King Lear's Audience in Search of Catharsis

The text of the Shakespearean Tragedy of King Lear undercuts the audience's need for empathy with its main characters, Lear and Cordelia. The development of characters is not only what is expected or even needed by the audience but is a study of the nature of life. Are characters or people simply one dimensional? That is, do they go only from bad to good for the purpose of satisfying the audience, or are they multifaceted and changing? The play at first would seem to be a look at the aging of an elderly king, the dysfunctional way his daughters treat him, and how dreadfully he treats his daughter, Cordelia. However, the audience is looking for Lear to change from an aging tyrant to a reformed pathetic king, but he does not. The audience needs to find a catharsis with the characters. Holman's Handbook to Literature says "catharsis implies a beneficial cathartic effect produced by witnessing a tragic ACTION is clear; how it is produced is what is in question" (76). Also, Thomas Scheff says that a catharsis involves a balance of detachment and involvement which correspond to Aristotle's idea of fear and pity. In Act five scene three of the play, the reader learns of six deaths and is grieved by the reaction of Kent to the death of King Lear. The reader will look at why the deaths of these six characters arouse little sympathy, why these deaths provide or do not provide the audience a chance to experience sympathy, and finally, why Edmond and more specifically, Kent become the characters that bring about catharsis in us instead of the more obvious characters of Lear and Cordelia.

When Edgar announces the death of the Duke of Gloucester empathy is not available because in reality the death is a relief. For the audience, who has had to bear his dreadful blinding and torture, there is an emotion that is close to sympathy. The audience knows Gloucester has suffered, yet there is a sense of relief knowing his death will end his suffering and the reader's as well. It is comforting for his readers to know that they will not have to witness his suffering further. Edgar tells us this when he says, "But his flaw'd heart/ Alack, too weak the conflict to support--/ 'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy, and grief, / Burst smilingly" (200-203). The fact that Edgar keeps the truth of his identity from his father is a flaw in Edgar. Spinrad opinion is, "Edgar is the Christian hero who is taught and strengthened by suffering, and who then both saves and is saved by his father, whose redemptive death he narrates almost like a homily" (5). One might consider Edgar before this to be benevolent, but in truth he kills his father. Keeping the news from Gloucester for so long that his heart burst with joy is evil. So, even though the reader is saddened by the death of Gloucester and the cruelty of his son, the reader does not experience an emotional and intellectual release of feelings.

Now, the reader gets close to pitying Edmund, but the audience never has a real sense of catharsis for him. Edmund, the bastard son of Gloucester, is a threefold character in this scene. He is first the cruel person who jails Cordelia and the old King, then he fights a chivalric duel with his brother, Edgar, and finally, he dies with a repentant heart. When the scene opens, an arrogant Edmund is responsible for putting Cordelia and Lear in prison, and he is proud of it. He says:

Sir, I thought it fit,
To send the old and miserable King
To some retention
Whose age had charms in it, whose title more
To pluck the common bosom on his side,
And turn our impress'd lances in our eyes
Which do command them. With him I sent the
Queen. (47-54)

In this speech the reader sees the evil character of Edmund. He sends the old king and Cordelia to prison, but the reader must remember that Lear and Cordelia were enemies to the kingdom. Edmund feels he is acting prudently. Also, he is wary that Lear will charm those around him and gain sympathy, further endangering the court. When he says, "and turns our impressed lances in our eyes" (52), the reader cannot ignore the reference to eyes that Edmund makes. The audience is reminded of the terrible blinding of his father and Edmund's cruelty. So, Edmund is scheming and evil. Yet the audience is forgiving! Why? Edmund's father can be seen as blind to Edmund's need for paternal love long before the blinding scene. In fact, the blinding of Glouster is a critical turning point in the play because it is not until the old man is blinded that he sees truth. Glouster says, "I stumbled when I saw" (I,vi. 19). The truth is unknown to Glouster until the brutality of the physical torture in this scene. The audience as well as the character of Glouster find that even in one's own home a man can be blind. Therefore, the damage to Glouster's eyes is not unlike the damage to Edmund and Edgar. The old man's blindness is twofold: He is blind to love when he treats Edmund like an outsider, and he is blind to truth when he believes Edmund's lies about Edgar. Glouster's role as father is a shadow of what it should have been. Edmund's cruelty is brought on by the heartless treatment he has received from a sighted Glouster, and Edgar's heartless game of waiting to tell the old man the truth of Poor Tom's true identity. So, the author allows his audience to have a small measure of sympathy for Glouster's son, Edmund.

Now, Edmund must fight his brother in a duel for honor. The true test of Edmund's nobility is revealed in this battle. Jerad W. Spotswood says, "Wearing the Gloucester armor and defending the Gloucester name, Edmund appears truly noble. Yet his defeat by Edgar shows the hollowness of his claim" (5). In this chivalric battle, the evil brother, Edmund, is fatally wounded. In his death speech when he is slain by Edgar, Edmond says, "What you have charged me with. That have I done, / And more, much more" (165-166). Michael Holahan says, "Poetic justice remains a kind of justice, at least for Edmund" (411). How refreshing for the audience to see a man who has done wrong admit guilt. So the audience can take a sigh of relief knowing that the evil Edmund is finished, and justice has prevailed in the death of Edmund. Thus, while Edmund arouses a small degree of sympathy, the question must be asked of the audience, "Can anyone truly find an emotional release and sympathy for Goneril and Regan?"

In one's need to find a release for emotions, the audience looks at the deaths of Goneril and Regan intertwined in two lines of the play's final scene. Note, that this scene, as well as Gloucester's death, both take place off the set. The question is why does Shakespeare give such characters so little attention in this death scene? According to Stephen Booth, Shakespeare goes out of his way to mingle the two sisters. He says:

Shakespeare goes to some trouble to establish Goneril and Regan as a single evil force: Regan's first words are "I am made of that self metal as my sister, /And prize me at her worth" (1.1.69-70); the first scene ends with a dialogue in which they agree to act together and which is constructed less as a conversation than as a monologue for two speakers. As the play progresses, they earn the joint title "unnatural hags," but we come to recognize Goneril's superior intelligence and managerial skill and to see that Regan trails behind her, compensating for dullness with exaggerated brutality. By act 5, when their mutual antagonism has become the most virulent in the play, Goneril and Regan are surely no longer a single unit; but in their squabble over Edmund they again seem interchangeable to us. (One has to think a moment to remember which sister is murdered and which is the suicide.) (58-59)

The brevity and swiftness of the death of these two women do little to muster very much sympathy. In fact, Shakespeare takes care of them in two lines. The Gentleman announces, "Your lady, sir, / your lady and her sister / By her is poison'd; she confesses" (30-31). The sisters are villainous, yet what made them so capable of villainy may be reason enough to mourn them. The reader can only speculate what causes these two sisters to hate. With the other characters in the play such as Edmond, the audience knows he is embittered by his father's treating Edmond as the bastard son. However, in the case of Lear's two eldest daughters, the text hints as to reasons for their behavior, but offers no concrete proof; therefore the deaths of Goneril and Reagan do not evoke sufficient pity from the audience.

Now the audience must deal with two more deaths in their emotional quest for release from their suffering. However, they find Cordelia easier to detach from emotionally because she is rigid and detached from the audience throughout much of the play. Just before the death scene, Lear and Cordelia are with the doctor and Kent. Lear begs forgiveness of Cordelia. He says, "You must bear with me./ Pray you now, forget and forgive. I am old and foolish" (II, ii. 86-88). Even though one feels the reader should be sympathetic, sympathy is obvious but not heartrending. Obviously, her death is worthy of a tragedy, but the audience has a hard time sympathizing with the character of Cordelia because they never get to know her. She is cold and speaks rarely. In fact Booth says of Cordelia, "Cordelia is justified in all that she says, but not lovable"(67).

As the death scene begins, the audience finds that this scene is not unlike the first. The old king is scheming to be alone with Cordelia. He seems to have a strong bent toward his daughter: he has plans for their being together enjoying his retirement, but she is not going to go along. She has other plans. She tells him: "You have begot me, bred me, lov'd me/I return those duties back as are right fit"(I,i.96-97). She is cold and arouses little passion from the audience.

In Act I, the audience sees the interaction between the two is controlling on the part of Lear and cold on the part of Cordelia:

Cordelia: Nothing, my lord.

Lear : Nothing?

Cordelia: Nothing

Lear: Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.

Cordelia: Unhappy that I am, I cannot Heave /My heart into my mouth, I love my

Majesty/ According to my bond, no more not less. (I,i. 87-93)

Obviously, the characters of Lear and Cordelia display a stubborn churlish quality. The audience knows they have created their own problems. A kind word spoken by either could have avoided the catastrophe the audience finds them in at their deaths in Act five. Therefore, an audience's catharsis is not probable for either character. In Act V, Cordelia shows her realistic side when she says, "Shall we not see these daughters and sisters "(7)? Booth explains, "Cordelia does not sound like a victim"(67). She is all business. Cordelia shows little regard for her situation but maintains a queenly air. So when the reader hears of her death by hanging from Lear, all the reader's energies go toward sympathy for King Lear and not for Cordelia herself.

However, the audience's hope of finding catharsis in Lear is not long lived. He is still obsessed with having Cordelia's company exclusively for himself. For his youngest daughter, Lear has reserved the best land. Lear says, "Strive to be interess'd, what can you say to draw/ A third more opulent than you sisters? Speak" (85-86). Stephen Booth says, "We yearn to see Lear get his comeuppance . . . We cannot comfortably tell ourselves that 'he brought it on himself'--even though he did" (66). In Act V, Lear tells Cordelia not to bother with business: let us go away together to prison. Cordelia will not find joy in this. However, Lear does; he seems to be overwhelmed with joy. He says:

No, no, no, no! Come let's away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds I' th' cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live,
and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh (8-12).

Notice first of all the command voice Lear uses to Cordelia when he repeats 'no' four times. He has not changed, nor has his initial desire to be with his favorite child and go play. In the beginning of the play, it was Lear's intent to retire from life's responsibility. Here again, Lear says, "tis our fast intent /to shake all cares and business from our age" (38-40). So being in prison really gives Lear what he wanted, his daughter. Now in Act five the commands have left Lear's voice, and he begs pathetically, holding her lifeless body, "Cordelia, Cordelia! Stay a little" (277).

At this point the audience feels pity for the old man, but some of that pity is diminished because he is not the sweet old man the audience has hoped he would be. Instead, Lear is screaming, "Howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones!/ Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so/ That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone gone forever" (261-264)! He commands heaven and all around him how to feel and what to say. His final lines are heartrending, yet readers feel only nominal sympathy for him as he says:

And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life?
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'll come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never! (310-314)

"We must be struck by such contrasts of frailty and subjective intensity, as Lear does find a woman whose value has been repaired and restored at a cost not less than everything. She is now everything but alive" (Holahan 421). Therefore, sympathy for Lear is of course available, but he did get what he wanted, which was to be alone with his daughter, and she does not have to say anything simply because she is dead.

With so many characters of royal importance, it is possible to overlook the one character that brings about the final catharsis. This character is Kent, the loyal servant of Lear. Kent enters the scene seeing death all around him. He realizes Lear is mad and tries to get Lear's attention. He wants Lear to realize who he is:

Lear: Are you not Kent?
Kent: The same, Your servant Kent. Where is your servant Caius?
Lear: He's a good fellow, I can tell you that;/ he'll strike, and quickly too. He's dead and rotten.
Kent: No, my good lord, I am the very man-- (286-291)

It is ironic that with all the love Kent gave to Lear, Lear remembers Caius as the good fellow, but he fails to recognize Kent. When Lear dies, the audience has its first real catharsis but not for Lear. Instead the catharsis is for Kent when he says, "Break, heart, I prithee, break" (316)! Kent is so distraught by the death of someone he is devoted to that death would relieve his suffering but it is not that easy. He is left to suffer. According to Robert B. Heilman, "The easiest conclusion to draw is that life is intolerable at a rational level, that it is irrational, and that madness is the proper symbol for it" (214). Therefore, Kent cannot cope in a world without purpose, and his purpose for life and living is to serve his King. When Lear dies, Kent suffers not only for Lear but for himself. Kent does not achieve a catharsis as the audience does. Now, the audience's heart breaks. The audience is the fortunate ones, but Kent is not so fortuitous. Therefore, when Albany offers Kent the kingdom to rule with Edgar, Kent says, "I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;/ My master calls me, I must not say no" (226-227). So the reader can assume that Kent's journey will be to follow his master in death. The play is structured so that it is natural for Kent to function with Lear. If Kent is not in this capacity, he cannot exist, and therefore, must go on a journey. Heilman explains, "Kent acts as a vassal, as members of organic society both [Cordelia and Kent] are in the 'nature,' the rupture of which is a leading motif of the play" (216). Each character has a function in the play. Kent's purpose is not to rule with Edgar, as Albany wants. His character functions to elicit emotion from the audience. His character is created to serve Lear. Therefore, without Lear, Kent cannot go on. The play is a tragedy, but no character is more tragic than the loyal character of Kent. The death of six characters fail to do what Kent's heartbreak does for the audience: his suffering brings the audience to a total catharsis.

Thus, in contrast to the other deaths, the death of Kent has the greatest claim on the audiences' emotions. In this sense, he provides a vehicle for catharsis because the reader feels the greatest pity for Kent. The audience is denied the right to hear of Kent's death unlike the other six deaths in this scene. His death is ambiguous to us.

Why does an audience need a release of emotions? Booth says, "Western culture is genetically incapable of producing an audience not conditioned to identify itself with the youngest of three sisters and to recognize transparent vessels of wickedness in elder sisters pleasing to their parent" (67). The audience feels it, therefore, a duty to identify with Cordelia. Yet the reader does not identify with her because she is cold and not passionate. King Lear is an old tyrant who as Booth says, "brought it on himself." Booth states:

We are pressed toward, but not to, the point of rethinking and justifying our evaluations. We are similarly pressed by our experience of the disguised Kent and by comparably disquieting experiences that arise from the fact that the wicked Edmund (for whom we felt sympathy in the first moments of the play during a conversation that ignored his rights and needs and, in a different dimension, ignored ours as well) takes us into his confidence and is superficially but intensely attractive when he does so; and from the fact that the virtuous, philosophical, and equally confidential Edgar is so often so foolish in his easy, inadequate moralizing, and from the fact that he so inadequately explains his tactics in denying his father the comfort of knowing that one of his sons cares for him. (66)

As for Gloucester, Edgar's choice of not telling him that he is his son kills the old man by bursting his heart. Gloucester's salvation is what kills him. Booth puts it this way, "The crowning example, of course, is the end of the play--where we wish events otherwise than they are and where remedy would give more discomfort than the disease" (69). Therefore, for us Gloucester's end comes at a time when the audience needs to take its leave of Gloucester. The audience cannot take more of his suffering. Similarly, Booth says of Cordelia and Lear: "To allow Lear and Cordelia to retire with victory and felicity would be to allow more to occur . . . . It would be a strong man whose natural ideas of justice and hopes for a happy resolution could outweigh his more basic need--his simple need of an ending" (70).

Therefore, it is only in Kent that the audience has a true catharsis, a total cleansing of emotions, so the audience needs a character worthy of such strong emotions. Booth explains, "Kent is the one major character whom an audience can effortlessly accept as altogether admirable" (63). So, he, Kent, is the only one who the reader cares about enough to have a strong degree of detachment and involvement. The reader has a need in drama to relate to a character, and the more obvious characters of Lear and Cordelia fail their audience. "In portraying Cordelia and Lear's deaths as more consequential, as more tragic than those of any other character in the play, Shakespeare constructs a hierarchy of death" (Spotswood 6). The characters of Cordelia and Lear are not deserving of the emotion needed to transfer such pity. Spinrad says of Lear's death, "This is why we must leave Lear's death alone, as his friends do on stage, and as we do off stage in the theater. To explain it away by dramatic convention is to falsify it and to deny ourselves the new kind of catharsis that it provides" (6). Therefore, the reader relates to Kent as the one character worthy of full empathy, and allows Lear's audience to know that Kent finds peace. Many gain our pity, but not wholehearted sympathy, our empathy, adequately to achieve catharsis. Now the audience rests having realized the fulfillment of their catharsis in the worthy character, Kent.

Works Cited

Booth, Stephen. "On the Greatness of King Lear." Modern Critical Interpretations Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
Heilman, Robert Bechtold. This Great Stage. Baton Rouge: Louisana State University Press. 1948.
Holahan, Michael. "'Look Her Lips': Softness of Voice, Construction of Character in King Lear." Shakespeare Quarterley 48 (Winter 1997): 406-431.
Holman, Hugh C. and William Harman, eds. A Handbook to Literature. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1986.
Spinrad, Phoebe S. "Dramatic 'Pity' and the Death of Lear." Renascence V43 (Summer, 1991) 230-236.
Spotswood, Jerald W. "Maintaining Hierarchy in The Tragedie of King Lear." Studies in English Literature. 38 (Spring 1998): 265-281.