Exonerating Goneril and Regan

 

Looking for discussion questions online for a class on MacBeth, I came on this, in paraphrase: if MacBeth is the villain of the play, who is the hero? Is it Banquo, or MacDuff?

False premise. Looking for heroes and villains makes sense in the main them of the tale is man versus man. But that is one of several, traditionally seven, possibilities. Tragedies are not man versus man; they are always man versus fate, or man versus God/the gods, which is the same thing. Witness the Three Witches in MacBeth—the Three Fates.

There can be villains in tragedy—Iago—but usually the case is unclear. Often deliberately unclear, so as not to obscure the main conflict. Given the notion of hubris, technically, the same main character is both hero and villain. And more villain than hero in the end. He is always responsible for his own fate.

This made it occur to me that I too have been misreading King Lear. I had always taken Regan and Goneril as the villains. They treat their father so disrespectfully, right? In contrast to the good and dutiful Cordelia. “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” as Lear laments, and all that.

Still, it always struck me as a little confusing that Shakespeare has Lear at first unreasonably favour Cordelia, before then unreasonably favouring Regan and Goneril. 

“I loved her most, and thought to set my rest…”

His favouritism is apparently notorious, and it is his fatal flaw. The play begins by pointing it out:

“I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.”

He didn’t have to invent that, were he trying to affirm Lear’s claim. It is not so clearly a case of favoured children being ungrateful; for most of their lives, Regan and Goneril were apparently less favoured.

And Shakespeare shows the same pattern in Gloucester’s family. Edgar was first favoured, then Edmund.

This makes Regan and Goneril’s treatment of their father seem more reasonable; even if they are flatterers, and opportunists. Their sin is refusing to allow their father a standing army. No responsible government should allow a standing, independent army. It is axiomatic that, to keep the peace, the government claims a monopoly on force.

This is all the more important since we and they know Lear’s judgement is unreliable and capricious. He might at any time, in some fit of anger, rise up and start a civil war. Governments exist to prevent just this sort of thing. 

Wise of them, therefore, to agree on one common front to handle Lear. Lear might otherwise throw his weight at any moment on one or the other side of an evenly divided country, giving those who want insurrection an ideal opportunity.

"You see how full of changes his age is; the observation we have made of it hath not been little: he always loved our sister most; and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off appears too grossly."

Regan and Goneril are unsympathetic characters, no doubt, but, in the mold of the classic tragic hero, Lear is responsible for his own troubles.

It is his own pride and rage, and not his two daughters, who drive him out onto the heath:

"REGAN: For his particular, I'll receive him gladly, but not one follower.

GONERI: So am I purposed."