Religious and philosophical approaches

Abstract

In what sense, if any, is King Lear a religious play? This has been one of the most hotly debated issues in Lear criticism, with extreme positions adopted both by those who read it as a Christian allegory of salvation and by those who read it as a grotesque parody which mocks and denies the possibility of any religious meaning. Of the earlier critics, Samuel Johnson was famously shocked by the ending, particularly by the death of Cordelia, which he found immoral and unjust (1765; excerpted in Kermode, 1969, and Muir, 1984). A. C. Bradley, on the other hand, went so far as to suggest that an alternative title for the play might be ‘The Redemption of King Lear’, arguing that the business of ‘the gods’ with Lear was ‘neither to torment him, nor to teach him a “noble anger”, but to lead him to attain through apparently hopeless failure the very end and aim of life’ (1904; excerpted in Kermode, 1969, and Muir, 1984; pp. 97–8 in Kermode).