and had been a strong ruler, indeed strong enough to suppress the addressing of many problems which by James's time had become irresolvable. The Tudors (Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I), ruling 1485–1603, brought relative stability after the turmoil of the Wars of the Roses (though there were various short-lived rebellions against them). Questions of succession, the nature of rulers, the use and limits of monarchical power, the influence of court and the qualities of courtiers, were matters that concerned people throughout the period, and are part of the contexts of Lear. Religion was a major area of conflict. Catholic opposition to the new Church of England and Puritan desires for freedom from tight central control created a constant battleground. The effects on society and individual morality of the wealth that the new capitalism and the expansion of trade were creating also worried Jacobean writers. The new individualism, another context, emerges in the self-centred ruthlessness of Goneril, Regan, Edmund and Oswald.
Henry VIII's great achievement (and cause of trouble) was breaking with the Catholic Church of Rome and establishing an independent English church. This inaugurated a period of seismic change called the English Reformation. In 1536 the first Act of Supremacy made Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England. Its rituals and doctrines remained essentially Catholic until the reforms of his son Edward aligned it with the Protestant movements on the Continent. There was some limited alliance with the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther, but in many ways the English went their own way. Monasteries and convents were dissolved, the infrastructural features of Catholicism banished, altars stripped of ornament (leaving only the cross and flanking candles), churches emptied of statues and relics, and some murals whitewashed over. New services and prayers were in English rather than Latin, new English translations of the Bible began to appear and there was a Book of Common Prayer to be used in all parish churches. Holy shrines, and saints' days were done away with as idolatrous superstitions. The vicar was to be the only intermediary between a person and God. After a brief, fiery, bloody return to Catholicism under Mary I (1553–58), Elizabeth I succeeded and the bedding-in of the new church continued. The freedom of a reformed English religion, supposedly stripped back to its simple original faith, encouraged the rise of more extreme reformist Protestant sects (not always to the liking of the infant Established Church). These groups, called Non-conformists, Independents or Dissenters, included Puritans, Calvinists and Presbyterians – all Protestant, but with doctrinal differences. Some eccentric sects emerged too, such as the Anabaptists, Brownists and the Family of Love. Religious differences, tensions between different faiths and disagreements within the same faith are persistently present at this time, but despite all the official changes to religion, the essential beliefs in sin, virtue, salvation, the centrality of Christ and the ubiquity of the Devil (the idea that he was everywhere, looking to tempt man) were the same as they always had been, as were the beliefs that sin was followed by punishment and possible damnation and that the world, in decline, would shortly come to an end.
Also persistent is the political discourse on kingship. Elizabeth I (adoringly nicknamed 'Gloriana' after her identification with a character in Spenser's The Faerie Queene) ruled 1558–1603, a time long enough to establish her as an icon, particularly as she headed up strong opposition (and victory) against the Spanish. External threats repulsed, the regime was consolidated (though relentlessly under covert attack by Catholicism), but the Elizabethan-Jacobean period was one of unstoppable internal changes, gradually altering the profile and mood of society. Religion, commerce, growing industrialization, increase of manufacture, social relationships, kingship and rule were all in flux. One feature of the period was the unceasing rise in prices, particularly of food, bringing about a decline in the living standards of the poor, for wages did not rise. The rich and the rising middle class could cope with inflation, but the state of the poor deteriorated. Enclosure of arable land (very labour intensive) and its conversion to sheep farming (requiring less labour), raised unemployment among the 'lower orders' or 'baser sort', who constituted the largest proportion (between 80–85 per cent) of the four to five million population. Rising numbers of poor put greater burdens on Poor Relief in small, struggling rural communities and added to the elite's fear of some monumental uprising of the disenchanted. Most of the population worked on the land, though increasing numbers were moving to the few existing cities. Later ages, regarding the Elizabethan era as a 'golden age', talked of 'Merry England' – it was not, except for a small section of rich, privileged aristocrats. Also enjoying greater luxury and comfort were canny merchants (making fortunes from trading in exotic goods from the 'New Worlds' of Asia and the Americas) and the increasingly wealthy, acquisitive 'middling sort' manufacturing luxury goods for the aristocracy. Awareness of the state of the poor and the governing class's emotional detachment from that deteriorating condition is a feature of Lear and reflects contemporary hardships. On Sunday 13 March 1603, the Puritan divine Richard Stock delivered a Lent sermon at the Pulpit Cross in St Paul's churchyard, commenting:
I have lived here some few years, and every year I have heard an exceeding outcry of the poor that they are much oppressed of the rich of this city. [...] All or most charges are raised [...] wherein the burden is more heavy upon a mechanical or handicraft poor man than upon an alderman.
The Jacobean period was quickly perceived as declining from the high points of Elizabeth's time, with worsening of problems she had been unable or unwilling to rectify during her reign. Economic difficulties, poverty, social conflict, religious dissent and political tensions relating to the role and nature of monarchy and the role and authority of Parliament all remained unresolved. Charismatic, strong rulers (like Elizabeth – and Lear) inspire loyalty though often through fear. Emerging problems are ignored or masked because the ruler disallows discussion of them and councillors fear to raise them. Elizabeth, for example, passed several laws making it treason to even discuss who might succeed her. Such a ruler's death exposes the true state of things. Many of these features are reflected in the contexts of Lear. The plan to 'divest' himself of rule, 'interest of territory, cares of state', and the love test, expose flawed thinking and suggest his decision making in general may be faulty. It exposes and activates the fault lines in his family. His strength as ruler and father is a weakness. Too controlling, too dogmatic, too unyielding, obstinately reluctant to go back on his words, especially those rashly spoken, Lear's behaviour raises the question, often asked in James's time, of the place that councillors, personal advisers and Parliament should have in making state decisions.
Strong, purposeful central rule dwindled under James into rule by whim and capricious diktat. His court became more decadent and detached from the rest of the population than his predecessor's. Commerce and manufacture expanded rapidly, triggering a rise in the middle class that provided and serviced the new trades and crafts. Attitudes to religion and freedom from church authority began to develop into resistance, and science began to displace old superstitions and belief in magic. Like all times of transition, the Jacobean period and the seventeenth century in general were exciting for some but unsettling for most, profitable for a few but a struggle for the majority. As always the rich found ways to become richer, and the poor became poorer. Gradually the disadvantaged found men to speak up for them in the corridors of power, in the villages of England and the overcrowded streets of the cities. King Lear, a Renaissance de casibus tragedy concerned with the fall of a powerful man, is also a typical Jacobean play – dark, cynical, satirical, violent, psychological, exploring character and motive. It is also much concerned with sin, punishment, repentance, redemption and reconciliation.
The first known audience was the court. The new reign and new century were still much overshadowed by the past. Just as Lear's past relationship with his daughters and Gloucester's with his bastard son influence their present, so past events resonated in Whitehall Palace on 26 December 1606.
CHAPTER 2THE ELIZABETHAN WORLD ORDER: FROM DIVINITY TO DUST
Strict hierarchy (everything having its place according to its importance in God's order) and organic harmony (everything being part of a whole and having a function to perform) were the overriding principles of the broad orthodox background to how the audience thought their universe was structured (cosmology), how they saw God and religion (theology), and how their place in the order of things was organized (sociology). The disorders and disharmonies upsetting roles and expectations in King Lear make it a deeply unsettling threat to established order. It is a play in which the world seems to be falling apart.
Everyone was fairly clear where they were in the universal order, the Great Chain of Being. There were three domains: Heaven, Earth and Hell. God ruled all, was omnipotent (all-powerful) and omniscient (all-knowing). Man was inferior to God, Christ, the Holy Ghost, all the angels, apostles and saints, the Virgin Mary and all the blessed, but superior to all animals, birds, fish, plants and minerals. God ruled Heaven, kings ruled on Earth (and princes, dukes, counts, etc.) and fathers ruled families, like God at home. The chain stretched in descending order of importance from God, through all the hierarchies of existence, to the very bottom – from divinity to dust – all interconnected as contributory parts of God's creation. Each link was a separate group of beings, creatures or objects, connected to the one before and the one after, semi-separate, dependent but partly independent, separate yet part of something greater. Each link had a hierarchy. The human link contained three different ranks: the 'better sort' (monarchs, nobles, gentry), the 'middling sort' (merchants, farmers) and the 'baser sort' or 'lower orders' (artisans, peasants, beggars). The word 'class' was not used then, but these ranks are equivalent to our upper, middle and lower classes.
Cosmology
Astronomically, medieval and Renaissance man thought of Creation, the cosmos, as an all-enveloping Godliness that incorporated Heaven, the human universe and Hell. The universe was thought of as a series of transparent crystal spheres, one inside the other, and each containing a planet. It was a geocentric model – the Earth in the middle, encased in its sphere, enveloped by the Moon's sphere, then Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, like the rings of an onion.
The Ptolemaic system
Each planet and sphere circled the Earth at different orbital angles and different speeds. After Saturn came the firmament – the fixed stars (divided into 12 seasonal zodiac sectors). Outside this were 'the waters above the firmament' (Genesis 1:7). The tenth sphere, the Primum Mobile (First Mover), drove the spheres and then came the all-surrounding Empyrean the domain that was all God's and all God (i.e., Heaven). Here He was accompanied by the angels and the blessed. The set of concentric crystal balls was imagined by some to hang from the lip of Heaven by a gold chain. This cosmological organization was the Ptolemaic system formulated by the second century AD Graeco-Egyptian astronomer/geographer Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus). In Tudor times his Cosmographia was still being recommended by Sir Thomas Elyot for boys to learn about the spheres.
A man could see the stars, sometimes some of the planets, but not beyond, his vision being blocked by the 'waters'. As the Empyrean, the destination for the virtuous saved, was thus invisible, people needed a visualizable image. It was easier to imagine the blessed 'living' in a celestial city rather than existing spiritually in the heavenly ether, so the idea grew of a heavenly city with towers and gates made of different substances. At the Gate of Pearl, St Peter was supposed to receive each approaching soul and consult his 'Book of Life', recording the person's good and evil, to see if the soul was worthy of entry. Medieval paintings show the Civitatis Dei (the City of God) as resembling the walled cities of Italy, France or Germany. Painters often simply depicted the city they knew.
By Shakespeare's time the Ptolemaic system was beginning to be undermined. The great Copernican revolution, supported by Galileo, Kepler and a few others, put the sun at the heart of the universe. It took a long time to become accepted and then filter down to the mass of ordinary people. This idea entered the public domain with Copernicus' study De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, 1542), but dissemination was impeded by church authorities and the slowness of information spread in those times. In 1603 Sir Christopher Heydon, displaying his knowledge of the new advances, declared, 'Whether (as Copernicus saith) the sun be the centre of the world, the astrologer careth not.' This references the triple belief system in which most people lived: 1. Christian doctrine existing uneasily alongside, 2. the new astronomy and sciences, and 3. old semi-magical beliefs in the authenticity of astrology. Heliocentrism, opposed by other sceptic astronomers (like John Dee), was also frighteningly repressed by dogmatic, authoritarian churches. The Catholic Church's Inquisition enforced conformity persuasively with thumbscrews, the rack and a host of other tortures. The English church had its own courts to question and punish deviations from customary practice and belief; visitations within their diocese enabled bishops to keep vicars and congregations in line and serious infractions could be brought before the Star Chamber. Torture was endemic in England too.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from King Lear in Context by Keith Linley. Copyright © 2015 Keith Linley. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Introduction; Prologue; 1. The Historical Context; 2. The Elizabethan World Order: From Divinity to Dust; 3. Sin, Death and the Prince of Darkness; 4. The Seven Cardinal Virtues; 5. Kingship; 6. Patriarchy, Family and Gender Relationships; 7. Man in His Place; 8. Images of Disorder: The Religious Context; 9. The Contemporary Political Context; 10. The Literary Context; 11. The Context of Tragedy; 12. The Family Context; 13. Sins, Transgressions, Subversions and Reversals; Notes; Bibliography; Index
What People are Saying About This
‘“King Lear in Context” provides a comprehensive but lively and accessible guide to the literary, political and intellectual contexts of the play, including much useful material on ideas of kingship, nature and the family. Students’ experience of the play will be enriched by Linley’s commendable emphasis on evidence from primary sources.’ —Martin Garrett, writer and senior A-level examiner
‘Those wishing to develop an insight into the contextual background from which the themes in the play developed need look no further. Although scholarly in approach, the guide avoids dry and confusing language, using an easy and informative style that will easily engage a range of readers. This guide will help students of Shakespeare manipulate themes and take a contextual overview, and will quickly become a resource for revision and essay practice. Whetting the appetite for further reading, it uses cross reference to other plays to develop an appreciation of Shakespeare’s other works and mind-set. This dynamic, contextual guide will surely become an essential study companion for students and teachers alike.’ —Jill Leese, secondary English teacher and team leader with leading UK examinations board