I suppose a little more extreme than normal family dynamics.
King Lear has it all: viciousness, madness, mutilation, suicidal impulses, inclement weather, deaths galore, and yet, after all that — wait, I’m wrong; it doesn’t have it all. No happy ending.
King Lear could be considered “the culmination of Shakespeare” (Goddard II 136).
Of Shakespeare’s English plays, this one concerns the oldest “historical” material, though Lear is “purely legendary.” King Lear began as a Celtic mythic figure: Lir or Ler (Irish) or Llyr (Welsh) (Asimov II 3). He then emerged into pseudo-history, or legend, set around 800 BCE (Asimov II 4), in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regnum Britanniae of 1135 (Asimov 3, Farina 201). His story, with its happy ending, appears in Holingshed’s Chronicles (first edition 1577; dedicated to Burghley), and in Spenser’s 1590 The Faerie Queene (II.x.stanzas 27-32).
The Gloucester subplot is often pronounced to be a borrowing from Philip Sidney’s Arcadia published in 1593, but Flippy derived the story from An Aethiopian Historie by Heliodorus, published in English in 1569, used by Shakespeare for other plays, and dedicated to the 19-year-old de Vere (Farina 202). Therefore many who do not buy the Stratfordian timeline assert that a version of the Shakespeare play preceded Spenser (e.g., Ogburn and Ogburn 1122). If it’s relevant, Oxford could have read Montaigne before Florio’s 1603 translation (Everitt 401).
Before the Folio edition of King Lear, we have the anonymous play King Leir — a version with a happy ending, performed before 1594 and entered that year in the Stationers’ Register (Kermode 1297, Everitt 397). And we have a Quarto edition of the play, which contains about 100 fewer lines than the Folio. It looks “as if passages lacking in the First Folio represent deliberate cuts … and that those lacking in the Quarto may be mostly additions in the Folio text” (Smidt 139). Also, there are “expressions of pity” in the Quarto lacking in the Folio: “an attempt to make the world an even harsher place for man” (Smidt 146)? Shakespeare changes the title in the First Folio from a history to a tragedy (Everitt 397).
Gloucester’s references to lunar and solar eclipses (I.ii.103f), along with a recorded performance of Lear for James I in 1606, have the misguided declaring a 1605 composition; but there were earlier eclipses during Elizabeth’s reign (Farina 201), including in 1590, 1598, and 1601 (Everitt 401).
E.T. Clark insists on a 1589 origin of the play, with Lear’s three daughters serving as personifications of the three lines of succession from Henry VII (Clark 866ff). There is more compelling support for such an apparently abstract notion that one might at first assume. Clark also finds many allusions to Sir Francis Drake, including his Kent-like banishment by Elizabeth (Clark 875ff), his short-temper, and his facility with swearing (Clark 878).
But she gives only brief nods to the personal dimension: acknowledging that Oxford had three daughters, but that a strict 1589 date of composition rules out real influence, Oxford’s daughters being too young in 1589/90 (Clark 868).
Ogburn and Ogburn second Clark’s topical assertions (Ogburn and Ogburn 1123) and the dating (Ogburn and Ogburn 347, 958-959), but supplement with Winstanley’s discoveries that connect the play with Coligny and Huguenot issues in France (Ogburn and Ogburn 1138ff; cf. Beauclerk 302). They also point out that “Lear” is an anagram for “Earl” (Ogburn and Ogburn 726, 946, 1124). And they acknowledge that in addition to Lear, Oxford inhabits Kent, Gloucester, and the Fool (1124). Hatton is a candidate for Oswald (1125, 1159). And they pay more attention to when Oxford, vs. Drake, was 48 (as Kent claims to be): in 1598 (Ogburn and Ogburn 1126).
Other connections include the fact that “De Vere’s first marriage produced three daughters who inherited their alienated father’s family seat while he was still alive” (Anderson xxvii): Oxford alienated Hedingham to his three daughters and Burghley in late 1591 (Ogburn and Ogburn 1131). Oxford lived across the street from Bedlam for a time, at Fisher’s Folly, and so perhaps “observed psychosis” first-hand (Anderson 156). Like Gloucester, he also had one legitimate and one illegitimate son, but Oxford’s youngest daughter Susan “proved true to her father’s life and legacy,” marrying into the Herbert clan and specifically one of the brothers to whom the First Folio is dedicated (Anderson 371). Much of this indicates a final version of the play written in de Vere’s closing years (Anderson 380).
King Lear, Act by Act
King Lear Introduction
Further Resources
Filmography
King Lear. 1910. In Italian, Re Lear.
King Lear. Starring Orson Welles. 1953.
King Lear. Dir. Grigori Konitsev. Russian, 1970.
King Lear. Dir. Peter Brook. Starring Paul Scofield. 1970.
King Lear. Starring Patrick Magee. Thames Television, 1974.
King Lear. Dir. Jonathan Miller. Starring Michael Hordern. BBC, 1982.
King Lear. Starring Laurence Olivier, Diana Rigg. Granada Television, 1983.
Ran. Dir. Akira Kurosawa. Japanese, 1985.
King Lear. Starring Ian Holm. BBC2, 1998.
King Lear. Dir. Trevor Nunn. Starring Ian McKellen. 2008.
Best Editions
Bevington, David, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 6th ed. Pearson Education Inc., 2009. 1201-1254.
Foakes, R.A., ed. King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. 3rd edition. UK: Thompson Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1997.
Furness, Horace Howard, ed. King Lear. A New Variorum Edition. Vol. 5. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1880.
Weller, Philip, ed. King Lear. An annotated online edition.
Oxfordian Resources
Clark, Eva Turner. Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays. 3rd ed. by Ruth Loyd Miller. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1974. 866-888.
Everitt, Alastair. “King Lear. In Dating Shakespeare’s Plays. Ed. Kevin Gilvary. Tunbridge Wells, UK: Parapress, 2010. 396-405.
Farina, William. De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2006. 201-206.
Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth & The Reality. 2nd ed. McLean, VA: EPM Publications, Inc., 1992.
Ogburn, Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn. This Star of England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Pub., 1952. Esp. 1121-1165.
And Other General Resources
Goddard, Harold C. The Meaning of Shakespeare. Vol. 2. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951. 136-171.
Smidt, Kristian. Unconformities in Shakespeare’s Tragedies. NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. 27-44. Smidt finds numerous time discrepancies suggesting significant revision, compression, and rearrangement of scenes.
Shakespeare Authorship Organizations
The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship. Browse, get hooked, become a member.
The De Vere Society. Our Oxfordian friends and collaborators across the pond.
The Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable. We consider all possible authors behind the “Shakespeare” name.