King Lear and the tragic: the use of "pity" and "fear" in the play

Fear and Pity

Lear is not a tragic hero in a traditional sense; we get Gloucester in the place of this traditional model. It seems to me that, by presenting the traditional model of tragedy alongside something other than this, Shakespeare explores the possibilities of the tragic.

For Aristotle, tragedy was defined in a way by the kind of response it evoked in the audience and in the chareacters themselves – pity and fear. These two words appear often in King Lear, as Shakespeare seems to explore the implications of pity and fear – the traditional description of the response to the tragic.

The first half of the play is full of fear. For example, a couple of quotations from I, iv.

Goneril: Sir,
I had thought, by making this well known unto you,
To have found a safe redress, but now grow fearful,
By what yourself, too, late have spoke and done (I, iv, 209 -- my italics)

And

Alb. Well, you may fear too far.
Gon. Safer than trust too far.
Let me still take away the harms I fear,
Not fear still to be taken. I know his heart.
What he hath utter'd I have writ my sister.
If she sustain him and his hundred knights,
When I have show'd th' unfitness-

Enter [Oswald the] Steward.

How now, Oswald?
What, have you writ that letter to my sister?
Osw. Yes, madam.
Gon. Take you some company, and away to horse!
Inform her full of my particular fear,
And thereto add such reasons of your own
As may compact it more. (I, iv, 334-346 -- my italics)

Does Goneril fear Lear too far? Is he in control of his knights or not? These people live in fear. Regan says at the end of Act II, “Wisdom bids fear.” In fact, there is a conspicuous lack of pity in them. In their world, pity is sinful: “Glou. Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing! When I desir'd their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house, charg'd me on pain of perpetual displeasure neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain him.” (III, iii, 1-8).

In their world, there’s a conjunction of pity and fools:

Gon. Milk-liver'd man!
That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;
Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
Thine honour from thy suffering; that not know'st
Fools do those villains pity who are punish'd
Ere they have done their mischief. Where's thy drum?
France spreads his banners in our noiseless land,
With plumed helm thy state begins to threat,
Whiles thou, a moral fool, sit'st still, and criest
'Alack, why does he so?' (IV, ii, 50-59 -- my italics)

By Act III, however, fear gives way to pity. “Fool. O nuncle, court holy water in a dry house is better than this rain water out o' door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters blessing! Here's a night pities nether wise men nor fools.” (III, ii, 10-14 -- my italics). Then this by Kent:

Kent. Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night
Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark
And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,
Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
Remember to have heard. Man's nature cannot carry
Th' affliction nor the fear. (III, ii, 42-49)

The basic question asked here is – how can man endure a life of all fear, and no pity?

When Lear does feel pity, or the related word “sorrow”, it’s seen as connected with life, the ability to endure, as Lear in part overcomes his mad egotism:

Lear. My wits begin to turn.
Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry yet for thee. (III, ii, 67-73)

However, here Lear’s pity is the result of seeing everything as himself – “you’re cold, I’m cold myself….” If he sees everyone in terms of himself, he’s not capable of self-criticism.

As the idea of pity comes with increasing frequency, the idea of fear in the play is more closely defined. It had seemed to refer to the feelings the “bad” characters had of each other, and of Lear – a fear of their safety, their independence. For a character like Albany, the fear felt in this play is fear of a different order.

Alb. O Goneril,
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face! I fear your disposition.
That nature which contemns it origin
Cannot be bordered certain in itself.
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use. (IV, ii, 30-37 -- my italics)

Two points need to be made: first, the severing of natural relationships, the denying of kinship, is something profoundly to be feared. This is a pervasive theme in the play (Lear and his daughters, Edmund and his father, Cornwall wanting to be Edmund’s father while Gloucester is still alive). It concerns the severing of natural marital relations as well:

Reg. Lady, I am not well; else I should answer
From a full-flowing stomach. General,
Take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony;
Dispose of them, of me; the walls are thine.
Witness the world that I create thee here
My lord and master.
Gon. Mean you to enjoy him?
Alb. The let-alone lies not in your good will.
Edm. Nor in thine, lord.
Alb. Half-blooded fellow, yes.
Reg. [to Edmund] Let the drum strike, and prove my title thine.
Alb. Stay yet; hear reason. Edmund, I arrest thee
On capital treason; and, in thine attaint,
This gilded serpent [points to Goneril]. For your claim, fair
sister,
I bar it in the interest of my wife.
'Tis she is subcontracted to this lord,
And I, her husband, contradict your banes.
If you will marry, make your loves to me;
My lady is bespoke. (V, iii, 75-90)

Regan repeats and echoes I, i, with variations. It’s about unnatural marriages. Albany is the character who sees the horror of the violation of marriage – he understands the horror of this speech.

All of this seems right in Albany. But then, his view of Lear is Lear’s view of Lear:

Alb. Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;
Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?
Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform'd?
A father, and a gracious aged man,
Whose reverence even the head-lugg'd bear would lick,
Most barbarous, most degenerate, have you madded.
Could my good brother suffer you to do it?
A man, a prince, by him so benefited!
If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,
It will come,
Humanity must perforce prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep- (IV, ii, 39-45)

This quotation leads to the second of the two points that needed to be made: wisdom and goodness are connected to the fear of the severing of such natural human relationships. If this is what defines wisdom and goodness, can Lear, then, be wise or good? (Rhetorical question!)

These discussions of the violation of natural bonds, and the fear such violations occasion, leads to a reemphasis on pity. Pity is connected with images of procreation, with natural renewal, with a recognition of “otherness”

Act IV, scene vi is important in this connection. At about line 207 a gentleman comments on “A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch, past speaking of in a king.” Recall, when Lear feels pity, it’s pity of others being like him – Edgar as poor Tom must be pitied because he must have been betrayed by daughters. This gentleman’s pity is the opposite of Lear’s egotism.

Another example occurs around line 225 –

Edg. A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows,
Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows,
Am pregnant to good pity. Give me your hand;
I'll lead you to some biding.

This is an affirmation of the natural bond with Gloucester, his father. Pity is connected with conception (“pregnant”), and with goodness, which runs counter to the vile references to conception and children throughout the play, especially by Lear himself.

Pity, then has to do with renewal, and with goodness and the ability to recognize the suffering of others as separate from ourselves. This pity doesn’t extend to the “bad” characters, however. The response to them continues to be one of fear.

Look at V, iii, 225 or so

Edg. What means that bloody knife?
Gent. 'Tis hot, it smokes.
It came even from the heart of-O! she's dead!
Alb. Who dead? Speak, man.
Gent. Your lady, sir, your lady! and her sister
By her is poisoned; she hath confess'd it.
Edm. I was contracted to them both. All three
Now marry in an instant.

Enter Kent.

Edg. Here comes Kent.
Alb. Produce their bodies, be they alive or dead.
[Exit Gentleman.]
This judgement of the heavens, that makes us tremble
Touches us not with pity. (my italics)

Albany here gauges our response. We tremble at heaven’s judgment of Goneril and Regan and Cornwall (i.e. fear) but we don’t pity them. Pity is evoked only by characters deserving of it.

Why pity Lear, then – for he is pitied here.
a) his intentions were to avoid future strife?
b) because he’s not fully knowledgable of himself or others?

Why isn’t he feared? How does he differ from Goneril, Regan, Edmund etc?
a) Lear not consciously evil?

Shakespeare, in Hamlet, suggests that the words to describe the tragic effect of that play are not fear and pity, but woe and wonder. It’s clear that the wonder felt in this play is of the following kind, as Kent says – “the wonder is he hath endured so long.” We wonder at the extent of Lear’s suffering. The woe is “present business” – the death of Lear, Cordelia, Gloucester, the rule of the “gored” state.