MEDIAEVAL AND RENAISSANCE DRAMA

Reading:
Background: summary of the lecture (handbook 17-18); The Elizabethan Theatre, Surprised by Time
(Norton B 27-33), “Elizabethans were certainly capable... is utterly indifferent” (Norton B 23); from
The Early Seventeenth Century: “Queen Elizabeth died […] exacting concessions from the king”
(Norton B 891-897)
Texts:
from Everyman (after 1485): lines 463-541 (Norton A 569-571)
William SHAKESPEARE, from King Lear (1605/6). The text of the play is accessible through the
New Oxford Shakespeare database, which is accessible on the KU Leuven network through the LIMO
library catalogue catalogue (search for New Oxford Shakespeare among databases, and go to the
‘Modern Critical Edition’ of King Lear). Select the scenes below through the menu in the left-hand
window). Textual notes in the right-hand window elucidate archaic or obscure phrases.
1.1. lines 1-124 (opening scene)
1.4. lines 186-213 (Gonoril confronts Lear)
2.2 lines 406 (from ‘Hear me, my lord’) to 431 (Gonoril confronts Lear again, this time with Regan)
3.4. lines 80-86, 129-151 (wandering on the heath during a storm, Lear discovers a beggar)
4.6. lines 92-124 (the earl of Gloucester, who has been blinded by Regan as a punishment for his
loyalty to Lear, meets the mad old king)
5.3. lines 300-22 (Lear’s death)

Language

EVERYMAN

ll. 463-4: ‘make my moan/For to go with me in that heavy journay’: beg to go with me on that sad
journey, i.e. the journey that dying people have to make.
ll. 487-8: ‘Thy sins has me sore bound/That I cannot stear’: your sins have bound me so painfully that
I cannot move.
l. 490: ‘I must you pray of counsel’: I must ask your advice.
l. 498: ‘I would full fain’: I would really like to.
l. 519: the verb ‘go’ is implied.
l. 523: ‘most’: greatest.
l. 532: ‘gramercy’: many thanks.
l. 537: ‘I would’: I wish.

SHAKESPEARE, from King Lear

NB: Gonoril is called Goneril in another version of the text.

Act 1, scene 1.
l. 34: ‘confirming’: another version of the text reads ‘conferring’.
l. 93: ‘Thy truth, then, be thy dower’: let your truth be your (only) dower’.

Act 1, scene 4.
l. 187: ‘I would you would’: I wish you would.
l. 193: ‘doth any here’: does anyone here.
l. 199: ‘Lear's shadow?’: a possible reference to the Fool. In another version of the text, these two
words are delivered by the fool, without a question mark, as an answer to Lear’s question ‘Who is it
that can tell me who I am?’
l. 201: ‘false’: here used as an adverb, i.e. ‘wrongly’.
l. 204-5: ‘o’ the savor/Of other your new pranks’: ‘in the style of your other new pranks’

Act 2, scene 2.
l. 402: ‘what need you five-and twenty, ten, or five’: why do you need twenty-five, ten, or five
(attendants).
l. 409: ‘have a command to tend you’: have received orders to look after you.

Act 4, scene 6.
l. 106: ‘does lecher in my sight’: behaves lecherously in front of me (‘lecher’ is used as a verb).
l. 108: ‘got ’tween the lawful sheets’: conceived within marriage.
l. 110: ‘yond simpering dame’: that simpering lady over there.

MEDIAEVAL AND RENAISSANCE DRAMA

MEDIAEVAL ENGLISH DRAMA

Christian in inspiration -> performed in church/close to church -> played on specific
occasions.
MIRACLE PLAYS
Based on miracles that a saint had performed
MYSTERY PLAYS
<métier -> performed by guilts of certain trades -> not professional actors
MORALITY PLAYS
Performed by professional actors -> took their play from one place to the other
(travel) -> inspiration= Christian, but text not necessarily based on bible or lives of
saints -> a didactic message -> carry the teaching of the church and the word of god to
people who can’t read
A MORALITY PLAY: EVERYMAN
Everybody in the audience should be able to relate to him -> he is preparing to go to
heaven -> we are al mortal -> he looks for a companion -> finds out that all the people
who he relied on are abandoning him.
- DIDACTIC ALLEGORY, LACK OF FORMAL SOPHISTICATION (RELATIVE
ABSENCE OF METRE, RHYME AS MNEMONIC AID?)
Not rely on those you thought would help you on your journey -> the only one
who can help you is knowledge of yourself = awareness
To rehearse very basic teaching of Christianity
Rhyme, but no meter -> rhyme compared with meter is relatively easy -> not for
the form, but to help the actors remember
- ORIGIN? AN ENGLISH OR EUROPEAN PLAY?
The text is English -> relation to Dutch play Elkerlyk -> which was the first version ->
common European culture -> different language, more or less the same story
- STATUS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
Influenced several later writers -> a model of reletivly simple and straightforward
literature for the people

RENAISSANCE ENGLISH DRAMA

TRAGEDY: CLASSICAL MODELS (esp. Seneca)
Showing they can also produce tragedies and comedies like in the ancient time.
Seneca bloody and violent -> influence on Shakespeare’s tragedies -> lot of bloodshed at
the end -> sensational appeal
A POPULAR ART USING ELITE FORMS
Most of Shakespeare’s plays was meant to be performed -> wrote the plays -> wrote
with certain actors in mind -> select setting (court, aristocrat parties, open -air theatres -
> mixed crowd (illiterate)) -> plays not very high position in literature -> also intended
to be played before the vulgar (people of low status)
Elite forms < classical antiquity => prove that English writers can match the writing of
Greek or Latin writers

SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR

1.1.1-124
POETRY (iambic pentameter, blank verse) v. PROSE
Even though they are aristocratic the speak in prose -> language of gossip
King arrives = verse -> language of the court
Mainly not meter -> now there is -> not always perfectly iambic
LEAR’S TRAGIC MISTAKE(S)?:
formal speech -> many people on the stage, crown -> the decision does not come as a
complete surprise -> there have been rumours
DIVIDING THE KINGDOM(S)
Big mistake to divide? -> 1606 knew king on the throne = James the 1 of England, 6 of
Scotland -> wants to be the king of Britain -> King lear wants to divide -> Shakespeare
wants to please his master = the king => bring the Kingdoms together instead of dividng
them
Nowadays it’s not that big of a mistake
DISSOCIATING THE KING’S TWO BODIES
King/queen is embodiment of the nation as long as they are alive -> abdicate, but
body is still alive? -> good idea to dissociate the two bodies? -> he still wants to be called
king an have the advantages, but he doesn’t want the power -> not going to work
Now people don’t care if a king abdicates
THE REJECTION OF CORDELIA
He rejects his favourite daughter and the one that loves him the most and divides
the kingdom in two -> his other two daughters pretended to love him.
King Lear = old -> feels strength declining -> wants to give his power away -> in
the plays you often see him misbehaving with knights -> not physically, but mentally ill
THE ‘LOVE CONTEST’: IMITATION AND RIVALRY AT THE COURT
Not genuine competition, but public ritual to justify what has already been decided ->
you pay extravagant compliments like in the poetry of the Renaissance (saying that your
not being able to speak, while speaking)
Cordelia stays silent -> does not (want to) understand that she has to pays big
compliments
GONERIL, REGAN AND CONVENTION
Their husbands are present on stage -> what do they think of that? => Cordelia -> how
do they love you completely, when they have husbands -> their husbands know that
when you address a king you have to pay those kinds of compliments = convention
Cordelia -> if your not able to speak, you say silent
CORDELIA’S (PURITAN?) CONSCIENCE AND THE REJECTION OF RULES: HER
OWN TRAGIC MISTAKE? CORDELIA AS A TRAGIC CO-PROTAGONIST?
Lear calls her his favourite -> not a genuine competition => the king has already decided
how he is going to divide the kingdom -> Cordelia gets England (Shakespeare’s plays
in London -> English)
Nothing -> she is not a hypocrite -> she goes against the rules (the hipocracy at court) ->
puritan (white clothes on stage) -> words just means what they say -> Cordelia
doesn’t talk to a king, but to her father
(// SOPHOCLES’S ANTIGONE AND HER ‘ἁμαρτία’= hamartia)?
Antigone also rejects the orders of the king
SHAKESPEARE, ACTING AND ‘HYPOCRISY’
A love that makes breath poor and speech unable ->she is speaking -> gonoril is just
trying to win him over with flattery
Lear doesn’t want the truth
His reaction is hyperbolic -> he speaks in public, so his rejection should fit one of a king
-> as a father his heart probably breaks -> he doesn’t really have a choice -> Cordelia
has humiliated the king => kings and queens need to be good actors
Which side is Shakespeare on -> Cordelia = pure, sincere -> hypocrisy < Greek word
‘actor’ -> S was an actor => no friend of puritans -> he does the same in his sonnets (pay
compliments -> end of play = speak what we feel, not what we ought to say

1.4.186-213
King Lear is not king anymore -> he is a guest of his daughters (the queen) -> he uses
‘we’ to talk about himself (“are you our daughter?”)
Cart =daughter, horse =king
THE KING’S TWO BODIES: LEAR AND HIS SHADOW (who can tell me who I am)
Who is it that can tell me? -> the fool = always following him
Who am I? -> am I a mere shadow of a king?
As king -> united eternal & mortal body of a king -> now only mortal body = shadow
As king my daughter obeyed me -> fool: “now you will obey them”
Gonoril -> “you should behave as an old man = not drinking, hunting… -> be wise
A CRITIQUE OF JAMES I AND HIS COURT?
His behaviour at court different -> whole day hunting & drinking in the evenings =>
behaviour not fit for a king as the embodiment of the nation => reminder to king James
as to how he should behave -> Shakespeare = the fool to the king who gives him advice
& warnings -> propaganda & advice
KL leave Gonorils palace -> other daughter (Regan) -> she will treat him the same way
and say that he should listen to gonoril -> you are in your daughters house and the
servants will help you if you ask your daughters => the servants aren’t at your direct
disposal anymore -> they now listen to your daughter
2.2.406-431
MADNESS, IMPOTENCE AND THE DETERIORATION OF THE KING’S SPEECH
Same madness as he used for Cordelia
3.4. 80-86, 129-151
PROSE AND NAKEDNESS (some actors got naked on stage)
A man = poor, naked animal -> you have no clothes on you = no silk, no perfume…->
part of the kings two bodies -> you have to dress impressively -> you are the
embodiment of the nation
Three = KL, fool & beggar
Not only taking of his clothes ->
LEAR’S MADNESS AND RELIGIOUS/PHILOSOPHICAL INSIGHT:
Prose = an ordinary man -> in his madness = religious/philosophical insight -> this is
how a man really is -> not fancy dressed, speaking in prose
CHRISTIAN AND CLASSICAL INFLUENCES
LEAR AND EVERYMAN (influence of the Christian morality play?)
 Not really Shakespeare’s style -> morality plays fallen out of fashion -> in
protestant England = too catholic for them -> KL = same situation as Everyman ->
everyone = abandoning him -> knowledge = fool & beggar
LEAR AND GREEK CYNICISM (allusions to Diogenes?)
Men did not need anything but the bare minimum -> he lived in a barrel, wooden
cup to drink water from the river, saw a boy drinking with his hands, trew cup away ->
cynic < Greek word dog -> living like an animal -> “we are unaccommodated men and
that’s as it should be”
 Combination -> synthesis between classical & Christian influences =>
teachings Diogneses = perfectly together with Christian teachings

4.6 lines 92-124

PROSE / POETRY AND THE KING’S LOST STATUS
MADNESS AND CYNICISM: BEYOND CHRISTIAN MORALITY?
 Cynicism breaks bands with the Christian worldview -> scene 4.6 ->Glaucters
eyes taken out on stage because loyal to KL -> he meets KL but doesn’t see
him -> he says he recognizes the voice -> KL talks in his madness about his
daughters -> he says that he is not the king -> Glaucter “the trick of that
voice” -> I recognize that voice, but it sounds different -> KL used to speak as
a king (in verse) -> KL starts speaking as a king again -> let everybody have
children out of wedlock = my soldiers -> Glaucter wants to kiss the kings
hand -> “wipe it first it smells like mortality” -> KL keeps on speaking in
verse, but no iambic pentameter

5.3 lines 300-22

BLEAK TRAGIC ENDING OR HINTS OF CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION?
Other world that may be waiting for him
NB: After l. 304 (“Pray you undo this button. Thank you, sir”), another version of the text
adds the lines:
Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
Look there, look there! He dies.
Is he imagining that Cordelia started speaking -> does he point out that her lips
are turning blue (she is that) -> implying that she is still alive -> see her soul exiting her
body through her lips -> does he join her?
In that alternative version, l. 307 (“Break, heart, I prithee break”) is attributed to Kent instead
of Lear, and the final four lines of the play are delivered by Edgar instead of Albany.

CLASSICAL INFLUENCES (TRAGEDY) v. CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES (MORALITY

PLAYS)
=> morality play & journey to dead or bleak tragic ending as in the classical
drama -> can they be combined? -> moment of joy or complete despair

‘SPEAK WHAT WE FEEL’: CORDELIA’S VINDICATION?

Final lesson of KL -> to writers as Shakespeare -> no hypocrisy anymore