Catherine O'Hara Dead

Catherine O’Hara has died. This is sad for her many fans. But I am offended by the media inevitably referring to this as her “tragic death.”

We all die. Death ends every life. If every death is tragic, every life ends in tragedy. Do we really believe that? Is our vision so narrow?

O’Hara lived to the age of 71: that is a full life, the Biblically alotted threescore and ten. Although we may have become accustomed to people living longer, it is enough. In historical or international terms, it is already an accomplishment to have lived that long. 

O’Hara bore and raised two children. That’s a good return on investment: given one life, she produced two more. That is already a great legacy.

She died, according to her agent, “after a brief illness.” It sounds as though she did not go through prolonged suffering. Given that we all need to go, that’s the best way to go. A good death.

And although she did do well, and became famous, Catherine O’Hara spent her life not just trying to make money and acquire things, but in the arts, using the gifts God gave her to the fullest to bring light into other lives. She let her light shine, as we are told to do by our Lord. She stayed salty; she did not lose her savor to the last. She died in harness, still acting, singing, and performing.

Given her talents, we can assume life was not easy for her. It is not easy for most of us; it is the vale of soul-making. Beauty in the arts comes only through pain. Why would she want to linger, if something infinitely better was waiting for her?

It is perverse, profane, and disrespectful to her memory to call this a tragedy.

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."