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The Limits of Politics: An Interpretation of King Lear, Act I, Scene 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Harry V. Jaffa
Harry V. Jaffa
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Extract

The data for political studies are most commonly drawn from history, either in accounts of lives, events and institutions, or in the writings of earlier systematic students. But to probe the meaning and relationships of ultimate ends like justice and truth, no actual happenings are needed; imaginative fiction and drama can supply the food for thought. Why then should we not as reasonably and profitably look for lessons in political wisdom in the works of our greatest poet? In this essay I have sought to find and expound such a lesson in Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear.

According to that profound student of Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, the most difficult task of statesmanship is that of providing, not for the foundation, but for the perpetuation, of political institutions. If the political institutions are the best, to perpetuate them is not only the most difficult, but also the greatest of all the tasks of the statesman.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1957 , pp. 405 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1957

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References

1 See “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” Address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838. Compare Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Bk. I, Ch. X, where it is said that, not the founders of republics and monarchies deserve the greatest praise, but the founders of religions. One might paraphrase Machiavelli by saying that the founders of religions are the true founders of civil society: Numa, rather than Romulus, is the founder of Rome. Another expression of the same thought, which is classical as well as Machiavellian, is that to found a state is an act of human virtue, but to perpetuate it requires divine assistance. It is the thesis of this essay that Lear's incomprehension of this truth was his tragic flaw. It might not be irrelevant to add that Lincoln acted the role of high priest in the Civil War, a conflict which he interpreted, in his two most famous utterances, as a divine affliction, designed to transform a merely political union into a sacramental one.

2 Cf. Bradley, A. C., Shakespearian Tragedy, p. 243Google Scholar.

3 Coleridge's Shakespearian Criticism, ed. Raysor, Thomas Middleton (Cambridge 1930), Vol. I, p. 55Google Scholar, n. 1.

4 Ibid., p. 59.

5 Ibid., p. 226.

6 A. C. Bradley, op. cit., p. 249.

7 Ibid., p. 249.

8 Ibid., p. 281.

9 Ibid., p. 250.

10 Cf. Plato, , Gorgias 510 B 2 ff.Google Scholar; and Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1155a33. Also, see below, note 25.

11 According to Perrett, , The Story of King Lear from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Shakespeare (Berlin, 1904), p. 175Google Scholar, no earlier version of the play shows Goneril and Began married previously to the love-test. This accentuates Shakespeare's emphasis on the King's policy.

12 Cf. Paine, Tom, Rights of Man, Everyman's Library ed., p. 51Google Scholar: “William the Conqueror and his descendants parcelled out the country in this manner, and bribed some parts of it by what they called charters to hold the other parts of it the better subjected to their will. This is the reason why so many of those charters abound in Cornwall; the people were averse to the Government established at the conquest, and the towns were garrisoned and bribed to enslave the country. All the old charters are the badges of this conquest, and it is from this source that the capriciousness of elections arises.”

13 Crowns and coronets are distinguished from each other in a number of Shakespearian texts: cf. Henry V, Act II, Prologue, line 11; Tempest, Act I, sc. ii, line 33; Julius Caesar, Act I, sc. ii, line 237. The crown is certainly one of the “additions to a King.”

14 Compare Lear's apparent intention to resign authority with that of Charles V, a comparison that would have occurred readily to an Elizabethan audience. Charles had his son crowned in a great state ceremony, in his own presence; and in that self-same presence had all the great peers of his numerous realms pledge their fealty to Philip. He himself then retired to a monastery, and remained virtually inaccessible to the political world. Lear, on the contrary, was to remain king, the sole bearer of regal authority. And, living with Cordelia, he would remain at the center of political life. It is not merely the ancient habit of command that compels him, later in the play, to give orders to his daughters' retainers, but the evident assumption that his orders supersede all others. As we will attempt to show below, this assumption would not have been unreasonable if his original plan had been adhered to. In fact, Lear's altered plan ran athwart the whole feudal system, and in this respect his elder daughters had just grievance against him.

15 This was pointed out to me by Professor R. S. Milne, of the Victoria University College, Wellington, New Zealand. Perrett, op. cit., p. 153, says that it was for Cordelia. But why would a princess of the blood royal receive a Coronet now?

16 Burgundy's reply to Lear's question, as to “What, in the least” Burgundy will require in dowry to take Cordelia, is ambiguous: “Most royal majesty, I crave no more than hath your Highness offered.” It is not certain whether Lear has already offered Cordelia herself to be bride to Burgundy, with the dowry of which Burgundy appears to have knowledge, or whether Lear has simply informed Burgundy of the amount and kind of Cordelia's dowry.

17 There does not seem to be any mention of Burgundy in Shakespeare's sources. He thus appears to be a Shakespearian addition, required to make possible Lear's original plan, as we are reconstructing it.

18 To an Elizabethan audience the Burgundian alliance would represent, in principle, the Spanish alliance, since Burgundy (or Franche-Comte) was part of the empire of Charles V and Philip II. A Spanish marriage would be in line with traditional English policy, as indicated by Henry VIII's marriage to a Spanish princess, and his daughter Mary's marriage with Philip. Elizabeth, on the other hand, although she conducted a long and maddening flirtation with the Duke D'Alencon, never actually brought herself to a French marriage. Only the threat of a Franco-Spanish alliance against England could have led Elizabeth to indulge in her fabulously insincere, and equally artful, negotiations to become bride of the heir to the French throne. Elizabethan principles of power politics are clear enough. A smaller power, such as England, forms an alliance with a great, but distant power, such as Spain, to neutralize a great and near power like France. In like manner, Scotland's traditional ally was France: Scotland was to England, as England to France; or, again, France was to Scotland, as Spain to England.

19 The legitimacy of Lear's rule, in the feudal sense of that term, is shrouded in the mist of the antiquity which surrounds the setting of the entire play. That the contemporary Elizabethan view of primogeniture is somehow present in Lear's legendary kingdom, is indicated by Edmund's famous soliloquy in Scene ii, and its sequel. All that need be said at the moment is that Lear is very old himself, his rule very successful, and his personal authority apparently unchallenged. But the obscurity of the legal foundation of the monarchy accentuates the political problem of the succession. Under traditional English rules, the eldest daughter would succeed in the absence of a male heir. Lear seems to be reversing that rule, in making his youngest daughter his heir. But if Lear's rule is just (until the fatal explosion), then it must be just in an extra-legal sense, since he does not seem to be hampered—or guided—by any legal rules in deciding what is best. Lear's decision (as we believe) to make Cordelia his successor certainly seems right since she alone of the daughters appears to inherit her father's regal qualities. Lear thus seems to act in the light of the truth—the truth that Cordelia is the best qualified—instead of the conventional or legal expectation that the eldest should inherit. But a decision based upon truth will be politically wise or truthful only if it is supported by public opinion. Lear's design—according to our interpretation—to cultivate the conditions for a public opinion favorable to his settlement is tantamount then to a design to provide a legal or conventional foundation for an arrangement which, in its origin, is essentially extra-legal.

One might object, however, that public pledges without an underlying favorable distribution of power would be worthless, while if such a distribution existed the pledges would be superfluous. As suggested above, the pledges might themselves be an ingredient in the distribution of power. For example, consider such public pledges as Magna Carta. Magna Carta only affirmed what the barons present at Runnymede believed that they and the king already knew to be the law of the realm. Despite the fact that all must have believed that the king would in future violate rights which he had disregarded in the past, when he had power to do so, it must also have been believed that his solemn public pledge would lessen his future power to do so. In like manner, we may suppose it possible that the pledges of Goneril and Regan may have served to minimize the opinion, particularly among their own followers, which might have been favorable to any attempt to upset Lear's will and testament.

20 They might have threatened Lear with a French alliance, just as Lear could threaten them with a French marriage for Cordelia.

21 Goneril: “He always loved our sister most.” I, i, 292.

22 E.g. Coleridge, op. cit., p. 54.

23 We are here concerned primarily with the way in which Lear marks the limits of human life by transcending them in the direction of the divine in his relationship with Cordelia. A full interpretation of the play would explain fully how Goneril and Regan mark the lower limits of humanity, passing beyond them into bestiality.

24 We must also give due weight to Lear's genuine paternal attachment to Goneril and Regan. It has been our thesis from the beginning that Lear was a political realist, and estimated his daughters' merits without sentimentality. This does not mean however that he wished to think ill of any of them, or that he had any inkling of the depths of baseness of Goneril and Regan. Lear's outburst against Cordelia was undoubtedly motivated, to some extent, by an instinctive awareness that Cordelia was tearing a veil that covered all their relationships, a veil on which were painted some pleasing illusions, illusions to which he was deeply attached even when not quite believing in them.

25 The tacit premise of this assertion is that we tend to resemble what we love. Cf. Plato, , Gorgias 510 B 2 ffGoogle Scholar. The principle is as follows: when we love someone, we praise what he praises, and blame what he blames. But character is formed by responding to praise and blame, as a shoe is shaped upon its last.

26 Compare the loveless plight of the tyrant in Xenophon's Hiero, and the interpretation thereof in Strauss's, LeoOn Tyranny (New York, 1948)Google Scholar.

27 We must not be blinded, by France's beautiful speech accepting Cordelia, to the prudential considerations which supported his action. To France, a claim upon Cordelia's dowry, not to mention a claim upon the British throne, was worth a good deal, whether acknowledged by Lear or not. France had forces to make good his claims, which Burgundy did not have. Hence France could affect a generosity which Burgundy could not afford. Note that France parted from Lear “in choler,” which is hardly the state of mind of a successful lover, who owes the success of his suit to the very temper of the old king which he now resents.

28 This does not mean that, in a monarchy, one cannot obey the monarch, and love justice, without loving the monarch. One might regard the monarch's commands as just because they happen to conform to a non-monarchical standard. Or, one might recognize the monarchical principle as the highest one, while holding the existing incumbent to be deficient in the qualities of a monarch. The second condition is not a genuine exception, because the regime would then not be monarchical in an unqualified sense. The fact that all actual monarchies may be nominal rather than real does not affect the argument. If, however, we consider the essence of monarchy, I believe the necessity for the statement in the text will appear. Monarchy is a political regime, consisting of a true king and true subjects. The true king is such by his pre-eminence in what his monarchical subjects recognize as virtue, as the true subjects are so by their obedience to the pre-eminent virtue of their ruler. But one cannot recognize virtue without loving it. Thus the necessary and sufficient condition of the obedience of a monarchical subject is the love of the person-age who embodies the ruling virtue. It is this kind of obedience alone which makes the regime essentially monarchical, and distinguishes it from other kinds of regimes.

29 As long as his subjects believe he has power, this belief is sufficient to produce the obedience which constitutes that self-same power.

30 Compare Lear with the good Duke Vincentio in Measure for Measure. The Duke, in order to discover the truth about his subjects' characters, pretends to go on a long journey, delegating authority to some of those he wishes to test. He then returns disguised as a friar, and becomes the confessor and spiritual adviser of several of the principals. This course is not open to Lear for, among other things, he is king of a pre-Christian Britain. Another such comparison would be with Prospero in the Tempest. Prospero however has Ariel, and Ariel's power to produce illusions (according to Prospero's directions) makes the malefactors helpless to conceal their motives from the man who controls their access to reality. Neither Prospero nor Vincentio, however, although apparently exempted from Lear's “human” limitation, of being unable to search men's hearts for their motives, is regal in the sense that Lear is. Both love “the life removed,” and “the liberal arts”; neither is a truly political man. Neither in fact is a success as a ruler, because both neglect the duties of office for something they care for more.

31 Lear's later sense of the limitations of his former justice is shown in the famous lines upon the heath:

Take physic, pomp.

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them

And show the Heavens more just.

III, iv, 33–36.

32 The best is an illusion, because the virtue upon which it is founded is an illusion. The tacit premise, of course, is that virtue is knowledge, but that Lear, deficient in the self-knowledge which the action of the tragedy alone could remove, did not achieve genuine knowledge, and hence virtue, until after he had ceased ruling. If the regime was constituted by the virtue of the ruler, ruling not only his subjects' actions, but their hearts, then the regime too was, in this sense, an illusion.

33 Compare The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, III, i, 4–31, the speech ending “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” but especially Henry the Fifth's speech, in the play of that name, IV, i, 246–301:

What infinite heartsease

Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!

And what have kings that privates have not too,

Save ceremony, save general ceremony?

That is, kings are paid with an illusory good, that their subjects may enjoy a real one.

34 The connection between Lear's image of the world in which he is king, and his image of the world in which he is no longer king, is indicated in many ways, including the following. In Lear's curse, disinheriting Cordelia, as in his oath affirming the banishment of Kent, Lear thinks of the order of the universe as the work of living gods, who are concerned with justice and injustice in the same sense that he is concerned with them. When cursing Cordelia he calls the light, the darkness, and “the orbs” from whose operation we both exist and cease to be, to witness his disclaimer of “paternal care, propinquity and property of blood.” But if it is the operation of the divine order that is the cause both of our existence and nonexistence, Lear's belief that he could disclaim a connection determined by that order must mean that Lear believed that Cordelia, in offending her father, had offended that divine order; and in breaking links that connected her with her father in the local moral order, had broken the links connecting him with her in the supramundane cosmic order. Similarly, Lear confirms the banishment of Kent with an oath “By Jupiter.” The reference is to the king of the Olympian gods, Homer's father of gods and men, who is invoked as the substance of what is shadowy in Lear's authority.

If we now turn from Scene i to the great passion upon the heath, we observe that Lear's consciousness of himself as a member of the imagined world he has until then inhabited, culminates in his tearing off his clothes. The clothes of course represent the conventions which have hitherto concealed his true self from himself. Lear's next words, after the “divesting,” are in response to Kent's “How fares your Grace?” “What's he?” replies Lear, now unable or unwilling to recognize the conventional distinction implicit in the salutation. And Lear's very next words indicate how little of intentional irony there is in these lines. Gloucester is pleading with him to go in out of the storm. Lear demurs. “First let me talk with this philosopher.” The person referred to is Edgar, disguised as a madman. “What is the cause of thunder?” demands Lear of the philosopher. Thus Lear, finally gone mad, as madness is understood in the world he has rejected, can no longer recognize the distinction of “grace,” by which kings are kings, nor can he recognize in thunder the sign of Jupiter's authority, the authority which reinforces and guarantees the moral order represented in this world by kings. The thunderbolt, symbol of the power of Jupiter, has become a question of theoretical philosophy.

Finally, it is worth noting that Lear, alone of those present on the heath, penetrates Edgar's disguise. For Edgar is the philosopher who, at the last, provides the moral of the play. “Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither; ripeness is all” (V, ii, 9). Even this supreme insight has its irony, in that it is a truth conveyed by a son, Edgar, to his father, Gloucester. For the catastrophe of the tragedy, its only catastrophe, is the catastrophe of that moral order to which Lear and Gloucester belonged when the play began; the moral order in which kings and fathers command, the moral order which is part of a larger order or cosmos, whose hierarchy maintains and is maintained by, the kind of subordination and superordination implicit in the relationship of kings and subjects, fathers and sons. That the moral of the tragedy is expressed by Edgar, and that his father must become his pupil to grow wiser, is as much a part of the moral of the play as the moral itself.

35 In short, Shakespeare would not accept Aristotle's formulation, that natural right is a part of political right, Nichomachean Ethics, 1134 b 18 ff. For Shakespeare as for Plato the highest form of political right reflects rather than embodies pure natural right. Natural right is distinguished from political right. It is a transcendental cause of political right, rather than an element in it. Cf. Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History, pp. 151–153Google Scholar.

36 We may here venture a hypothesis concerning one of the most difficult problems in the interpretation of King Lear, albeit one that goes beyond the proper scope of this essay. This is the problem of the ending, the apparent wantonness of the gods in permitting the deaths of Cordelia and Lear. It has been cited as a fundamental defect of the dramatic structure that these deaths do not follow, as a result of the necessities of the action, as in the cases of Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, Brutus, and other tragic heroes. It has been held that the poet's theme became too gigantic even for his colossal powers, and that, although dramatic fitness required the deaths of the hero and heroine, he knew no way of effecting these deaths but by chance. I believe there is another explanation.

One of the puzzles of the last scene is the apparently inexplicable delay of the dying Edmund, from line 200, where he promises to “do good,” until line 245, where he finally tells of his order for the death of Cordelia. The delay might even conceivably be traced back to line 161, where Edmund appears already to show remorse. The question is, why, if Edmund's repentance is genuine, does he delay so long to tell of his order? The murder of Cordelia is the greatest of his crimes, and yet it lay within his power to stay the hand whose blow would put more guilt upon him than any he had yet struck.

The solution, I believe, is this. The deaths of Lear and Cordelia were not matters of mere dramatic fitness. They were required as retribution for the transgressions against justice that both had committed. Both had sided with France against Britain. Lear's rejection of Cordelia was a blow at his own justice as king; Cordelia's invasion with French forces was not an act of public redress, it was motivated by love of her father, who was no longer the true king, because he had shown himself no longer capable of ruling. The defeat of the French forces, and the unification of the kingdom under Albany is, we must observe, a political consummation which achieves all the just purposes of Lear's original plan. The survival of Lear and/or Cordelia would throw all this once more into confusion. Above all would this be true if Cordelia lived, for it would continue the French claims, the excuse for foreign intrusion. The dying Edmund means to do some good yet. What good, in the sense of justice, could he do, better than to let the order against Cordelia's life run? It is necessary that Edmund remand the order, as a way of showing his repentance for the merely malicious action he had heretofore done, but the silent delay shows a deeper understanding of the demands of justice, the demands that Cordelia too had rejected, in favor of something celestial, just as he had rejected them in favor of something infernal.

37 The word “divest” is used advisedly. See note 34 above. When Lear reawakens, after the “divesting” in the storm scene, he is in Cordelia's arms, wearing different clothes, clothes that he does not recognize.

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