The Heart of It All

 Of all the major characters in King Lear Cordelia has the fewest lines (116 lines, barely edging out Cornwall and less than her two sisters).  Yet, her actions are central to the play: her refusal to flatter her father leads to her banishment, her rescue of Lear restores his sanity, her senseless death leads to Lear's own death. The history of this play is also full of questions and controversies about her character.  Is her refusal to flatter Lear an act of honesty or defiance?  Is her portrayal in the Folio significantly different from the Quarto?  Is there a connection between the Fool and Cordelia (the two never appear on stage together)?  Why did Nahum Tate's adaptation of the play, in which Cordelia survives and marries Edgar, essentially replace Shakespeare's original from 1681 to 1838? FOCUS on a speech, a scene or a controversy and explain Cordelia's importance to the play.

"Fortune . . . Turn Thy Wheel"

 King Lear is a play in which many of the major characters undergo suffering -- everything from exile, imprisonment, madness, filial ingratitude, madness, mutilation, despair, to extreme physical deprivation. Yet , at the same time, many of these same characters have ideas about the purpose and limits of suffering.  What are some of the those ideas?  How are they related to the idea of a cosmic moral order, that idea that the world is just if we could only discover its deeper meaning?  How is it related to the ideas about moral order expressed in other plays, such as Henry IV, Part 1 or the Merchant of Venice? Do the events of the play endorse or undermine these ideas?  What is this play telling us about suffering?

"The Excellent Foppery of the World"?

 In Act 1, Scene 2, Gloucester and his illegitimate son Edmund reveal two contradictory views of human agency.  Gloucester looks to the heavens to explain the troubles of the world: "These late eclipses of the sun and moon portend no good to us.  Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by sequent effects"(1.2.109-12).  Edmund mocks his father's beliefs and instead places the blame for human misery squarely in the hands of humans.  He asserts:

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that
when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits of
our own behavior) we make guilty of our disasters
the sun, the moon, and stars as if we were villains
on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves
thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance;
drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced
obedience of planetary influence; and all that we
are evil in, by a divine thrusting on  (1.2.125-33).

What do we make of these philosophical speeches?  Do these speeches tell us about the character of Gloucester and Edmund?  Do they expound on a major theme or debate in this play?  Given the events of the play and the reaction of the characters, does one of these views prove correct?  Is our belief  in God "the excellent foppery of the world"?  Is this a play in which the divine controls human agency or humans themselves?

Much Ado About Nothing in Lear

 In the very first scene of King Lear Lear asks his daughters the measure of their love.  The older sisters try to outdo each other in the hyperbolic humungousness of their lover, but the youngest Cordelia can only manage to assert "Nothing, my Lord."  Lear, not quite believing his ears retorts "Nothing?"  Cordelia affirms her original "nothing" to which Lear responds "Nothing comes from nothing"(1.1.96-99).  In rapid success we have five mentions of "nothing" that begins a veritable feast through out the play.  What do you make of the use of "nothing" in this scene?  Does it reflect a similar use of "nothing" in other parts of the play?  Is nothingness a theme of this play?  Why make such a big deal out of "nothing"?

All's Well That Ends Well?

 The ending of Merchant satisfies the main requirement for a comedy: multiple marriages that ensure the continuation of the community.  Furthermore, Antonio, the titular merchant, is rescued from death and financial ruin.  Yet, there are hints in the play that the future is not all rosy.  After all, Bassanio and Gratiano fail the Ring Test (and have professed that they love Antonio more than their wives), Bassanio has a history of debt that motivated his marriage in the first place, Lorenzo and Jessica flirt by comparing themselves to doomed lovers and Antonio is left as lonely and melancholy at the end of the play as he is at the beginning.  Not to mention that Shylock is forced to convert to Christianity, cutting him off from his friends and co-religious but not welcoming him into the insider community.

While these marriages ensure community, do they ensure happiness?  While many of  the characters at the end of the play are prosperous, are they happy?  Is this a happy ending? Do you consider this play a comedy -- or a comedy in name only?

Who Wears the Pants in Portia's Family?

 When Bassanio correctly chooses the casket with "Fair Portia's counterfeit" enclosed, Portia expresses her consent to marry him when she states (in the third person), "Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit / Commits itself to yours to be directed / As from her lord, her governor, her king" (3.2.67-69).  These words suggest a traditional marriage arrangement in which the husband is in charge and the woman is submissive.  Yet, one act later, she sneaks off to Venice, dressed in men's garments, to save Bassanio's dear friend Antonio from almost certain death.  She masterfully takes charges of the trial and cleverly sets a legal trap for Shylock. Furthermore, she tests Bassanio's fidelity by demanding her ring in the person of the young clerk Balthasar -- a test he fails.  She even teases him with the prospect of infidelity when he can't produce the ring:

I will become as liberal as you:
I will not deny him anything I have,
No, not my body nor my husband's bed.
Know him I shall, I am well sure of it (5.1.242-5)

Her thinly veiled threat of adultery is hardly part of a conservative notion of  marriage.  So what is going on in this play?  Is her consent to a traditional marriage and submission to Bassanio insincere?  Is she using subterfuge and trickery as women's weapons in a man's world? Does she change her mind?  What is it saying about marriage and male-female relationships? Who is really wearing the pants in this relationship?

Squaring the Circle: The Role of the Trials

The Merchant of Venice presents a world in conflict in which the characters need to navigate between opposing and conflicting values.  They need to attend to their romantic interests as well as their financial and legal obligations, to balance justice and mercy, to juggle their friends and their lovers. Each of the three trials in the play (the trial of the caskets, the trial of the contract of the pound of flesh and the trial of the rings)  is an attempt to resolve these dilemmas.  Each trial confronts a seemingly irresoluble conflict -- only to miraculously solve the problem.  In the world of comedy, we can have our cake and eat it, too.

Choose ONE of the trials.  What are the values at stake?  How is the conflict resolved?  What is this trial telling us the nature of these values?  Are they really conflicting?  Is there a strategy to resolve the problem?  Or is it only in the never, never land of the play that we can ever hope to square the circle?