In order to fully appreciate the text, we need to delve into the relevant social and historical context that surrounds King Lear. Create a blog post and do some research into the following:

• The Elizabethan/Jacobean world view
• The Divine Right to Rule
• The state of England under Elizabeth I and James I
• Shakespeare’s education and additional plays

Once you have researched these topics, summarise your knowledge on them and explain how they may have played a part in influencing Shakespeare’s writing of King Lear.

William Shakespeare was born in 1564 whilst Elizabeth I was in power. Elizabeth I was one of three children, having a sister, Mary I and once having a brother Edward. Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII wished for a male child because males are more entitled to rule England than females and since Edward was the first male child, despite being the youngest of three, he was the first to rule England. After Edward died of tuberculosis, Mary I came into power since there were no other children to fill the role. Mary I had a Catholic devotion and despised and chopped the heads of Protestants. The reformation then occurred, a European movement wherein attacks on corruption in the Catholic church of Rome led to the founding of non-Catholic Protestant churches, where all Englih Catholics were seen as potential traitors. After Mary I died, Elizabeth then became queen and having pretended to be Christian whilst Mary was in power switched to Protestant religion amidst the reformation and despised Catholics like Mary Queen of Scots and those in Europe, thus killing Catholics as Mary did to Protestants. This conflict draws parallel to Regan and Goneril who seemingly were in unison mindset whilst Mary was in power but once Elizabeth was in power it came into light that they had opposing opinions and hated each other. Life in Elizabethan times was cruel and hard, but through religious beliefs, people made sense of their existence, almost everyone believing in God and expecting to go to heaven or hell after death.

The Great Chain of Being, a concept inherited from the Middle Ages, was an attempt to give an order to the vastness of creation, constructing an idea that God created everything in a strict hierarchy which stretched from God himself, down to the lowest things in existence, such as rocks and gumboots. Accepting one’s place in the chain was a duty that would be rewarded by God in heaven, whereas disrupting the chain was thought to lead to chaos (many still did change their position in society without the eruption of chaos) as seen in King Lear after he enables his female daughters to gain more power than him. Another common belief was that fairies, witchcraft, spells and prophecies existed and had a great influence on life. Nightmares and insanity were often blamed on fairies, goblins and sprites, whereas witches blamed for disease and disasters. Astrology, the belief that the position and movement of the stars influence events on earth, was also important. Another is the human body being thought of like a miniature representation of the universe as a whole, in that it contains four humours (black bile, phlegm, blood and chiles), imbalance of which causes high temperament, illness and mental disorders (eg. excess black bile leads to depression).

Little is known about Shakespeare’s education, or much about his life at all because it was such a long time ago and therefore information may be misconstrued over the centuries. It is commonly believed that Will studied at King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon and learned the sophisticated language of Latin and the many authors of Latin literature. Boys usually went to school only if their parents could afford not to send them straight out to the workforce. Girls, on the other hand, were typically taught at home and therefore weren’t given the same opportunities as boys, indicating the sexism during this period. They mostly studied Latin. Shakespeare then left at fifteen and didn’t go to university, reading what books he could get ahold of in order to educate himself. Due to his father’s glover business being in difficult times and the family being in debt, Shakespeare left for London to begin his playwrighting career. 

From 1589 to 1608, Lear mostly produced comedies such as the Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Merchant of Venice. However, around about the time that the Bubonic Plague returned to ravage London, Shakespeare switched from writing cheerful comedies to mainly tragedies, possibly to adapt to how the audience was feeling at the time surrounding monarchy and the upsetting of the gods. The nature of authority is a key theme in King Lear. Many believe that the concept of a King’s decision having a heavy negative toll on a country expressed in King Lear is inspired by Henry VIII’s decision to separate from the Catholic church and the devastating political, spiritual and societal impacts that the Monarch’s personal desires and actions could have on the entirety of England. Lear, having heavy interest in history and the past rulers of England wrote Lear as an exploration into issues surrounding patriarchial monarchy and what happens if the King’s relationship to his family and state is broken. Lear played with the audience’s Jacobean understandings of limits and abuses of the relationship between monarch and country in order to evoke the fear produced from tragedies which Aristotle discusses in Poetics. Shakespeare wrote about human nature and how people behave. Since human tendencies haven’t changed over the centuries, his ideas are just as relevant now as they were four centuries ago.