El Rey Lear

Cordelia says she loves her father ‘According to my bond’. Explore some of the significance of ‘bond’ in the action and language of the play, and consider how far ‘bonds’ are restored in Act 5.

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The allusion to the concept ‘bond’ along King Lear’s performance is not a mere coincidence. Along this tragedy, written between 1604 and 1605 by the famous dramaturge William Shakespeare (1564-1616), many elements of compulsion as a linguistic slang which represents the pain and misfortune have been mentioned. Albeit, is relevant the case of bonds, word that is repeated directly and suggested more than four times all over this tragedy.

Hence, the aim of this essay is to explain the symbolism of this concept and analyze the aftermaths reflected in the last act (i.e. the Fifth one).

Chiefly, throughout the first sequence of First Act, Halio emphasizes a myth: ‘The affinity between the story of Leir and his three daughters and the ancient Cinderella tale’. (11):

From the one hand, we find the older sisters Goner and Regan, whose main purpose is to lie in order to achieve power and richness. In addition, they are married with the Dukes of Albany and Cornwell respectively, in spite of their null love.

From the other side, the little daughter, identified with Cinderella, has been portrayed as shy and innocent according to Kermonde (2000): ‘Cordelia, coming third in order of praising, would have a hard task, but shuns this competition, meaning nevertheless to outdo her sister by exposing their theoretical falsity’(185-186). Instead of her sisters, she had two suitors, electing as her husband the King of France, a man whose love and personality is reciprocated with her benignity.

Furthermore, in her third intervention at the first scene, she mentions the feelings she has for her progenitor:

CORDELIA Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave

My hearth into my mouth, I love your majesty

According to my bond; nor more nor less.

(1257: 1.1 91-93)

Even though, she thinks about herself as the sustainer of the ancient king; Lear considers from his Medieval moral, that his youngest daughter is betraying him and hence, as argued in the preface of the book by Greenbalt ‘Lear understands these words too to be the equivalent of “nothing”. (1252). Due to this fact, she is disinherited and isolated with her husband to France.

Being centered in the second employment of the concept, we should move to the second part of first act, where the nature represents the prime mover that has decided Edgar’s superiority above Edmund, character who feels capable of gain the social battle against his brother:

EDMUND Thou nature, art my goddess; to thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should I

Stand in the plague of custom, and permit

The curiosity of nations to deprive me…

(1262: 1.2 1-4)

At this point, a parallel case of unfair abandonment to offspring, is produced in the palace of Gloucester, where the Earl trust his bastard Edmund lies, and refuse his real son Edgar, who manage to survive in a world of fools as a beggar changing his name to Tom o’Bedlam.

Moreover, there are two importance differences between these filial intercourses:

Firstly, the guilt is conceived by Lear’s daughters and Gloucester’s (Edmund and the Earl) who cheated the innocents Lear and Edgar; in contrast with the great feelings manifested between Cordelia-Lear and Edgar-Gloucester. This is in line with the theory of Bloom (1998) ‘There is love, and only love, among those four, and yet there is tragedy, and only tragedy, among them’. (485).

Then, there is a view that states ‘Shakespeare leaps over several intervening reigns in order to have Edgar succeed Lear as king of Britain’(Bloom,1998: 479), being by this thought the goodness character more central in the case of Cordelia.

By continuing in the second scene of second act, Edmund, the character in which is represented the medieval villain, deceives Gloucester with a supposed card in which Edgar talks about the ‘bondage oppression of aged tyranny’ (1263: 1.2 49-50), by becoming patent the importance of conversation along the performance. One view, expressed by Magnusson (1999) is that ‘King Lear insists on the extraordinary power that the banalities of conversation exert in constructing and holding in place the structures of reality that characters in Lear inhabit and Cordelia’s role in the recognition scene helps to bring this into the foreground’ (150).

After that, in the same scenario, Gloucester regrets Edgar’s behavior because of his tyranny and eagerness to stand up his father. By this way, both characters, King and Earl start to fall in a madness which culminates at Lear’s meeting with Tom o’Bedlam as Kenneth Muir (1960) states, ‘Edgar, in acting madness, precipitates Lear’s; for as a raving madman, Poor Tom is what Lear has most feared he will become’. (35).

This madness was caused by the neglect that Lear receives from his chosen daughters at the time he could not develop his own activities owing to his old age. When Reagan removes her mask of kindness, he discovers his loneliness by answering himself what had he done in order to convert his daughters into inhuman beings and also by talking with a fool: ‘Thou better know’st the offices of nature, bond of childhood. Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude…’ (1290: 4.2 175-178).

But, analyzing the second scene of second act, we come upon the juxtaposition of these bonds explained by the labor of the Earl of Kent:

KENT Such smiling rogues as these,

Like rats, oft bite the holy cords a-twain

Which are too intrinse t’unloose; smooth every passion

(1282: 2.2 68-70).

With the use of a metaphor in which the rats represent the evil, located inside the people who want to destroy the kingdom; the Earl of Kent wants to dress down the bad intentions of those antagonists, by starting a direct speech with Oswald which is a simple servant, but applying the discourse to the debauched Edmund and the older daughters of the King.

A similar stance is taken by McLeish and Unwin (1988) ‘The metaphysical battle between the realpolitik of Lear’s enemies and the human society we have so far seen only as dream of prophecy’ (104).

All the same, in this point of the discourse is important to reflect about the social status included at this passage, where Kent demonstrates a gentleman attitude

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