Red Cedar

Which society? Through the lens of King Lear

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Megan

(What follows is a somewhat stream-of-conciousness entry about King Lear – the process of writing this helped me immensely in getting my thoughts straight after a somewhat plodding read of the text).

I am really hoping that in-class discussion helps to illuminate King Lear a bit more for me. While I recognize this is considered to be Shakespeare’s master work, a multi-layered dramatization with complex meaning – I had a difficult time getting past the hysterical tenor of the scenes involving “Tom” the madman and the Fool, not to mention the fact nearly every single character dies by the end of the play. (Yes, I recognize this is a tragedy, but ten people have to die to make a point about pride?).

As much as I hate to admit it, I found it difficult to get past the “dramatic” nature of this play to get much out of it, and so I’ve since turned to other sources in order to find its deeper meaning. This helps me to place Shakespeare’s King Lear in a similar context to The Prince – that is a society in transition from old-world rules, loyalties, hierarchies and commitments – to a new ruthless and competetive society which favours a different kind of reason, and a different kind of person in success. In Shakepeare’s day, the medieval world was shrinking away to the emergence of a new political reality – seen in the contrast between Edmund (the bastard) and his half-brother Edgar (the honourable rightful heir) and it seems that the audience of Shakespeare would have recognized this tension in their own social order, thus responding to these characterizations quite readily. Likewise, the doting King Lear, is supplanted by his daughters Goneril and Regan who use their newly-inherited estates to attempt to crush their father’s world. It should be noted that Edmund, Goneril and Regan all die by the end of the play, a statement by the playwright about which side of the transition he feels most comfortable on.

But these characters – representative of the new individualism of Shakespeare’s time – are not entirely unsupportable either. We are somewhat sympathetic to Edmund in particular – though he plots against his half-brother Edgar in seeking the father’s estate – for he is to be left with nothing because of his uncertain parentage, while Edgar is somewhat the weaker of the two (in intelligence certainly as he falls for the most dubious ruse of his brother). So there is a great deal of moral ambiguity in the play’s villains. It’s not as simple as to hold up the old order to repulse the new “man” – for we are to understand that these characters have very real grievances stemming from the old way of doing things.

Another way into understanding the intent of the play is to look at the characters who are on the side of moral “good” – Cordelia (who is honest and caretaking), Kent (who is loyal and caretaking), Edgar (who exhibits patience, who cares for his elder father, and restores right at the end through killing his half-brother Edmund), the King of France (who believes in courtly love without the promise of inheritance), the Duke of Albany (who argues against his wife and her sister-in-law a their greed, and in the end attempts to restore Lear to the throne – settling with a sharing of power between Kent and Edgar). Each of these characters (not all of whom live or are victorious in the end) embodies an ethic of care for each other, in addition to upholding some aspect of the medieval order – birthright, chivalry, care for elders and respect for “natural order”, loyalty to the “natural” king or queen, etc. These are the characters with whom we are to side, even as their weaknesses and character flaws are exposed.

Nature is also hard to ignore in this play – as much of the most dramatic action takes place outside during a blindingly fierce storm – not to mention the words “nature”, “natural” and “unnatural” being mentioned more than forty times in the course of the play (thank Wikipedia for that fact!). Many of these references have to do with human nature, and the so-called natural order of familial and social relations. When Cordelia defies her father – for instance – he is quick to call her unnatural and tell her that nature could not tolerate her treatement of him. Fundamentally the question becomes one of how human nature is most rightfully seen by Elizabethan society. Is it Edmund or Edgar? Goneril/Regan or Cordelia? The Duke of Cornwall or Kent? Is human nature caring or selfish? Both? What does a society in transition reflect about human nature?

Ah, and there’s an interesting question: for one type of society puts a primacy on some aspects of human nature, where another type of society idealizes another – indicating that at the very least, our “natures” are flexible to our context. Unlike Machiavelli’s The Prince, King Lear leaves open the possibility that humans can behave in ways that are caring, generous, altruistic – and still succeed given the right social conditions. It’s just not a given that the forces of good will win out, and in the interim there may be a lot of violence and bloodshed with casualties on both sides. So there’s that to consider.

There are, of course, many other symbolic readings of the play one can undertake – feminist, Freudian, Jungian and the like – but having read through a number of interpretations, what resonates with me best is that which examines the context of a shifting social order. Perhaps that’s the materialist in me?

Tomorrow I am going to post a second piece on the Book of Genesis which explores the contested nature of the emergence of civilization – and I think Lear posits for us the same kind of debate on the emergence of individualism in society. Our stories are the internal social debates of our time – and as is evident in Genesis and in Lear (and in so many other stories that we tell each other over history) – no social transition goes uncontested. And further to that? The stories we tell each other *do* matter, our ideas matter – because they shape our actions, which shape our society. Lear is a piece of a debate that ultimately is won by the other side, and we are living proof.

Autumn in the ‘hood

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Megan

In the garden October

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Megan

Lions and foxes – lessons in power

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Megan

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I’m having a hard time finding an entry point into the material for this week’s class – King Lear and The Prince. Both works deeply embedded in our political/historical culture and thus difficult to unpack in the space of 500-1000 words. My own digestion of the material is just too fresh for any meaningful depth of discovery, and in the case of King Lear I found it a real struggle to get it down in the first place. More on that later, as today’s reading journal entry is focused on The Prince – a guidebook to seizing and maintaining power, written in early 16th century Florence.

Though some have posited that this may have been satire rather than advice, I have a difficult time believing that – particularly as the Machiavelli had spent some time being tortured in prison for an alleged role in a plot to overthrow the Medici family – and any word taken the wrong way would have surely been used painfully against him. At the same time, some of Machiavelli’s prescriptions in The Prince seem over the top in their amoral inference that the door is certainly open to understand the book as a satirical critique of power if one should choose to do so.

It is better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both. But you must avoid being hated.

So, taking the book at face value – Machiavellis famous for saying things like the above. And also things like:

Men should either be caressed or crushed, for if the injuires are slight they can always gain revenge, but they cannot if they are heavy.

Really, the book is packed with handy tips like these which cover everything from how to take power, the necessity of destroying bloodlines of former rules, the requirement for civic rather than mercenary armies, the types of fortifications and arms one should need for maintaining power, and the requirement for chucking morality out the window should the need to hold onto power supercede it. Oh – and don’t bother looking for your rewards in heaven, being a good prince pretty much necessitates behaviour which will send you straight to hell. A very straightforward, no-bullshit approach to power if you ask me, even as I cringe at the self-interested autocracy of it all. And the prose is direct, not flowery or euphemistic, a clear communication from one who fancies himself an insider-strategist to those who actually hold the levers of power.

In this way, Machiavelli may be our first evidence of the political strategist as we understand that role in modern politics. The Prince is, after all, an attempt to get to the heart of the leadership question during a time of emergence for the modern state in Italy. This was not a friendly or fanciful context, but one in which torture was used routinely – one where the church had all but abandoned any pretences to morality under Pope Alexander VI (the “Borgia” pope who sought to feather the nests of his children through use of the Papal armies and his own political strategies). Although Machiavelli may seem cynical in the writing of this, he is not promoting so much as reflecting on the way the maintenance of power really works, as opposed to how it “ought” to work morally or ethically.

The perfect leader in Machiavelli’s opinion, is one who can balance reason and passion, playing the strengths of each – the astuteness of the fox alongside the ferocity of the lion – in order to alternately smoothtalk and create fear among the public. It is not enough to simply ride in and take what one wants without endangering the whole enterprise. A good prince may not be virtuous in his actions, but he must always be seen to be virtuous. A good prince must not be afraid to inflict cruelty, but if he does so it should be in the very beginning of his taking power so people can eventually forget that cruelty. It’s all a bit of a Jedi mind-trick really, but when one thinks of the success of the “100 days” plans of most conservative governments as of late, the effectiveness of the strategy is clear. (By “100 days” I mean the strategy by which a government comes to power and enacts its most regressive cuts and legislation in the first hundred days as part of the new “mandate” from the public. Closer to elections, governments become a lot more giving – this is all in keeping with Machiavelli’s edicts for holding onto power).

What justifies this all? The end of course – as usual, holding up the means by which one gets there. But then the question is, what are the ends? Are the most important ends sought by the individual prince? the political party? on behalf of the people? This is where the real deception comes in, because even Machiavelli seems to believe that the ends are based in the needs of the people being met, as opposed to the needs of the individual ruler in meeting his own bloodlust or addiction to political rulership. As in modern politics where the needs of the public are continually held up as the motive, when in fact they become the driver for the real motive – concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few.

And therein lies my issue with reading Machiavelli’s words as satire. While it may *seem* over the top – what in his words is not the truth of how rulers do rule successfully? North American political parties may seem a long way removed from Florence during the Rennaissance, but no fewer political conspiracies and intrigues abound today, and while the direct murder of an opponent may be verboten (here and now) – to slaughter someone’s character through lies and innuendo is seen as perfectly fair game. Power is not a game for the ethical, then or now. And if the tone of the work is sometimes detestable, does that not simply reflect a desire on the part of Machiavelli to shock his reader into careful consideration of what he has to say?

These are my initial thoughts on The Prince – which I appreciated for the lucidity of thought, much more than the world prescribed by those thoughts. The question I am left with is one of the human capacity to see and act on power differently than what is laid out in this handbook – for we aren’t even one step removed from the cynical approach to ruling than the Florentine monarchs of the 16th century were.