Context
1 Harsnett’s ‘A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures’ (1603)
- Samuel Harsnett wrote a pamphlet about people who feigned madness to gain money or sympathy.
- Harsnett was a sceptic; he didn’t believe in demonic possession.
- Shakespeare used Harsnett’s pamphlet in creating Edgar’s disguise as Poor Tom.
- There are many links to Harsnett’s pamphlet in the play, such as Poor Tom’s words ‘the Foul Fiend’.
2 Grace Wildgoose (1603)
- She tried to have her father, Brian Annesley, declared insane.
- She and her sister tried to take control of his estate by proving he was unfit to manage it.
- Shakespeare would have heard about this story – it was big news in 1603–4.
- This real-life scandal probably gave Shakespeare the idea of making Lear go mad.
3 The Great Chain of Being
- This was a static world view, where everything in nature had its place. It was unchallenged until the early 1600s.
- In Renaissance times, ‘Truths’ that were comforting and reliable were challenged by the ‘New Learning’.
- King Lear explores these tensions between the old belief systems and new ideas based on scientific discovery.
- Edmund rejects the old, conservative ideas that the stars influence human fortune; he argues the case for free will.
4 The Spanish Armada (1588) and the Gunpowder Plot (1605)
- The invasion of the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot were both Roman Catholic plots against the government of England.
- As a result of these events and Renaissance Protestant nationalism, Roman Catholicism was seen as hostile and disloyal.
- Shakespeare seems to have avoided direct religious comment in his plays, but his characters, such as Lear, have Protestant leanings.
- Lear is obsessed by his sense of identity – his inner struggle; this was very much a Protestant preoccupation.
5 Charles de Bovelles (sixteenth century)
- He wrote the Liber de Sapiente (Book of Wisdom); he argued that man is motivated by more than animal instinct.
- He reasoned that man achieves wisdom through knowledge acquired through the senses and knowledge acquired through contemplation of the soul.
- Edmund can be seen in this light as striving for fulfilment, denying that he is inferior to Edgar.
- Goneril and Regan, however, are motivated by selfish desire for status and power.
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