An Undoing of Pattern or a Pattern of Undoing? Sin, Folly and Chaos in Shakespeare’s King Lear

Abstract

ABSTRACT The opening of King Lear evokes a series of mathematical operations: Lear seeks a multiplication of love in exchange for the division of the kingdom, but rejects the equals sign given to him by Cordelia in pursuit of the triangular “more than” offered by Goneril and Regan. These are the signs that comprise the play’s inventory, articulating a complex equation whose effects reverberate throughout the play. Drawing upon analogies from contemporary chaos and complexity theories, I read the play-world of Shakespeare’s King Lear as a complex system which demonstrates features including disproportionality between cause and effect, and patterns which are, to borrow James Gleick's description of chaotic structures, “locally unpredictable, globally stable”. I map these patterns onto the distinction between sin and folly in the play, outlining how Lear’s foolish actions in the opening scene catalyse a chain of disproportional consequences. These events are experienced as “locally unpredictable” disorder by characters described as possessing the attribute of folly, but the sinful characters including Goneril, Regan and Edmond participate in a complex and “globally stable” order. Lear’s apparent undoing of pattern is, on another level, a pattern of undoing.