Lear: Men and Threats to their Security in Old Age
Please watch Belle's Youtube video of her Chinese "King Lear," a graphic novel-in-progress.
In reply to Matthew Biberman's post:
At the beginning of the play, Lear was merely OLD and irrational because he was afraid. He was merely OLD and not yet mad.
I think Harold Bloom said it perfectly: All old men are King Lear.
I’ve made old men my life's study. Old people develop a sweet tooth for honeyed words as proof of devotion. They are headed for dependence and need reassurance they will be loved, taken care of. They are AFRAID. Even as they defiantly utter words of independence, they crave attention and nurture from their adult children.
I have three dear old males I keep watch over and one has just broken off decades-old friendships over email exchanges on political issues. Family and mutual friends tried to dissuade him from rash actions to no avail. Irrational is my preferred thinking. I've known this marvelous man most of my life and I've watched him grow childish and impatient with age. He cannot brook dissent to his intellectual authority. He wasn't easy to enrage at the apex of manhood.
King Lear may not have alway been irrational or selfish. He grew to be needy and, therefore, afraid. Rage is evidence of great fear. I've experience my sweet, wise, rational, cool-headed, loving but and increasingly dependent father promise to disown me when his future security was threatened by my potenial actions.
The aging man, so used to being the figure of authority in society--physically strong to defend his realm, property, territory--grows fearful when his knees weaken, loses his teeth and sight. He roars all the more louder when he begins to sense the demise of power.
Lear does indeed become mad after being spurned by Regan and Goneril, but not before. He was merely OLD at the beginning of the action. Old and deeply afraid in spite of his ruckus.
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James Whyle says:
Maybe he is afraid. The
Maybe he is afraid. The wonder is you can do it in many different ways. But I do very sincerely, at the age of 52, hope his behaviour is not a natural symptom of old age.
I hope I don't manage my retirement and my children's inheritance with a flattery competition. And then alienate a faithful daughter, and exile my one true friend. Lear is, in the opening scene, frighteningly wild and reckless. And angry.
We did Lear with an actor, Sean Taylor, then in his late forties. And it worked extremely well with a powerful, virile man at the start. It gives you further to go. Then there's that bit when Lear asks Kent, now in disguise, why he wants to serve him.
Kent: You have that in your visage which men would fain call master.
Lear: What's that?
Kent: Authority.
It makes sense to me that he's a powerful man at the beginning. Keen to hunt and drink and fuck with his noisy knights. I don't think he's doddering.
Kent is a crucial character. I'm surprised no one's mentioned him before. He's the cousin of Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra. Same template.
I like Bloom's thought. But I'd extend it. By the end of the play, Lear is all men. And women too.
Matthew Biberman says:
Lear and Madness
Another great post. I love Bloom. Once people thought there was this big difference between Bloom and Greenblatt and that always amused me. After Will in the World its pretty clear the differences were never that great. For me the difference basically boiled down to genius theory. Bloom is unrepentant on the subject. Shakespeare is a genius, he shapes our sense of what it means to be human. Greenblatt: We see what we think of as "human nature" begin to emerge in the Renaissance: general societal external forces create it: we see how this process works in--oh, let's see--Shakespeare, not that he's great or anything...
I see that where we break in our reading of Lear remains at the most basic level: on the question of tragedy and what Lear is doing. I will devote my next blog to it.
Eric Nichols says:
Fear of aging is pretty universal
King Solomon describes it pretty well in the end of Ecclesiastes:
1Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;
2While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:
3In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,
4And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;
5Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
*note. "Keepers of the House" are generally understood to refer to the ARMS and the "strong men" are the legs.
Eric Nichols says:
A few years, one of my old
A few years, one of my old mentors of electronics, Bob Hisamoto, passed away. He was 95 years old, and had 15 kids. (His last child was born when he was 72...obviously his wife was a bit younger).
He had to be pronounced dead three times....he came back to life after the first two "tries."
The way his wife Louisa tells it is hilarious. "The newspapers said he "died peacefully at home.' Let me tell you, it was ANYTHING but peaceful. The old guy just couldn't make up his mind! I left the room and told him to call me back when he was really ready...."
I really wanted to write this interview"...but at the time it seemed like it would have been crass. But the whole thing was so hilarious and surrealistic. Bob went the way I want to go....still fighting!
:)
eric
Belle Yang says:
James, Matthew, Eric
I believe the scariest time in a man's life is the period when power shifts into the hands of others. And that's the untidiest emotional phase for a man used to having power: that shift. That's when the rage is there. Once power is in entirely in someone else's hands, then there comes grudging acceptance and then benign dependence.
James, I would like to write about women and power (if I am able to think through this using Shakespeare women. Women are different, James ;)
Jessica Barksdale Inclan says:
Don't you remember these famous lines:
"Bambi, get up Bambi."
Now, this is from, yes, Bambi, and it's Bambi's father exhorting him to move along.
And then there is that moment at the end, Bambi--antlers a plenty, a candelabra of antlers (Freud, where are you?)--at the edge of the precipice, looking down just as his father had earlier in the movie.
This old man fading thing is just where it's at. Now, in literature, we have the crone. She may be hunched, but she knows it all!
J
Jessica Barksdale Inclan www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com
Belle Yang says:
Yeah, J
Crone power! I hear you. And I would love to blog about that with you. Don't know how to approach it yet, but women gain power after their men lose it. I'm not trying to be obnoxious, but I've seen it and my older women friends tell me this is true. Pay back!
sonshi (not verified) says:
Maybe it's physical
When I had my toothache I was grumpy for the entire day. Women seem to tolerate pain much better than men. That's probably why you hear about grumpy old men and hardly ever grumpy old women. :-)
Belle Yang says:
Thomas
Women get plenty grumpy in old age. As I said above, men sort of soften after they do accept their loss of control. Then women take over the show. Watch out when Samantha turns 60 :)
Eric Nichols says:
Who said this?
Okay, smart people. I'm looking for the source of a quotation, but it seems Bartlett's Familiar Quotations has come up empty. Perhaps the quotation isn't familiar enough...but it sure was great. Who said this?:
"Drawing upon my formidable command of the English language, I said nothing."
I think it might have been H.L. Mencken, but not sure.
Eric
sonshi (not verified) says:
Robert Benchley
Robert Benchley
Eric Nichols says:
Thank you, my good man!
You are a veritable repository of information. :)
(This is one of those quotes that just works on so many levels. :)
eric
Peter Trachtenberg says:
No Country for Old Men
So you don't buy the notion that Lear is unconsciously testing his daughters to see if they're angry at him for his derelictions as a father? I don't necessarily buy it, either, but I've encountered it, and it would explain why Regan and Goneril behave toward him as they do.
Studies suggest that men start getting emotionally screwloose well before middle-age. Typically in their mid-50s men start making demands for emotional closeness that women typically do earlier in their relationships. At the same time, their wives are often becoming more confident and eager to assert themselves in the outside world. It's not easy being XY.
Peter Trachtenberg
David Pennebaker says:
Lear: Men and Threats to their security in their old age
The older men become, the more they regress to the child they once were. I don't mean this in any way to demean the aging process, or their gender. It's just so, the continuum of life. It requires a compassionate person to look into the eyes of this elder child and make them feel purposeful. To comfort them when they feel unwanted, overlook failures when they are wrong, and nurture when illness and pain beseige them. That is a calling for us all.