‘And that’s true too’: King Lear and the Tension of Uncertainty

Summary

‘By the end of King Lear, we should see that Cordelia possesses everything that is genuinely worth having.’ This might be a quotation from Shakespearean Tragedy, but it comes from a recent book by John Reibetanz. The approach is new, but the conclusions are familiar: ‘through his sufferings Lear has won an enlightened soul’; ‘we protest so strongly against Cordelia’s death because we are not of her world’; ‘Material goods are fetters and the body a husk to be discarded so that the fruit can be reached.’ Reibetanz acknowledges the obvious debt to Bradley, but he is no ordinary disciple. He admits his master’s weaknesses, and emphasises them by considering precisely those areas Bradley ignored: the nature of the public and private theatres; Shakespeare’s use and adaptation of contemporary stage tradition and the expectations of an audience moulded by regular playgoing. In the light of this, it is ironic that he reaches similar conclusions to the man who argued the play was ‘too huge for the stage’. Much less ironic is the fact that while I find most of Reibetanz’s commentary thoroughly convincing, it leads me to an exactly opposite conclusion.