All the Devils in “King Lear”

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Beneath the politics, the power plays, and the sibling rivalry, darker currents are running in Shakespeare’s plays. In showing these dark forces murmuring below the surface, was Shakespeare also hinting at the rumors of occult dabblings in the Tudor and Jacobean courts?

Imaginative Conservative contributor Joseph Pearce has produced, with Ignatius Press, a series of handy and handsome critical editions of the classics—Shakespeare’s greatest plays among them. The critical editions offer the full text with comprehensive notes as well as a collection of important critical essays.

Which brings me to my recent immersion in King Lear. What I hadn’t realized before, and which is excised from the film versions, (I recently viewed both Ian Holm’s and Anthony Hopkins’ portrayals) is the substrata of the occult in the play. We are familiar with the hags in MacBeth, but we overlook the occult dimension in King Lear.

Dancing with demons is un-natural, and R.V. Young’s essay in Ignatius’ critical edition expounds on the use abundant use of “natural” and “un-natural” in the text. Cordelia’s seeming disloyalty is branded as un-natural. “Similarly the Earl of Gloucester, convinced by his illegitimate son, Edmund, that Edgar, the eldest son and heir, has betrayed his father, calls him an ‘unnatural, detested, brutish villain’ and subsequently lauds Edmund as a ‘loyal and natural boy.’” ^[*] Young shows how, throughout the play that which is dark, dastardly and dreadful is “unnatural”.

Another unnatural aspect to King Lear is the use of “monster” and “monstrous”. France declares that Cordelia’s seeming disloyalty is both unnatural and monstrous, “Sure her offense must be of such unnatural degree that monsters it.” Elsewhere Lear inveighs against Regan and Goneril as monsters, and Albany, in his rage against Goneril’s treachery, sees her as a monstrous devil incarnate: “See thyself, devil! Proper deformity seems not in the fiend so horrid as in woman… thous changed and self covered thing, for shame Be-monster not thy feature… thou are a fiend, a woman’s shape doth shield thee.” Witches? In one of his thunderings Lear calls Goneril and Regan “you unnatural hags.”

An exorcist will explain that one is in little danger from demonic infestation unless in some way they are summoned, but once summoned—by persistence in grave sin, by intentional occult activity, or conscious cursing—the demons will swarm. Invite them and they will come. Open a door and they will enter.

King Lear himself does just this in Act One. In response to what he perceives as Cordelia’s coldness he swears by the forces of darkness and curses her, “For by the radiance of sun, the mysteries of Hecate and the night, By all the operation of the orbs from whom we do exist and cease to be, Here I disclaim all my paternal care, propinquity and property of blood… by he that makes his generation messes to gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom be as.. thou my sometime daughter.”

Hecate was the Greek goddess associated with the moon, witchcraft, and black magic—often thought to be the Queen of the witches. Saturn, like Moloch, was the monstrous god known for gorging on the flesh of children. Thus Lear invokes the Queen of the Witches and a god who devours his own children—ominously foretelling the fate of Lear himself who, through his foolish vanity, sees his own daughters devoured by the dark.

This invocation of the forces of darkness at the beginning of the play unleashes the unnatural forces throughout the play. The monstrous behavior of Regan and Goneril, the unnatural blinding of Gloucester, the unnaturally frightening storm, the betrayal of Edgar by his brother, the feigned madness of Edgar, and the genuine insanity of Lear all echo through the drama like an ominous howl.

The infestation of demons becomes specific in the madness of Edgar. He says his madness is feigned, but at his first entrance, disguised as Poor Tom, Edgar cries, “Away, the foul fiend follows me!” Throughout the mad scenes, Poor Tom identifies pestering demons by various colorful names that old Screwtape might have recognized. Poor Tom shrinks from “The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet”—the demon of gurning. Elsewhere he warns, “Beware my follower- Peace Smulkin-peace thou fiend!” Then, “Frataretto calls me,” “Hoppedance cries in Tom’s belly.” And “Five fiends have been in Tom at once, Lust as Obdicut; Hoppidance prince of dumbness, Mahu of stealing, Modo of murder; Flibbertigibbet of mopping and mowing—who since possesses chambermaids and waiting women.”

Shakespeare’s source for the names of demons was the Archbishop of York, Samuel Harsnett. Harsnett was an Anglican divine who rose to the Archbishopric in 1629. The author of A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures he was a skeptic of the occult—attacking the veracity of exorcisms conducted by both Puritan and Catholic clergy.

While Poor Tom was faking his madness, what can be drawn from the demonic element in his madness is that it was common for madness to be perceived as having a demonic dimension. As such, Lear’s own madness would have been understood as a consequence of his invoking the dark forces at the beginning of the play. The play can be interpreted, like MacBeth, not simply as a human tragedy, but also as a Jacobean horror tale. Beneath, in, and through the horrible human evil runs a darker thread. The Queen of the Witches is invoked, the dark Lord Saturn—friend of Moloch—is summoned, and as a result, the dark forces of murder and mayhem are unleashed. These are more than bad people—they are demonically-driven people.

When this deeper, darker dimension to the play is understood, we get a glimpse into Shakespeare’s worldview. Beneath the politics, the power plays, and the sibling rivalry, darker currents are running. In showing these dark forces murmuring below the surface, was Shakespeare also hinting at the rumors of occult dabblings in the Tudor and Jacobean courts?

The most famous occultist from the period was John Dee: astrologer, mathematician, alchemist, and esotericist, and member of the court of Elizabeth I. Our own age is not unique in a fondness for conspiracy theories and rumors of occult powers operating behind the scenes. Rumors swirled that Anne Boleyn was a witch, that Mary Tudor was cursed, and that the Tudor court was rife with witchcraft. King Lear’s invocation of dark powers would have fed such rumors and fit neatly with Shakespeare’s own opinions of the powers that be, if he was indeed a secret recusant Catholic.

^[*] Ignatius Critical Edition Lear, p. xi

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The featured image is “Saturn Devouring His Son” (between 1820 and 1823) by Francisco Goya, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.