King Lear is a study of the brutality, not only of human beings, but of the natural world

King Lear is a play that for many years many directors considered unperformable because of the sheer brutality of its contents. The term “brutality” can be understood in many ways, often being seen as synonymous with wild and extreme violence by both the characters and by their surroundings, like the storm. However, it can be said that as the play is about the tragic figure of Lear, it is a study of tragedy (with its accompanying brutality), not of mere brutality.

When looking at Lear dramatically it is very easy to see why it could be termed brutal due to the plethora of horrific and bloody acts committed by the characters. As Charles Lamb says “to see Lear acted…has nothing in but what is painful and disgusting” as we watch the unrelenting and gratuitous horror of around 10 of the central characters dying on stage and many more off. In one of the most gruesome scenes, the earl of Gloucester, whom the audience know to be a sympathetic and loyal character is attacked by Regan and her husband Cornwall for protecting Lear. They proceed to humiliate him by plucking his beard, a symbol at the time of masculinity and honour, and hypocritically jeer “so white, and such a traitor”. In a shocking act of violence and accompanied by his blood curdling screams of “Oh cruel you gods” Cornwall blinds him. The cry of abandonment to the gods is symbolic in the lack of divine interest in the events, furthering the sense of chaos, brutality and pointlessness to the agony.

Furthermore, the gratuitously detailed statement “upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my foot” evokes fear and disgust from the audience. From the blood of this, in Dominic Dromgoole’s production, Regan is known to smear it on her eyes as eyeshadow. This extension of violence into the aesthetic only furthers the horror of the scene. Later, deaths appear to spiral exponentially, with us suddenly hearing of Gloucester’s death in one line “his heart burst smilingly” and the news of Regan and Goneril’s death “produce the bodies, be there alive or dead”. The plural of this also evokes a sense of the multitude of dead. However, the brutality of these events are worsened by the audience response that Samuel Johnson noted that “no other play keeps the audience so strongly fixated”. The violence appears to also awaken the brutal in us, therefore perhaps performing as a study of the theatre goer’s brutality, as well as those on stage.

Even in the absence of death many characters are consistently unkind to each other and to Lear who by the end of the play is a piteous figure. Goneril’s statement “old fools are babes again and must be used with checks as flatteries when they are seen abused” is a horrifically unkind response, and thus the audience themselves feel their sympathies to be brutalised when he cries “I am a man more sinned against than sinning”

In Lear, human brutality is sometimes in itself, from nature. Lear’s anger over Cordelia’s “untender” “nothing” when asked to proclaim her love for her father animalistic. He irrationally does not consider that moments ago he had revered her as “our joy” but explodes into a fit of rage. This is expressed by the terms he uses to describe himself during his rejection as a fearsome beast “come not between a dragon and his wrath”. Even as he curses her he evokes images of nature “by the sacred radiance of the sun”. Yet the modern audience recognises that his behaviour is not merely of a “weak, infirm old man” but of a person suffering from Alzheimers, a biological occurrence. This biological act of viciousness brings about “Active, vicious embarrassment” as Simon Russel Beale has noted. This adds an extra irony that nature itself literally sets off the tragic brutality of Lear’s behaviour

Yet, when portraying brutality, Shakespeare ironically shows that brutishness is not always concurrent with brutality. Goneril and Regan can be seen to epitomise the best of renaissance culture with their high rhetoric and costumes. Edmund also can be seen to be an emblem of humanism, with his atheism and “serviceable” mannerisms. Goneril states her love for her father was “more than eyesight” and “space”, and Regan says her “love makes breath poor”, thus rejecting the constraints of the natural world, and Albany echoes this battle saying “rude wind blows in your face”. Edgar on the other hand in the form of Bedlam Beggar Tom takes the “basest and poorest shape” and appears to be the epitome of conventional brutality with his wild words “fa sol la mi”. However he shows extraordinary selflessness and kindness to Gloucester “leading him, begged for him, [and] saved him from his despair”. Thus ironically the cultured “robes and plumed gowns” belong to those who are the opposite of brutish are in their hearts the most evil.

However, Lear can ultimately be seen through the lens of tragedy and the disorder that is catalysed when human beings disrupt nature. Nature and fate are often seen, particularly by the Jacobeans as very similar. It was believed that both humans and the natural world lived in a state of equilibrium, but when human’s disrupted the “natural order” of things, chaos would ensue. The play begins with an action that can be seen as contravening the natural state of things, the “darker purpose” of dividing the kingdom into three. At the time of its reception, this would have had additional significance as the new Monarch, James I and VI, was in the process of uniting the kingdom. Due to Cordelia’s failure to satisfy his vain preclusions, Lear severs his parental bond “I disclaim my parental care”, thus exercising his fatal flaw of misjudgement and catalysing his own tragic fate. Nature is seen to enact her revenge on Lear both externally in the metaphorical storm “cataracts and hurricanoes” “sulphurous fires and all shaking thunder”, an internally with the “tempest in my mind”. The fates are against him because of his retraction of filial piety and thus wage “high engendered battles ‘gainst a head so old and white and this”. “what they are, yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth”