King Lear Acts 1 and 2: Finally Something Written in English!

I would have thought that reading something originally written in English (finally!) would be a relief. However, when it's Shakespeare, it's definitely not any easier than reading translated ancient Greek. (I did enjoy the creative insults, though, "you whoreson cullionly barbermonger" (II.2.30)!)

I found a main theme in King Lear to be the indignity of aging and having to bequeath an inheritance. It seems that this is such a psychological strain that it leads, essentially, to madness. In a conversation with the Fool, Lear says "Dost thou call me fool, boy?" and the Fool replies, "All other titles thou hast given away; that thou was born with" (I.4.145). In aging and giving up his land to his daughters, Lear has lost his youthful vigor and his power over both his land and his children. In this scene, speaks more rationally than the Fool who insults him, but later, at the end of Scene II when Goneril and Regan declare that they will not allow him any servants, he is equally nonsensical and crazed. Without his titles, it seems, Lear is nothing more than the Fool. Another compounding factor in Lear's insanity seems to be that he has only daughters, no sons. I know that the ideas about inheritance are different in Lear's time than in, say, Virgil's, but a patriarchal structure is nonetheless in place: a man's heir to the throne should be his son. In Act 1, Scene 4, Lear curses Cordelia into sterility- something he can afford to do because she cannot actually bear him an heir. This draws attention to Lear's plight and powerlessness that arises from his lack of a male child, as well as providing insight into the extent to which female children are viewed as useless and undervalued.
Lear's honor is further insulted when Regan and Cornwall are deciding what to do with Kent after Kent hits Oswald. They say that to punish Kent would insult Lear, because Lear is his messenger, but that not punishing Kent would insult Goneril because Oswald was her servant. Firstly, this scene calls attention to the fact that property, in this case servants, are intimately tied to an individual's honor and respect. In this case, Lear's honor is valued below his daughters, further emphasizing his depressing loss of power.

Though Love is not the primary focus of King Lear the way it is in Decameron or Symposium, it still plays an interesting role in the relationships and interactions between characters. In Regan's hyperbolic declaration of her love for Lear, she says, "I find she names my very deed of love; Only she comes too short, that I profess myself an enemy to all other joys" (I.1.71). While this is obviously intended to be read as insincere, it does raise an interesting perspective on love. Whereas Boccaccio describes love as pervasive and universal whether you want it to be or not, Regan describes that she actively decided to make enemy to other emotions in order to make room for love. Because her speech is so disingenuous, it seems that this is then a comment both on the fact that love should not prevail over all other emotions, and that it is actually impossible to control it to this extent.
Another interesting love-related twist regards the characterization of what is desirable. While the Duke of Burgundy shuns Cordelia after realizing that she no longer has an inheritance, the Duke of France is impressed by her honesty, saying "my love should kindle to inflamed respect. Thy dowerless daughter . . . is queen of all of us" (I.1.260). This indicates somewhat revolutionary new standards for a wife, beyond dowry and beauty, and perhaps a small victory for females in that it is possible for integrity and intelligence to actually be considered an asset.

A last motif I picked up on was the relationship between man and nature. The play seems to oscillate between the characterization of nature as being in opposition or in alignment to mankind. Lear declares,

"We are not ourselves when nature, being oppressed, commands the mind to suffer with the body" (II.4.105). This statement in itself presents both perspectives: Lear says that it is when nature is oppressed that it causes problems, but he also says that it is the sickness caused by nature which corrupts the mind. Later, at the end of Act II, nature is more obviously antagonistic, when Lear ends up shut outside in a tempest after his two daughters insult him. In both of these cases, there is a clear relationship between failings of the mind (insult, insanity) and chaos in nature (illness and storms), perhaps indicating a view of humanity in which the mind is more (or at least equally) governed by natural forces as is the body.