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THE DRAMATURGICAL AND THEATRICAL HERITAGE the Fool, one of which is, “Who is it that can tell me who I am? Lear’s shadow — I would learne that, for by the markes of soueraintie, knowledge, and reason, I should bee false perswaded I had daughters.”°° Having listed many other related details, Knowles finally reaches the plausible conclusion that the majority of the resemblances between the two plays is rooted in the similarities in the details of dramatic action, especially in the first and middle part.* On the other hand, the relatively few word-for-word textual correspondences and the only occasionally direct linguistic influence of the Chronicle Historie suggest that, even if Shakespeare was familiar with the 1605 play, he did not consciously or intentionally borrow words from his assumed source.” The term “interlude” and the reason for which I chose Skelton’s Magnyfycence as the third work for my contrastive analysis need further clarification. Twentieth-century Shakespeare criticism slowly but steadily developed an interest in the relevance of Medieval dramatic heritage to the historically valid understanding of Shakespearean drama. In the 1910s, A. C. Bradley remarked that the sharp distinction between good and evil characters in King Lear reflects the influence of morality plays, but it was only in the 1970s that academic attention turned to Shakespeare’s possible dramatic sources, other than the anonymous True Chronicle Historie. In 1972, Maynard Mack observed that Lear, stirs memories of a far more ancient dramatic hero variously called Mankind, Everyman, Genus Humanum, Rex Virus, Rex Humanitas, Magnificence, etc. [...] The persons surrounding him are in some sense (again as in the Morality plays) extensions of himself, who will struggle to assist or defeat him.** Mack dedicates an entire chapter in his 1972 book to point out many elements in King Lear that derive from the morality tradition, although in his view, they could hardly call to mind this dramatic heritage as late as the first decade of the seventeenth century. He concludes that these resemblances are “not particular to King Lear but are the characteristics of Shakespearean dramaturgy throughout his career.” In 1975, Robert Potter, however, proposes a stronger connection and argues that “King Lear is Shakespeare’s supreme, metaphysical, Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. D1r. Knowles: How Shakespeare, 14-16. 52 Tbid., 17. 53 A.C. Bradley: Shakespearean Tragedy. Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1992, 226. Maynard Mack: King Lear in Our Time, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972, 58. 55 Tbid., 78. + 23°
