King Lear's ending, Good Friday grief, and Medieval Passion Plays

The ending of King Lear has inspired some modern critics to claim it is a godless play, without hope. The ending scene (5.3) - in which Lear howls and holds the corpse of the one daughter who loved him best - is filled with grief.

Actors and directors (who perhaps have only been kings and queens of wishful thinking [1] and never literally monarchs) must draw upon general feelings of deep grief to enact their roles.

Feelings are one thing. But how shall we express them? Cultures and art shape expectations, showing how we might act in such circumstances. 

Profound grief may make some catatonic, or suicidal, causing self-harm, or seeking revenge. But was there a stage tradition in Shakespeare’s time for the grief of a parent at losing a beloved child?

A young Shakespeare may have witnessed some of the last performances of medieval passion plays, as well as perhaps medieval mystery, miracle, and morality plays, increasingly prohibited under Elizabeth I. [2]

In a 2005 book, Katharine Goodland notes that in a Medieval Passion Play that Shakespeare may well have seen as a child, Mary howls over the corpse of her son Jesus, taken down from the cross [3].

So this moment in King Lear, of a parent howling in profound grief over the loss of a beloved child, is not entirely new, though the genders of parent and child have been changed from those portrayed in the Medieval Passion Play tradition. 

And the feeling of hopelessness, which modern critics label as “godless,” is very like the feeling of Good Friday in the Passion Plays after the death of Jesus. The synoptic gospels quote Jesus as praying that “this cup” pass from him [4], and in two of those gospels, he later quotes the opening of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [5] The psalm continues: 

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, and art so far from mine health, and from the words of my roaring?

So if King Lear, in his howling grief, is in a godless, hopeless play, then by the same logic, without knowing what might come next, isn’t the Good Friday crucifixion story the same? 

(Such critics who see the play as "godless" seem to assume a reified understanding of God, where God must do the bidding of the one praying --  instead of religions being efforts to name and wrestle with our relationship to the phenomenology of mystery...) 


NOTES: Shakespeare plays are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online versions: https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/

[1] “King of Wishful Thinking” - See Cassidy Mackie’s cover (arrangement): https://youtu.be/TPFmMdH29ZM?si=Rmv5U7Up4omCkQDY

[2] These medieval plays had scripts that were only loosely based on scripture, and the tradition of these medieval plays were from more Catholic times, too Catholic of a tradition for Elizabethan Protestant times that discouraged public displays of grief: If one truly believes in the resurrection, then by Elizabethan Protestant thinking, one should rejoice at the death of a loved one who would either be in heaven, or divine justice would damn the deceased for all eternity, and one should rejoice at the wisdom and justice of God.

[3] Katharine Goodland, Female Mourning and Tragedy in Medieval and Renaissance English Drama: From the Raising of Lazarus to King Lear, Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2005), page 201.

[4] In the first three (synoptic) gospels, Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane prays that “this cup” (his coming death) might pass, but surrenders to God’s will, that God’s will should be done, not his own.  See Matthew 26:39, Mark 14:36, and Luke 22:42. 

[5] Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34. See also Psalm 22, verse 1, 1599 Geneva translation. 


IMAGE: Frank Langella as King Lear, holding the corpse of Cordelia played by Isabella Laughland, in the 2013 Chichester Festival Theatre production of King Lear, directed by Angus Jackson at the Minerva Theatre. Fair use via Global Shakespeare https://globalshakespeare.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/learcord.jpg

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