Something From Nothing

I have attended of late to King Lear as once I attended to Hamlet. Then I was closer in age to the Prince of Denmark, and I had something to prove to the world, having been once denied participation in an Honor’s English Class where Hamlet was studied because, it was adjudged, I was not smart enough. I spent the next thirty years studying Shakespeare’s tragedy, teaching it many times, attending numerous performances of it, owned the Richard Burton Broadway production, and once even dressed as the prince for a celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday. Then I even walked about in black doublet and hose crying out “What a rogue and peasant slave am I.” I have read Lear three times in the past six months and viewed a video of a production starring Ian McKellan as Lear. During the mad scene I cried. I understand him better now than before.
     I seem to recall the first time I studied Lear. Dr. Wise’s claim that the theme of Shakespeare’s Lear is stated early in the play and, ironically, spoken by Lear himself. When Lear asks Cordelia what she can say that would quantify her love for him she answers, “Nothing, my lord.” Lear counters, “Nothing will come of nothing.” He threatens that unless Cordelia speaks, Lear will cancel his gift to her of the larger part of his kingdom. As a result of her inability to put her heart into words—to say nothing—Cordelia will receive nothing, but her nothing is imbued with something: her love for Lear. Nothing is not empty.

     What I understand now is that the play is proof text that, indeed, though nothing will come of nothing, that nothing is always something. If zero is a place holder then the zero that nothing represents is not empty of either quantity or meaning. Goneril says to Lear, “I love you more than word can wield the matter . . . A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable,” and yet her words are false: a place of nothing replete with meaning. Her words are empty and full of meaning. Lear’s second daughter Regan announces, “I profess/Myself an enemy to all other Joys/Which the most precious square of sense possesses/And find I am alone felicitate/In your Highness’ love.” These words, too, are empty, but they are not nothing: they are heavy with meaning though their meaning is ironic. Her happiness depends fully on her joys other than her love for her father. Kent recognizes that Cordelia’s “nothing” is honestly spoken, and he expresses hope that the generous, effusive speeches of love spoken by Goneril and Regan may by their deeds be approved. But Kent knows that the words spoken by Goneril and Regan—their something-- contain nothing, but this nothing is not also meaningless.

     The fool asks Lear, “Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?” and Lear echoes his earlier conclusion, “Nothing can be made out of nothing.” But the play suggests that the opposite contains greater truth: out of nothing that is always something, something new might be made, as a zero added to the number 1 makes 10. Edgar, hiding in the guise of a mad man, declares “Edgar, I nothing am,” but in his care for Lear and for his father, he is always Edgar. Kent, placed in the stocks and reading Cordelia’s letter, declares, “Nothing almost sees miracles/But misery.” In the deepest despair when nothing seems possible, the slightest relief seems miraculous and is something. Nothing makes space for something. A gentleman, having observed Lear raging in the storm describes him to Gloucester thus: the King “tears his white hair,/Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage/Catch in their fury and make nothing of . . .” But Lear’s dishevelment is not nothing but evidence of his madness. The statement is filled with irony because soon Gloucester will be, in fact, eyeless, and in his blindness, he will come to see that to which he had been blind.
     My heart breaks with Lear’s acknowledgement that his pain derives from his being a “very foolish fond old man.” I have some affinity with his condition. Lear states that he is eighty-years of age and upwards. I am not yet that old, though I certainly hope to arrive at least at that age. But now I return to Lear’s statement “Nothing will come of nothing,” and his disinheritance of Cordelia for her silence. Because in Act III, scene ii, Lear gone now mad, stands exposed to the storm. The Fool begs Lear to make some peace with his daughters, Regan and Goneril, and come in from the storm, but Lear even in his madness cries out that Nature has not joined forces with his “pernicious daughters” to strike “’gainst a head/So old and white as this.” To the Fool’s supplicatory urgings to speak to his daughters Lear responds, “No, I will be the pattern of all patience./I will say nothing.” It is this same nothing for which Cordelia had been banished. Lear has learned how there is always something and not nothing.

     At play’s end, Lear and his daughters are dead, the kingdom is shattered, and only Edgar, Kent and Albany remain. Kent announces he goes soon to his own death, Albany renounces any claim to leadership and authority, and only Edgar remains of the original court. The kingdom is destroyed. Edgar laments, “The weight of this sad time we must obey/Speak what we feel not what we ought to say./The oldest have borne most; we that are young/Shall never see so much nor live so much nor live so long.” The play has returned to where it began: Cordelia could neither speak her feelings nor say what she ought to say. And nothing has come of nothing. There is not much left of the kingdom or authority. And that is something.    Blinded Gloucester says to Lear “O, let me kiss that hand!”, and Lear responds, “Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.” How full has Lear become of Cordelia’s nothing.