THE “MARBLE-HEARTED FIEND”: MATERIAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIP IN KING LEAR

Abstract

The parent-child relationship is one of the most important subject matters in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear in the sense that from it naturally spring the major themes of the play. Themes like regeneration of wisdom, distribution, and effect of power and pelf, human and divine justice, and man’s relationship with man and nature, are all presented on a universal scale, spatial and temporal, passing from the palace to the hovel, from the court to the heath, and from moments of folly to moments of enlightenment through moments of purgatorial sufferings. This universal scale can be regarded as connected to the political contexts of Britain, modeled on the prototypical and primary unit of a family. And since family, which involves principally the begetter and the begotten that also has the potential of begetting, is the primary and fundamental unit of the whole universe from both human and animal perspectives of life, this paper seeks to investigate how the familial background of the parent-child relationship in King Lear is portrayed against the backdrop of the kingdom and the universe. In order to do so, these three units – family, kingdom, and in natural and metaphysical senses the universe – are considered to be deeply interconnected with human relationships, corresponding consecutively to its psychological, material, and spiritual aspects. Shakespeare has illuminated the tragic truths about the relationship between the parents and their children by showing a profound interaction between the family, kingdom, and the universe with respect to their corresponding psychological, material, and spiritual aspects.