Why does King Lear end in a reverse-gender Pieta?

Many have commented on how the image at the end of the play, of King Lear holding the corpse of his daughter Cordelia, resembles the Pieta, in which the Virgin Mary holds the corpse of Jesus.

Modernist critics often dismiss any religious implication [1] [2]. Jesus was allegedly in the tomb for three days, but if Cordelia doesn't revive by the end of the last scene, then to them, there is no resurrection (literal or figurative) and to them, God (literal or figurative) does not exist.

Some view the reverse-gender pieta simply as an allusion to the traditional Christian Pieta, and perhaps as pointing to a life after death in some metaphysical realm.

But what of the gender reversal, with father holding daughter? Is this significant, even radical?

If we view it in a near-vacuum, then it may seem to carry possibly radical implications, where the human father Lear is no sinless virgin, but a sinner purged of his pride in the crucible of profound suffering, holding the daughter of God, not the son.

In Luke's gospel, after Mary visits her kinswoman Elizabeth, Mary gives a little speech known as the "Magnificat" - and carefully read, verses 1:51-52 seem to come true in the person of Lear:

51 [... God] hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
52 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.

Lear's suffering prepares him to be humble and ready for his meeting with Cordelia, the daughter who proves to have loved him best.

On the other hand, Protestantism was skeptical of non-biblical claims about the sinlessness of Mary.

If the reverse-gender Pieta is not a wonderfully radical expansion, transcending traditional gender-assignments, is it merely a denial of the Catholic cult of Mary with its Pieta, and an image of King James grieving Parliament’s opposition to a unified kingdom, and the loss of three infant daughters? [3] [4]

Or might it be both, not only conforming to Protestant skepticism about Mary, but also by this same train of thought, stumbling upon wonderfully radical and expansive implications?


NOTES: References to King Lear 5.3 are to the University of Victoria’s Internet Shakespeare Folio version: https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/Texts/Lr/F1/scene/5.3.html

[1] Pages 98-121, Benson, Sean, Ch. 3, “Cordelia’s Quasi-Resurrection and Shakespearean Revision,” Shakespearean Resurrection: The Art of Almost Raising the Dead, 2009, Penn State University Press, 2009. DOI: 10.5325/j.ctv1xx9mw5

[2] de Grazia, Margreta, ch. 4, “Secularity before Revelation," Four Shakespearean Period Pieces, 2021, University of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo90478410.html

[3] As I noted in my last post, three of James’ four daughters had died before 1610:
Princess Margaret Stuart (24 December 1598 - March 1600) had died before the play was written;
Princess Mary Stuart (8 April 1605 - 16 September 1607) died at about the age of two and a half years.
Sophia Stuart (22 June 1606 – 23 June 1606) lived only a day.

A sermon preached on the occasion of the 1607 funeral of Mary Stuart mentions her lips, and also uses repetition similar to Shakespeare’s:

"such was the manner of her death, as bred a kind of admiration [...]. …for [...] twelve or fourteen hours [...], there was no sound of any word heard breaking from her lips; yet when it sensibly appeared that she would soon make a peaceful end of a troublesome life, she sighed out these words, 'I go, I go!' [...] again she repeated 'Away, I go!' And yet, a third time, almost immediately before she offered up herself, a sweet virgin sacrifice, unto Him that made her, faintly cried 'I go, I go!'"

[4] See Mary Anne Everett Green’s 1857 multi-volume series on the princesses of England, which references the funeral sermon. Everett Green, Mary Anne (1857). Lives of the princesses of England, vol VI. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longman, & Roberts. See pages 94-95. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044005605050&view=1up&seq=118


IMAGE: Colm Feore as King Lear and Sara Farb as Cordelia at the Stratford Festival, Ontario, 2014. (Photo by David Hou.) Fair use via https://i0.wp.com/jewishreviewofbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Millman3.jpg?w=500&ssl=1 

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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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