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Human Endurance and the Importance of Language in King Lear
Andrew L. Crick
When Lear enters carrying the dead Cordelia, Kent asks the penetrating question, "Is this the promised end?"(V.iii.263). In so doing, Kent suggests that the events of the play up to this point have been governed by a logic which has foretold a particular conclusion, and that decisions and actions prior to this moment have in some crucial way lead up to it in an almost inevitable manner. While a strong argument can be made that the death of Cordelia is merely the final episode in a sequence of tragic events set off by King Lear when he violates his duty to the kingship and thus throws England into complete disorder, still this does not mean that the end of the play is entirely pessimistic or destructive.
Cordelia's death, though the end of her, is not the end of the play itself. Although the distraught Albany, overcome by the fulfillment of the play's tragic vision before his eyes, cries "Fall, and cease!"(V.iii.264), it is crucial to realize that neither Kent, nor Edgar, nor Albany actually do collapse at this juncture and yield themselves to despair. All three rise. They get up and continue despite bearing witness to the ineffable worst, and although the world left to them is considerably more disordered than the one they inhabit at the beginning of the play, the mere fact of their endurance in the face of so much pain is a testament to an astounding resilience. This resilience brings with it the possibility of hope and renewal, and it casts the conclusion of the play in a light that reflects notable personal
goodwill among those who survive.
In political terms, the vision of the play is far more bleak. Although we are left with a trio of survivors who have come out on the "good" side of things, Albany makes the mistake of recapitulating Lear's foolishness when he addresses Kent and Edgar. "Friends of my soul," he says, "you twain/ Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain"(V.iii.319). It is clear that the impetus for all the chaos which subsequently plagues this drama lies in Lear's initial decision to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, yet unfortunately Albany seems blind to this crucial fact. Lear, as King, initially stands for the stable and unified order which governs English society, but once he divests himself of this responsibility to the public, there is no longer a recognized center of authority to
guide and control people's behavior. Consequently rebellion rears its ugly head and strikes hard and fast in many forms. For Albany to recommend a duel center of power in both Kent and Edgar is to commit the same sin against regal order that drives the commotion of the play in the first place.
Part of Albany's problem here lies in the difficulty of establishing a successor to the kingship. With Lear and his daughters all dead, the issue of royal legitimacy is raised and it becomes unclear who merits or is even capable of taking over the kingship at all. Lacking a legitimate heir, England is vulnerable to more disorder and discontinuity because the ties of blood through which legitimacy has historically passed have been completely severed. In this sense whoever does co-opt the kingship may very well be contested in that position and criticized for violating the order of succession by birth that has historically ratified each succeeding king.
However, the political confusion, which pervades the play and seems to promise further difficulties in the future because the location of proper authority is still undetermined, is subsumed under the dialectic of emotional development which occurs at a deeper personal level and has even more profound consequences. While Lear fails utterly as a king, and Albany seems unable to divine the lessons which that failure teaches, as "unaccommodated" (III.iv.112) men, stripped of the trappings of state and sovereignty, these characters grow and learn in significant and enduring ways. There are several currents running against the political flow here which indicate that politics and political order may not be the highest good in this drama. For instance, early in the play Lear is livid when he discovers Kent in the stocks
not because it is an insult to humanity in general, but because it violates political rank and procedure. Lear asks, "What's he that hath so much thy place mistook/ To set thee here?"(II.iv.12). This occurs at a time when Lear is still caught up in the very political structure he has tried to "unburthen" himself from, and this political vision blinds him to the human violation that is far more serious. Later on, after Lear has been stripped entirely of the trappings of political office on the barren, tempest-ridden heath, he begins to see with the clear, bare eyes of "unaccommodated man" (III.iv.112). In a show of purely human sympathy, he offers the Fool lodging before himself, saying "In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty"(III.iv.26). Lear finally transcends the restrictions of place and rank which still had plagued him in the episode with Kent in the stocks, and in showing concern for the "Poor naked wretches"(III.iv.28) of the
world, the dethroned king finally ascends to a height of understanding that allows him to view humanity in the egalitarian terms which the removal of custom and convention and cultural caprice finally makes possible.
Politics itself may thus be a form of extraneous accommodation to what is fundamentally human. While Lear's failure as a politician is as undeniable as it is unforgivable, still the play moves toward a consideration of human relations that is much more concerned with exploring the nature of communication between people on a one-to-one basis than it is with the ceremonious conventions of the state. Sincerity of speech and the honest reaching-out towards others in supportive gestures of friendship and understanding ultimately become the standard against which value and the potential for reestablishing order are to be measured. Albany pinpoints this saving grace of human expression in the closing moments of the play when he says, "The weight of this sad time we must obey:/ Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say"(V.iii.323). Thus, while he seems to remain politically naive with regard to the danger of dividing the power center in the realm, Albany does suggest that some learning
has occurred on an individual level. The "weight" of experience reveals to him that emotional integrity is more important than political correctness and that words, while they might not be entirely sufficient for conveying deep feeling, are nonetheless the best avenue for doing so.
It is true that much of Lear's vocabulary seems to argue against the adequacy of language, and Edgar at one point corroborates this by saying, "the worst is not/ So long as we can say, 'This is the worst'"(IV.i.29). As the madness of his situation drives him insane, Lear's speech decays into a very inarticulate sequence of monosyllabic grunts like "kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill"(IV.vi.191), "No, no, no, no!"(V.iii.8), "Howl, howl, howl, howl!"(V.iii.257) and "Never, never, never, never, never"(V.iii.308). Elsewhere he also admits, "I know not what to say"(IV.vii.54), and Albany later repeats, "[Lear] knows not what he says"(V.iii.293). However, these repetitive words from Lear, although they lack variety in their description, are nonetheless very
expressive of his troubled state in the direct impact of their drum-beat-like cadence. These screams are the vocally embodied frustration of a mind whose only outlet lies in the wailing of words. Such cries are the sole remaining vehicle for his expression since he has been divested of the power of the state. In any case, these emphatic verbal events convey far more than Lear's silence could were he to remain reticent at this time. Similarly with Edgar, the power of the spoken word is revealed in all of its strength. Edmund says of his brother's words, "Thou hast spoken right, 'tis true"(V.iii.173), and "This speech of yours hath moved me,/ And shall perchance do good"(V.iii.199). So it is clear that heart-felt language is the best, last hope of the characters in this play as they try to recover from the chaos engendered by duplicity, deception and the denial of responsibility both to themselves and to each other. Cordelia likewise learns that, imperfect though
it might be, language is indeed the clearest way of conveying her love for Lear. Her "Nothing"(I.i.89) of Act One becomes an explicit admission of the emotional fondness she feels for her father when she tells him outright that she has "no cause"(IV.vii.76) for not loving him.
The triumph of this play then lies in the capacity of the surviving characters to continue the struggle for existence and for effective communication despite the horror and chaos from which they have suffered. When Kent says of Lear's death, "The wonder is, he hath endured so long"(V.iii.316), he identifies the redeeming component which allows the characters to hold their heads up and confront the future. Endurance, bolstered by the fraternal expression of human sympathy and a loyalty to one another, constitutes the best line of defense against a capricious fate which often seems to work in direct opposition to the fulfillment of human ambition. Thus, while King Lear is a political disaster, it is also a victory for the human spirit in so far as that spirit learns the value of sincere communication. Since
much of the reason for Lear's failure in the public role of king is grounded in his lack of self-knowledge and his inability to distinguish flattery from fidelity, it is possible that Albany's call for sincerity on a personal level will mark the point of departure for rebuilding a wider political order that is stable precisely because it is free of the ceremonial trappings of court which blind "accomodated" man from truth and reality. Language thus becomes the liberating factor which holds promise for the future, and while it may not be much in a world that often seems to honor its rules in the breach rather than in the observance and though it can always be misused and abused, it may be all we have. Endurance, and the effort to speak truly, is in this instance victory enough.
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