a título oneroso

18 William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, ed. by Jonathan Bate, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1995), 2.2.42-43. All references are to this edition.

19 Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ed. by Katherine Duncan-Jones, The Arden Shakespeare (Walton-on-Thames: Thomas N elson, 1997), Sonnet 55. All references are to this edition.

calling it the “ending” doom , and this differentiates this instance o f the w ord from the m ore general use. A n o th er so nn et defines true love as unchanging and unchangeable until doom arrives:

Love’s n o t T im e’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks W ithin his bending sickle’s com pass come;

Love alters n o t w ith his b rief hours and weeks, But bears it ou t even to the edge o f doom .

S onnet 116

Love, this sonnet claims, lasts until the end o f the w orld, outliving physical beauty that falls to the ravages o f time, and endures until time stops on the brink o f the apocalypse. In Macbeth the term refers to the Last Judgem ent as the w itches conjure a vision o f Banquo’s royal progeny that foretells the failure o f M acbeth’s tyranny: “WTiat! will the line stretch out to th ’crack o f doom ?” 20 F or Caesar in A ntony and Cleopatra, doom ’s roar should be greater w hen A ntony dies:

The breaking o f so great a thing should make A greater crack. T he roun d w orld

Should have shook lions into civil streets

A nd citizens to their dens. T he death o f A ntony Is n o t a single doom ; in the nam e lay

A moiety o f the world.21

D oom has the sense o f b o th death and fate in Caesar’s w ords, b u t on this occasion lacks the cataclysmic im pact w orthy o f such a passing. As well as a rift or fissure, this crack evokes the thunderous sound M acbeth associates w ith the day o f doom : A ntony’s suicide, the individual death o f one man, should have caused the upheaval, the semi-apocalypse, befitting a triumvir w hose nam e was synonym ous w ith a share o f the R om an Empire. The equivocation o f “d oom ” here joins death w ith m ajor political turmoil. As well as “judgem ent”, then, the sense o f doom in the play has the following meanings: death;

20 William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. by Kenneth Muir, T he Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1962), 4.1.117. All references are to this edition.

21 William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, ed. by John Wilders, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1995), 5.1.14-19. All references are to this edition.

doomsday; cataclysmic change; fate. Indeed, Cleopatra’s words to the messenger, Thidias, signify m ore than just her acquiescence to Caesar’s judgement:

M ost kind messenger, Say to great Caesar this in deputation:

I kiss his co n q u ’ring hand. Tell him I am pro m pt T o lay my crow n at’s feet, and there to kneel Till from his all-obeying breath I hear The doom o f Egypt.

Antony and Cleopatra, 3.13.77-82 Egypt’s doom refers to Caesar’s judgem ent on the Q ueen o f Egypt, b u t also foretells both her death and the significant historical change that it brings about: the demise o f the Hellenistic dynasty and the rise o f Rom an control in the eastern M editerranean.

In the light o f these uses, Lear’s “d oo m ” can be un derstoo d as equivocal, referring to a judgem ent that K en t insist he “Revoke” (Q, 1.1.153) b u t w ith apocalyptic, Christian connotations, foretelling the violent disorder L ear’s decision will cause in King Lear, the personal tragedies o f Lear, Cordelia and G loucester, the invasion by France and the simmering civil war.

“D o o m ” in the Q uarto anticipates the eschatology o f Lear’s m adness. The cataclysmic “cataracts and hurricanoes” and the “ sulphurous and thought-executing fires” (3.2.2, 4) are images that resemble the A rm ageddon that Jo h n o f Patm os

describes.22 This recalls the “trum pet-tongu’d” angels in Macbeth that herald judgement (Macbeth, 1.7.16-20), w hich in the Book o f Revelation bring tem pests and plagues. W hen Lear beckons the judgem ent o f the gods, the crimes on w hich he focuses are

recognizable as the sins that incur G o d ’s final w rath. D am ned are those that “Neither repented [...] o f their m urders, no r o f their sorceries, n o r o f their fornication, nor o f their thefts” .23 Lear’s attack displays a biblical argum ent o f condem nation:

Hide thee, th o u bloody hand, T hou perjured, and tho u simular o f virtue

T hat art incestuous. Caitiff, to pieces shake,

22 Revelation, 6.12-17. 23 Revelation, 9.21.

T hat under covert and convenient seeming Has practised on m an’s life.

3.2.53-57

The m urderer stained by his crime, the falsely sworn w ho deceive, and the unchaste that give the appearance o f m odest virtue are all to be held to account by the “ dreadful summoners grace” (3.2.59). Indeed, w hen the ravaged old m an goes on to speak one o f the play’s m ost famous lines, “I am a m an | M ore sinned against than sinning” (3.2.59- 60), it sounds like a statem ent o f defence offered to spare him from the fate awaiting the doomed, quivering w retch that plotted against his fellow man.

Lear’s prayer to the “P o or naked w retches” (3.4.28) presents Christian reason in a pagan universe. Judy K ronenfeld has argued that, contrary to M arxist and cultural materialist readings that explain King ljear as proto-com m unist, the language o f the play is “well accounted for by traditional P rotestant rank-respecting exhortations to and

concepts o f charity” .24 In the light o f this, we can read Lear’s prayer as paraphrasing the Song o f Mary — also know n as the Magnificat — that is in b o th the G ospel o f Luke and the Book of Common Prayer. T he “houseless heads and unfed sides” (3.4.30) can be those o f “low degree” exalted in the Song o f M ary,25 while the humility o f “Take physic, pom p” (3.5.33) w ould have rem inded an early m odern audience probably well-acquainted with the canticle that G od “hath scattered the p ro u d ” .26 T h e prom ise th at he w ho

overcomes will have “pow er over the nations”27 accounts for the hierarchy o f

Protestantism K ronenfeld identifies, bu t also Lear’s resolution “to feel w hat wretches feel” and then “shake the superflux to them | A nd show the heavens m ore just” (3.4.34, 35-36). T o p ut it another way, his words bring to m ind the alms-giving and government- controlled charity o f Shakespeare’s day that K ronenfeld points out, b ut they also

24 Judy Kronenfeld, “‘So distribution should undo excess, and each man have enough’: Shakespeare’s King

Lear— Anabaptist Egalitarianism, Anglican Charity, Both, Neither?”, E L H , 59 (1992), 755-784 (p.764).

25 Luke, 1.52. 26 Luke, 1.51. 27 Revelation, 2.26.

rearticulate the prom ise to “give un to every one o f you according to your w orks” .28 Ultimately, Lear’s language n o t only confirm s P rotestant dogma, b u t can also be read as an invocation to the justice o f pagan gods that, at the same time, paraphrases the wrath o f a G od w ho “hath filled the hungry w ith good things” and sent the rich “empty away”, an instance o f the biblical eschatology in Lear’s m om ents o f m adness.29

Christian connotations also surface in b o th Q uarto and Folio w hen Lear invokes “sweet heaven” (1.5.43). Like “d oo m ” , heaven could be neutral: it was understood as “the expanse in which the sun, m oon, and stars, are seen” o r “the ‘realm ’ or region o f space beyond the clouds or the visible sky” (O ED , sb.l.a, jA3.a). O n the other hand, the term is also m ore specific. It is

the celestial abode o f im m ortal beings; the habitation o f G o d and his angels, and o f beatified spirits, usually placed in the realms beyond the sky; the state o f the blessed hereafter. O pposed to hell. (O ED , sb.5.a)

Lear’s call on heaven would have implied the hom e o f G o d and the sky, as well as the canopy over the G lobe Theatre’s stage.

The play com bines Christian m oral values w ith its pagan setting. N o clear notions o f heaven, hell, or salvation com plim ent the Christian issues th at are so central to the play. As a result, the simultaneous presence o f Christian ideas and the absence o f a metaphysical structure that m ight provide relief from the play’s tragic events can be read as placing Christianity in King Eear beyond the antithesis o f presence and absence. Equivocations such as Lear’s “sweet heaven” call u p o n Christian imagery from a pre- Christian context, at once invoking and deferring an ordered religious framework that “does no t succeed in arriving, precisely by arriving” .30 King Eear articulates Christian

28 Revelation, 2.23.