Editing Lear: Terms of Allegiance

         Our language betrays us; not just when we make the occasional Freudian slip, but any time we speak we inevitably show our prejudices, assumptions, cultural context, and upbringing. In King Lear, political language is particularly revelatory, as the characters put immense pressure on their hierarchical relationships and loyalties. For this reason, I would opt to make Gloucester’s words, “I shall, my lord and liege,” using both “liege” from the 1608 Quarto and “lord” from the 1623 Folio. While the words seem synonymous, both appearing to be deferant titles that show Gloucester’s fidelity and correct relationship to the King, liege and lord both enrich the range of possible readings of King Lear.

         The word lord has historically connoted a fairly limited and inflexible set of positions of authority, all dominant. It alludes to (since it is not  capitalized, it does not directly represent) divine authority, often was used as a synonym for “husband”—clearly adding to the power implied in that position, and most often was seen as it is in this particular context, meaning the master or ruler of a hosuehold or domain (OED). A more obscure, but pertinent, definition of lord is “The planet that has a dominant influence over an event, period, region, etc.” (OED 5). This insinuation of Lear as a heavenly body that controls events interestingly shifts responsibility for the tragic unfolding of the plot away from the “evil” characters and onto Lear himself, especially as various characters evoke the stars as willful agents, as when Kent says, “It is the stars, / The stars above us govern our conditions” (the Word-Searchable Shakespeare lists this as Scene 17, line 34). However, in an earlier instance, Edmund derides man’s tendency to displace his agency on the stars, saying, “This is the excellent foppery of the world: that / when we are sick in fortune-- often the surfeit of our /  own behaviour-- we make guilty of our disasters the /  sun, the moon, and the stars . . .” (I.2.113-116). This perhaps cautions us against making Lear culpable for all the play’s tragedy.

          If Gloucester calls Lear his “liege,” however, he potentially upsets the stable hierarchy between King and Earl. Strangely, the word liege is primarily defined as “the characteristic epithet of persons in the relation of feudal superior and vassal” (OED 1) but is equally used for both persons: “Of the superior: Entitled to feudal allegiance and service” (OED 1a) and “Of the vassal: Bound to render feudal service and allegiance” (OED 1b). While it is implausible that Gloucester—who hardly comes off as insubordinate or impudent—would intend such a meaning, given Gloucester’s later heroic endeavors on behalf of the King, it seems to be an authorial foreshadowing of the debt of service that Lear will “owe” to Gloucester. Since “lord” and “liege” are not mutually exclusive terms, and the OED in at least one instance cites them in usage together, I would opt to keep both in the text.