The Passing of King Lear

Summary

Generations of scholars have grappled with the problems posed by the ending of Shakespeare's King Lear: not one of the solutions proposed to date has commanded general and lasting assent. As Bridget Lyons put it:

Lear's words just before his death have always eluded the attempts of critics to label what he sees, does or feels at the moment that he utters them.

Such critical attempts have been varied in the extreme: for G. R. Hibbard, they range from the 'sentimental wishful thinking' of writers such as Paul N. Siegel to the 'reductive nihilistic rant' of Jan Kott. Reactions to these attempts have been equally varied: what to one scholar is sublime is ridiculous to another. As a result, one senses the tendency, at the present time, to feel that this is perhaps one of the Shakespearian mysteries we are not intended to solve: that we should be content to say of Lear, as the churlish priest said of Ophelia, that his end was doubtful. It is therefore clear that any further attempt to provide a solution to the enigma must, if it is to have the slightest hope of carrying conviction, be based on foundations laid with the very greatest care. I shall thus begin by inviting assent to a certain number of premises essential to my later arguments.