King Lear and Contemporary Critics

Abstract

It is idle to conjecture as to which of the Four Great Tragedies is greatest. As one writer has put it, the reader is always inclined to judge as the greatest the one he has read most recently. However this may be, King Lear is traditionally placed among the best of Shakespeare's plays; and like any play of Shakespeare's it is a work of art eminently worthy of study. Among the Four Great Tragedies, however, King Lear seems to be least in popularity. This may be due partly to the difficulty in grasping the huge significance of the play even when it is read carefully; and it is certainly due partly to the difficulty of presenting the play on the stage. The action implies much more than can be shown on the stage; the characters are gigantic, often beyond the ability of the actors to portray. But whatever the reason, comparatively little has been written about King Lear. Obviously the Hamlet criticism takes undisputed lead in quantity over the criticism on any other play of Shakespeare, and indeed over that on any other single play by any dramatist. But even a comparison of the criticism on Macbeth with that on King Lear shows one and one-half times as many bibliographical items on the former as there are on the latter. Moreover, only twenty-one composers have written music for Lear, whereas about fifty have composed for Macbeth. Finally, Lear is produced on the stage much less frequently than many other plays of Shakespeare, probably because of the difficulties already mentioned. Nevertheless, it should not be concluded that there is a paucity of criticism on Lear. The fact that less has been written about this play than has been written about others is interesting, but proves nothing. All the great commentators have had something to say about King Lear; and often their interpretations are at wide variance one from another. One author sees in the Lear universe an expression of the beauty of lawful order; another sees a Hardyesque world ruled by cruel and malignant Fate. One considers that poetic justice is done at the end of the pl ay; another finds poetic justice completely reversed. And so in almost all aspects of the criticism and interpretation of the play there is great divergence. The purpose of this thesis, then, will be to give a conspectus of critical opinion about the play since the beginning of the present century. The work of representative critics, will be summarized, and care will be taken not to distort their views in the condensed version to be given. Moreover, only the criticism which deals with interpretation or appreciation of the play will be summarized; problems about the text, date, staging, etc. will not be included. Finally, the summaries will be given for the most part without comment; any conclusions or judgments about individual writers will be reserved for the final chapter. It is hoped that by this method the status of present - day critical opinion on King Lear will become clear and that the material will be useful for handy reference. It has been stated that the criticism to be summarized will deal chiefly with interpretation of the play. In the case of King Lear, interpretation of the play very often amounts to speculations and judgments as to whether the play reflects a pessimistic or an optimistic view of life. Hence, special emphasis will be given t o critics' views in this regard. But the theoretical approach of each critic will also be given when one has been stated, since the critic' s approach obviously has great importance in his interpretation. The choice of critics whose work is to be summarized has been determined in several ways. The fact that only interpretative criticism is to be given explains the omission of some prominent Shakespearean scholars. For example, Harley Granville-Barker has been omitted because his work deals chiefly with the theatrical presentation of the play; the valuable work of Miss Lily B. Campbell has not been dealt with because it is limited to tracing Elizabethan psychology in the play; Miss Caroline F.E. Spurgeon's interesting analyses of Shakespeare's imagery have been omitted because they have little bearing on the interpretation of the play. For the same reason, critics who, like J.M. Robertson, deal chiefly with the chronology and authenticity of the plays have not been included. Likewise, those who seek biographical information in the plays, as f or example Darrell Figgis and Frank Harris, are among the omissions. On the positive side, the attempt has been to choose critics who are for some reason outstanding among the more recent writers on Shakespeare. The choice of these critics has to a large extent been guided by the choice of Augustus Ralli in his excellent book, A History of Shakespearian Criticism. This book has been taken as a sort of Who's Who among Shakespeareans, and the critics included in this wok have been included in the thesis when their contributions were sufficient in kind and amount to be pertinent to the thesis. But since Ralli's book does not go be yond 1925, other critics have been chosen from those who, in the last fifteen years, have written along lines especially pertinent to the thesis. In this selection Tannenbaum's bibliography was of considerable aid. With regard to the general approach of the present day Shakespearean critics, it is common knowledge that their work has tended to be much more scientific than that of the nineteenth- century critics. The contrast is well expressed in the following words: Romantic and Victorian critics, such as Coleridge, Hazlitt, Axnold, and Dowden, tended to think of Shakespeare more as an idol to be worshipped than as an artist to be understood…… Toward the close of the nineteenth century the more aggressive students of Elizabethan drama became more and more dissatisfied with the easy- going assumptions taken for granted by their predecessors. They began to wonder whether, after all, the flood of uncritical rhapsody bestowed on Shakespeare could be justified when examined in the light of historical data. The author of the foregoing quotation goes on to say that the skeptical critics did their best work during the first two decades of the century and that they succeeded in making clear the distinction between the stereotyped elements which Shakespeare took from his sources and the original elements which Shakespeare's genius added. Of ten enough, however, these critics lacked that intuitive insight which is indispensable for just criticism of poetry. This deficiency has been supplied by critics who have written after 1920. Men like J. Dover Wilson and G. Wilson Knight have returned, in a way, to the sympathetic attitude of the Victorians; but at the same time they have profited by the huge store of information gathered by the patient scholarship of the historical critics. A final word may now be added about the various types of criticism represented in the thesis. The transition, so to speak, from the Victorian to the historical criticism is represented by A.C. Bradley, Walter Raleigh, E.K. Chambers, and Stopford Brooke. It is with diffidence that E. K. Chambers is said to represent the transition period, but the work summarized in the thesis appeared in a series of editions which came out between 1904 and 1908--at a time when his great historical investigations were perhaps in an inchoative stage. The historical, or skeptical, critics are represented by their leader, Elmer Edgar Stoll, as well as by Hardin Craig; Richard Perkinson may also be classed with this group. Impressionistic criticism has an able exponent in J. Middleton Murry, who is the only ex professo impressionist represented. Another type of criticism is found in the work of Professor Benedetto Croce, who, for want of a better term, may be called a philosophical critic; he seeks for the philosophical presumptions of Shakespeare's mind, but at the same time there are many conventional elements in his interpretation of individual plays. In one last class may be gathered most of the more recent critics included in the thesis: G. Wilson Knight, Mark Van Doren, and Hazelton Spencer. These critics appear to be somewhat impressionistic, but not in the strict sense; they rather give interpretations based on the text. And since they have also profited by the scholarship of t he historical critics, their type may be called the historical -interpretative. So much for a preview of the critics dealt with in the thesis. The selection may seem to be incomplete, but it is hoped that those chosen will be sufficient to satisfy the purpose of the thesis as limited above.