Subject
Cruelty
From
Date
Body
Shakespeare’s King Lear. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the
gods;/They kill us for their sport” (4.1. 36-37 in the conflated text of
the Norton edition). This also serves as the epigraph for Hardy’s Tess
of the D’Urbervilles. My point is not just that Shakespeare is cruel to
his characters, but because Jacobethan* audiences KNEW that Cordelia
would win the battle, restore Lear to the throne, and live happily, not
forever, but for a few more years, Shakespeare is also tormenting his
audiences. At 5.3. 264 Lear hopes—and leads the audience to
believe—that Cordelia might be alive after all. So King Lear, and
maybe Titus Andronicus, test the audience’s capacity for cruelty, pain,
and disappointment. Some audiences and readers, especially in the
eighteenth century, e.g. Samuel Johnson, could not bear King Lear; and I
won’t reread Tess because it hurts too much.<XXML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O
/><O:P></O:P>
<O:P> </O:P>
*”Jacobethan”: a term coined by the linguist David Crystal (at least
that is where I first encountered it) to cover the reigns of both
Elizabeth I and James I, the period of Shakespeare’s
productivity.<O:P></O:P>
<O:P> </O:P>
Eric Hyman<O:P></O:P>
Professor of English<O:P></O:P>
Graduate Coordinator<O:P></O:P>
Department of English and Foreign Languages<O:P></O:P>
Fayetteville State University<O:P></O:P>
1200 Murchison Rd.<O:P></O:P>
Fayetteville, NC 28301<O:P></O:P>
(910) 672-1901<O:P></O:P>
ehyman@uncfsu.edu<O:P></O:P>
<O:P> </O:P>
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gods;/They kill us for their sport” (4.1. 36-37 in the conflated text of
the Norton edition). This also serves as the epigraph for Hardy’s Tess
of the D’Urbervilles. My point is not just that Shakespeare is cruel to
his characters, but because Jacobethan* audiences KNEW that Cordelia
would win the battle, restore Lear to the throne, and live happily, not
forever, but for a few more years, Shakespeare is also tormenting his
audiences. At 5.3. 264 Lear hopes—and leads the audience to
believe—that Cordelia might be alive after all. So King Lear, and
maybe Titus Andronicus, test the audience’s capacity for cruelty, pain,
and disappointment. Some audiences and readers, especially in the
eighteenth century, e.g. Samuel Johnson, could not bear King Lear; and I
won’t reread Tess because it hurts too much.<XXML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O
/><O:P></O:P>
<O:P> </O:P>
*”Jacobethan”: a term coined by the linguist David Crystal (at least
that is where I first encountered it) to cover the reigns of both
Elizabeth I and James I, the period of Shakespeare’s
productivity.<O:P></O:P>
<O:P> </O:P>
Eric Hyman<O:P></O:P>
Professor of English<O:P></O:P>
Graduate Coordinator<O:P></O:P>
Department of English and Foreign Languages<O:P></O:P>
Fayetteville State University<O:P></O:P>
1200 Murchison Rd.<O:P></O:P>
Fayetteville, NC 28301<O:P></O:P>
(910) 672-1901<O:P></O:P>
ehyman@uncfsu.edu<O:P></O:P>
<O:P> </O:P>
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Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
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