Free English Literature Dissertations - As Cordelia Says Nothing Of Her Love To Lear, The King Identifies This
As Cordelia says nothing of her love to Lear, the King identifies this nothing with dumbness that, for Lear, symbolises death40.
However, Lear does not realise that by depriving himself of his power, he is transformed into a female, turning to hysterics. It is this loss of self, the loss of his phallus, as Freud puts it, that causes Lear’s death and the death of his beloved daughter Cordelia. As a result, by the end of Shakespeare’s play Lear looses all his titles and roles; he is not the King, as he has no kingdom, he is not a parent, as his daughters die, Lear is reduced to nothing, therefore, he dies. Shakespeare does not directly state that Lear will reunite with Cordelia after death, but he does not explicitly reject this possibility. Although Purgatory was eliminated in England in the middle of the sixteenth century, Shakespeare constantly revives this Christian dogma, proving that people unconsciously desire to communicate with their relatives41. Although Bradley points at the fact that Christian religion in King Lear is more frequent than is usual in Shakespeare’s tragedies42, other researchers oppose this viewpoint; in particular, Jan Kott states that King Lear makes a tragic mockery of all eschatologies: of the heaven promised on earth and the Heaven promised after death43. Shakespeare demonstrates that King Lear implicitly identifies himself with the gods; according to Stephen Lynch, instead of submitting to the will of the gods, Lear repeatedly assumes command over them44. As a result, Lear fails to realise that his actions are sinful; instead, he believes in his own power and the ability to control the universe. But the divine is still worshipped by Lear and other characters of the play, as Wilson Knight states, this worship to the divine shows at most an insistent need in humanity to cry for justification to something beyond its horizon45. But as justice does not prevail by the end of the play, Lear, as William R. Elton puts it, turns to a more than secular attack on authority, on the powers that be46. Lear considers that Cordelia’s death is unjust and he condemns some divine powers in this injustice.
However, in addition to the unconscious denial of death, Freud also points at the fact that every person has a death instinct that is in constant struggle with his/her life instinct, and as a person makes an attempt to protect himself/herself from the death instinct, he/she easily turns to violent actions and aggressive behaviour. According to Freud’s vision, a death instinct recurs throughout classical European literature47; as Shakespeare’s character Lear tries to overcome his death instinct, he acts rather violently towards people who are devoted to him.
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