Oldal 34 [34]
SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
"For I am a vertue yf I be well vsed / And I am a vyce where I am abused.”1#
In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the exception is Albany, who at the beginning of
the play seems to side with Lear’s enemies, but when he realizes how corrupt
Gonorill is,’ he joins the other group.
Although in Shakespeare’s King Lear, the characters do not become entirely
allegorical figures, or in other words, their metaphorical traits do not cover
all aspects of their dramatic personae as they do in the interlude, the fact that
virtues and vices become distinctive and even verbally assigned attributes of
certain characters gives textual or intrinsic evidence to support the relevance
of a moralist analogy. For example, the King of France welcomes Cordelia after
her father banishes her with the following words: “Thee and thy virtues I ceaze
vpon,”!® while Edgar greets Gonorill’s servant, Oswald, by saying, “I know
thee well, a seruiceable villaine, / As dutious to the vices of thy mistres, as
badnes would desire.”!”° This sharp moral contrast is even more remarkable
in the case of Edgar and Edmund who, regardless of the disguise they take,
become embodiments of virtue and vice, a quality they keep throughout the
play. Moreover, the delicate use of imagery sustains the tension between these
moral qualities and their actual representation. When Edmund gives the fake
letter to his father to make him suspicious of Edgar’s intentions, he stirs his
imagination by saying: “I hope for my brother’s iustification, he wrot this but
as an essay or tast of my virtue.”!” The deceitfully virtuous impression he
creates by adopting a language that does not correspond to his deeds is also
reinforced by other characters. After he claims to have saved his father’s life
from Edgar’s attempt to kill him, the Duke of Cornwall expresses his gratitude
by saying, “for you Edmund, whose vertue and obedience, doth this instant
so much commend it self, you shall bee ours, natures of such deepe trust, wee
shall much need you, we first seize on." The two brothers’ behavior seems
to owe much to the representation of morality play characters, as Edmund,
the virtue-like vice, and Edgar, the vice-like virtue, exemplify that evil is the
reverse of good. Talking about Magnyfycence, Bevington offers the following
explanation for this dramaturgical tool: “the individual actors, like the plays
themselves, embody this antithesis, oscillating between straight and character
parts, normality and excess, the believable and the absurd.’
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Skelton: Magnyfycence, lines 2135-2136.
Cf.: “See thy selfedeuill, proper deformity seemes not in the fiend, so horid as in woman. [...] how
ere thou art a fiend, A womans shape doth shield thee” Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. H4r.
Ibid., sig. B4r.
Ibid., sig. K1r.
107 Tbid., sig. Clv.
108 Ibid. sig. D4v.
David M. Bevington: The Pioneering Contributions of Bale and Skelton, in David M. Bevington
(ed.): From Mankind to Marlowe. Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1962, 136-137.
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