Critical+Essay+1

Critical Essay #1
// Clare Cross is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in modern drama. In this essay she discusses the moral development of Lear in Bond's play. //

In his play // Lear, //Edward Bond focuses on the moral development of the title character, a king in ancient Britain. Although Lear begins the playas an old man, his behavior is that of a child; he is totally absorbed in himself and his own security and needs. He is literally building a wall to keep others out. As the play progresses, however, Lear loses his position of power and is forced to move outside of his self-absorbed sphere and into the society he helped to create. As he suffers along with his former subjects, Lear begins to mature, realizing that others are human beings with needs and desires of their own. For the first time, Lear truly sees other people, and this leads him to recognize the consequences of his own actions and to take responsibility for what he has done. His moral growth, however, is only complete when he turns his understanding into action. It is only then that he becomes a morally mature human being.

When the audience first meets Lear, he is morally a child, seeing nothing beyond his own needs and desires. He is obsessed with the building of his wall, which he claims will benefit his people. It is clear from the beginning, however, that Lear has a callous disregard for others He complains about the workers leaving wood in the mud to rot, then almost immediately turns to complaints about the living conditions of the men. Bond makes it clear, however, that Lear's complaints do not arise from true concern for his workers. His dissatisfaction about their living conditions is, in fact, parallel to his complaint about the wood. "You must deal with this fever, " he tells the Foreman. "When [the men] finish work they must be kept in dry huts. All these huts are wet." Like the wood, the men are being left to rot. Lear goes on to tell the Foreman, "You waste men," a statement that shows that to Lear, the workers are simply more materials to be used in building the wall.

Bond makes Lear's attitude even more clear when Lear's primary concern with the accidental death of a worker is that it will cause delay in building the wall. Lear insists, over the protests of his two daughters, Bodice and Fontanelle, that the worker who inadvertently caused the death be executed. Here Bond contrasts Lear's spoken concern for his people with his actions. When his daughters say they will tear down the wall, Lear says, "I loved and cared for all my children, and now you've sold them to their enemies!" Immediately after this statement, Lear shoots the worker who caused the death; it is Lear who is the true enemy of his people What Lear's wall actually protects is not so much his subjects but his position as their king. When his daughters reveal their plans to take over the kingdom, Lear turns on them as well, saying, "I built my wall against // you //as well as my other enemies." In his book // The Art and Politics of Edward Bond, //Lou Lappin pointed out that Lear's wall also functions as a glorification of himself. Lear says, "When I'm dead my people will live in freedom and peace and remember my name, no -- venerate it." Lappin called the building of Lear's wall "a self-absorbed gesture, an act of solipsism that seeks to ennoble itself in a cult of personality. " Like a child, Lear thinks only of himself.

In his book // The Plays of Edward Bond, //Richard Scharine wrote, "When Lear is overthrown, he is propelled into the society he created like a baby being born." Scharine went on to say, however, that "the mere fact of his being overthrown does not teach Lear moral maturity." At the Gravedigger's Boy's house, Lear is still very much a child. Physically, he depends on the Gravedigger's Boy and his wife to feed and shelter him. "You've looked after me well," says Lear. "I slept like a child in the silence all day." Like a child, Lear retains his self-absorption. When he glimpses the tortured Warrington, Lear's emphasis is not on Warrington's pain, but on the effect of that sight on himself: "I've seen a ghost. I'm going to die. That's why he came back. I'll die." When Cordelia, the Gravedigger's Boy's Wife, tells Lear he must go, his response resembles a child's tantrum: "No, I won't go. He said l could stay. He won't break his word... .No, I won't be at everyone's call. My daughters sent you! // You //go! It's you who destroy this place! We must get rid of you!" It is only when the soldiers arrive, killing the Gravedigger's Boy and raping Cordelia, that Lear shows some recognition of the pain of others when he says to the soldiers: "O burn the house! You've murdered the husband, slaughtered the cattle, poisoned the well, raped the mother, killed the child -- you must burn the house!" Yet as Jenny S. Spencer pointed out in her book // Dramatic Strategies in the Plays of Edward Bond, //Lear's cry of horror is "ironically underscored" by Lear's "unrecognized responsibility for the soldier's brutality." Lear has begun to see outside of himself, but he still does not recognize that the pain he sees is the consequence of his own actions.

Lear's lack of insight continues in the courtroom scene. As Scharine noted, Lear "still does not understand that he himself is the architect of his prison." Not only does he not realize his responsibility for his daughters' actions, but he denies that he has daughters at all. In his madness, he sees himself in the mirror as an animal in a cage, but in viewing himself as an animal, he also sees himself primarily as the victim of others and an object of pity. "Who shut that animal in that cage?" he asks. "Let it out. " Yet at the same time, Lear's view of himself as an animal implies a greater connection with those around him. "No, that's not the king," he says. He is not above the others. In fact, Lear shows the mirror around to those in the courtroom, letting them see the animal, an act that equates the others with himself. In a sense, all are victims. Lear can now see pain outside of himself. However, his moral growth is still incomplete. He still does not take responsibility for his actions, still does not see his own guilt.

It is in his prison cell, after the Gravedigger's Boy's Ghost appears to him and brings him his daughters as young children, that Lear begins to see a connection between his daughters and himself. In the courtroom he says, "My daughters have been murdered and these monsters have taken their place."

Yet when Bodice and Fontanelle appear as young girls, Lear shows that they are, in fact, his daughters. The apparitions sit next to Lear with their heads on his knees, and he strokes their hair. When they finally leave, he asks them not to go. At this point, Lear begins to see what he has done, saying, "I killed so many people and never looked at one of their faces." When the Ghost, already deteriorating, asks to stay with Lear, Lear responds for the first time with real compassion: "Yes, yes, Poor boy. . . . I'll hold you. We'll help each other. Cry while I sleep, and I'll cry and watch while you sleep.. . The sound of the human voice will comfort us." Lear recognizes not only that the Ghost can help him but also that he can help the Ghost. Later, when walking with the other prisoners, Lear expresses even more concern, saying, "I don't want to live except for the boy. Who'd look after him?" In his relationship with the Ghost, Lear also begins to develop a sense of his own responsibility, saying of the Ghost: "I did him a great wrong once, a very great wrong. He's never blamed me. I must be kind to him now." Lear is now moving toward moral maturity, toward the recognition that he needs to practice compassion, responsibility and action.

With Fontanelle's autopsy, Lear's responsibility becomes even more clear to him. When he sees the inside of her body, he says, "She was cruel and angry and hard. . .. Where is the beast?" He is surprised to find there is no monster inside of Fontanelle. "I am astonished," he continues. "I have never seen anything so beautiful." Unlike the Ghost, Fontanelle had done Lear wrong, so he could continue to see her as a monster, separate from himself, but at this point Lear understands his responsibility in forming her character. "Did I make this," he asks, "and destroy it?" Earlier, when the Ghost had tried to take Lear away from the Jail, Lear answered, "I ran away so often, but my life was ruined just the same. Now I'll stay." Lear continues now in his desire to face reality. He says, "I must open my eyes and see."

Lear's desire to finally see is followed almost immediately by his blinding. Scharine quoted Bond as saying, "blindness is a dramatic metaphor for insight. That is why Gloucester, Oedipus, and Tiresias are blind." Once blinded, Lear is released into the countryside. Near the wall, he meets the Farmer, the Farmer's wife, and their son, all of whom describe how the lives they had known were destroyed by Lear's wall. Lear now sees that he has harmed not only isolated individuals but all of his society, and he is horrified. Falling on his knees, in a posture that asks forgiveness, Lear begs the Farmer's Son not to go into the army, but his efforts are fruitless. As Scharine pointed out, "The society that Lear created has been perfected. Cordelia's subjects are socially moralized and go to their consumption by the social order without questioning." Lear cannot unmake the society he has created, and he sees the depths of his guilt.

In the third act, Lear is seen living at the Gravedigger's Boy's former house with Susan, Thomas, and John. In a sense, this is an attempt to return to the idealized, pastoral life that he glimpsed while living with the Boy and Cordelia--the life he led in his child-like phase. Lear, however, has changed. He is no longer the self-absorbed child, simply seeking the help of others. Now it is Lear who shows compassion, even as the others, including the Ghost, are concerned that Lear is endangering himself by helping those the government considers enemies. When Lear is told to protect himself, to tell those who come to him that they must leave, Lear insists that all can stay: "I won't turn anyone away. They can eat my food while it lasts and when it's gone they can go if they like, but I won't send anyone away."

Lear is not only taking people in, however; he is also speaking out against the government he helped to create. Lear's former Councilor appears, telling him he must end his public life: "In future you will not speak in public or involve yourself in any public affairs. Your visitors will be vetted by the area military authorities. All these people must go." Knowing that he cannot defeat Cordelia's regime, Lear despairs. He is trapped. "There's a wall everywhere," he says. "I'm buried alive in a wall. Does this suffering and misery last forever? I know nothing, I can do nothing. I am nothing."

After Cordelia tells Lear that he will be tried and executed, however, Lear is again able to move beyond himself and his own despair to his final act, an attempt to dig up and destroy the wall he created. In their book, // Playwrights' Progress, //Colin Chambers and Mike Prior saw Lear's final act as "so random and so futile that it seems an almost meaningless choice except in terms of the individual conscience." For Chambers and Prior, "Lear's final nod towards the continuing existence of a will to resist is . . . a gesture."

Yet Malcolm Hay and Philip Roberts, in their book // Bond: A Study of His Plays, //disagreed. "The gesture he makes is neither final nor futile," they wrote. "It is the demonstration of Lear' s integrity to those he leaves behind that action is both necessary and responsible" Knowing that he will die soon anyway, Lear uses his death to show the need, not only for compassion and responsibility, but also for action. No longer the child who hides behind his wall, Lear has reached a position of moral maturity and even an ability to teach others. In the final scene, as the workers leave Lear's body on stage, one looks back, showing that others can learn from Lear's death, that there is purpose in his moral journey, that his final act is not futile.

Lear's attack on the wall also carries symbolic weight, for the barrier he seeks to destroy is not only the physical wall he has built but the metaphoric wall he has constructed between himself and others. In gaining compassion for his former subjects and human life in general, Lear completes his transformation by seeking to eradicate both of these walls. Yet where he fails to destroy the physical wall, he more importantly succeeds in tearing down the wall within himself.

Source: Clare Cross, for // Drama for Students, //Gale, 1998.