Truthiness and Liars and Lear

King Lear:

All of King Lear comes down to Albany's closing statement. He says “speak what we feel, not what we ought to say” (275).

From the very beginning we are confronted with an opportunity to speak the truth. Truth is a big deal. Truth is also a rare thing. This is not Truth's fault. The fault is ours. Why is it so difficult to do what Albany says? Or, why do we suck so much?

Lear, in his fragile state, demands to hear about who loves him and how much. 2 of the 3 daughters make fanciful statements meant to deceive Lear into thinking they love him more. The strange thing is that Lear's favourite is the one who is honest with him and is the one who suffers for that honesty. Lear gets the answer he should expect and the answer he should honour. Instead he punishes her greatly for this. His ego is in his way. Who's isn't?

Lear is on a warpath against truth from this point on. Perhaps he is anxious about the truth of his age, his cognitive capacity, his loneliness, the impending doom of death ever ready to knock on the door of an aged and once noble king. The truth ought to be rewarded and promoted. Lear, however, has a drive to vanquish truth, to crush it, to bury it beneath words that sound nicer to us than the truth sounds. It is as though Lear suffers from the truth.

Kent, his loyal companion, suffers for truth. Kent remains loyal even though his loyalty is  what brings him more punishment. I am tempted to consider Kent a masochist. But that would be a half-witty and hopefully clever observation, and I fear it would not even be a good one at that. Kent is actually  what most don't have the courage to be. Kent is almost too good to be true. And he is certainly too good for the world he lives in. I have noticed this with a lot of great characters. Great characters, like great people, have no place in the world. They make the rest of us face the fact that we are capable of greatness and good. Most are comfortable fighting this truth though.

Edmund, until the very end, is rewarded for his deception. Edmund is a force. I view great characters not as people so much as forces. Edmund the force drives our dishonesty at full speed. It is hard to avoid Edmund's charm and power. Edmund makes some honest observations, one of the best is his observation that we like to find blame for our shortcomings in anything around.

Edmund proclaims: “This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortune – often the surfeit of our own behaviour – we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treacherers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on.” (121). It is hard to disagree with this observation of our foppery and general fopperyness.

I understand Edmund's drive. I understand his pain. I am drawn to Edmund. I do not necessarily agree with everything he does though. This does not stop me from understanding why he does them. Edmund is a very powerful force of untruth. He also will not allow us to make him a victim of circumstance. However, I feel a tension when he does this, as though he does not entirely believe it himself. His speech is like one of Hannibal Lecter's, when he tells Clarice “Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling, I happened. You can't reduce me to  set of influences.” Edmund, and Hannibal, were not given fair starts. So it is going to be difficult to remove all circumstances when trying to understand them. Throwing out these circumstances would be nonsense. But Edmund knows this. I think Edmund is more comfortable turning his pain into anger, his hurt into strength.

Lear is a force only in his weakness. The only person he does not punish for honesty is the Fool. The lovely and endearing Fool. The Fool can get away with telling Lear exactly how it is. Lear continuously questions whether he should allow this or not. In the end Lear allows the Fool to be truthful. Given Lear's previous treatment of moments of Truthiness this is a victory.

The force of untruth is eventually defeated. Truth has been at a disadvantage in the play though. It is in our world as well. Cordelia is thrown to the winds. Kent is broken and debased. Edgar is forced into rags from Edmund. Kent and Edgar disguise themselves. They use deception to conquer deception. Kent gets to remain what he has always been: loyal, whether as the fool or as the foolish Kent trapped in a world of deception. Edgar's reckoning, complete with brilliant armour, is a moment of the utmost beauty and truth.

The tragedy of King Lear then is that truth comes at a cost. It doesn't have to. But Lear makes it so. And, I fear, so do most of us in our daily lives.