King Lear

One striking feature of Shakespeare’s reworking of the old anonymous Leir play is his removal of its Christian frame of reference (that was one of the reasons why Tolstoy perversely said he preferred the old play!). The characters are always appealing to the gods but not getting the response they want. And then there is Edmund appealing to “Nature” as his goddess. What was your thinking about religion in the play?

Noble: The first time I did it I quite consciously sought a godless universe. I was very influenced by Brecht and Beckett. I sought a godless universe and a quite vengeful, spiteful universe. I made heavy cuts at the end of the play to highlight that fact.

The second time I imagined a universe that was not godless, but in which the gods sat back and refused to interfere. The choice is as much to do with the director or interpreter as the writing.

Warner: The removal of any uniting Christian frame makes this text all the more available to us now. The characters are struggling away as we are all struggling away, and have ever been struggling away for centuries. From the seventeenth century to the twenty-first, Shakespeare allows us no simple answers, and that is why productions should beware of giving them.

Nunn: Remember, in the old Leir play, the king is restored to his throne and Cordelia lives. By changing the ending, Shakespeare deliberately violates a seemingly fundamental rule of drama, namely that plays serve as a moral or cautionary influence on their audience, because they show, regardless of trial and vicissitude, that the good will triumph in the end. In King Lear we’re surely expecting just that, but Shakespeare won’t allow it. I think this is proof positive that Shakespeare’s intentions were very different from those of the old play. Shakespeare’s investigation of the extremes of human behavior, into the nature of man the species, concludes that life isn’t like a morality play. When everything in our religious and cultural history requires us to believe that ultimately the gods will intervene on the side of virtue, Shakespeare says emphatically that they don’t. It’s more than the conclusion that his play is not Christian, it’s that he moves to a conclusion that is, at the very least, agnostic.

For me, it is centrally important that there is no sense of divine justice in this tragedy. I’m wondering whether any other writer during the Elizabethan age ever ventured to question whether or not the heavens might be empty? In the early scenes, as I said, Shakespeare’s play sets up the fundamental belief in his characters that human actions are overseen by the gods. Lear seems to believe that, like him, the gods are old men, that they are intelligent, and that they’re watching, and he clearly sees himself as in privileged contact with the gods. But as the play progresses, Shakespeare shows us more people praying for the intervention of the gods, to no avail. The battle at the climax of the story will determine whether or not the “good” will triumph. Gloucester is urged by Edgar to “Pray that the right may thrive.” He does. They don’t. Finally, as it’s realized that a death sentence is on both Lear and Cordelia, Albany leads all present in a final prayer as soldiers run to the prison—“The gods defend her!” The first word of the next line is “Howl.” Cordelia is dead. No intervention. The gods aren’t mentioned again.

So yes, I think Edmund is placed before us early on as evidence of a solitary, dangerous, atheistical intelligence. Then as Lear’s journey takes him increasingly toward challenging the behavior of the gods, arriving at his epiphany in the “unaccommodated man” speech, his more fundamental questions begin. “What is the cause of thunder?” “Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?” His questions now seem to be reaching toward Darwinian rather than divine explanations, and his belief in the gods begins to evaporate.