Notes on Lectures of the Florilegia Institute by Gil Bailie
Series: "The Shakespearean Insight"
Tape #1 Re: King Lear
  1. The distinction between "story" and "plot": the worthy story confused with dubious plots.
    1. It's an admittedly artificial distinction, but hopefully a useful tool for assessing the human predicament.
    2. Shakespeare was a literary master, which partly means that he understood the use of dubious plots to bring forth a larger story, one which those caught up in the plots generally miss. He's a good source for making this distinction.
    3. Example of Shakespeare's handling of plot vs. story: Cymbeline. Belarius tells stories to the two sons of the king: Polydore, the older brother and heir, is susceptible to the dubious plots of these stories; Cadwal, the younger, "shows much more his own conceiving."
    4. Shakespeare, a life-long theater person, had an ongoing 'wink,' or in-joke, with his friends in the theater throughout his plays. It was a commercial operation, and they know that without the plots the play won't go on. The "groundlings" paid a penny to sit in the bleachers and get caught up in the plots, and Shakespeare wrote to them. But he was a creative artist who also wrote for those who might have a sense that these plots were part of a bigger story. Polydore represents those who are more obviously mimetic in getting caught up in the plots.
    5. Did Shakespeare later in his career begin to have misgivings about this? His later plays seem to show that he thinks the theater has a dubious effect in that respect, and so wrote some plays that might help provide some corrective to that effect.
    6. T.S. Eliot from the Four Quartets on the power of these plots to get us caught up in them so that we miss the bigger story.
    7. Paul Ricouer: we have to abandon our "original naivete" for a "second naivete." We are the people of the Book and most often come to understand ourselves in the presence of the text.
    8. Sum: Shakespeare is one who provides both plots and story. As we go through King Lear, which has plots aplenty, we'll want to notice these plots -- which have to do with who's in and who's out, who's winning who's losing, who's good who's bad -- without getting caught up in them. The two bigger stories we will need to attend to:
      1. The story of cultural collapse: how it comes about, what it consists of, and how it might find resolution.
      2. The story of King Lear's conversion. Or, since this is set in a pagan culture, we might describe this story as: what it costs someone to extricate themselves from the plots and wake-up to the story. Lear is a classic example of such a painful awakening.

        3.  
  2. Brief primer on kingship (from a Girardian perspective).
    1. Hamlet is almost the opposite of King Lear: someone who is having trouble getting back into the plots after returning from the university.
    2. Quotes from the play that Hamlet arranges in Act II, scene 2, where Pyrrhus is about to kill Priam and has his sword paused, raised in the air [reads lines 484b-499]. The moment with the sword raised in the air is symbolic of the most awesome moment of kingship.
    3. Girard's anthropological definition of kingship as arising out of 'the sacrificial victim with a suspended sentence.' The sacrificial victim, after selection within the community, represented an awesome figure whose prestige could be extended in time and savored by the community for its cultural formation.
    4. This provides a common theme in Shakespeare. Example: soliloquy by Richard in Richard II:
        5. For God's sake let's sit upon the ground
        And tell sad stories of the death of kings --
        How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
        Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
        Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed --
        All murdered.
      This is somewhat akin to the NT telling us that all the prophets are killed. It's not literally true, but bears an important truth in it. Continuing Richard's speech:
        All murdered. For within the hollow crown
        That rounds the mortal temples of a king
        Keeps death his court and there the antic sits,
        Scoffing his State and grinning at his pomp,
        Allowing him a breath, a little scene to monarchize,
        Be feared and kill with looks.
      In this sense, we are all royalty. Life allows us to choose a little plot and live within it with the conviction that it has ultimate significance. Continuing:
        Allowing him a breath, a little scene to monarchize,
        Be feared and kill with looks,
        Infusing him with self and vain conceit
        As if this flesh which walls about our life
        Were brass impregnable and humored thus
        Comes at last and with a little pin
        Bores through his castle wall and, "Farewell, King."
      Shakespeare is so keen on how and what royal prestige does for us, and how much we need it to organize our social lives.
  1. Shakespeare and the theme of chaos
    1. Harold Goddard on Shakespeare: "From Henry VI onward, Shakespeare never ceased to be concerned with the problem of chaos, or, as we would be more like to say today, of disintegration. Sometimes, it may be no more than a hint of chaos in an outburst of individual passion or social disorder. Often, however, it is chaos under its extreme aspects of insanity or war." Both of which occur in King Lear. "Always, the easy and obvious remedy for chaos is force, but the best force can do is to impose order, not to elicit harmony, and Shakespeare spurned such a superficial and temporizing solution."
    2. We are going to take Goddard's insight that Shakespeare is "concerned" -- we might say, preoccupied -- with social and cultural chaos in his later plays.
    3. The most famous speech on this subject is in Troilus and Cressida, the story of Greek infighting at the time of the Trojan War. As in Homer, Ulysses (Odysseus in Homer) tries to speak to the problem, tries to hold the confederation together. [Reads Act I, scene 3, lines 89-128a, 131-138:]
        4. The Heavens themselves, the planets, and this center,
        Observe degree, priority, and place,
        Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
        Office, and custom, in all line of order:
        And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
        In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
        Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
        Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
        And pasts like the commandment of a king,
        Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets
        In evil mixture to disorder wander,
        What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,
        What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
        Commotion in the winds, frights, changes, horrors,
        Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
        The unity and married calm of states
        Quite from their fixure! Oh, when degree is shaked,
        Which is the ladder to all high designs,
        The enterprise is sick!
      Shakespeare's word for this is "degree"; Girard talks about the crisis of distinction.
        How could communities,
        Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
        Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
        The primogenity and due of birth,
        Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels,
        But by degree, stand in authentic place?
      "Degree" means the hierarchical structure of cultural life. People understand what their place is, and how they fit into the whole pattern, and they don't develop envious rivalries and jealousies with people in other stations.
        Take but degree away, untune that string,
        And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets
        In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters
        Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
        And make a sop of all this solid globe;
        Strength should be lord of imbecility,
        And the rude son should strike his father dead;
        Force should be right, or rather, right and wrong,
        Between whose endless jar justice resides,
        Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
        Then everything includes itself in power,
        Power into will, will into appetite;
        And appetite, an universal wolf,
        So doubly seconded with will and power,
        Must make perforce an universal prey,
        And last eat up himself....
        And this neglection of degree it is
        That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
        It hath to climb.
      In other words, as someone tries to climb out of this quicksand, one further sinks into it.
        The general's disdained
        By him one step below; he by the next;
        That next by him beneath: so every step,
        Exampled by the first pace that is sick
        Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
        Of pale and bloodless emulation.
    4. This is the mimetic nightmare: everything is up for grabs. And every hint of a superior social position or prestige provokes envy and all that flows from that: "Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, ... eat[s] up himself." This is a marvelous, amazing description of how the cultural crisis is begun.
    5. Culture, we could say, exists in order to avoid the state of affairs that Ulysses has described. If you untune degree, if you the distinctions begin to fall apart, then what? Chaos. And endless rivalry. All the rivalries are examples for each other until it "grows to an envious fever Of pale and bloodless emulation." Everybody is totally mimetically entangled with everybody else, trying to find the tiniest scrap of data on which to build a set of distinctions -- for instance, the color of one's skin, or the amount of money, or the color of one's shirt. There are places in Los Angeles where, if you go with a certain color shirt, because it represents the gang's color of another area, your life is in peril. The desperation for distinction in a world where they dissolves.
    6. Now, listen to the epistle of James (2:1-4): "My brothers, do not let class distinction enter into your faith in Jesus Christ, our glorified Lord. Now suppose a man comes into your synagogue, well-dressed and with a gold ring on, and at the same time a poor man comes in, in shabby clothes, and you take notice of the well-dressed man, and say, 'Come this way to the best seats'; then you tell the poor man, 'Stand over there' or 'You can sit on the floor by my foot-rest.' In making this distinction among yourselves have you not used a corrupt standard?" We have Ulysses and we have James. They are both absolutely right. Without the protections that the distinctions provide, the scope of the mimetic epidemic has no limit.
    7. Quote from Girard's work. He's talking about the mimetic rivalries that Ulysses has just depicted:
        8. The subject has no wish to triumph completely over the rival; he has no wish for the rival to completely triumph over him. In the first event, the object would fall to him, but it would have lost all value. In the second event, the object would attain an infinite value, but it would be forever outside his reach.

        However painful it may be, the triangular relationship is less painful than a decision that would end it in one way or the other. That is precisely why it has a tendency to perpetuate itself and to reproduce itself if it has collapsed. Rivalry is intolerable, but the absence of rivalry is even more intolerable. It brings the subject up against nothingness. That is why the subject makes every effort to persevere or begin again, often relying on the undisclosed complicity of partners who are aiming for similar goals. (Things Hidden, p. 361)

    8. "Partners," here, means either rivals or allies. It doesn't matter, because if the purpose is to regenerate the conflictual mimesis, we need our rivals and our allies. Our conspiratorial partners can be either one, as long as they participate in the reconfiguration of the mimetic entanglement. He says that because to abandon that we come face-to-face with nothingness, all of us have the tendency to reconvene it so as not to have to face nothing.
(end of side one)
    1. This is like a trial: Ulysses, James, and now Girard. This is John Sullivan, a French novelist, who in his memoirs wrote this: "Instead of satisfying our desires, Jesus sends us back to ourselves at a deeper level. Morality, politics, economics, the intellectual harmony I keep looking for in the Gospel, none of these are the concern of Jesus. He points in another direction. He drives me toward nothingness." We have to put these things together in order to get an idea of the predicament we are facing. [Girard says that, anthropologically, we would prefer even the endless rivalries and conflicts to nothingness; Sullivan says that Jesus drives us precisely toward that nothingness.
    2. Another excerpt from Sullivan's journal: "Jesus is for the disappearance of classes, but not for the class struggle." This one sentence is such an insight into history, an insight into how it is that at the very moment when it's possible to abandon the mimetic entanglement, we recapitulate it on new terms, based on the slogan that should have associated with its abandonment: a classless reality that gives way immediately to a class struggle, which is the mimetic entanglement all over again.
    3. Sullivan goes on to say that 'the full impact of the Gospel would mean cultural chaos.' "That's why the evangelical counsels and certain precepts of Jesus became the preserve of monasteries. If realized politically, they would call into question the order of the world -- and certain ecclesiastical institutions which are its reflection." Sullivan was a Catholic priest, in addition to being a novelist.
    4. These quotes begin to give us an appreciation of the predicament we're in, which does not admit to any easy solutions.

      5.  
  1. King Lear, Act I, Scene 1
    1. First lines, 1-5. Kent, Lear's old servant, and Gloucester, Lear's old friend, enter, with Kent commenting, "I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall." Shakespeare has a way of putting early lines to great use. Gloucester responds, "It did seem so to us; but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the Dukes he values most..." Albany is married to Lear's oldest daughter, Goneril, and Cornwall to the second daughter, Regan. If one is looking for some logic to maintain the typical hierarchical system, a system of "degree," then logic supports Kent's opening assumption in favor of the oldest daughter. Kent starts by essentially saying that he 'thought they had the usual hierarchical structure of favor, but apparently we do not.' We have two dukedoms that stand in identical, equal favor to the king.
    2. Lines 7-22. We move immediately to another family situation: Gloucester's bastard son, Edmund, enters, and Gloucester mentions his other legitimate son, too, but immediately mentions, "who yet is no dearer in my account." Again, convention supports logic for favoring one son over the other, but Gloucester says that they are equal to him. This is marvelous, forward thinking, but Shakespeare seems to be setting us up for a fall. We're being set up to talk about equality, that everyone is treated equally. But we need to see if the drama supports it.
    3. King enters with whole family and entourage by line 31. Lear makes speech about getting out the map to show the divided kingdom so he can basically retire. The key lines (41-45): "Our son of Cornwall, And you, our no less loving son of Albany, We have this hour a constant will to publish Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife May be prevented now." Well intentioned. But the difference between Shakespeare and Lear is that Lear doesn't realize that the triangle is the cultural DNA and Shakespeare does. Lear has the best of motives, to settle things so that there won't be squabbling when he dies. But it's got a triangle in it, and he's about to play right into it (lines 49-54): "Tell me, my daughters (Since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state), Which of you shall say doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend Where nature doth merit challenge."
    4. Goneril speaks first: "Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter; Dearer than eyesight..." Eyesight is a key theme in this play. It's really all about seeing. In terms of the plot/story theme of this lecture: it involves the transformation of one who's eyes are focused on the plot and blind to the story, to one who comes to see the story. The plots and the story are always simultaneously present. The question is which one are you seeing?
    5. Lear shows Goneril her portion of the kingdom and turns to Regan, who begins, "I am made Of that self metal as my sister, And prize me at her worth." In other words, I'm equal to my sister. Now, get out your stop watches and see how long equality lasts: "In my true heart I find she names my very deed of love, Only she comes too short..." That's it, you see? After you've witnessed a number of Shakespearean avalanches, you become keen on trying to find when the first little pebble slips. In this play, it's right here. This is how long equality lasts. Slippage of degree has set this in motion, as Ulysses' speech indicates: "And this neglection of degree it is That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose It hath to climb."
    6. Lear indicates Regan's piece as, "No less in space, validity, and pleasure Than that conferred on Goneril." In turning now to Cordelia, he indicates that she is his favorite and that her piece is bigger than her sisters. She will not play this game, however. Her response, "Nothing, my Lord." Remember, Girard says that if we abandon that mimetic entanglement, we come against nothingness, and so we reconfigure it instead of abandoning it. John Sullivan says that Jesus is interested in bringing us face to face with nothingness. Cordelia: "Nothing, my Lord." Lear: "Nothing?" Cordelia: "Nothing." Lear: "Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again." The word "nothing" appears five times in the space of ten words. There's no question what Shakespeare is doing here. This is the theme of the play: Lear falling out very gradually -- two steps forward, one step back -- falling out of the mimetic entanglement, very painfully, and by the end of the play coming face to face with nothingness. "Nothing will come of nothing." This play is written in order to decide whether this is true.
    7. Shakespeare often depicts hereditary kings as having led sheltered lives in which their every whim is attended to. Lear, thwarted by a daughter who refuses to play by the script he's set for her, flies into a rage and banishes her. Kent tries to intervene but to no avail: Peace, Kent! Come not between the dragon and his wrath. I loved her most..."
    8. So Lear turns to his other daughters and their husbands: "Cornwall and Albany, With my two daughters' dowers digest the third." That's like throwing a hand grenade at the situation. "This coronet part between you." Just cut it in half? Equality.

      9.  
  2. King Lear, Act I, Scene 2
    1. Edmund enters with a forged letter from his half-brother Edgar and says: Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound." By "Nature" he means "tooth and claw," survival of the fittest. Is he bound to anyone but himself?
    2. He continues: "Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me..." "plague of custom" and "curiosity of nations." What he's talking about is cultural distinctions and biases. Gloucester says he has equal affection for his two sons, but custom would give the inheritance to the legitimate son. Edmund is correct to challenge the danger of false distinction, as does the epistle of James. But the predicament, once again, is that our challenge to false distinctions generally plunges us into the situation of loss of distinctions, Ulysses' side of the equation. Sure enough, Edmund, like Regan, is asserting his equality, but then ends, "Well then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land."
    3. Gloucester enters and Edmund makes a show of putting away the letter. Gloucester: "What paper were you reading?" Edm: "Nothing, my Lord." (Ah! We've heard those words before.) Glou: "No? What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. Let's see. Come, if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles." Shakespeare is having a romp. "Let's see." Yes, let's! Gloucester will have his eyes put out later in the play so that he can finally see. So acclimated are he and we to the mimetic entanglement that sometimes we need to shut down the senses. That's one of the things that the monastic tradition has offered us.
    4. "I shall not need spectacles." No, here all Gloucester needs is a little piece of paper. Folks like Polydore in Cymbeline needed spectacles to get caught up in the mimetic entanglement. Shakespeare seems to be joking at his contemporaries that not even that is needed anymore. So ripe were people for the onset of the mimetic entanglement, that they didn't need spectacles anymore. Almost anything would do.
(end of tape)