"Missing Mothers and Absent Fathers": Howard Barker's Seven Lears and Elaine Feinstein's Lear's Daughters

Abstract

If we are to accept that the family represents the bedrock of a stable society, or, as Milton termed it, "the Fountain and Seminary of good subjects," then what are we to make of Shakespeare's King Lear? Within that play we are presented with the alarming spectacle of a family and a kingdom that have both undergone savage dislocation and moral collapse. Barbara J. Bono believes that the family in King Lear is the key to providing an understanding of "a play that finally rests on our [own] kind nursery, in the pre-Oedipal realm of the maternal gesture." The dynamics of family structure motivating the tragic outcome that we see unfold in Shakespeare's play are shared by the dramatists Howard Barker and Elaine Feinstein in their respective plays Seven Lears (1989) and Lear's Daughters (1987). These plays use themes from King Lear to examine the idea of the family, particularly the role of the father within that family structure, in order to provide alternative readings to the familiar ending in Shakespeare's play. Both of the modem plays directly attribute Lear's tragic fate to his neglect of his roles as husband and father.