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Volume 26, Number 1, 2001 reprinted by permission of the Law Review KING LEAR: THE KENTISH FOREST AND THE PROBLEM OF THIRDS TERRY REILLY* hybrid generic form. In order to discuss these rather disparate issues, the following paper is divided into two sections. The first section contextualizes Kent in the contemporary debate about inheritance and then examines the double representation of Kent in the text. The second section interprets the division of Lear's kingdom in light of various contemporary laws and rules governing inheritance, and then combines these perspectives to discuss the overall shape of the play. Before beginning this discussion, however, it is first necessary to contextualize the first recorded court performance. The King's Men performed King Lear at court on December 26, 1606. Given the practice of opening the Christmas revels with a comedy,2 it is safe to assume that this audience expected a retelling of the Leir3 story as a comic romance in the tradition of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Higgins, Warner, Holinshed, Spenser, and the anonymous play, The true Chronicle Historie of King Leir, and his three daughters.4 However, as the double plot of King Lear grafts the tale of Leir and his daughters to the Gloucester plot--a retelling of Musidorus' tragic story of the Paphlagonian king and his two sons from Sidney's Arcadia5--this pairing of comic and tragic sources provides King Lear with previously established discourses both from the popular comedic tradition and from Aristotle's prescriptive codes for tragedy. Susan Snyder suggests that King Lear represents Shakespeare's "most radical use yet of comedy in tragedy,"6 but, as we shall see, it may be equally appropriate to describe King Lear as a radical use of tragedy in comedy. As the topsy-turvy world of festive comedy came to form a requisite part of the holiday season and the Christmas revels, the traditionally subversive function of comedic conventions became institutionalized. In other words, comic inversions which originally destabilized and questioned established hierarchies came to represent either licenced transgressions or normative examples which reinforced these same hierarchies.7 Shakespeare's plays known to have been performed at the beginning of the Christmas revels include The Comedy of Errors (December 28, 1594), Love's Labor's Lost (December 26, 1597), Measure for Measure (December 26, 1604), and King Lear (December 26, 1606).8 These four plays, taken together, suggest that over time, Shakespeare used the carnival licence implied by the Christmas season to reshape traditional comic conventions into increasingly complex self-reflexive representations which challenged normative hierarchies. Thus, while The Comedy of Errors clearly follows the pattern of New Comedy and its doubling of traditional comic conventions often approaches farce, each of the two subsequent plays qualifies its representations of comic conventions: Love's Labor's Lost self-consciously calls attention to its comic form in the final act, and then withholds the requisite concluding marriage;9Measure for Measure offers tragic possibilities, then concludes with a number of problematic marriages.10King Lear, however, poses an even sharper paradox: It invokes a comic source and uses a number of comic conventions--the Fool, disguises, madness, marriage, etc.--to produce an overwhelming tragedy. The anomalous relationship between King Lear and the prescriptive comedic code of the Christmas revels can perhaps best be described as a "carnivalization" of the comedic norm. By transforming a traditionally comic story into a tragedy, and by performing King Lear at court as the first play of the Christmas revels, Shakespeare reshapes utopian comedy into dystopian tragedy; in effect, he implies that carnival can be tragic as well as comic. Moreover, tragedy during the Christmas revels recaptures the cultural dissonance originally accorded to comedy: As playgoers at the December 26, 1606, performance leave the theater and resume their Christmas festivities, King Lear takes shape as a realistic intrusion which carnivalizes their holiday world. In this sense, the double plot of King Lear reproduces real inheritance issues which faced contemporary English subjects and then follows the implications of these issues to their tragic conclusions. As we shall see, the County and Earl of Kent function as both sites and guides for negotiating this transition. The representations of the Earl and County of Kent in King Lear reproduce historical and cultural differences between the inheritance customs of Kent and the rest of England. In The Use of the Law, Francis Bacon traces the origin of Kent's unique sociocultural position to the Norman conquest: "The Conqueror got, by right of conquest, all the land of the realm into his own hands, in demesne, taking from every man all estate, tenure, property, and liberty of or in the same, except religious and church lands, and the lands of Kent."12 James Doyle explains Bacon's remark by noting that William awarded Kent to his bastard half brother Odo of Bayeux after the Battle of Hastings.13 Subsequently, William introduced the system of primogeniture, the exclusive right of inheritance belonging to the eldest son,14 into England, but Kent's relative autonomy allowed it to refuse the custom and to retain its ancient pre-Norman custom of gavelkind, which provided equal inheritance for all male offspring.15 Although Kent eventually became absorbed into the geographic and political boundaries of England, it retained this custom in the ensuing centuries, despite repeated efforts by the royal courts and parliament--including a bill presented and defeated in 159716--to abolish gavelkind and to enforce primogeniture. Historians have offered differing interpretations of Kent's refusal to adopt the custom of primogeniture, but the importance of economics and geographic location recur in the explanations. Because of its central location on the main trading routes between the continent and the rest of England, by the twelfth century Kent prospered, securing a position "unrivalled . . . as the highway of commerce."17 Commerce and prosperity obviated the need for primogeniture, which sought to perpetuate the impartability of feudal military tenures and agricultural land. Shared inheritance of Kentish gavelkind, then, prefigures the transition from a feudal agricultural economy to mercantile capitalism, a change which began to affect the rest of England in the sixteenth century.18 Since many younger sons of the gentry became merchants and tradesmen, and since mercantile prosperity enabled fathers to distribute wealth among all of their offspring, the rise of the merchant class contributed to the production of a great deal of literature which attacked the treatment of younger sons by primogeniture.19 Tudor and Stuart documents critical of primogeniture and its treatment of younger sons frequently cite Kentish gavelkind as both the epitome of fairness and a pragmatic alternative to primogeniture. For example, in Microcosmography, first published in 1628, John Earle notes that younger sons "would have long since revolted to the Spaniard, but for Kent only, which they hold[ ] in admiration."20 Earle here establishes the County of Kent as a separate third entity, a geographic and cultural buffer zone between England and Spain and between English primogeniture and the customs of "the Spaniard." In doing so, he underscores problems in the English inheritance system, while offering potential solutions to those problems. As in King Lear, however, alternatives offered by Kent present no practical solutions for the English government: Abolishing Kentish gavelkind would lead to revolt, while adopting Kentish customs would eliminate primogeniture and undermine the English system of common law. In King Lear, the County and Earl of Kent reproduce Earle's characterization of Kent as a double representation of the dichotomy between Nature and Fortune--what Lear refers to as "our nature" and "our place."21 This dichotomy, akin to the Renaissance discipline known as chorography,22 explores the relationships between characters and their geographic, cultural, and political environments.23 Since King Lear is set in the ancient undocumented past, this dichotomy enables Shakespeare to inscribe various systems of value on the undefined historical period of Lear's Britain. These created systems depend upon, and call attention to, various historical and cultural contexts. In this way, the "natures" of the characters in King Lear become chorographically linked not only to sociogeographic features in the text, but also to a variety of contextual "places" proper to various historical times. On one hand, the play, set in the distant past of Leir's fabled kingdom, suggests the sense of an indistinct historical beginning--a time linked to the generative origins of English law and custom. In this quasi-historical time frame, Lear creates law as he divides his kingdom in the first scene.24 Although this sense of a distant past frees Lear from the laws and customs of Tudor/Stuart England, his newly created system of law repeatedly calls attention to and manipulates customs and laws existing in that period. On the other hand, the Gloucester plot suggests a contemporary time frame which anticipates an apocalyptic end. Gloucester's comment, "we have seen the best of our time,"25 epitomizes this idea, but Edmund, Edgar, and Gloucester repeatedly call attention to the fact that they must act according to an extant and disintegrating legal system which they interpret in terms of the "plague of custom,"26 and the "order of law."27 Together, the two plots begin by offering possibilities for different trajectories: The Lear plot, derived from a comic source and set in the distant past, emphasizes marriage, the creation of law, and the generation of new possibilities, while the tragic source for the Gloucester plot underscores destruction, death, and the sense of an apocalyptic end. As the two plots interact within overlapping ancient and contemporary time frames, they mix historically specific laws and customs to produce what Lear refers to as "superflux"28--an environment characterized by temporal confusion and the instability of cultural norms. Samuel Johnson clearly describes this mixing process, although he interprets it as a flaw in Shakespeare's artistic practice: "He commonly neglects and confounds the characters of ages, by mingling customs ancient and modern, English and foreign."29 The overall shape of King Lear, however, suggests that this mingling is carefully and consciously controlled to inform the scope and direction of the dramatic action. Thus, after creating the prospect of a potentially normless society, the play telescopes the laws and customs of different historical periods to a virtual vanishing point, and the final scenes take place in what appears to be a static, mythical temporal environment in which past, present, and future coalesce. This environment negates a traditional historical sense of cause and effect and, instead, produces a unique nonlinear concept of an eternal here and now. In King Lear, freed from the chronological and spatial restrictions of historical time, oppositional dichotomies coexist--and are represented simultaneously--in mixed, overlapping forms. Significantly, these final scenes take place "near Dover"--in Kent. Both the County and the Earl of Kent in King Lear provide for the "mingling" of these oppositional features, thus serving as the chiastic nexus of both the plots and the characterizations. In King Lear, the County of Kent and the Earl of Kent occupy liminal geographic and psychological areas, mirroring the anomalous position of Kent in the history of English inheritance practices. Since Kent was the only county in England which did not practice primogeniture, it forms a mediating term--a natural cultural bridge--between the different class-and gender-based inheritance issues at work in the two plots of King Lear. Also, since it remained unchanged from Celtic pre-history to the Tudor/Stuart period, the Kentish custom of gavelkind provides a normative link between ancient and contemporary laws and customs. The historical stability of gavelkind, and its position as a point of intersection between custom and natural law, enable it to function in reference both to the early history of the Leir plot and to the contemporary time frame of the Gloucester plot. Similarly, the fictitious Earl of Kent, as a newly created character in a dramatic retelling of two traditional stories, exhibits a unique form of mobility in the play: He appears in all the different geographic settings as the only character who speaks to all the other characters. He thus helps integrate the two plots and drives the dramatic action toward the closing scenes in the County of Kent. His relative autonomy within the play allows him to act as an intermediary who serves as an agent of both Lear--the King of Britain--and Cordelia--the Queen of France--and indirectly as an agent for Gloucester and Edgar. Beyond their roles as mediating terms, the two Kents also offer liminal alternatives which create and maintain possibilities through implied dichotomies of dramatic structure and form. Thus, as the characters move inexorably toward Dover in the final scenes, the County of Kent represents either a recuperative Forest of Arden or an apocalyptic Armageddon. In much the same way, the Earl of Kent guides both the characters and the audience through points of formal transition: Kent identifies and negotiates comic and tragic markers which signal differences between King Lear and its primary sources. Both Kents thus play complex choric functions: Though they exist and function within the text, their roles frequently take them either partially or totally outside the dramatic action, and this implied distance allows them to map the geographic and psychological topography of King Lear. This double position both inside and outside of the play replicates the unique position of the County of Kent in the history of inheritance customs: It exists inside the geographic and political boundaries of England but outside the complex sociocultural sphere of influence defined by primogeniture. The alternatives that Earle sees Kent offering help to explain the peculiar relationship between representations of the County of Kent in Shakespeare's plays and the character of Kent in King Lear. References to the County of Kent occur in six of Shakespeare's plays other than King Lear,30 and they characterize it not as an idyllic Forest of Arden, but rather as a place of civil unrest and rebellion. In The Second Part of Henry VI, for example, Sir Humphrey Stafford links the discord in the County of Kent to its people, referring to them as "rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent."31 In the same play, Lord Say's comment, "bona terra, mala gens,"32 breaks the chorographic symmetry by drawing a distinction between Kent and its inhabitants. These two comments, delivered by aristocratic characters, assert the malevolence of the Kentish people, but these perspectives also differ as they emphasize either the similarities or the differences between people and their sociogeographic environment. Shakespeare further manipulates the fluid representations of Kent and its inhabitants in The Second Part of Henry VI. Before he assumes his disguise, other characters describe the Earl of Kent as a veritable paragon of virtue: "an honorable friend,"33 "noble and true-hearted."34 In the first scene, however, Lear describes the "good Kent"35 as an "unmannerly"36 "recreant,"37 one who openly challenges the King's authority. Kent's remarks attempt to deflect Lear's anger away from Cordelia and redirect it toward himself, but as Lear sees Kent's mediating position, he warns him not to come "between the dragon and his wrath,"38 and "betwixt our sentence and our power."39 Thus, though Kent's lines in the first scene seem to place him in direct opposition to Lear, they actually define an emotional and linguistic middle position between Lear's "hideous rashness"40 and Cordelia's "nothing."41 This position enables the audience to measure the emotional distance between Lear and Cordelia, as well as the potential scope of the conflict. The vehemence of Kent's lines, delivered from this middle position, underscores the enormity of both this distance and this conflict. Kent's physical and social characteristics represent this middle position in the generational conflicts: His age, fortyeight, places him between generations in the inheritance controversy, and his unmarried status underscores his autonomy as neither father, husband, nor son.42 This middle position allows him to combine oppositional elements and personae--gentleman/servant, courtier/rustic, rebel/patriot, Englishman/foreigner. Such diversity exemplifies the social mobility offered by the Kentish custom of gavelkind--equal inheritance among sons suggests a degree of personal and social freedom absent from the custom of primogeniture. Critics have tended to interpret Kent's protean character in terms of his relationships to virtually every other character in the play. Martha Tuck Rozett notes that "[t]he alignment between Kent and Cordelia . . . is obvious,"43 while H.N. Hudson links Edgar and Kent because of their selfless virtues.44 Harley Granville-Barker compares Kent to Oswald through antithesis,45 while Francis Jacox notes that, like Schlegel, he sees a close connection between the Fool and Kent because of their similar positions as "wise[ ] counsellor[s] [and] faithful associate[s]."46 Huntington Brown suggests that Kent represents Lear's alter ego, who speaks in "the voice of Lear's own better self."47 One extra-textual historical fact links Kent to Edmund: Of the seventeen Earls of Kent from the time of Odo of Bayeux to Shakespeare, most were younger sons or bastards and five were named Edmund.48 These various comparisons suggest that while Kent can be linked to any single character in King Lear, it may be more useful to discuss ways that he mirrors, focuses, and/or amplifies the dominant qualities of all the characters around him. In King Lear, Kent's banishment and assumed name also function to locate him in the middle of the ensuing conflicts. When Kent assumes his disguise,49 his choice of the name Caius--the English equivalent of the Latin Gaius--invokes historical, cultural, and legal contexts which help to shape King Lear. Caius--or Gaius--a common Roman praenomen, indicates a title of nobility usually translated as "the honorable."50 The name Caius also enables Kent to retain his social position while in disguise: Although he has "raz'd"51 his likeness and has lowered his status, the praenomen Caius serves as a reminder of his noble status. Moreover, Kent's disguise as Caius allows him, though banished, to remain in Britain and to act as an intermediary between the two plots and between Lear and Cordelia. This doubling accounts for the constancy of Kent's personality and "good intent"52 both in and out of disguise, and it reasserts his position as the point of normative stability in the text. The name Caius also has significance in an interesting way in a different context. Charlton Lewis notes that on the day of Roman wedding ceremonies, the groom assumed the name Gaius, "the honored one," while the bride assumed the name Gaia.53 Interpreted in this way, Kent's disguise becomes a complex representation of both honor and marriage. Kent assumes the name after the ceremonial occasion of Cordelia's marriage opens the play.54 As Caius, the "banished" Kent becomes "dead" Lear's husband, in the literal, etymological sense of husbandry, and his pledge of "service"55 echoes the bride's pledge at a Roman wedding. As Kent assumes the name of the groom, Gaius, he also suggests indirectly that perhaps he should have married Cordelia. Significantly, in King Lear, this possibility is never offered. Caius is the only name in King Lear which suggests a Latin or Roman origin, and this anomaly produces a sense of "otherness" which distances the banished Kent from the rest of Britain both in space and time. Since Geoffrey of Monmouth's history dates King Leir's kingdom circa 800 B.C., contemporary with the events of the Old Testament,56 the Roman name Caius becomes anachronistic. Kent's disguise thus places him between the period of Leir's kingdom and contemporary England, and this position allows him to mediate cultural elements from both. In King Lear, the name Caius--or Gaius--used simply as a name rather than a praenomen, provides an important connection between an historical figure and Shakespeare's fictitious representation of that person. The Roman jurist known simply as Gaius (c. 110180) wrote The Institutes, which formed the basis for the Justinian Code, the Corpus Iuris Civilis. W.M. Gordon and O.F. Robinson note that although "[w]e know almost nothing about Gaius himself,"57 Justinian's references to "Gaius noster"58 indicate that "[i]t was from Gaius that Justinian drew his [tripartite] division of the whole outline of private law under the headings of Persons, Things, and Actions."59 The structure and legal issues presented in King Lear frequently reproduce those of Gaius' Institutes. In the first of his four commentaries, Gaius distinguishes between "state and natural law," noting that "[t]he law of the Roman people is . . . partly its own and partly common to all mankind."60 Then, after delineating class differences and the rights of various classes to make laws, he devotes the remainder of the first commentary to "Roman law marriage"61 and "how dependent persons are freed from another's control."62 This latter section includes contingencies produced by "the head of the family's death"--banishment, emancipation, or manumission.63 The structure of the first commentary thus clearly parallels the first scene of King Lear. The events of the first scene reproduce the chronological narrative sequence of Gaius, first commentary as they depict Lear's figurative legal suicide, then Kent's banishment, Regan and Goneril's dowers, and Cordelia's marriage. The division of Lear's kingdom thus calls attention to various inheritance laws and customs, partly his own, partly those of Rome and Tudor/Stuart England, and the speeches of Kent, soon to be renamed Caius, articulates the differences between them. In The Institutes, Gaius begins the second commentary by locating "Things" within the jurisdiction of either divine or human law: "Sacred and religious things . . . are under divine law. Sacred things are those consecrated to the gods above; religious things those left to the gods below.64 What is under divine law, cannot be private property."65 In human law, Gaius subdivides "Things" into two categories, "corporeal and incorporeal,"66 and he insists that though inheritance deals in corporeal things, it is incorporeal, since the laws of inheritance govern only the transmission of these "things."67 King Lear dramatizes Gaius' categories of "Things," as well as their jurisdiction: Since the problems in the story have arisen from the distribution of property, they are therefore outside of the jurisdiction of divine law, and the frequent prayers to various gods go unanswered. Most of Gaius' second and third commentaries define the conditions of Roman marriage and inheritance, including procedural guidelines for the disposition of goods and property through dowries and wills.68 In these commentaries, Gaius describes two conditions which, as we shall see in the next section, become important in King Lear: the concept of double ownership and the public proclamation of the heir(s) acknowledging the conditions of the will.69 King Lear dramatizes these two points in the first scene: Cordelia refuses to make the public proclamation of love which would fulfill the condition of her "dower," and Lear gives away his land but insists upon retaining "the name, and all th' addition to a king,"70 stipulating that he will visit Regan and Goneril "by monthly course."71 Kent's disguise as Caius, then, functions in several ways: In determining the time period in which the play is based, it establishes a middle position--somewhere between the time of Leir's Britain and Tudor/Stuart England; it emphasizes his liminal position as both insider and Other, both a Briton and a Roman in the pre-Roman times of Lear's kingdom; it calls attention to the Gaian argument--and the contemporary debate--about the relative positions of state and natural law in the inherently mixed system of law which King Lear represents; and it suggests that the legal framework which shapes King Lear may be derived from the Institutes. As we shall see, these multivalent characterizations of Kent and his disguise as Caius not only negotiate representations of common and civil law in the text--and particularly in the division of the kingdom--but they also call attention to the interaction of comedic conventions and tragic determinism. property at the time of marriage, in King Lear the legal discourses concerning marriage and death become inextricably interwoven. The division of Lear's kingdom combines a sense of beginning--the basis for a new generation through Cordelia's marriage--with an implied end--the death of Lear, the embodiment of the older generation's authority. Lear signals the conflation of marriage and death in his second speech, when, after acknowledging his "sons," Albany and Cornwall, he announces: We have this hour a constant will to publishOn one hand, the intent of Lear's speech seems clear: He wants to divide his kingdom equally, thereby creating a balance of power and lasting peace. On the other hand, as Lear uses the word "dowers" and frames it with the urgency of "this hour" and "now," he opens his speech to various interpretations. A comparison between Lear's speech and the corresponding section from The true Chronicle Historie of King Leir, and his three daughters, a primary source for King Lear, provides a means to discuss these different interpretations. In the source play, Leir declares that he will resign "up the Crowne from me / In equall dowry to my daughters three."74 By providing equal dowries, Leir hopes to marry his daughters "to neighbour[ ] Kings, / . . . . And so establish such a perfit peace, / As fortunes force shall ne're preuayle to cease."75 In the ensuing "game," all three daughters compete for "dowries," and the play remains focused on their impending marriages. As Shakespeare's Lear substitutes the word "dowers" for "dowry," he indicates important legal, generic, and contextual differences between the two plays. The Oxford English Dictionary notes three definitions of the legal term "dower" by 1600: 1) The portion of a deceased husband's estate which the law allows to his widow for her life. Tenant in dower, the widow who thus holds the land. 2) The money or property which the wife brings to the husband; dowry.Thus, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, while "dowry" refers only to marriage gifts, "dower" encompasses both marriage and the widow's portion after the husband's death.77 In a contemporary law dictionary, The Interpreter, John Cowell underscored the contemporary ambiguity of "dower" near the beginning of his definition: Dower . . . Signifieth in our common lawe, two things: [F]irst, that which the wife bringeth to her husband in mariage . . . [N]ext, and more commonly, that which she hath of her husband, after the mariage determined, if she out-live him. . . . I likewise once thought it not unreasonable, to call the former a Dowrie, & the other a Dower: but I find them confounded. For exa[m]ple: Smith de rep. Anglo. calleth the later a dowrie, and dower is sometime used for the former: as in Britton ubi Supra. [Y]et were it not inconvenient to distinguish [between] them[,] being [so diverse]. The Civilians [lawyers practicing civil--or Roman--law] call the former (dotem) and the later (donationem propter nuptias).78Cowell's description of "dower" goes on for another eight hundred words, and the problems he encounters trying to limit his definition are similar to those which inform King Lear. Thus, after noting how other authors have "confounded" the words "dowrie" and "dower," Cowell inverts and confuses the civil law terms and common law definitions: In his definition, dotem and donationem propter nuptias should be reversed, since the first refers to the widow's portion, not to "that which the wife bringeth to her husband in marriage." As Lear replaces the restrictive term "dowry" with the more ambiguous legal term "dowers," he at once echoes Cowell's doubly "confounded" definition and conflates the double representation of Cordelia's marriage and his impending "crawl toward death."79 In short, Lear evokes the contemporary ambiguity of the word "dowers" in law and in law texts to describe exactly what is occurring in his text. In his ensuing speeches in the first scene, Lear reinforces his choice of the word: He repeats the word "dower" four times80 and refrains from using "dowry." France subsequently calls attention to Lear's predilection for "dowers": When he addresses the king, he adopts Lear's term and describes Cordelia as "thy dow'rless daughter";81 when he speaks to Burgundy, however, he says that Cordelia "is herself a dowry."82 Lear's insistence on "dowers," underscored by France's use of both terms, signals a complex interactive relationship between marriage and death which resonates throughout the play. Lear's insistence upon the present calls attention to the manipulation of time in the text, which can be discussed by considering the marital status of the three daughters. As the word propter in the civil law term donationem propter nuptias83 indicates, and as Keith Wrightson has noted, during the Tudor/Stuart period dowries were customarily presented at the time of the marriage.84 Since Goneril and Regan are married, they should have already received their marital dowries. By awarding them "now," Lear grants them too late. Since Cordelia does not yet know whom she will marry, she is to receive her dowry too soon. As Lear frames the word "dowers" with temporal references which repeatedly emphasize the present--the word "now" is repeated seven times in the first two hundred lines85 --he creates a sense of urgency and immediacy which reinforces the link between marriage and death, implying that they will occur simultaneously. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, in which conflicts between love and the authority of law develop over time into combined, sequential representations of marriage and death, King Lear establishes simultaneous connections between the two immediately, then reproduces this linkage later, as in Edmund's dying speech, "all three Now / Marry in an instant"86 and Lear's "let's away to prison" speech.87 Set in a pre-Norman, pre-Roman period of quasi-mythic English history, the conflation of marriage and death in King Lear produces temporal confusion which breaks down the cause and effect relationship implicit in linear historical time. Instead, an artificially created eternal present subjects past and future events to overlapping systems of Roman and English norms and laws and then represents these events and systems as a seamless, inseparable mixture. In this way, Lear simultaneously plays literal and figurative roles of father, husband, and child to his daughters, and Edmund assumes the title of Earl before the audience learns of Gloucester's death.88 Similarly, the Fool's direct address to the audience at the end of Act 3, scene 4, moves forward and backward in time, both prefiguring and restating Merlin's prophecy.89 The connection between "dowers" and death implies that inheritance, as well as dowries, informs the division of Lear's kingdom. In his definition of "dower," Cowell underscores the uncertainty about what portion the widow should receive: [Dower] may bee what the husband will: so it exceede not a third part of his lands . . . [o]r the halfe, as some say. . . . And this Dower is either certainly set downe and named, or not named but onely in generalitie, as the law requireth: if it be not named, then is it by lawe, the third part, and called (dos Ligitima) . . . or the halfe by the custome of some countries, as in Gavelkinde. . . . And the woman that will chalenge this dower, must make 3 things good, viz. that shee was maried to her husband, that he was in his life time seised of the land, whereof she demaundeth dower, and that he is dead.90 Cowell's commentary here underscores similarities and differences between common, civil, and statutory inheritance laws, and the Kentish custom of gavelkind which King Lear reshapes as class and gender issues. Interpreted in terms of various contemporary common law inheritance customs, Lear divides his kingdom through a sequence of decisions that calls attention to and then manipulates class and gender distinctions. John Harington outlines the customary inheritance procedures among gentry and royal families with daughters and no son: [I]t is a generall and common rule that if a man dye seazed of landes in fee simple having daughters and no sonne, his lande shalbe divided by equall portiones among all his daughters, which holdeth not in the Crowne, but rather the eldest daughter inheriteth the whole as if shee were yssue male.91 In a contemporary Tudor/Stuart historical context, Lear's decision would be clear: Goneril should inherit "the whole as if shee were yssue male."92 By initially dividing his kingdom in thirds, or "equall portiones among all his daughters,"93 Lear reduces his daughters' royal status and practices the custom of coparcenary, the legal term for collective inheritance by daughters of the gentry very similar to gavelkind. Bacon, in The Use of the Law, notes that coparcenary provided that daughters, unlike younger sons, could be privileged but not disinherited.94 Thus, while Cordelia may inherit a "more opulent third,"95 she cannot be excluded. As Lear subsequently disinherits Cordelia, he completes a process which inverts the gender and class structure implicit to Tudor/Stuart common law inheritance customs: Instead of giving everything to Goneril as if "shee were yssue male," Lear treats Cordelia as a younger son and disinherits her. Thus, in the division of his kingdom, as Lear grants "several dowers," he empties out every common law sense of the word: He ignores Goneril's rightful claim to all of the inheritance, he denies Cordelia a marital dowry, and then abrogates her customary inheritance portion as a gentle daughter. Interpreted in terms of Roman and civil laws of inheritance derived from Gaius' Institutes and the Justinian Code, Lear has done nothing wrong: He publicly designates heirs, requires a public declaration of acceptance from his heirs, and then exercises his right of double ownership. According to the Roman concept of double ownership, after the bequest, the testator and the heir(s) co-owned the estate or property either for a specific period of time or until the death of the testator.96 In Roman or civil law, then, the onus of responsibility shifts to the daughters: Cordelia must respond appropriately, and Regan and Goneril must observe the laws of double ownership in order to receive the bequest. Lear's decision to divide and distribute his entire kingdom calls attention to contemporary inheritance statutes, and, further, suggests a close link between "dowers" and a pun on the word "will" which appears in the preceding line.97 The 1540 Statute of Wills98 allowed a man to dispose of up to two-thirds of his land and/or goods during his lifetime, or to provide a will designating the distribution of two-thirds of his estate after death.99 If the man neither disposed of the entire twothirds nor provided a will, then that property, along with the remaining one-third, descended to his heir(s).100 Thus, when Lear divides and distributes his entire kingdom, he exceeds the rights granted by the statute. Instead of granting dowers or dowries, he executes his own will. As Regan and Goneril "digest" Cordelia's third of the inheritance, Lear completes his legal suicide and negates his patriarchal authority for the rest of the play. He subsequently assumes a ghost-like role --"Lear's shadow" as the Fool observes,101--until he is resurrected--taken "out o' th' grave"102--for the final short-lived reconciliation scenes in Kent. Or, as Terry Eagleton says, "Lear has struck his own title abstract, divorced it from material life . . . . [He] cuts himself off from his own physical life, leaving his consciousness to consume itself in a void."103 These various interpretations of the same event in common, civil, and statutory law point to different approaches these systems of law took concerning the burden of proof. W.W. Buckland and Arnold McNair point out that in civil law inheritance cases, a person used a writ of usucapio to confirm his own title by establishing continuity of possession; in common law, each claimant sought to cancel or discredit the other person's claim to title.104 By literally saying "nothing," Cordelia refuses either to assert her own right or to discredit her sisters' claims. Instead, she calls attention to the paradox inherent in the condition of Lear's "game." As Lear says "Tell me my daughters / . . . Which of you shall we say doth love us most,"105 each daughter must prove she loves her father "most" in order to receive "equal" portions. Lear's desire to divide his kingdom equally to prevent "future strife"106 thus depends upon fashioning a hierarchy of "love" speeches from his daughters. The conflation of equality and a hierarchy doubles the potential for conflict: Shared inheritance among the three daughters becomes reconfigured as shared, though contested, inheritance between Goneril and Regan and the exclusion of Cordelia. The laws which Lear invokes or creates in the division of his kingdom do not simply carnivalize Tudor/Stuart practices, however, since Lear is an actual king whose abdication is irrevocable, and he seals his bequests with the commands "[b]e this perpetual";107 "[t]o thee and thine hereditary ever";108 and "this shall not be revok'd."109 Instead, as the division of the kingdom creates royal proclamations of both rational and irrational "law," and the systematic abrogation and destruction of English common law, it leaves in its wake a void of authority which different normative systems attempt to fill. This void--or "nothing"--represents the psychological and political environment in which the forces of the play take shape. These forces closely balance the possibilities for recuperation or annihilation which inform the ensuing scenes and events.110 As Kent champions Cordelia's response of "nothing,"111 he establishes himself securely in the gap between oppositional forces and becomes an emblem of this middle space. In much the same way, the County of Kent becomes a middle ground which serves both to measure the intensity of the conflicts and to signal possibilities for recuperation, apocalypse, or a combination of both. Ralph Berry observes that in the division of Lear's kingdom, Cordelia's "third" includes the County of Kent.112 Kent thus becomes not only the anthropomorphic nexus of the controversy within England, as Regan and Goneril attempt to "digest" Cordelia's "third," but also the geographic location of the battle between Britain and France. By the end of Act 3, Kent represents "bona terra," a place of "[b]oth welcome and protection"113 similar to the Forest of Arden, where conflicts will reach their comedic conclusions. Act 4 and the beginning of Act 5 continue this representation: Edgar and Kent begin to remove their disguises, and reconcilitations based on recovered identity take place--Lear with Cordelia and Edgar with Gloucester. Kent, of course, returns to his homeland. Concurrent with these reconciliations, however, the battles between Britain and France and between Edmund and Edgar take place. These battles confuse the chorographic and temporal connections between "nature" and "place": Edmund refers to himself as Gloucester before Edgar relates his father's death; the British victory over the French results in the capture and imprisonment of Lear, the powerless king of Britain. Significantly, Kent does not fight in the battle--he leaves at the end of Act 4 and does not reappear until the middle of the final scene.114 Kent's absence is not explained, but it indicates the presence of two unacceptable alternatives: [F]ighting for the British army would betray the British king, while fighting for the French would betray Britain. The end of the play, however, produces a third alternative after Albany abdicates, Kent refuses, and Edgar, the embodiment of the system of primogeniture, assumes the throne. In terms of Tudor/Stuart inheritance customs and laws, Edgar's kingship inevitably raises questions concerning the mode of royal succession in King Lear, since Cordelia's husband, the King of France--whose army is still ominously in Britain--has, perhaps, a more "legitimate" claim to the throne than does Edgar. Thus, although the end of the play apparently reestablishes the hegemony of primogeniture, by repressing the inheritance claims of France, it questions the legitimacy of Edgar's succession and precludes complete recuperation and closure. Instead, both the beginning and the end of King Lear dramatically reproduce the complexity of legal debates concerning inheritance in late sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century England and restate possibilities which the County of Kent occupies in John Earle's description of the contemporary debate concerning inheritance: shared inheritance, reestablishment of the primogeniture status quo, or threat from a foreign power. In short, as the county of Kent and the Earl of Kent come to represent complex social allegories in King Lear, they restate Earle's point from three very different perspectives. Moreover, Shakespeare's stylized use of these Kentish figures calls attention to ways that contemporary legal discourse may have influenced dramatic form. |
