1. Introduction

Interpreters of Shakespeare's King Lear tend to fall into two camps. First are those who point to the play's numerous allusions to Bible verses and see it as telling a Judeo-Christian morality tale. The other camp is the nihilists, who find no transcendent values at all in the play; for them Lear's universe is one empty of divine beings. For them (e.g. Frye 1963, 1961) the Biblical references help convey how characters are seeing situations within the play, but point to no transcendent meaning apart from that character. The result is "a negation of the possibility of unity, coherence, and resolution" in the play (Felperin), a "radical instability" (Booth, both cited in Foakes 1997, 84f). Yet film versions, such as the Russian one or Lawrence Olivier's, do seem to have coherence and unity (Foakes 1997). 

I want to try to reconcile these opposites. I believe that the Biblical allusions do express characters’ attitudes, but also point to a transcendent meaning--just one not within the traditional Christian framework, whether Catholic or Protestant. I wish to argue that the world-view of the play is something outside traditional Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, while also something like Christian salvation is attained by Lear at the end toward which the audience's alter ego, Edgar, bears favorable witness. It is not a salvation that requires belief in a historical Jesus and his historical sacrifice; that is part of the point of setting the play in pre-Christian Britain. It is more an expression of what was called the prisca theologia, the ancient theology that God taught Adam and which continued to be practiced in many parts of the world before Christ. It is a salvation through experience rather than through belief. In that sense it has affinities with certain strains of pagan philosophy. In the Renaissance there was Christian Neoplatonism, which connected with pagan Neoplatonism and its fascination with Orphic and Chaldean "Mysteries." Before the Renaissance, there were independent thinkers and poets during the Middle Ages, not to mention the heretics of those times. And before that there were figures such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and the independent subscribers to Christiantiy, but condemned by the orthodox, called Gnostics. There were also Jewish writers such as Philo of Alexandria and the author of the Wisdom of Solomon.

Among these various strands, I will be concerned with only a few: for one, a troubadour named Pere Cardenal,; for another, the ancient theologians of the type known as "Gnostic" by the heresiologist Irenaeus, whose work "Against Heresies" went through many editions in the century preceding Shakespeare. A third will be the alchemical texts of the time, which although Christian in orientation were based on previous works by Arabic writers. The content was something neither intrinsically Muslim nor Christian. I am not trying to argue that Shakespeare actually read these works. He probably was exposed to only a few of them. It is the point of view that matters, for clarifying the play. In that spirit, I will even be citing some works that he certainly could not have read.

Irenaeus's book on the "Gnostics so-called" went through numerous printings in the 16th century, first as edited by Erasmus in 1526, later by others in 1570-1575 (Unger 1992). According to Irenaeus, only a few groups actually called themselves “Gnostic,” but others were enough like them to group them together. Even today Irenaeus’s survey defines the term “Gnosticism” as used by modern scholarship

That it was Erasmus who published Irenaeus is of particular interest. Scholars have noted the similarity in outlook between Erasmus’s own work Praise of Folly and Shakespeare’s King Lear (Wood 2003). Speaking through personified Folly, Erasmus exposes the foolishness in people’s apparent wisdom, in terms similar to the Fool in Lear; at the same time he shows the wisdom in apparent foolishness, in terms that bear comparison to the “mad” scenes in Lear. Actually written in England, the book was immensely popular there, both in Latin and in a 1569 English translation. I shall explore the similarities in sections 1, 5, and 11 of this essay.

Erasmus, however, claimed to be an ordinary Christian believer; and while his works were condemned after his death, that does not prove that he was anything other than he claimed. For our purposes here, it shows that the dividing line between heresy and orthodoxy is not always clear.

Thanks to these various sources, the Gnostics were well enough known. A satirical travel fantasy written around 1600 and published in Latin in 1605, with an English translation in 1609, manages to satirize most of the Gnostic sects mentioned by Irenaeus--and also by Augustine, in his On Heresy--in about three pages (Joseph Hall, Mundus Alter et Idem, pp. 103-105 of English version). Individual Gnostic teachers were mentioned in  mythology handbooks. John Donne preached a sermon against Gnosticism in 1622. In part this upsurge in interest  may have been that because of the victory of Protestantism, Gnostic-like groups such as the so-called “Ranters” were emerging spontaneously in England. (The name "ranter" was not necessarily a term of abuse; besides meaning "harane", the term "rant" also meant “make merry.”)

So I will start with Irenaeus. Simplistically stated, what characterized Gnosticism for him was its positing that the god of Genesis is not the true god, even if he did create heaven and earth, but only an ignorant, arrogant, and foolish impostor.(See http://www.gnosis.org/library/advh1.htm, Book I chapter 5, sections 3-6; also chapter 26, section 1, and others). For some Gnostics, he was even evil (chapter 27, sect. 2); but very few of the teachers cited by Irenaeus say this--they say only that he did what was in fact evil through his ignorance and folly,. Above him stands a God of All, incomprehensible by humans, whom Christ came down to reveal, to those with ears to hear.

This critique of Judeo-Christian tradition implies a critique of a certain personality type as well, that represented by the god of Genesis. Such an insecure ego, given to rages and punishments when challenged, is found in abundance in rulers on earth. Christ’s message, for the Gnostics--one not unique to him, to be sure-- was that such a personality cuts itself and those following its lead off from a true relationship with the divine,  which is a relationship to something beyond ego. It is such a relationship alone that makes for true peace of mind, independent of the vagaries of fortune and favor.

In this regard we are fortunate to have Jung’s 20th century psychological reading of the Gnostics. He has shown us how to read them in a way that describes the human. Where the Gnostics wrote disparagingly about the god of Genesis, Jung sees the shadow-side of the human ego. Where the Gnostics wrote of an Unknown God, Jung sees the Self, the inner totality of the personality, both conscious and unconscious, which communicates with the ego through our dreams, the unconscious goals of some of our actions, and our artistic responses.

Because of this psychologizing tendency, which  King Lear participates in having its personalities conform to the personalities of Gnostic myth-making, it is possible to reframe the Gnsotic demiurge in less radical terms. We tend to think of God in terms familiar to us. In that sense, the Book of Genesis can be thought of as expressing a psychologically primitive conception of God, in which God is separated sometimes from His Wisdom; at such times, the shadow-side emerges. As humanity matures, its conception of God does the same. So instead of two gods, we may prefer to think of one God conceived in various ways, gradually integrating the power of God with his Wisdom..That perspective further blurs the distinction between Gnostics and thinkers who stay within the mainstream. However the distinction between demiurge and high god is nonetheless useful for psycholo9gical and exegetical purposes, between two major types of personality and conception of God. It is not the same as "Old Testament" vs. "New Testament," because the so-called "Old Testament" also contains both conceptions; the second type there is then, by Christian theologians, classified as "predictions" of the New Testament within Judaism..

As I have said, I will be drawing from two other traditions, both of which Shakespeare was likely familiar. One is that of the medieval troubadours, in what is now southern France. I will be citing just one poet, Peire Cardenal, who wrote in the 13th century and reputedly lived to almost 100 years of age, even longer than Lear’s 80. He lived long enough to see the unique culture of his beloved Languedoc destroyed by a half-century armed crusade by the Popes and the French monarchs against the Cathars, a Christian sect broadly supported by all classes of Languedoc society, but which the Church branded heretical. Many scholars (e.g. Hamilton 1999, 281; Quispel 2000a, 192f) think that the Cathars were the last Western European remnant of the ancient Gnostics. Cardenal's songs seem to suggest a sacred as well as secular meaning, and sacred in the manner of the Cathars rather of the Catholic orthodoxy he clearly despised. I do not know whether Shakespeare was familiar with Cardenal; again, it does not really matter.

The other tradition I will be using is that of alchemy, especially texts and pictures from the century or so before and the half-century after the appearance of the play. Here I build upon work begun by Nicholl (1980). We tend to think of alchemy as a medieval phenomenon, but actually its greatest flourishing was during Shakespeare’s lifetime, at the court of the Hapsburg Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, who employed dozens of alchemists. London had its own court alchemist, by the name of John Dee, and representatives of each center visited the other: Dee went to Prague in the 1580’s with his colleague Michael Kelly, and Rudolph’s  physician Michael Maier visited London in 1612-1614 (Yates 1964).

In Shakespeare’s time, too, the works of earlier alchemists, notably Edward IV’s court alchemist George Ripley, were translated from Latin and printed with illustrations. After Shakespeare, alchemy continued to flourish in England for a century or more. Its devotees ranged from the mystic Thomas Vaughan (brother of poet Henry Vaughan) to the scientist Isaac Newton, who in his younger days is said to have spent more time on alchemy than he did on mathematics and physics. What is of interest here is less the chemical processes the alchemists described, which have been described better since, and more the spiritual meaning the alchemists projected onto their work, which comes out especially well in the illustrations that accompany their rather dense prose. Here Jung has provided important insights into how the alchemists’ quest may be understood in terms of psychological transformation.

In very much the same spirit as alchemy are two famous artists, Hieronymous Bosch, from around the year 1500, and William Blake, around 1800. To help us get a sense of the feeling-states that go along with King Lear, I will illustrate Lear’s states and visions with examples from their works. Finally, I will use another visual aid to illustrate the play, namely, representations of the Fool in Shakespeare’s day, in popular art and in the decks of cards known as tarot, whose images were familiar in Shakespeare’s England.