A King Lear of the debtors' prison: Dickens and Shakespeare on mortal shame

Social Research, Winter, 2003 by Alexander Welsh

Shame is more operative in the several actions of King Lear than most commentary on the play would lead one to believe. Cordelia's silence in the first scene is not determined by any notable wickedness in the show of flattery her father demands. Rather, her sense of truthfulness and of his dignity is offended. Sincerity is especially important on this occasion, which is also to mark her betrothal. Cordelia holds an entirely different view of nature and the bonds of family, obviously, than that which Edmund boasts, but she has her pride too. Goneril, the oldest daughter, may be far more selfish than Cordelia, but much of her initial concern has to do with decorum. (Amy Dorrit's older sister Fanny inherits something of Goneril's tone in these early scenes.) Goneril complains of the unsightly behavior of the king's followers and the treatment of her home "more like a tavern or a brothel / Than a graced palace. The shame itself doth speak / For instant remedy" (1.4.236-38). Her scolding of her father, after all, is an attempt to shame him into changing his ways. The king with his sarcasms--"Your name, fair gentlewoman?" (1.4.227)--is dishing out more of the same. The re-entrance of Goneril in act 2 interrupts this exchange with Regan:

   Who stocked my servant? Regan, I have good hope
   Thou didst not know on't. Who comes here? O heavens!
   If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
   Allow obedience, if you yourselves are old,
   Make it your cause. Send down, and take my part!
   [to Goneril] Art not ashamed to look upon this beard?
   O, Regan, will you take her by the hand? (2.2.377-83)

Indeed, the disguised Kent has been placed in the stocks for his tripping up Oswald--that is, for trying to put that other servant to shame for his disrespect for the king. The return he gets is "this shameful lodging" (2.2.170), Kent's words for the stocks.

It is very true that as these exchanges become more and more intolerable, all social and family constraint gives way. The action shifts to thrusting out of doors, murder and mayhem, and licentiousness. Yet even the most terrible deed enacted on this stage, the blinding of Gloucester, has an element of deliberate shaming. Would Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall think of punching out the eyes of a young man in Gloucester's position? Do not his "corky arms" and unmistakably "white" beard (3.7.29, 37) tempt his torturers to render the old man more helpless? Are Regan and Cornwall, in the erotic charge they seem to get from this cruelty, exorcising the inevitable coming of their own old age?

Notoriously, before the end of act 1 Lear has quarreled bitterly with his oldest child. Goneril wants him to curb the behavior of his rowdy knights and reduce their number; the king has loosed the first of his terrible curses, that she be childless, or else mother of a thankless child like herself--the most shameful conditions he can think of at this moment. At the same time he is fighting back tears: "Life and death, I am ashamed / That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus" (1.4.288-89). The alternation of wrath and weeping continues to act 2. The fool berates the king for his foolishness and the king begins to fear he will go mad. When madness overcomes him in act 3, his powers will have zeroed out altogether. Until then, incipient madness is another embarrassment to his manhood like his tears. As Goneril and Regan methodically count down the number of knights they are willing to tolerate when their father visits, Regan's relentless subtraction--"What need one?"--triggers the eloquent but uncertain speech that begins,