The Love Tests In King Lear and Macbeth

By George F. Held

This essay forms Chapters 3 and 4 of my ebook: A Christian Pattern In Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello, available at Lulu. Lastly and most importantly, the action of both plays is structured around a pair of love tests: one at or near the beginning of each play, and the other at or near its end. In both plays the first love test illuminates the personality of the female deuteragonist and the quality of her love for the male protagonist; in both the second love test illuminates the character of the male protagonist, the quality of his love for the female deuteragonist, and the nature of her effect on him. In both the second love test consists of the male protagonist’s reaction to the death of the female deuteragonist. In both the results of the love tests are mutually illuminating: they help to explain each other and much else in these plays.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312154278

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The Love Tests In King Lear and Macbeth

The Love Tests in King Lear and Macbeth

By

George F. Held

Preface

This essay forms Chapters 3 and 4 of my ebook: A Christian Pattern In Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello, available at Lulu. The ebook is an expanded version of my book: The Good That Lives After Them: A Pattern in Shakespeare’s Tragedies (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1995) [I may also publish the new ebook version of the book under its previous title]. What is new in the ebook is two chapters on Othello and two addenda to the chapter on Hamlet. I plan to make all the chapters of the ebook available online at Lulu for free as separate essays. If you find this essay to be of interest, you might express your appreciation for it by purchasing at Lulu the ebook of which it forms a part. Chapter 5 of the ebook: The Difference between Macbeth and Richard III continues my discussion of Macbeth. It is available at Lulu for free as a separate essay.

1: King Lear and Macbeth: the First Love Test

Tomorrow, and tomor­row, and tomorrow (Mac. V.iv.19)

Never, never, never, never, never. (Lr. V.iii.309)

King Lear and Macbeth are perhaps the two most closely related plays of Shake­speare. They belong of course to that most exclusive group within the Shakespearean corpus, the four greatest tragedies, and they were probably written in consecutive years. The special rela­tionship which I see between them, howev­er, is due not so much to these two facts as to another. This other fact makes their co-greatness and coevality all the more remarkable. This other fact is that they are opposites.[1] They contrast in regard to both action and character: the major characters in them are opposites, and so also are some of the major actions. The action in one contrasts with that in the other even in terms of speed and length: Macbeth has often been praised because its action is so quick and short; King Lear has been criticized on the grounds that its action is too slow and too long.[2] There are some outstanding similarities between these two plays, including the compositional pattern described above, but the similarities only serve to underscore the more substantive differences. For example, in each there is a crucial action at or near the start of the play, which precipitates most of the rest of the dramatic action. In each it is the protagonist who performs this action, and in each he seems to act somewhat out of character in performing it. In each, since he seems to act somewhat out of character in performing it, this action constitutes something of a paradox—yet they are paradoxes of opposite sorts. In one a kingly man gives up kingship; in the other an unkingly man seizes kingship. The contrast between these actions may be expressed more fully: in one a very kingly, possessive and authorita­tive man voluntarily dispossesses himself of his kingdom and kingship; in the other a rather unkingly, unpossessive, unauthoritative and even unambitious man eagerly seeks and seizes a kingdom and kingship. (Lear intends to give up his kingdom, not so much his kingship, but in fact gives up both. He retains not all th’ addition to a king, but only the name.[3] Macbeth is not eager to kill Duncan but he is eager for kingship;[4] he is not, however, in the full sense ambitious.) Both protagonists only seem to act out of character in performing these crucial actions, but do not really do so. They seem to do so if one takes into consideration only their ostensible, second­ary motives for performing these actions. On a deeper level, that is, if their primary motives are under­stood, both will be seen to act very much in character in performing them.

Lear and Macbeth as Opposites

These protagonists are in several respects opposites: they contrast not only in regard to kingliness and related qualities but also in regard to their relation­ships with women and their attitudes toward life. Their relationships with women, as represented by the female deuterago­nists, Cordelia and Lady Macbeth, greatly affect and reflect their attitudes toward life. The exposition of the protag­onist’s attitude toward life is the heart of each of these plays: it is what each of them is ultimately about. Neither protagonist changes his attitude toward life in the course of the play; each reveals it clearly to us toward the end of the play. The difference between their attitudes toward life and toward women is exemplified and encapsulated in the two contrasting lines cited at the beginning of this chapter.

Both protagonists are preoccupied with greatness, with obtain­ing it or giving it up and, conversely, with accepting or rejecting smallness. Great is a key word in both plays, and there are some other important words or synonyms or ideas common to both plays. Lear says at the beginning of his play that it is time for him to unburden’d crawl toward death. Macbeth near the end of his play complains that time itself creeps at a petty (= small) pace. Creeping and crawling are very similar forms of slow locomotion, used by men primarily when they are small or wish to make them­selves small. Creeping and crawling both connote small­ness and slowness. Lear’s words imply his acceptance of smallness and slowness; Macbeth’s words make clear his repugnance for them. Lear near the end of his play distinguishes between himself and Cordelia, on the one hand, and the great ones, on the other; he tries to persuade Cordelia that she and he can have a great life together even if they are not great ones, that is, even if they lack greatness. At the beginning of the play he unburdens himself of much that makes him great, and near its end recommends the sacrifice of greatness to his favorite daughter. Macbeth is several times referred to or addressed as great;[5] he and his wife are very pleased to become partner[s] of greatness, to become in other words great ones. He is willing to jump the life to come for the sake of greatness, that is, to sacrifice everything else for it. He seems to think that life to be great requires great­ness. The ill-fitting garments imagery, so frequently applied to Macbeth, however implies that he is too small to be king, too small to be great.[6] Macbeth in fact is never ad­dressed, and proba­bly never referred to, as king;[7] at the end of the play he is termed rather a tyrant and a butcher. Lear, on the other hand, is, by his own admission, every inch a king (IV.vi.107) and is frequently ad­dressed and referred to as king (fifty-two times in all). Greatness seems an integral part of him. The ill-fitting gar­ments imagery is applied to Macbeth mainly by his enemies. Some of their accusations against him are clearly false; for exam­ple, Malcolm describes Macbeth as Luxurious, avaricious, . . . smacking of every sin / That has a name (IV.iii.59-61). The issue of Mac­beth’s greatness or smallness is not simple, nor is that of his goodness and badness. Fair and foul combine peculiarly in the one play, meteorologi­cally and ethically, and are at times very hard to distin­guish; in the other they remain largely separate and are generally much less difficult to distinguish, meteorologically and ethically.[8] Macbeth desires to have in his old age honor, love, obedience, troops of friends and regrets that all that he can look to have is things like mouth-honor (V.iii.24-28). Lear in his old age possesses all that Macbeth would then like to have. Due to a desire for what might be called mouth-love, he finds himself dishonored, unloved, and disobeyed, and is gradually deprived of troops of friends. He however is never completely without that which should accompany old age. Much of the play’s action consists of the display toward Lear of honor, love, [and] obedi­ence by a remarkably loyal troop of friends.

Cordelia and Lady Macbeth as Opposites

The female deuteragonists are even more directly opposite than are the male protagonists, although they have one notable trait in common, androgyny.[9] Each possesses an unusually large num­ber of qualities which Shakespeare’s contemporaries would have considered masculine and which today are still considered stereo­typically masculine. The common trait of these deuteragonists, however, far from establishing a similarity between them, is rather the very basis of the enormous difference between them: whereas the personality of one is a composite of the stereotypical virtues of both sexes without the stereotypical vices of either, the personality of the other is a composite of the stereotypical vices of both sexes without the stereotypical virtues of either.[10] These women natural­ly have oppo­site effects on their respective male protagonists. The difference between these women is most obviously reflected in the fact that one is in various ways associated with Christ and heaven, and the other with the devil and hell. It is even implied that life with one is a kind of heaven, and life with the other a kind of hell. Cordelia is implicitly compared by the Gentleman to Christ.[11] Lear at one point imagines her to be in heaven: Thou art a soul in bliss and You are a spirit, I know; [when] did you die? (IV.vii.45, 48). Later he seems to think that a life spent with no one and nothing but Cordelia would be a very good life which would go on indefinitely, that is, a kind of heaven.[12] Lady Mac­beth, on the other hand, is barely on stage before she not only unsexes herself but also in effect demonizes herself. The spirits whom she calls on to unsex her and to fill her with direst cruelty would have been considered by Shake­speare’s contempo­raries to be devils; their filling her constitutes a sort of demonic posses­sion.[13] Shakespeare with the help of a drunken porter com­pares the place where she and her husband live to hell (II.iii.1-21). The appropriateness of this analogy is later justified by her hus­band’s sweeping condemnation of life: his words imply that he has ever inhabited a kind of hell.[14] Lady Macbeth at the end of the play is described as fiend-like; Cordelia at the end of her play plays the role of Christ in a scene which is "a Pietà with the roles re­versed;[15] the last adjective used with reference to her is excel­lent. Cordelia, when she first speaks, says nothing; Lady Macbeth, when she first speaks, creates nothingness. (I will explain how below.) Cordelia’s nothing leads to Lear’s observation of the obvious truth, that nothing will come of nothing." Lady Macbeth’s nothingness ought to lead to our observation of a some­what less obvious but related truth, that nothingness will come of nothingness. That is, that psychological nothingness may derive from contact with and experi­ence of ontologi­cal nothingness. The play’s action well illustrates this phenomenon. The ontological nothingness which Lady Macbeth both creates and is generates to some extent the psychological nothingness which Macbeth describes so eloquently near the end of the play.

A Pair of Love Tests

Lastly and most importantly, the action of both plays is struc­tured around a pair of love tests: one at or near the beginning of each play, and the other at or near its end. In both plays the first love test illuminates the personality of the female deuteragonist and the quality of her love for the male protagonist; in both the second love test illuminates the character of the male protagonist, the quality of his love for the female deuteragonist, and the nature of her effect on him. In both the second love test consists of the male protagonist’s reaction to the death of the female deuteragonist. In both the results of the love tests are mutually illuminating: they help to explain each other and much else in these plays. The love tests and the compositional pattern mentioned above are the two major formal similarities between these plays. These two formal similarities however are not entirely distinct: the latter is to some extent an off-shoot of the former. Documentation of the love tests accordingly leads directly to documentation of the existence of that compositional pattern. By focusing on the love tests I will also be able to point out some additional contrasts between these two plays. My subsequent discussion hence will focus on these love tests.

King Lear: The First Love Test

In one play the first love test is artificial and perverse; in the other it is natural and genuine. In King Lear the first love test consists of a love contest. For the purpose of testing his daughters’ love for him, Lear requires that each of them put her love for him into words in public. Since love cannot be tested in this manner—and for other reasons as well, Cordelia and her sisters, if they truly love their father, ought to refuse to participate in this contest. Cordelia by both what she says and what she refuses to say in this scene proves the quality of her love for her father. In Macbeth the first love test consists of two private scenes, first with Lady Mac­beth alone and then with her and her husband together. By both what she says and what she fails to say in these scenes Lady Mac­beth casts doubt on the quality of her love for her husband. In both plays the first love test reflects on the quality not just of the love of the female deuteragonist but also of her honesty and courage. In Macbeth her courage is not actually tested in the course of the first love test, but she there, in her own inimitable way, prays for courage (I.v.40-54), and implies that she is courageous (I.vii.60-61). Her courage is tested later on, especially near the end of the play, and is found wanting. In King Lear the first love test, be­cause it is artificial and perverse, is in fact much more a test of honesty and courage than of love. In King Lear the female deuter­agonist passes all these tests wonderfully well: her courage is proven by her behavior not only at the beginning of the play but also near its end. In both plays the first love test derives much of its force from the juxtaposition of conflicting scenes. What takes place in the scene or scenes of the love test conflicts with what takes place in the preceding or following scene or scenes. In King Lear the scene of the love contest is juxtaposed with the scene of Cordelia’s marriage which is to follow it. (Cordelia, subsequently, is not actually married on stage, but her bethrothal to France is the dramatic equivalent of a marriage ceremony.) Participation in the love contest would conflict with participation in the subsequent marriage ceremony. This conflict is Cordelia’s primary reason for refusing to participate in the love contest. In Macbeth the scenes in which Lady Macbeth denigrates her husband’s courage (I.v and vii) are juxtaposed with the earlier scenes in which his heroic deeds are described and his courage and valor highly praised. What she says about him conflicts with what we know about him from these earlier scenes.

Lear of course has had his apologists, Goneril and Regan their defenders, and Cordelia her critics. We have been told that, since the division of the kingdom has already been made, Lear’s daugh­ters cannot expect to gain anything by expressing their love for him.[16] Goneril and Regan, in doing so, therefore do not verbally prostitute themselves. They merely participate in a harmless cere­mony or ritual.[17] Their oratory is a dramatically heightened version of the formal speech-making that takes place (in democratic as in monarchic times) when a ruling statesman announces his retirement (Elliott 241). Manners moreover have changed. Prin­cesses, even if married, did sometimes write letters to their fathers declaring exaggeratedly great and almost exclusive love for them.[18] Historical precedents, however, are idle since no one mentions any in the play. This would not be the case if Shake­speare had wished to present the love contest as a time-honored and innocent ceremony. Gloucester and Kent in the opening lines of the play discuss and