By
my best estimate, I’ve read King Lear
six or seven times. I read it for the first time in my early twenties, before I
married and had children, and my assessment of Lear at that time in my life was
that of a young man who hadn’t been forced to look hard at himself and his
weaknesses. I didn’t see what Lear and I had in common, though with my latest
reading, certain uncomfortable aspects of Lear’s personality resonated in a way
that they didn’t twenty-plus years ago.
In
my first reading of King Lear, I took Lear’s defense of himself at face value.
Lear exclaims in the middle of the play, “I am a man / more sinned against than
sinning.” (Act 3, Scene 2, lines 59-60). By this point in the play, Lear’s two
older daughters, despite their proclamations of love in the first scene, have shown
their teeth, and have driven their father and his handful of followers out into
a storm with no shelter. Lear’s famous line from the middle of the storm sounds
defensive. He’s willing to admit on some level that he has sinned, but his failings
are not as great as the failings of others.
