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Abstract
ABSTRACTCritical literature has long identified in King Lear the transition from feudalism to bourgeois values that Shakespeare observed in his own time, and contrasted the feudal party of Lear with the “nascent capitalism” of the party of Edmond and the new Machiavellian man. The play offers the possibility to view Lear’s partition of the kingdom as the introduction of the law of supply and demand at the heart of the feudal bond. By making his vassals compete with one another, with the largest share allotted to the highest bidder, Lear translates the feudal economy of mutual exchange into market economy. The value of the goods and services on offer fluctuates and love, the currency used in the deal, enters the money market. The opening scene, organised as a formal ceremony of commendatio reasserting fealty simultaneously lays the foundation for the disruption of feudalism. Even before Edmond’s proto-capitalist manifesto, Lear’s transformation of a gift-based into a commodity-based economy is one by which “the social fabric of the group is invariably destroyed”.
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