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Department of English and American Studies English Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Jana Pavlíčková Sources of Shakespeare’s King Lear B.A. Major Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D. 2006 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.d. for his valuable guidance and advice. Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2 1.1 King Lear 2 1.2 Lear’s story 3 1.3 King Lear’s Sources 5 2 Main Sources 6 2.1 Historic Surveys and Accounts 6 2.1.1 Historia Regum Britanniae 6 2.1.2 Chronicles 8 2.2 True Chronicle History of King Leir and His Three Daughters 9 2.3 Arcadia 14 3 Other Variants of King Lear’s Story 16 3.1 Mirror for Magistrates 17 3.2 Faery Queene 18 4 Sources of Ideas and Inspiration 20 4.1 The Malcontent 20 4.2 Essays of Michel de Montaigne 22 4.3 Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures 24 5 Conclusion 26 5.1 Summary of the Sources 26 5.2 Conclusion 28 6 Works Cited 29 1 Introduction William Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear ranks among his best-known works. The main plot of this play is a story of an old king who wants to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. With this purpose, he inquires for the extent of his daughters’ love for him. Upon his children’s answers, he passes his kingdom only on the two eldest, who flattered him successfully in the love-test, and banishes Cordelia, the youngest one, who only told him the truth. This misjudgement does not go unpunished. Lear finds out about the ill nature of his eldest daughters and with Cordelia’s help, he gets back all his power, and the two daughters are punished for the mistreatment of their father. However, this does not end with a happy ending. Lear’s beloved youngest daughter dies and so does the old king. This story of naivety, greed and intrigues, but also of true love and forgiveness, has had a great influence upon other dramatists and playwrights since it was published. Numerous performances and adaptations have made this play familiar to almost everyone. However, Shakespeare not only inspired his followers, but he also relied on the previous reworkings of the primary story of King Lear. Wilfrid Perrett in his book The Story of King Lear from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Shakespeare mentions fifty-seven works, which were written before Shakespeare’s tragedy and which include variants of King Lear’s story. This thesis focuses on nine works chosen out of the list and aims at considering them as far as their relevance to Shakespeare’s tragedy is concerned and pointing out the similarities between them and King Lear . Successively, Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae , Holinshed’s Chronicles , the True Chronicle History of King Leir and His Three Daughters , Sidney’s Arcadia , Higgins’ Mirror for Magistrates , Spenser’s Faery Queene , Marston’s Malcontent , Harsnett’s Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures , and three essays of Michel de Montaigne will be discussed. 1.1 King Lear As David G. Byrd and Edward F. Nolan state, the first mention of King Lear dates th back to 26 November 1607, when the play appears in the Stationers’ Register. The date of King Lear’s first appearance in a printed form, is the year 1608, when Nathaniel Butter published the First Quarto with an inscription “ M. William Shak-speare: His True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King LEAR (being stressed) and his three Daughters. With the vnfortunate life of Edgar, fonne and heire to the Earle of Gloster, and his fullen and affumed humor of TOM of Bedlam: as it was played before the Kings Maiestie at Whitehall upon S. Stephans night in Christmas Hollidayes ” on its title page. The play later appeared also in the Second Quarto, which had the date 1608 on its title-page, but was actually printed in 1619 from a copy of the First Quarto. King Lear’s next appearance was in 1623, when it was included among Shakespeare’s tragedies in the First Folio, which was prepared by Shakespeare’s fellow actors after his death. This was followed by three more Folios (1632, 1664, and 1685) and the Third Quarto in 1655. The exact date of the actual composition of King Lear is, however, more difficult to find. The dates of composition of other plays and works should be taken into account, above all those works which Shakespeare relied upon and used when writing his King Lear . As observed by Byrd and Nolan, this concerns mainly Samuel Harsnett’s Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures from the year 1603 (the exact date of its entry into the Register being March 16, 1603). In this work, we can find names of various devils which Edgar as Poor Tom mentions in his speeches. (Byrd and Nolan, 1). According to Kenneth Muir, King Lear was written between March 1603 and Christmas 1606, but the most usual date of Lear’s composition is in the winter of 1605 and 1606 (Muir, xxi). 1.2 Lear’s Story The story of King Lear and his three daughters derives from a folklore tradition, which had been adapted and incorporated into several subsequent works. These alternations that helped Shakespeare to shape King Lear’s plot, episodes and the characters themselves are of different kinds. They range from a mythological king ‘Ler’, ‘Leir’ or ‘Lyr’ in British and Irish mythology, various chronicles and annals, to the works of the playwrights of the 1590s. The earliest appearance of Lear’s story can be found in old folk-tales and ballads. The love- test given by an old father to his three daughters is, for example, in a tale called Cap o’ Rushes . This is a story of a very rich gentleman, who wanted to know how his three daughters loved him. The eldest two valued their love more than their lives, but the youngest one’s answer was “I love you as fresh meat loves salt” (Briggs, 387). Because of her answer, she was banished from the house. At the end of this story, she invites her father to her wedding and serves him meat without salt. This makes the old man recall his mistreatment of the youngest daughter and he regrets deeply his doings. The link between this old tale and the story of King Lear is that of the love-test and the similar manner of the daughter’ answers. The eldest two flatter their father in order to gain the maximal profit, but the youngest daughter’s speaks of her love as being based on a duty of a child to his parent. The first written account of Lear’s story can be found in the History of the Kings of Britain , written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1135. As Perrett states, Monmouth was later followed by several translations and adoptions by other historians, priests, clerks and authors of various historical collections (Perrett, 24). The first chronicle in English was written by Layamon in about 1205. The works ensuing that of Monmouth were written in Latin and English as well as in French or German. Among these works, compiled by Perrett, were for example the Latin Annales by Alfred of Beverley (1149), the Anglo-French versification of the British history the Müncher Brut (the exact date is not known), “Caxton’s” Chronicle (1480), or the chronicle of Robert Fabyan. In the sixteenth century, the passages from British history including the story of Lear appeared also in the French prose romance of Perceforest (1528), The Mirror for Magistrates (1557) by John Higgins, Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577), William Warner’s Albion’s England (1586), Edmund Spenser’s the Faery Queene (1590) or the old anonymous The True Chronicle History of King Leir and His Three Daughters (printed 1605). In 1603 and 1605, there also appear two actual historic cases that may have had reminded Lear’s story and thus had an influence upon revival of the interest in this tale. The first case, mentioned by Chudoba, happened in October 1603. It is a story of Sir Brian Annesley, a wealthy pensioner of Queen Elizabeth and his three daughters (Chudoba, 34). Brian’s eldest daughter Lady Grace Wildgoose wanted to have her father declared lunatic, so that she and her husband Sir John Wildgoose could take over the management of his affairs. As in Shakespeare’s story, the youngest daughter named Cordell opposed firmly her sister’s intention and appealed to Sir Robert Cecil, which was successful, because after her father’s death Cordell gained all his possessions and property. This case could have caused the revival of interest in Lear’s story and it could have given Shakespeare the idea of Lear’s madness. The second event that is known to have happened and which might have had some influence upon Shakespeare’s King Lear , but which might have influenced him to incorporate another source is, according to Foakes, the story of Sir Robert Dudley. Dudley was a bastard son of Earl of Leicester and desired for establishing his legitimacy. This could have made Shakespeare incorporate the sub-plot of Gloucester and his legitimate and illegitimate sons into his tragedy. Although Shakespeare was much inspired by the previous reworkings of the old tale and by others works of his time, he enriched Lear’s story with a lot of his own elements.
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