King Lear’s Noble Anger
Of the four ancient schools most esteemed by the humanists—Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism—the last is espoused by More’s Utopians, who regard the Stoics as their particular adversaries. “… I wil no Stoickes of my Jury,’ pronounces Sir John Harington in An Apologie; “of the twoo extreames, I would rather have Epicures.” Yet in a chapter on “the opposite opinions of the Stoicks and Epicures” Thomas Jackson’s A Treatise of the Divine Essence and Attributes, Part II, notes that “The Stoicks did well in contradicting the Epicures, which held fortune and Chance to rule all things..”
Moreover, cosmic Epicureanism and Stoicism had personal corollaries, which are attacked, for instance, in Miles Mosse’s Scotlands Welcome, assailing contemporary atheists: “. . . Epicures they are, for they hunt after pleasure as after their chiefest good…. Stoikes they are: for though they love to dispute of Action and Practise, yet themselves covet to sit in ease and quietnesse”. In addition, William Fulbeck’s A Booke of Christian Ethicks or Moral Philosophie describes the alternatives facing his contemporaries, who may seem, according to their actions, “fooles to the Stoikes, blockes to the Epicures”. It is such want of feeling that evokes Marullus’ outcry in Julius Caesar, “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!”, as well as Montaigne’s repeated attacks upon “Stoicall impassibility”; compare the commonplace jest in Taming of the Shrew on “stoics” and “stocks”. Speaking of a philosopher, Montaigne says, “Hee would not make himselfe a stone or a blocke, but a living, discoursing and reasoning man…” and the essayist admits himself not “begotten of a blocke or stone.” Sidney’s Arcadia, too, following the tale of the “Paphlagonian” king, observes,
Griefe is the stone which finest judgement proves: For who grieves not hath but a blockish braine.
As Edgar has been shown above to provide indications contrary to Stoicism, so Lear, whom he parallels, repudiates such unfeeling impassiveness. “Howl, howl, howl! O! you are men of stones…”
Indeed, anger marks both Lear’s opening scene, when he rages at Cordelia, and his closing scene, when at her death he storms at the heavens. Although anger was associated with the irascibility of old age, the emotion was not always discredited. On the one hand, “… in age,” notes The Pilgrimage of Man, “man is wonderfully changed, he is prompt to wrath..”, as the evil daughters agree, “You see how full of changes his age is . . . the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them”. Yet, on the other hand, in Kent’s reply to Cornwall, “but anger hath a privilege”, and in Lear’s prayer for “noble anger” may be heard an attitude antithetical to the Stoic injunction. As King James himself confesses, “I love not one that will never bee Angry: For as hee that is without Sorrow, is without Gladnesse: so hee that is without Anger, is without Love, while Bacon points out, “To seek to extinguish Anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics.” Similarly, William Sclater’s An Exposition. … upon the First Epistle to the Thessalonians argues against Stoic repression of such emotions and, like Lear, indicts “men of stones”:
The opinion of Stoickes, not allowing to their Wise man any use of Affections, not to sigh or change countenance at any crosse accident, sorts neither with Religion nor Reason…. Another sort of men wee have, in practice more then Stoicall; whom no crosse from God or men can affect to sorrow…their patience is it, or rather their blockish senselesnesse?
Indeed, a Renaissance point of view, like Lear’s, exalted a virtuous anger. Ficino and the Florentine humanists, for example, helped effect a change with regard to the traditional sin of ira, transforming it partly to a “noble rage” as in Lear’s desired “noble anger, which, instead of bursting forth, comes deliberately called.
Similar in their deaths, the protagonists provide a basis for comparison also in their lives. Although both are, as Lamb said, on the “verge of life,” for Gloucester the verge is symbolized by a physical cliff, while for Lear it is the more terrible Dover of the mind, as in Gerard Manley Hopkins’
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.
Yet the common language of their renunciation-resolves, Lear’s “To shake all cares and business from our age” and Gloucester’s presuicidal:
This world I do renounce, and in your sights Shake patiently my great affliction off
in light of the consequence of such attempts, may suggest human suffering is unshakable; the attempt to escape leads only to further suffering. Whereas the abject Gloucester falls undignifiedly, Lear stands erect as he challenges the elements to “Singe my white head!”. The latter’s attitude to life as well as to death seems summed up in several lines of Choice, Chance, and Change, regarding one who, being “moulded of a noble mind”, has “steele unto the backe” and “Cries not with feare, to heare a thunder cracke.” Such a person:
Stoupes not to death until the heart do crack; Lives like himself, and at his latest breath, Dies like himself…
-excerpted from “King Lear and the Gods” by William Elton (1966)