God, authority and redemption in Pericles, The Tempest and ...



Belief and redemption in Pericles, The Tempest and King Lear

Pericles, The Tempest and King Lear have all been described as stories of redemption. The three plays are indeed similar in many aspects of plot and in many of the issues that they address: however, to argue that they resemble one another in terms of the religious framework in which they take place seems to contradict Shakespeare’s text. Although both Pericles and The Tempest are to some level redemptive narratives, King Lear is not. Indeed, Shakespeare seems to take pains in this play to show a world in which the gods are very definitely absent: certainly, it is a world in which religious belief can be found, but whereas this belief is shown in Pericles and The Tempest to be justified, King Lear gives us little reason to suppose that the gods to whom such frequent reference is made are actually there. The lack of a higher authority in King Lear is reflected in a wider confusion and lack of authority which contrasts in many aspects with The Tempest and Pericles. It is not just in the lack of god that the world of Lear is seen to be unpredictable: however, the absence of any intervening deity is what prevents us from understanding the play as ultimately redemptive in nature.

To understand this fully it is worth first examining why the three plays might be considered to be redemptive stories. The Tempest is perhaps easiest to interpret in this way: it begins with Prospero and Miranda alone on their island with just Ariel and Caliban for company, and ends with Prospero’s dukedom restored, Miranda to be wed, and both slaves freed. This last point is perhaps most key to Prospero’s ‘redemption’ (for it is he that we must ultimately understand to have been changed): even as the play begins he seems fiercely determined to maintain the domination he has previously exerted over every being on the island, seen in his telling Miranda the story of their abandonment. ‘Be attentive’, he tells her, ‘I pray thee mark me’, ‘Dost thou attend me?’, ‘Thou attend’st not!’, and again ‘Dost thou hear?’ Miranda never seems other than attentive in this scene, and so Prospero’s insistence on being heard is excessive; it points to his controlling nature. Similarly, he is quick to anger at Ariel’s request to be freed: the ‘brave spirit’ of 50 lines earlier becomes a ‘malignant thing’ in his eyes. As the play progresses, however, Prospero is seen to renounce control, first of Miranda, then of Caliban and finally of Ariel. That he finds this difficult is evident: his repeated cautions to Ferdinand not to ‘break her [Miranda’s] virgin-knot’ before they are wed speak of a father unable to quite abandon his daughter. Not until the last scene does it become clear how total Prospero’s renunciation is to be: he vows to ‘break my staff’ and ‘drown my book’. Throughout the play Prospero’s books have been a symbol of his power: Caliban tells Stephano that ‘without them/ He’s but a sot, as I am’. However, they were also what deprived him of his dukedom: ‘being so retired’ in the study of his books is what ‘awaked an evil nature’ in his opportunist brother Antonio. Paradoxically, Prospero’s resumption of his role as Duke involves a renunciation, rather than an acquisition, of power: his Epilogue to the audience makes this clear. ‘I must be here confined by you/ Or sent to Naples’, he tells the audience. Prospero has been the storyteller of the play: his renunciation of narrative control acknowledges the vital role of the audience and – ‘my ending is despair/ Unless I be relieved by prayer’ – of the gods. There is a very strong sense that he will be a better ruler for abandoning the absolutism of his rule on the island.

In Pericles, the redemptive ending of the play seems also to link to an understanding and acceptance of the protagonist’s limitations. Pericles’ nature is essentially passive: his flight from Tyre is prompted by Hellicanus’ suggestion that he ‘go travel for a while/ Till that his [Antiochus’] rage and anger be forgot’, he is chosen by Thaisa rather than the reverse, and he does not return to his home country until a letter arrives, again from Hellicanus, this time warning of ‘mutiny’. Rather than act, Pericles seems to endure: he is given to lamenting rather than seeking a solution. This is seen at its peak when he loses Marina: he becomes mute and dons ‘sackcloth’, a form of penance or mourning familiar to Shakespeare’s Christian audience. It is easy to become frustrated with Pericles at this point: his inactivity seems almost wilful, Marina’s abduction directly related to his absentee parenting. However, there is an interesting parallel with the Biblical book of Job that points to an excuse for his behaviour and provides explanation for the redemption which he is granted at the end. The link between the two stories is obvious, the lament that ‘he breaketh me with a tempest, and multiplieth my wounds without cause’[1] perhaps equally applicable to either man. Job’s story is an illustration of the ultimate power of God, and the weakness of man before him; the ‘great miracle’ of Pericles’ happy ending seems to bring his tale to a similar conclusion. The loss of Marina emphasises Pericles’ helplessness by demonstrating his mortality. ‘Kings are earth’s gods’, he has told Antioch in the play’s first scene: what he learns through the course of the play is that kings, unlike gods, are not immortal. With Marina apparently dead, there is no hope of Pericles’ lineage being continued, leaving one of his most important functions as King, to ensure a succession, unfulfilled. Marina’s restoration, as well as that of Thaisa, leaves Pericles aware of his responsibilities and limitations as King, demonstrated in his first real act of fatherhood since the naming of his child fourteen years before. ‘You shall prevail were it to woo my daughter’, he tells Lysimachus in 5.2, and by the play’s final scene the pair’s ‘nuptials’ are already anticipated. Pericles is at last fulfilling his role both as father and as King.

Lear’s death at the end of King Lear of course prevents us from treating it as a tale of a king learning better how to rule, as both Pericles and The Tempest can be to some degree understood. Indeed, the play begins with Lear abandoning ‘rule/ Interest of territory, cares of state’ and retaining only ‘The name, and all th’addition to a king’. It is this paradoxical wish to be free of the responsibilities of kingship, whilst retaining the respect and, to some degree, the authority of the role that prevents Lear’s hope to ‘unburdened crawl towards death’ from realisation. Albany declares his intention to ‘resign/ During the life of this old majesty/ To him our absolute power’, but Lear’s restoration as King lasts less than twenty lines. There is no sense in which his supposed redemption can be related to a better understanding of his duties as king. Neither is there any hope of the kind of earthly immortality granted to Pericles in the form of descendents: all three of Lear’s daughters are dead by the close of the play. Instead, those critics who have seen the play as a redemptive story have suggested that Lear’s suffering is necessary to bring him closer to God: this is Irenaean theodicy, a 3rd century response to the Christian problem of evil. St Irenaeas described the world as ‘a vale for soul making’, suggesting that it is ‘essentially… a difficult, sometimes agonizingly difficult environment in which the human spirit is refined by fire’[2]. It is certainly indisputable that Lear suffers greatly throughout the play. However it seems to me that although it is possible to understand the pagan setting of all three plays as an allegory or exploration of essentially Christian beliefs, to argue that King Lear shows us a world where these beliefs are in fact justified (and so Lear’s suffering on earth is counterbalanced by greater happiness in the afterlife) is to contradict Shakespeare’s text. In the other two plays, it is the definite presence of a divine power that both instigates the action and justifies a redemptive understanding of their narrative. In King Lear no such power is evident.

This difference between the three plays is highlighted by the fact that they all take place in worlds where religious belief is to some extent taken for granted. In Pericles this is particularly evident in Pentapolis, where both Thaisa and Simonedes seem to do everything ‘by the gods’: their two initial judgements of Pericles are made ‘by Juno’ and ‘by Jove’, in absolutely typical fashion. However it is not only in court that we see the characters of Pericles invoke the gods: even in the brothel there is talk of ‘the god Priapus’. Every aspect of life in the Mediterranean world of Pericles seems to have an attendant god: Diana for virginity, Hymen for marriage, Jove ‘king of thoughts’, and the play’s most pervasive spirit, Neptune of the sea; every character, right down to Boult and the Bawds, sits comfortably in a framework of religious understanding and belief. In The Tempest, the language of religion comes easily, but is often applied to human forms: Ferdinand calls Miranda ‘goddess’ and she describes him as ‘a thing divine’; Caliban takes Stephano for ‘a god’. Nonetheless there is still an awareness of higher power: ‘the King and prince’ turn to ‘prayers’ to relieve their ship from the eponymous tempest, and Ariel describes ‘Jove’s lightning’ and refers to ‘Neptune’ in recounting the storm he has enacted at Prospero’s request. Here there seems to be still more of an interweaving between the divine and the material worlds: rather than the gods sitting above controlling the action, in The Tempest they seem to be of a different nature but almost of equal status to the play’s human characters. The parallel between man and god is frequently made, and Miranda’s characteristic wonder at the ‘brave new world’ opening up before her seems to express an almost religious awe. The characters of King Lear seem to be closer to those of Pericles in their religious belief, invoking the gods rather than seeing them represented on earth. Such reference is less frequent in this play, but there is nonetheless an assumption that the gods are there to listen, and to act: the most striking instance Edmund’s ‘gods, stand up for bastards!’ The departing Kent blesses Cordelia with the words ‘The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid’; Lear addresses the ‘goddess’ Nature in his anger at Goneril, and calls out to ‘you gods’ when wandering in the storm.

So in all three plays the characters refer to or invoke the gods: however, as suggested, each play presents us with a different scenario in terms of how the gods are seen to interact with humankind. In Pericles there is a very real sense that the gods are controlling events on the earth: they are frequently shown to intervene and to deal out justice where it is required. Although the religious framework is overtly pagan, much of Pericles’ journey recalls the stories of the Old Testament, where God is present to interact directly with mankind: the death of Antiochus and his daughter, destroyed by ‘a fire from heaven’ evokes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by ‘brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven’[3], albeit for a different kind of sexual transgression. Parallels with a theistic, intervening God can also be seen in the answering of prayers, notably in the case of Marina and her rescue from the brothel. ‘The gods defend me’, she cries, ‘Diana aid my purpose’, and it is her piety that preserves her, seen in the unlikely exchange of the Gentlemen at the beginning of 4.5: ‘I am no more for bawdy houses’, says one, and the other ‘I will do any thing now that is virtuous, for I am out of the road of rutting forever’. Although it is Diana who answers her prayers, it seems inevitable that a Shakespearean audience would have drawn parallels with their own God. This sense of a higher authority with a clear sense of right and wrong, willing to help the weak and to punish the wicked, means that there is a sense of purpose in Pericles’ trials. Shakespeare has Gower emphasise repeatedly that it is ‘fortune’ driving the storms that deliver him from island to island: the evidence of divine justice that we are given means that we are confident that there is some definite end to Pericles’ adventures, a confidence shown to be justified in the deus ex machina that brings about the final reunion with Thaisa.

In The Tempest it appears at first that Prospero is, effectively, higher than the gods. After all, he is able to summon Iris, Juno and Ceres as entertainment for Miranda and Ferdinand: the gods themselves are at his command for what he describes as a mere ‘vanity of mine art’. His ability as a magician is attested by his liberation of Ariel from where ‘the foul witch Sycorax’ had imprisoned him, and by his subjugation of Caliban: both are unwilling slaves, Ariel demanding ‘liberty’ and Caliban seeking to destroy Prospero with the help of Stephano and Trinculo. Prospero’s dominance over them gives him the semblance of a god on this island: however, further consideration shows that he is not in fact the ultimate power in the world of The Tempest. A key point is made in his first conversation with Miranda: ‘By accident most strange, bountiful fortune/… hath mine enemies/Brought to this shore’. This short explanation highlights the limitations of Prospero’s power. He is able to manipulate the elements around him, but he is unable to control the whole course of events: if ‘fortune’ had not chosen to sail the Italian ships close to Prospero’s island, he and Miranda might have been stranded there for a further fifteen years. ‘My zenith doth depend upon/ A most auspicious star’, he elaborates: that is, even Prospero is subject to the dictates of the heavens. This is a more equal relationship than we find in Pericles, then, and one in which man is able to impact on the gods in a way that would not be possible in the world of the other play: but the undeniable presence of the gods means that there is again a sense that the play’s events are happening for a reason. If Prospero were not ready to understand that ‘The rarer action is/ In virtue than in vengeance’, and if he were not prepared finally to renounce his art, the ships of the royal party would not have been directed within his reach. Here, too, the gods reward an increased self-awareness with some form of redemption.

The comfortable assurance that the gods are sitting somewhere beneficently guiding events is found nowhere in King Lear. As the play develops, both characters and audience are brought to understand that there is no relying on divine justice in this world.

As in Pericles and The Tempest, the dramatic spectacle of a storm is used within the play: however, whilst in the other two plays the storms have a clear cause and lead to evident narrative progression, in King Lear the storm seems an exacerbation of what is already happening rather than a cause of narrative development. There certainly seems to be no evidence that the weather here is of divine origin, something that Lear comes to understand: he begins by imputing the storm to a divine source, speaking of ‘the great gods/That keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads’ and railing against the ‘elements’ that ‘join/[Their] high-engendered battles ‘gainst a head/So old and white as this’. However, by 3.4 we see him asking the ‘philosopher’ Poor Tom ‘What is the cause of thunder?’; a question that RA Foakes in his notes on the play relates to ‘the atheist, D’Amville, who claims that thunder ‘is a mere effect of Nature’ in Cyril Tourneur’s ‘The Atheist’s Tragedy’[4]. This realisation on Lear’s part, that the gods are perhaps not there to answer when they are called, is reflected in a similar realisation on the part of the audience. As in Pericles, we see characters swearing and blessing by the gods: here, however, their desires go manifestly unfulfilled, sometimes ironically so. Thus we see Kent say to Gloucester ‘the gods reward your kindness’ as he parts from the old man the very scene before Regan and Cornwall blind him. Such a sequence would be unimaginable in Pericles’ Pentapolis or Miteline. In Lear’s Britain, though, men are reduced to mimicking the actions of the gods in their absence: the deceit carried out by Edgar on his father is perhaps the most poignant indicator of the feeble thread by which the faith of the play’s characters hangs. ‘Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours/ Of men’s impossibilities, have preserved thee’, Edgar says to Gloucester: but the audience knows better. Shakespeare could make no better demonstration of that fact that King Lear there is no theistic presence: if there is any God at all, he has long since abandoned his creation, just as Lear has abandoned his kingdom. In such a world there can be no hope of divine redemption, either on earth or beyond it.

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[1] King James Bible, Job 10.17

[2]

[3] King James Bible, Genesis 19.24

[4] Arden edition, p 282 n

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