The tragedy of Lear is precisely not nihilistic. It consists of the moral order reacting to a moral outrage: a kind of allergic reaction from the just world to great injustice.
There is an asymmetry of injustice: The innocent receive punishment that they surely don’t deserve. But no guilty one goes unpunished. “All friends shall taste the wages of their virtue and all foes / the cup of their deservings,” says Albany. And he is, strangely, not wrong.
Whatever gods rule Albion, they by no means clear the guilty. Inexorably the agents of wickedness die by poison, by treachery, and by a fair fight.
The Lear we meet in Act 1, Scene 1, has become the kind of man who deserves the worst.
We can glimpse from Kent, Albany, and Cordelia that perhaps Lear was not always like this. He is worthy of some intrinsic loyalty as a king, a venerable old man, and yet surely also he must have had some real nobility that makes him worthy of such a love. But his behavior to Cordelia betrays not only a present madness, but a deep corruption of his soul: a pride that has devoured him and has caused him to do the worst thing a father can possibly do.
(A father should love his daughter without condition, no matter how wicked she is; this father denounces his daughter because she will not love him without condition—which shows him to be wicked.)
In a just world, it is of course a problem that a man like Lear should exist. But granting that such a man exists, what should we expect but utter destruction? What should we expect from a family with such a father?
Steadily, the moral universe responds to Lear’s offense in outrage. His elder daughters betray and belittle him; what else should become of such a father? Lear’s punishment is most strict and correct. The father who devours his daughters is in turn devoured by them. He loses his crown, is beset by madness, loses the whole world. The whole corrupt family, the whole dreadful crew, is devoured by bloodshed.
Not to mourn the profound suffering of this play would be inhuman. But without adopting an unholy chipperness, we can, I think, be surprised that the play’s tragic outcome is by no means the worst possible.
While the righteous ones are grievously hurt, the wicked do not prosper. There is a properly nihilist version of this play in which Edmund kills the king and his family, usurps the throne, and lives happily ever after with whatever sister he decides not to murder. But this is not what Shakespeare writes. In his version, the guilty get what they deserve. Except —
What does Lear deserve?
Certainly not Cordelia.
(Regan and Goneril make sense. For a father like Lear to have such daughters is within the order of things.)
It is the expected and right outcome for Lear’s sin to beget sin. Lear’s wickedness must as a matter of course kill his daughters and his sons and his friends, because evil begets evil. The whole court should perish in madness, be consumed by fire, be turned to pillars of salt.
But it is not, because one righteous daughter is found. And one, nay, two, righteous advisors are found. And there is a righteous son, a son who loves his blind father well. These happy few do not bend the knee to Baal; they disrupt the inexorable march of justice; they shine like stars in a cruel and corrupt world. How extraordinary are these good ones! Why would we marvel at the cruel father and his cruel daughters? We should instead be caught in astonishment by the strange few who can love. The miracle is that all is not lost.
And so something begins to happen. Lear begins to receive a portion of what he has deserved, and yet, by what I think must only be divine grace, he also receives something he does not deserve.
The Fool, Cordelia, Edgar, and Kent love Lear with a pure and steadfast love, and when he loses his crown and his wits and his health, something changes.
Lear is changed. He turns around. He asks his daughter’s forgiveness and is forgiven. He offers to love her. This man who threatened his daughter with death then dies in her defense. Who is this man? He is not the man from Act One. He is a man capable of selfless love, a man whose pride has vanished, a man whose broken and contrite heart enables him to at last be a father to his daughter.
This is not cheap grace. It is the costliest kind I can imagine. But I think it must be salvation. There is no earthly reason that this man of cruelty and bitterness should become a man of love.
I think there is no other way to understand Lear’s story than that the man we saw at the beginning has been crucified, has fallen to the ground and died. And while the kingdom of Albion has been stained dreadfully with blood, there is nonetheless fruit unlooked-for rising from the seed. “What comfort to this great decay may come / Shall be applied.” Two righteous men remain to rule and restore.
Albion is saved by a pinch, saved as if through fire, like its sinning king.
Lear’s heart of stone has been changed for a heart of flesh.
But I think this is why King Lear has to be a tragedy: The awful privilege of a heart of flesh is that it can break. Lear’s crime is a type of the human crime: human sin is too great to have no consequences. Its burden is placed, with deep injustice, on an innocent, a Lamb.
At last, Lear sees himself with clear eyes. “You do me wrong to take me out o’ the grave. / Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound / Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears / Do scald like molten lead.” This is the hell Lear deserves.
Well. Treat every man as he deserves, and who shall escape whipping?
I think we can hope that Lear does not get what he deserves. I think we can hope that the daughter he does not deserve brings him, with her, to the bliss that he does not deserve.
Lear has lost the whole world. By God’s grace, by the grace of his daughter, by the foolish upside-down absurdity of a love that will not let him go, he may have gained his soul.
