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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
King James I.”° Thirdly, the two monarchs’ unusual behavior also bears some
similarities, and thus Lear’s hysterical outbursts could have echoed James I’s
hallucinations, caused by the mental illness porphyria from which scholars
have since concluded he probably suffered.*’ Last but not least, the way King
Lear presents the importance and defective nature of written correspondence
in relation to public affairs also provides some Jacobean resemblances. David
M. Bergeron presents a lengthy and rather convincing argument in support
of his claim that King James I’s must have understood the problematic nature
of keeping indirect contact even within family circles since the exchange of
letters was the main channel of communication between him and his mother,
Mary Queen of Scots, and also his cousin, Queen Elisabeth.”®
As for textual connections, some of King James’ writings, published and
widely read in the first decade of the seventeenth century, have also been found
relevant to certain passages of Shakespeare’s play. Most recently, Grace loppolo
has pointed out that certain ideas like filial ingratitude might derive from the
True Law of Free Monarchies, and Basilicon Doron may offer a pretext for the
representation of royal wrath.”? Michael Ryan also adds James’ Demonologie
to this list, and he argues that Shakespeare could have used this work for the
description of Edgar’s demonic quasi-hallucinations when he appears in the
guise of Tom o’Bedlam.*°
Taking the resemblance between King Lear and King James I to its extremes
would lead to fascinating but endless speculations, which is definitely not the
goal of this book. Rather, it is worth recalling Foakes’ insight that the main
problem with this type of historical approach is that it focuses mainly on
details and marginalizes the importance of the text as literature that provides
a “coherent artistic impression.”*! Although I still find it essential to bear in
mind the possible Jacobean allusions of the play, Foakes’ remark provided the
initial prompting for me to pursue the textual investigation I present in the
following pages.
Leonard Tennenhouse: The Theatre of Punishment, in Leonard Tennenhouse: Power on
Display: The Politics of Shakespeare’s Genres, New York—London, Methuen, 1986, 142.
27 Margaret Hotine: Lear’s Fit of the Mother, Notes and Queries 22:6 (1981), 138-41.
28 David M. Bergeron: Deadly Letters in King Lear, Philological Quarterly 72 (1993), 172-174.
Cf. Grace loppolo (ed.): A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on William Shakespeare’s King Lear,
London—New York, Routledge, 2003.
Michael Ryan: A Historicist Reading of King Lear, in Michael Ryan: Literary Theory: a Practical
Introduction, Malden, MA, Wiley—Blackwell, 1999, 134.
Foakes: Hamlet versus Lear, 245.
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