King Lear is a play without Providence, but with a strong conceptual understanding and hope there for. From the beginning of the tragedy, which is instigated by Lear’s failure of judgment, Providence abandons the scene, and although there are many instances when the characters might again call forth reason and thereby gain salvation, but inevitably these opportunities are missed, and the characters move closer and closer to their own tragic ends and their own self-imposed destructions. Seneca, a stoic, discusses the idea of Providence in an essay thereon. Initially the essay seems to be inapplicable to King Lear as a play or as a character. However, as the play proceeds, and as one gains an increasingly clear understanding of Seneca’s definition of Providence, it becomes very evident that the blatant lack of Providence, in a play where almost every character is waiting for the aid of the Gods, is an indication of what is required by Shakespeare’s conceptualization of Providence, and what is lacking in the world of Lear. Eventually these two understandings of Providence and salvation align, and it becomes evident that what Lear lacks, his hamartia and the curse of the play, is the reason to find his own salvation, leaving his world devoid of any hope for Providence.
The God’s role in Greek tragedy is a complex one, but, significantly, a present one. Although, like in Shakespeare’s tragedies, the final fall of every character is due to some human failing and some chain of events that is due to human decisions, there is some element that is predetermined by the Gods. The tragedy is imposed by the Gods on the human who can’t help but inflict it upon himself. Providence, in this context, is complex. It is unclear whether humans, once set on a tragic path, could be saved from their self-made circumstance and the tragedy reversed. Greek tragedy acknowledges the Gods as the imposers of punishment; there is very little sense of any hope for salvation in Greek tragedy. This closely parallels Seneca’s understanding of Providence.
Seneca’s conceptualizes “Providence” not as a mode of salvation, but rather as a mode of education. He seeks to answer the question “Why, if Providence rules the world, it still happens that many evils befall good men”, ad he chooses to “plead the cause of the Gods” (Seneca 3). By focusing on this question he seems to assume the presence of a Providence, although he also only addresses it in the case of “good men”, any other kind of men not coming into the question. This poses a problem for King Lear, a play which is distinctly lacking in “good men”, and whose protagonist, though not a “bad” man, is far from model. When Seneca further clarifies that “a good man differs from God in the element of time only” and that “he is God’s pupil, his imitator, and true offspring, whom his all-glorious parent, being no mild task-master of virtues, rears, as strict fathers do, with much severity” it becomes quickly evident that to be classified as a good man is highly dependent on an extremely strong presence of virtues that Lear cannot claim (Seneca 7). However, the question of the “good man” deserving providence is interesting within the context of Seneca, who is looking at a Providence which does not save men from harm but rather “harass[es them] by toil, by suffering, by losses, in order that they may gather true strength” (Seneca 11). Providence seems to identify “good men” as the men worthy of exercising because they are capable of working through hardship and will ultimately benefit from the experience. This definition seems to leave it up to the men to prove themselves “good” after hardship has been imposed by the Gods. Lear might almost become “good” where he to escape his self-imposed suffering. Although his torment has not been imposed by the Gods, but rather is self-imposed by his own foolish and self-indulgent actions, where he to overcome it through a reversal of his hamartia and an application of reason, he would in so doing deliver himself to his own salvation, and thus achieve a kind of Providence.
Whatever the God’s role in Greek tragedy, this role is nullified by Shakespeare. Where Greek tragedy was familial, and the sins of the father could damn the son, Shakespeare’s tragedies are almost entirely self-imposed. In the most clearly familial the tragic element of the play is still self-imposed, although the scenario that creates the tragedy may be created by the family. This is exemplified by Romeo and Juliet, where the children’s love is tragic because of the families’ unfortunate (but not tragic) feud, or Hamlet, where Hamlet’s death and the fate of Denmark is tragic because of the unjust (but not tragic) scenario imposed on Hamlet by his parents, or King Lear, where Lear’s fall and death is tragic because of Lear’s tragic (but self-imposed) judgment. In Shakespeare tragedy cannot be imposed by another, there is no inherent set of circumstance that leads to tragedy, but rather a continuous series of steps imposed by the protagonist on himself, that eventually leads to his downfall. This calls to question the possibility and the idea of Providence.
Lear speaks in the language of faith. He has faith in his children to act in a way that, if it is not good for his kingdom, at least protects his interests and dignity, and he has an understanding and faith in the Providence that has, to his perception, caused all his problems.
The conversation between Lear and Regan demonstrates the degree to which Lear has placed his fate in the hands of both his daughters and the Gods. By giving away his autonomy and his self-determination, from a Senecan perspective, Lear necessarily removes himself from the preview of Providence, because Providence only takes interest in testing heroes and warriors; Lear’s retirement signals an unwillingness to engage in the education that the Gods take interest in. However misplaced, the equation Lear creates between the Gods and his daughters creates the possibility for some form of salvationn; if his daughters took pity on him they would be in a position to offer him mercy and to reverse his suffering. The daughters are not the real cause of Lear’s suffering, however, is poor judgment is, and so, although they have the ability to reverse his plight, he can only reach real salvation by overcoming the real cause of his suffering. If Lear where saved by his daughter’s mercy, he would still be subject to their will. Until he has reformed his judgment he cannot overcome his own condemnation. A failure of judgment begins the tragic events, as the Gods of a Greek tragedy would, and so only a victory of judgment can stop the tragedy once it is underway, although, as in Greek tragedy, the momentum of the play will not be reversed, and the tragic course will eventually reach its fruition.
It is clear that Lear has confused the providence he might hope for from Gods with the mercy he might hope for from his daughters. Within ten lines of referring to his daughters as his “guardians”, a word he uses before resorting to the more accurate term “depositories” he evokes the Gods in a way that will become increasingly characteristic of his soliloquy as he is increasingly aware of his daughter’s betrayal. The soliloquy in Act II, scene iv provides an interesting picture of Lear’s understanding of his daughter’s role and the God’s role in his fate, but also demonstrates how thoroughly he fails to connect these to an understanding of his powers of self-determination.
The soliloquy begins as a reaction to his daughters’ determining that he will not have the soldiers he is accustomed to traveling with. They have, in denying him these men, done nothing but reduce his status; he has neither been rejected himself, nor has any harm been done to him in any capacity but to his honor. In his horror at being denied his men, he is simultaneously aware of the fact that he is loosing only status symbols. His understanding that the men are superfluous is important. Although he sees that there is little “need” that he have accompaniment, he also sees that “man’s basest beggars are in the poorest things superfluous” (II.iv.268). His meaning (in the first part of the soliloquy) is quickly summed up as “allow not nature more than nature needs, Man’s life is cheap as beast’s” (270-271). The point that what is needed and what is valuable is important to the play; Lear initially is appealing to his daughter’s mercy to provide him with what is valuable to him, not what is needed. At some point, however, he will no longer be appealing merely for what is valuable to him, but what he perceives himself as needing; at the point he applies for his needs he will appeal to the Gods. He chides his daughters for vainly wearing women’s impractical clothing, and then goes on to appeal for what he truly needs, which he defines as “patients” (274). The desire for patients is Senecan, particularly in the context of a circumstance wherein he might easily be enraged, however to appeal to the Gods for this patients exactly fails to act as the Senecan “good man” would. Good men “are willing that [bad] things should happen and, if they are unwilling, that they deserve misfortune” and are not good men (Seneca 15). Good men are happy to engage in struggle as a mode of exercising their ability to reason for “of proof of virtue is ever mild” and the “oftener we engage [the mind] the stronger it shall be” (31). Appealing to the Gods as soon as his daughters have failed him indicates profoundly Lear’s helplessness. He is unable to reason for himself, or to help himself escape his situation through reason, and so applies for the Gods for the ability to bear what is upon him. His error is slight, but it cements his tragedy, as he will be unable to recover himself from the problems he has created.
As soon as a “true need” has been identified Lear no longer appeals to his “guardian” daughters (in fact, this need is imposed by his daughters), and instead to “you heavens” (II.iv.275). Lear quickly reverses his request for patients, an indication of how little he understand his potential power to reverse the situation or how he should proceed from his current state. He questions whether the Gods have “turned these daughter’s hearts against their father”, something Lear himself clearly did during Act I, scene i, when he declared that he would divide his kingdom according to whichever daughter loved him most so that “largest bounty may extend where nature doth with merit challenge” (Act I, scene i). Lear (as opposed to a Senecan Providence that would seek to teach him) is responsible for is present straights, and Lear (as opposed to his appealed to Providence) must reverse his situation.
The soliloquy eventually supports Seneca’s conceptualization of suffering as a mode of building character, as Lear appeals to the Gods to “fool [him] not so much to bear it tamely” and asks to the Gods to “touch him with noble anger” (280). His wish is quickly granted, and the tone of the soliloquy becomes enraged. Although Seneca would never have supported moving towards anger as a mode of productivity, Lear begins to contemplate action, which is exactly the Providence that could provide him with a solution to his tragic situation. Within the frame of the speech his daughters have gone from being identified by Lear as “ladies” to being referred to as “hags” (282). This re-signification of the women is essential; their status is quickly turned from “guardians” to “daughters” whose “hearts” are “turned…against their father” (250; 270). Understanding the nature of his daughters is the first step Lear takes towards overcoming his own weakness of mind and reaching a Shakespearean salvation through the Providence of reason. Lear’s hamartia has been his weakness of mind and his inability to understand what constitutes real love from his children; he appears to be summoning both strength of mind and a dedication to just parenting in his request of the Gods. However, a key realization that he fails to come upon, important for both Shakespeare and Seneca, is that he must save himself with his own mind.
The soliloquy in II.iv is the moment when Lear damns himself to tragedy both in Shakespeare’s terms and in those of Seneca. In the soliloquy he defines what he believes is reasonable behavior; he acknowledges that what he demands from his daughters is not necessary for life but is necessary for dignity. In so doing he establishes his desire to keep his status as a leader and hero, though he may have given his power to his daughters. The Gods have no interest in testing a powerless man. The likelihood of Providence taking any interest in Lear diminishes as he places his daughters in the position of being his “guardians”; in so doing he reverses roles so far as to not only replace Providence with a human, but a human over whom he, the parent, should have control. He finally re-substitutes God in as a guiding force, and appears to be asking for the correct faculty, according to Seneca, which is not to “shrink from hardships and difficulties, nor complain against fate; they should take in good part whatever happens, and should turn it to good. Not what you endure but how you endure is important.” Lear’s mode of endurance is improving but he is still passive and still not clear what he must pursue in order to reverse the tragedy; Lear does not recognize that he must seek reason, a fact that would be very evident if he recognized that it was a failure of reason (rather than Providence) that started the events of the tragedy.
By the end of the soliloquy Lear has thoroughly disappointed any hope that he might establish himself as a Senecan hero and survive his trials through stoicism. He resolves, as a stoic should, not to weep, seemingly affirming a reformed nature, but then, in a final invocation he reverses all promise the audience has seen in him. Finally Lear moves beyond hope in the Gods and resolves that his “heart shall break into one hundred thousand flaws or ‘ere [he’ll] weep”, but then, having no one left to call on but himself or the fool, he declares “oh fool, I shall go mad” (II.iv.289). Lear fails to recognize the potential value of his judgment, he does not see that it is his failure of judgment that empowered his daughters to put him in the situation he is in.
The soliloquy is characteristic of the speeches in King Lear, most of which command action from others. In Act III, scene ii, King Lear is acting out his rage by commanding “blow, winds and crack your cheeks, rage, blow”, and generally commanding violence in nature rather than in action he might take to rectify his situation. By the end of the play, when it is too late for Cordelia to be saved or tragedy to be overted, Lear begins to take action that is full of rage (not that which a stoic could approve of) and “kill’d the slave that was a hanging” his daughter, and yet is still not totally able to act for himself, and apples to the men around him to “howl, howl, howl, howl” and says that “had [he their] tougues and eyes, [he’d] use them so that heaven’s vaults should crack” (V.iii.260). Lear doubts even his own perception that Cordelia is dead, and as her death provides the final evidence in the play against the presence of a Providence, he sits in melancholy contemplation thereof. Providence never arrives in Lear’s world, a world seemingly without providence. However, this failure of providence an hardly surprise; Unlike the plays of the Greek, where the God-imposed circumstance highlights the folly of the protagonist, Lear’s folly creates his circumstance, and then, like the Greek tragic heroes, condemns him to follow his circumstance through to its most tragic end. The Senecan “good man” is unfit for tragedy, for the good man will overcome his circumstance and “the greater his torture is, the greater will be his glory” (Seneca 21). In Shakespeare’s terms, tragedy is not a situation that cannot be avoided, rather it is a situation that is not avoided due to the folly of the protagonist. This means Providence is inherently inaccessible, as the tragedy will always be imposed by an initial failure of reason or of action, and will always be followed up by subsequent failures, that lead to a conclusion that would have been avoided by the un-flawed “good man”. This is why the Senecan version of Providence must the source of the problem, rather than the source of salvation, because the good man would never impose a problem on himself as a tragic hero must, “nature never permits good to be injured by good”, he must submit to the Gods to be educated and tested (7). The tragic hero creates his own tragedy (so in Seneca’s terms creates his own Providential problem), and could offer himself his own salvation, but does not because he is still subject to the same flaw that created the problem. Lear initially suffers because of his poor judgment and likewise must ultimately die due to his failure to reverse his reasoning.
