King Lear  

Sunday, June 25, 2023

 

A cold-reading group I’m in did Lear recently. Like always, that gave me ideas.

 

For years, I’ve been thinking about one saying of Jesus, in Matthew 5, against oath-taking: 

 

³³ “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ ³⁴ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; ³⁵ or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. ³⁶ And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black.³⁷ All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’;anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

 

I have tried to imagine that as the center of Jesus’ teaching, rather than, say, some recommendation of compassion or radical benevolence. (This is part of a larger project of trying out sayings of Jesus as central, to see how that makes one read the others.)

 

In last week’s play, Pericles of Tyre, oaths come up. Pericles tells his deputy he shouldn’t bother swearing an oath, because the sort of person who would abuse his office would also break his oath; nothing is gained:

 

The care I had and have of subjects' good

On thee I lay whose wisdom's strength can bear it.

I'll take thy word for faith, not ask thine oath:

Who shuns not to break one will sure crack both:

But in our orbs we'll live so round and safe,

That time of both this truth shall ne'er convince,

Thou show'dst a subject's shine, I a true prince. Act 1.

 

Dionyza, by contrast, is keen to remind her servant Leonine of his oath – to murder Marina:

 

Thy oath remember; thou hast sworn to do't:

'Tis but a blow, which never shall be known.

Thou canst not do a thing in the world so soon,

To yield thee so much profit. Let not conscience,

Which is but cold, inflaming love i' thy bosom,

Inflame too nicely; nor let pity, which

Even women have cast off, melt thee, but be

A soldier to thy purpose.

 

Another murderer in the play, Thaliard, laments his oath to King Antiochus: 

 

So, this is Tyre, and this the court. Here must I

kill King Pericles; and if I do it not, I am sure to

be hanged at home: 'tis dangerous. Well, I perceive

he was a wise fellow, and had good discretion, that,

being bid to ask what he would of the king, desired

he might know none of his secrets: now do I see he

had some reason for't; for if a king bid a man be a

villain, he's bound by the indenture of his oath to

be one! Hush! here come the lords of Tyre.

 

Pericles of Tyre is partly about how little one can predict what’s going to happen, or what one may be called upon to do. It is odd to think that one could maintain any resolution, in a world like that. One would have to know oneself and/or control oneself far more than people do. The play might serve as an example in support of Jesus’ warning about oaths.  (Ophelia raises a related point in Hamlet, “we know what we are but know not what we may be.”)

 

Oaths and formal declarations are important to Lear, and one of his reasons for not reconsidering his dismissal of Cordelia is that he has sworn oaths. He responds to Kent’s intervention on behalf of Cordelia:

 

Hear me, recreant!
On thine allegiance, hear me!
Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow,
Which we durst never yet, and with strain'd pride
To come between our sentence and our power,
Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,
Our potency made good, take thy reward.

 

So, Lear believes that swearing makes an intention real and permanent; it is a small step to thinking that professions of love do the same.

 

Someone in our group suggested that Lear is demented, a claim I find very interesting. A couple of points are relevant here:

 

1.     He values oaths and embellishments the way his society values them, which is also the way our legal system values them. Whatever someone’s character may be, whatever example a person may have set, oaths are administered at every significant juncture, at every point where speaking matters.

2.     According to one history noted as a source for this play, Lear has ruled for 60 years. So, for his time, he is very old, and likely very tired. One understands his reluctance to give up ruling: a king with three daughters and no son will likely see his kingdom descend into civil war when he dies or abdicates. His only option for giving up rule is to maintain his daughters’ personal connection to himself, to keep them from – naturally – becoming enemies through ambition. It is a small hope – but one can understand his impulse to be a control-freak at this instant. He is enacting a public ceremony to save his people.

3.     Cordelia has the option of saying something affectionate without entering into a competition with her sisters – making a kind of place-holder statement. But she does the opposite thing: she emphasizes that her loyalties will be divided when she marries.  That presents an opening for her husband (who-ever he may turn out to be) to reject the threefold division and try to claim the kingdom, to ignite a civil war. She seems to be testing Lear.

 

What interests me here, more than the interpretation of the play, is the status of oaths and professions. What has become of Jesus’ point, which Shakespeare echoes: we don’t control our future selves, and we can’t foresee our future circumstances, and that makes swearing a kind of charade (as immediately becomes obvious in the behavior of Regan and Goneril)? The oaths and professions don’t set anything in cement; they just prevent people who take them seriously from reconsidering horrible mistakes. 

 

A king who has reigned for the maximum time allowed to a king, maybe 60 years, has lived a long time hearing people say what they ought to say, with his kingdom and his own dignity upheld by formulas, oaths and professions. And, having reigned that long, he has to be aware of the fragility of a kingdom where the king has only daughters; maintaining his sovereignty amounts to holding back civil war. He might admit that, under the professions and the oaths and the formulas, people’s real attitudes and loyalties may have changed over the years, that the structure of words is masking a new reality. But he bets on the structure, on people saying what they ought to say.

 

Many of us live now close to as long as Lear lived, and we rely on memories of loyalty, memories of attachment, structured habits, to keep us feeling secure: we know who are friends are, we know what can happen. (My mother’s writing group chose as its anthology one year: “I think I can handle this life.”) So, living in the knowledge that many relationships could have changed, since one’s last “audit”, and that the settled features of the world might become unrecognizable tomorrow, is not any easier for us than for Lear. For everyone, as Ophelia says, “We know not what we may be,” and exploring a mind that experiences life that way is, I think, one task that Shakespeare undertakes over and over. 

 

My primary interest in this matter is more about interpreting Jesus than interpreting Lear. If one takes Jesus seriously about compassion and forgiveness and mutual affection, one is in the mainstream of human moral teaching. Lots of venerable people have said this sort of thing. If one takes Jesus seriously about oaths, one puts oneself outside of the consensus and, to a considerable extent, outside of respectable society. It is not even clear how a society without oaths would work; I am not sure there has ever been one. And yet Christians tend not to see their commitment as radically estranging them from political and legal engagement in their societies.

 

But, if one reads Jesus from the standpoint of this strange saying on oaths, he moves into the same intellectual space as Shakespeare writing Lear, inviting people to take seriously how much they don’t know and how much can change from one day to the next. What would people who did that, day after day, be like?