No comfort for old men
Shakespeare’s King Lear; what society values; what use are the elderly?
I’m reading through Shakespeare’s plays in an attempt to make sense of the world. Today I’m writing about “King Lear.” For a quick reference to posts on previous plays, click here. Next week, “Macbeth.”
Pay attention to how a society treats its elderly. Does it show gratefulness to the generation that birthed the world in which we live? Are families and communities integrated multi-generationally? Is silvered hair a mark of distinction? Facing difficulty, do people seek out the wisdom of those who’ve overcome decades of hardship themselves?
Or does the society stamp people with ‘use-by’ dates in employment, assume that decades of experience result in feebleness and not wisdom, warehouse its infirm elderly in institutions, and use budget balancing as a rationale for denying earned benefits, hoping that death arrives before checks can be deposited? Faced with a deadly pandemic, does it call for grandparents to sacrifice themselves so that businesses and schools can remain open for younger people? Does the society ostracize its elderly, perhaps leaving them exposed in harsh conditions, to hasten their demise? Are laws required to prevent hospitals from dumping the old and poor on city streets to fend for themselves?
Step back from the unrelenting headlines about the age of the US President (and, to a lesser degree, of his political opponent) and reflect on what drives the critique. This uproar is only tangentially about a man in his 80s. Fundamentally, it’s about the way a society views the elderly, and by extension, itself.
Some motivation for age-bashing is driven by greed: younger people who want what their elders have. Why should the elderly hang onto political power, when they could pass that power to younger people (who are presumed to be more deserving simply based on fewer years)? This argument was central to the push within her own party against Nancy Pelosi standing for House Speaker. Succession is important. A wise use of power is arguably more so, especially when voting margins are thin. Regardless what you think of her politics, Pelosi was effective. When she did pass the baton, her party’s leadership in the House didn’t skip a beat.
Some motivation for ageism derives from fear: of the unknown, of loss. Aging is better than its alternative, yet both involve losing all the privileges that the young enjoy—vitality, unencumbered health for many, beauty (when defined by the culture as youthful), undiminished physical strength.
Every society has had to grapple with the question of what to do with its members who survive to old age. Once people have aged beyond birthing and raising new generations, once their physical ability prevents them from shouldering the great labors needed to ensure the society’s needs are met, of what use are they?
Shakespeare positions this question in the heart of King Lear.
Summary
King Lear gathers his three daughters to announce that he’s stepping down and is ready to distribute his kingdom amongst them. He demands they swear their love for him. The greater their eloquence, the greater their share. He rewards his eldest daughter Gonoril with a prime parcel of the kingdom after she ostentatiously fawns over him. His second daughter, Regan, mimics her older sister and she’s similarly rewarded. The third daughter, Cordelia, is his favorite. Insinuating that he’s left the best for last, he asks what she can say to outdo her sisters. Plain-speaking Cordelia replies, “Nothing, my lord.” Unbelieving, her father responds “How? Nothing can come of nothing. Speak again.”
Cordelia stands her ground, saying that she will only speak truth. She loves her father, but she refuses to trade an embroidered love in exchange for land. Her love is absolute, not transactional.
Lear, outraged in feeling denied by the daughter he holds dear, tells her she will have nothing from him: no inheritance, no dowry. He orders her current suitors, the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy, to be brought in, then asks them their intentions for his daughter since she is now penniless and outcast. Burgundy folds—his was a claim of politics and money. However, the king of France maintains his love is for Cordelia, not her wealth or access to power. Lear sends Cordelia off with the King of France, to marry and live abroad.
Lear details his conditions to his other two daughters. He will cede almost everything to them effective immediately. He intends to retain only his retinue of 100 knights and his personal staff. Since he’s giving up his kingdom, he requires that his two daughters house him and his retinue for a month at a time, alternating between their houses.
Lear’s loyal friend Kent entreats the king to relent in his harsh treatment of Cordelia, arguing that Lear’s emotions are causing him to take rash actions that he’ll regret. For speaking truth to power, Kent too is banished.
The Earl of Gloucester, Lear’s only other close associate, decides not to confront the king. Gloucester has two sons. The eldest, Edmund, is illegitimate. Despite that, Gloucester recognizes him as his son and treats him well, helping him make connections important to his career. The younger, Edgar, is Gloucester’s legitimate heir. While Edgar is kind and honest, Edmund is ruthless and devious. Edmund orchestrates a scheme to remove Edgar and ensure his own swift inheritance from Gloucester. Edmund convinces Gloucester that Edgar is plotting to assassinate him. Edmund engineers conditions that make Edgar flee for his life and dupe Gloucester into thinking Edmund is the honest and faithful son.
Lear’s first month of retirement is to be spent with Gonoril and her husband Albany. Little time passes before Gonoril decides to evict Lear. She instructs her staff to treat the guests poorly, in hopes that inhospitality will drive her father and his men away to her sister’s. She complains to Lear that his men are making her home uninhabitable, and she urges him to leave. She says she will only house half of his 100 men. Outraged at her ill-treatment, Lear says he will go to Regan’s.
Regan and her husband Cornwall refuse to take in Lear, claiming that it’s not yet time for them to host him. Hearing that her sister will only put up 50 of his men, Regan counters that she’ll only put up 25. Lear, considering Gonoril’s proposition of 50 to be twice the deal, relents and tells Gonoril he’ll stay with her, along with 50 of his men. Deal’s off, Gonoril says. With neither daughter willing to take him in, Lear sets off into a storm-filled night. The sisters take up residence in Gloucester’s estate, where Edmund insinuates himself into an alliance with Gonoril and Regan.
Accompanying Lear is a man found in the wild whom Lear doesn’t recognize: it’s his dear friend Kent, in disguise. Kent tries to help Lear protect himself from a fearful storm. Banished from his kingdom, Lear becomes unmoored mentally. Kent urges Lear to use a nearby hovel for protection from the storm and to settle his mind.
Edgar, having fled his home and now living off the land, has disguised himself as a raving, naked madman who calls himself ‘Poor Tom.’ He arrives at the hovel as protection from the storm. Here he meets his former king, now a broken man and truly out of his mind. Lear quickly takes to Edgar, recognizing in Edgar’s pretense a mirror to his own madness.
Gloucester leaves his estate in the hands of Edmund and the evil sisters, setting out to search for the king. Rumor has it that revolution is brewing within the kingdom between Albany and Cornwall, and that the French king is en route to Dover to launch an attack.
Gloucester finds Lear, the disguised Kent, and his son Edgar disguised as Poor Tom. Gloucester tells Kent that Lear’s daughters mean to kill their father. With Lear’s safety as well as his sanity endangered, Gloucester and Kent plan to get Lear to Dover, where Cordelia and the French can care for and protect the aged former king.
Edmund tells Cornwall (Regan’s husband) that the French have landed, and spins a lie about his father Gloucester being part of a treasonous plot. Cornwall and Regan remove Gloucester’s title in absentia, giving it to Edmund. Cornwall sends for Gloucester with violent intentions.
Once Gloucester’s brought in, Cornwall sends Edmund off to accompany Gonoril back to her estate, ostensibly to save Edmund from watching his father being tortured. Regan prompts Cornwall to blind Gloucester by plucking out his eyes. In a scuffle, Cornwall is injured. Sightless, Gloucester is exiled. Cornwall dies, leaving Regan a widow.
Gonoril arrives at her estate with Edmund, with whom she’s now romantically involved. She receives a poor welcome from her husband Albany. He’s disgusted with her treatment of her father and her contemptible behavior. Albany tells Gonoril and Edmund that Cornwall has died, and sends Edmund off to Regan. This is unhappy news for Gonoril: her sister, newly widowed, will be free to marry Edmund.
Albany hears the sad tale of Gloucester’s, his eyes taken by Regan and Cornwall. Albany throws his support in with Lear and Gloucester, against his wife and her sister.
Cordelia has landed in Dover, but she’s unaccompanied—the King of France was called back to his country, leaving Cordelia behind and exposed. She’s brought a doctor for the care of her father, and is determined to find her father and help him.
Blindly wandering the countryside, Gloucester finds his son Edgar, still posing as Poor Tom. Unable to see, Gloucester asks Edgar to take him to the cliffs of Dover, where he can throw himself to his death. Edgar tricks his father into thinking that he’s standing on the edge of a great cliff, which in reality is merely the edge of a small depression. Edgar stands back as Gloucester steps out into what he thinks is the abyss and quickly reaches ground. Edgar runs to him, claiming that Gloucester has indeed fallen off the cliff, but has been spared, miraculously.
Lear arrives in Dover, wearing weeds and flowers in his hair, completely unhinged. Men arrive to take him to Cordelia. Gonoril’s steward comes upon them: Edgar and he fight, and the steward dies.
Lear is brought to Cordelia, accompanied by Edgar, Kent, and Gloucester. They encamp with the French, whose doctor attends to Lear.
Gonoril and Albany arrive at the English encampment set up by Regan and Edmund. They prepare for battle.
Edgar shelters his father during the battle, which the English win, taking Cordelia and Lear captive. Edmund secretly gives a note to the captain in charge, which is an instruction to hang the old king and his daughter. Publicly, Edmund says to Albany that the captives were taken off to await Albany’s decision on what to do with them.
Regan and Gonoril bicker over Edmund. Albany arrests Edmund, charging him with treason, along with Regan and Gonoril, who are taken offstage. Edgar arrives; he engages Edmund in a sword fight, and Edmund is wounded mortally. Before dying, Edmund decides to come clean, attesting to the truth of the facts that Edgar shares with Albany.
News arrives that Regan and Gonoril have killed each other. Cordelia has been hanged, as ordered by Edmund. Lear, his heart bursting with grief, dies too. Albany turns to the remaining characters, Kent and Edgar, and says that they shall rule together. Kent respectfully declines.1
KENT I have a journey, sir, shortly to go: My master calls, and I must not say no. ALBANY The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest have borne most. We that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long. Exeunt carrying the bodies -Scene 24 (Act 5 Scene 3)
Thoughts
‘Nothing will come of nothing’
Lear threatens Cordelia that refusing to speak as he wants will yield her nothing in return. The play returns to this again, when Lear is with his fool.
FOOL Mark it, uncle. Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest, Set less than thou throwest, Leave thy drink and thy whore, And keep in-a-door, And thou shalt have more Than two tens to a score. LEAR This is nothing, fool. FOOL Then, like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer, you gave me nothing for’t. Can you make no use of nothing, uncle? LEAR Why no, boy. Nothing can be made out of nothing. FOOL (to Kent) Prithee, tell him so much the rent of his land comes to. He will not believe a fool. -Scene 4 (Act 1 Scene 4)
Lear’s fool is playing back Lear’s first scene to him, mocking him with aphorisms as meaningless as Gonoril’s and Regan’s speeches. The fool tricks Lear into repeating what he said to Cordelia: nothing will come of nothing. Which, the fool points out, is exactly what Lear now earns from the lands he’s given away.
Lear, upon meeting Edgar disguised as Poor Tom, is amazed by his condition.
EDGAR […] Bless thy five wits, Tom’s a-cold! Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking. Do Poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes. There could I have him, now, and there, and there again. LEAR What, has his daughters brought him to this pass? [To Edgar] Could’st thou save nothing? Didst thou give them all? FOOL Nay, he reserved a blanket, else we had been all shamed. -Scene 11 (Act 3 Scene 4)
What is a man without the comforts of known life? Edgar wears his nakedness as a costume, pretending to have lost his mind. Lear, with his ‘slender’ knowledge of himself and the world, can only imagine Poor Tom has experienced what he himself has undergone. For Lear, exactly nothing is left of him now that his daughters have abandoned him to the elements.
Every life transition brings loss of the person one once was, before knowing what life will be like going forward. Transitions, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood to middle age to old age, become increasingly more difficult. The new adolescent yearns for the increasing autonomy and attaining new milestones, but occasionally regrets having to leave behind childhood’s life without care. With each new transition, there’s less to look forward to and more to regret.
Lear has made this struggle immensely more difficult with a few rash decisions. His tragedy is that he sees only the absence—the nothing—rather than the presence of people whose loyalty and love can support him: Kent, Gloucester, Edgar, Cordelia. He recoils from entering the hovel in the midst of a storm. He’s sees only that it’s beneath him, not that it offers him essential shelter.
Reap what you sow?
Gonoril and Regan plant the idea that Lear’s becoming infirm with age, setting up a justification for their unjustifiable actions. Some interpretations of the play underscore the point that how Lear lived his life is to blame for his final chapter. Tragedy implies a flaw that creates tension with our sympathy for the hero. There’s some truth in what his daughters say—Lear is indeed flawed. But given how self-serving these two characters are, how much can we trust their assessment?
Kent, intervening to prevent Lear from disowning Cordelia, is the first to hold a mirror to Lear. He takes care to approach gingerly the king who’s out of temper from hearing a plain-spoken testament of love.
KENT Royal Lear,
Whom I have ever honoured as my king,
Loved as my father, as my master followed,
And as my great patron thought on in my prayers—
LEAR
The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.
KENT
Let if fall rather, though the fork invade
The region of my heart. Be Kent unmannerly
When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man?
Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour’s bound
When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom,
And in thy best consideration check
This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgement,
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,
Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound
Reverbs no hollowness.
LEAR Kent, on thy life, no more!
-Scene 1 (Act 1, Scene 1)
When the court has cleared and after Cordelia has left with France, Gonoril and Regan embroider on the theme that Kent has launched, twisting its meaning to their intent:
GONORIL You see how full of changes his age is. The
observation we have made of it hath not been little.
He always loved our sister most, and with what poor
judgement he hath now cast her off appears too gross.
REGAN ‘Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever but
slenderly known himself.
GONORIL The best and soundest of his time hath been but
rash; then must we look to receive from his age not
alone the imperfection of long-engrafted condition, but
therewithal unruly waywardness that inform and
choleric years bring with them.
REGAN Such unconstant starts are we like to have from
him as this of Kent’s banishment.
-Scene 1 (Act 1, Scene 1)
With this, they agree to ‘do something, and i’th’ heat.’ This will be their justification for plotting against him.
Regan and Gonoril have already shown themselves untrustworthy, so how should we interpret Lear’s actions in this first scene? He’s vain, quickly enraged when Cordelia refuses to bow to his vanity. He’s rash, easily angered. Kent, referring to Lear as ‘mad’ in this scene, confronts his beloved friend with strength, matching him in aggression (“Do, kill thy physician, / And the fee bestow upon the foul disease, / Revoke thy doom, or whilst I can vent clamour / From my throat I’ll tell thee thou dost evil.” 153-156). Later in the play, when Lear has become unmoored, Kent treats him solicitously, patiently, kindly. In this scene, Kent is witnessing a man making a regrettable mistake. It’s madness for Lear to disown the daughter he loves.
Were Lear always inconstant, as the sisters avow, he couldn’t sustain close relationships with Cordelia, Kent, and Gloucester. These three characters never waver in their love for Lear. We know their previous relationships only in the depths of their emotion in seeing Lear diminished. Despite being banished by her father, Cordelia’s concerned for him in the hands of her sisters. Taking leave of Gonoril and Regan, Cordelia says she knows them well, and because she does she feels the need to beseech them to take care of their father: “Time shall unfold what pleated cunning hides. / Who covers faults, at last shame them derides. / Well may you prosper.” (271-273)
In the moment in which he banishes Cordelia and Kent, Lear is a powerful man feeling profound emotion. His divestiture humbles him, a king unaccustomed to humility. He’s given everything to his daughters, and he yearns to hear their gratitude commensurate with what he’s ceded to them. He fails to recognize what is implicit in Cordelia’s simple declaration of her love: that theirs is a bond she will not break nor cheapen in a trade for land or money.
What’s easily given is easily taken away, which the other daughters demonstrate. As soon as power moves to them, they move to use it against their father.
Madness
Some performances interpret Lear’s mental decline as evidence of Alzheimer's or an unnamed degenerative, senescent condition. That argument is compelling. It makes real-world sense of Lear’s otherworldly dissolution from reality. It questions how we care for relatives with Alzheimer’s, and how much compassion we afford the drawn-out decline and indignities of the disease.
And yet, Lear doesn’t display any symptoms when he’s divesting himself, when he’s staying at Gonoril’s estate, when he’s arguing with his daughters in negotiating who will care for him. The daughters simply want to be rid of him now that they have what they want from him. It was always a zero-sum for them: once he transferred his power and wealth to them, he was nothing. He had no use for them.
Dumped into the harsh and brutal environment of the natural world, without protection and care for his well-being, no family and friends, Lear faces the abyss and yields to it. He becomes a thing of nature, without the qualities that men think set them apart from the rest of the animal kingdom: reason and the technology that allows men to live in security and safety.
Yet, for all of the wildness of that horrific storm, it doesn’t touch the savagery that the humans use against each other. The storm took no lives and harmed no one. The count from human violence is eight bodies high. Who is more mad, Lear with a crown of flowers or the daughters who not only banished him but ended their lives killing each other?
What do we value?
Carefully crafted images that are displayed on social media startle me in their bland perfection. Kitchens are uniformly large, clutter-free expanses decorated in beige and white tones of granite and wood, boasting the latest models of expensive culinary equipment. Dogs romp through houses free of any signs of daily human life: fleeces draped haphazardly, shoes randomly discarded at the front door, rugs askew, envelopes and magazines opened and abandoned. Young women (almost all women in these videos are young) wear their hair in one of three styles, and all wear perfectly applied makeup. The video performances affect a vibe of spontaneity, but there’s nothing ad hoc about these images. They are designed to appeal to what an audience of millions values: youth, beauty, wealth. Each of these is transitory. If you’ve accepted that your value depends on any of these, what will you value in yourself when they go?
If you’re lucky, you’ll be around to ask this question and contemplate what it means for you. But you don’t have to wait for a personal inspection: consider it in the context of others around you. If you’re irritated when an elderly person takes time crossing a street, consider what you value more: the thirty extra seconds you’ll spend waiting, or the attempt of another person to live a mobile life as long as possible? When you hear that someone is ‘too old’ to do a job, consider your values as you consider the job. Does the job require physical strength and stamina? Does the job require a mature temperament and experience? Is a younger candidate better because he’s more like you? What qualities do you value for the job? In many instances, these qualities are not exclusive to youth.
Years ago, businesses were forced to eliminate questions of age in their hiring and management practices. As a result, more of them focused on the skills and behaviors of potential and current employees. This change was positive even though it didn’t eradicate subjective ageism. Qualified older applicants are still passed over in favor of the more youthful and less experienced. And yet, reminding people to think less about age and more about what a person brings to the job is a net positive. It just isn’t perfect.
Both of the leading candidates for the US presidency are old men. That should be less material than considerations of their job skills and characters. These, not age, define them.
Ellie’s Corner
Her ‘sugar beard’ tells her age, but she’s ageless to me. Here’s hoping we have many snowy trails ahead.
Thanks for reading,
I’m using the ‘Quarto’ text for all references, which numbers scenes sequentially without re-starting the sequence within acts. In parentheses you’ll find the act and scene as identified in the ‘Folio’ text. As explained by “The Oxford Shakesspeare”: the play was first printed in 1608 in a quarto; in the 1623 Folio, it was substantially changed. I’m basing my essay on the quarto version.