Thor’s Day: Redemption beneath the stars

A Christian reading of Shakespeare’s King Lear

By Kyle Garza

Upon a first reading, King Lear seems like yet another Shakespearean tragedy wherein foolish characters, hanging their faults on their sleeves, lament their undoing in an unjust and cruel world. The characters all seem to fall into two worldview camps: One thinks that cruel higher powers torment us merely for their own sport, and we must endure their harsh torture as petty toys; the other thinks that the majority of evil in the world is the result of human sins, and there is a higher arbiter who orchestrates justice in the natural world. The latter in the play not only capture Shakespeare’s thematic intent more accurately, but they also demonstrate the core elements of the Christian gospel throughout King Lear’s five acts. It is clear by the end of the play that the wicked receive their comeuppances in a world with orchestrated justice, that the wicked cannot justify their wickedness by the predetermination of the stars, and that the characters of Edgar and Cordelia serve as Christ-figures that anchor the play to the Christian gospel.

    King Lear would undoubtedly be a play about the natural injustice of the world if Cordelia’s sisters made off with the kingdom in the end, or if Edmund successfully ruined his brother Edgar’s life, or if Cordelia and her father were never redeemed. But this simply is not the play that Shakespeare wrote. It is clear throughout the play that the majority of the pain and suffering endured by characters is the result of the wickedness of their mortal peers and not some divine, sadistic power. Three hundred years after King Lear first met the stage of England, C.S. Lewis said it best: “When souls become wicked they will certainly use this possibility to hurt one another; and this perhaps accounts for four-fifths of the sufferings of men. It is men, not God, who have produced racks, whips, prisons, slavery, guns, bayonets, and bombs; it is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork." [C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain] Man’s wickedness is prevalent throughout King Lear, and it accounts, as was Lewis’s estimation, for most of the suffering endured by the characters of the play.
    King Lear himself is perhaps the clearest example of this to analyze. Lear’s perpetual sin is his rashness and pride, which he constantly projects as the sin of others: “Let pride, which [Cordelia] calls [frankness], marry her.” [I.i.145] He even accuses Kent of “strained pride” [I.i.193] when he attempts to defend Cordelia and correct the King’s harsh treatment of her for being honest about her love for her father rather than falsely flattering him. It was a blow to Lear’s pride when Cordelia, his most beloved daughter, would not hyperbolize her love for him and instead spoke what was merely true. While some like Regan might blame the king’s rashness on “the infirmity of his age,” [I.i.339] Goneril accurately notes that, “The best and soundest of his time hath been/ but rash.” [I.i.341-342] Still, Lear cannot see the full extent of his folly, believing himself to be “a man more sinned against than sinning.” [III.ii.62-63] He is blind to his own sin and feels like a victim rather than an irrational fiend. Beyond that, he has an overinflated ego, and he even thinks of himself as a generous saint: “O Regan, Goneril, your old kind father whose frank heart gave all!” [III.iv.22-23]

Lear is not the only one blind to the consequences of his own sin, though. Because he is perpetually blinded by his own sin, Lear does not recognize the truth and goodness of his best daughter, Cordelia; hence Albany notes, “Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.” [IV.ii.47] Gloucester is Lear’s foil, though, and his blindness is a double entendre, for he is figuratively blind to his own sin (the glorification of his own sexual exploits in the first 33 lines of the play) and to not only the wickedness of his son Edmund, but also the goodness of his son Edgar; he is eventually literally blinded by Regan and Cornwall for attempting to aid the king in the midst of a storm, which serves to further demonstrate his blindness to his son Edgar’s goodness, who in his father’s most desperate hour, acts as a guardian angel of sorts, saving him from despair under the guise of a madman. Gloucester, like Lear, sees no errors in his own course, though, and so concludes, “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods;/ They kill us for their sport.” [IV.i.41-42] Incapable of seeing the consequences of the evil in his own life (and even the lives of others), he concludes that there is some sort of cosmic game being played with his life. He does not have the insight of his owns sons, Edgar and Edmund, who eventually come to realize that “The gods are just…The wheel is come full circle.” [V.iii.171,175]
    Gloucester never achieves complete redemption with his estranged son Edgar, but in some capacity, Lear serves to demonstrate the hope of Christian forgiveness and salvation, no matter the wrongs and sufferings, with his daughter Cordelia. Near the end of his life, Lear begs of Cordelia, “Pray now, forget and forgive. I am old and foolish.” [IV.vii.84] Cordelia happily does so, and so actually partially contradicts the words of Albany near the end of the play: “All friends shall taste/ the wages of their virtue, and all foes/ the cup of their deservings.” [V.iii.301-303] Though Lear eventually dies in the throes of mourning after losing the only daughter who truly loved him, he does not taste death with the bitterness of never tasting redemption with Cordelia. Cordelia in no way deserved her suffering, much like Christ Himself. Likewise, it was the enduring, humble acceptance of her suffering that eventually redeemed her father to herself. Thus, in the end, Lear can truly say he does not fear being taken “away to prison,” so long as he and Cordelia can “sing like birds i’ th’ cage” [V.iii.9-10] together. In one sense, Lear’s words are an echo of the Psalmist: “if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.” [Psalm 139:8b ] In another sense, Lear has simply allowed himself to be redeemed, having finally come to his senses and recognized Cordelia’s sincere and true heart.
    In the same scene of Lear’s redemption with the Christ-figure of Cordelia, one may see for the first time Lear growing nearer to a Christian worldview, earnest to discover “the mystery of things,/ As if [he] were [one of] God’s spies.” [V.iii.17-18] Lear’s redemption is not merely paternal, but it is also theological. He was once a man who believed his existence to be merely dependent on the “operation of the orbs” [I.i.123] or determined “by Apollo” [I.i.182] or “by Jupiter.” [I.i.202] He once blamed his faults on the predetermination of the stars or various gods, a practice which even the wicked Edmund calls “An admirable/ evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish/ disposition on the charge of a star!” [I.ii.133-135] Lear eventually distances himself from the worldview of characters like Kent who think “It is the stars. The stars above us govern our conditions.” [IV.iii.38-39] He realizes in a similar line to Albany’s thinking that “you are above,/ You justicers, that these our nether crimes/ So speedily can venge.” [IV.ii.95-97] For the first time, Lear acknowledges God rather than a star or pagan god, and though his redemption is short-lived, Lear finds himself in nearness to Cordelia like the thief on the cross to Christ.

Cordelia

In lieu of the redemption stories that may be observed in King Lear, one must come to recognize that none of it would be possible without the Christ-figures of Cordelia and, to some extent, Gloucester’s son Edgar. It is these redemptive plots that redeem the entirety of injustice and wickedness throughout the play. Just as Christ spoke of the last and least being first, so Cordelia finds herself in the favor of her father in the last minutes of his life; she becomes the most treasured daughter once Regan hangs herself after poisoning Goneril, and truly can be called Lear’s “joy,/ Although [his] last and least.” [I.i.91-92] Cordelia’s one supposed sin was that she was simply “So young… and true.” [I.i.119] Like the way, the truth, and the life Himself, Cordelia must endure harsh persecution merely for being true to her nature as the play’s pinnacle of veracity. She is banished and reviled by her father, yet she performed “no vicious plot, murder, or foulness,/ No unchaste action or dishonored step/ That hath deprived [her] of [the king’s] grace and favor.” [I.i.262-264] She was simply honest, not having a dishonest and flattering “eye and such a tongue” [I.i.266] as her servile sisters. In spite of her fall from her “dear [father’s]” graces, she continues to serve him faithfully by going about his “business” [IV.v.26-27] (rather than seeking vengeance) even when he admits that he deserves to drink poison from her for the wrong he has caused her. [IV.vii.82-85] Cordelia personifies the very heart of Christ in word and deed, meekly suffering unjust persecution, yet humbly serving undeserving man.

Edgar & Gloucester

    In the last scene of the play, Edgar’s survival personifies the living hope of Christ that endures the trials and pains of a wicked and perverse generation, and Cordelia symbolizes the sacrificial redemption of Christ only made possible in the great suffering of undeserved death. Betrayed by the relation of his brother as Christ was by his disciple Judas, Edgar must abdicate his nobility and take the form of a lowly man (and a madman at that), in order to save his father. He must come to the point where he can truly say, “Edgar I nothing am,” [II.iii.21] just as Christ had to make himself nothing, as a servant, [Philippians 2:7] in order to save the spiritually and literally blind. Upon revealing his true identity to his father, Gloucester vacillates “’Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief” [V.iii.234] and passes away, leaving one with a dubious reflection of whether or not his redemption with Edgar was fully realized. Gloucester’s death is sharply contrasted with the death of Lear, who in his final hours recognizes one fair “lady/ To be [his] child Cordelia.” [IV.vii.78-79] Cordelia responds to the king’s recognition with words that echo the very name of God Himself, “And so I am; I am.” [IV.vii.80] In Lear’s most desperate hour, the daughter he betrayed to banishment and death would not leave his side. The throes of pain in prison dulled in the light of this fellowship, and so Lear truly meets the redemption he needed before his death.
    While the entire work of Shakespeare’s King Lear certainly does contain characters who despair in existentialism or believe the world to be bound by the clutches of absurd, merciless forces, it is clear that Shakespeare sufficiently provides hope for redemption: a poignantly Christian one at that. There is no reason to conclude, like the blind Gloucester, that suicide is the only escape. Rather, it is clear that “Men must endure/ Their going hence even as their coming hither,” [V.iii.10-11] and it is the good Christ-figures like Edgar and Cordelia that make that endurance all the more bearable in the face of suffering and evil.

Copyright © 2014 by Kyle Garza