Self-Discovery in Montaigne's "Of Solitarinesse" and King Lear

Abstract

There is not much lesse vexation in the government of a private family, than in the managing of an entire state.... [T]hough be lesse important, they are as importunate. Moreover, though we have freed our selves from the court, and from the market, we are not free from the principall torments of our life. --Michel de Montaigne Shortly before the composition of King Lear, Shakespeare's England saw the appearance of John Florio's 1603 translation of Michel de Montaigne's Essais, including a chapter, Of Solitarinesse, in which the French author explores the implications of a simple axiom: Contagion is very dangerous in a throng (1) In addition to the very real danger of spreading disease (such as the outbreak of plague that closed the London theaters that same year), there was a kind of moral contagion that could be contracted by consorting with the wrong sort of people, especially in close quarters: Merchants that travell by sea, have reason to take heed that those which goe in the same ship, be not dissolute, blasphemers, and wicked (189). Likewise, those who traveled on land risked encountering highwaymen, vagrants, and a host of other dangers on the roads and at crowded inns along the way. Montaigne learned these lessons the hard way. Famous for doing much of his thinking on horseback, his personal encounters with unsavory elements of his backward region of southern France included one episode in which he was captured and threatened with death by a group of armed thugs. (2) As a remedy against such dangers, he recommends retirement from active life, particularly to wealthy householders of a certain age who can afford the luxury of retreating into the relative safety of their homes and privacy of their studies. At long last freed of importunate domesticall occupations and time-consuming public obligations, such men can take stock of their lives and, above all, contemplate the self. Whereas Montaigne's essay outlines physical and psychological benefits of solitude, King Lear depicts various nefarious effects of public life and companionship on the individual self. In fact, as I shall argue, the behavior of Lear seems patently to contravene every recommendation found in Montaigne's essay. It is as if Shakespeare used Of Solitarinesse as source material but inverted its core contents so as to produce a kind of negative exemplum in dramatic form. On the whole, King Lear seems more a kind of dramatic essay on pleasure, on crowdedness, on cementing future bonds with others--even though the play opens with Lear's decision to divide his kingdom, divest his authority, and retire from the world. Initially, his intentions seem to coincide exactly with Montaigne's recommendations: `tis our fast intent To shake cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburthen'd crawl toward death. (1.1.37-40) (3) However, his subsequent demand that his daughters vie for his affection occasions Cordelia's refusal to play along, and her retort to Goneril and Regan, Why have my sisters husbands, if they say / They love you all? (1.1.98-99). She slices through the thin veneer concealing her father's essential fragility, vulnerability, and dependence. Above all, Lear's vitriolic reaction to Cordelia's reply underscores his unwillingness to light, so to speak, on the final voyage toward death. Since she refuses to let him set [his] rest / On her kind nursery (1.1.122-23), instead he will travel monthly--encumbered with an enormous train and whatever else appertains to all th' addition to a king (1.1.135)--from Goneril's castle in Albany in the extreme northeast to Regan's castle in Cornwall in the southwest. (4) This quasi-royal progress would of course present a significant imposition on either host as well as on the great houses along the way (such as the duke of Gloucester's). Lear's proposal would be impractical for a young king, never mind one supposedly crawling unburdened toward death. …