Humanizing the end

In his contribution to The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature , Joseph Wittreich examines the apocalyptic elements of King Lear . Shakespeare doesn’t hold, he thinks, to traditionally Christian views of the end, nor does he want to turn the apocalyptic framework into a fixed law of history. His solution is to “humanize” the apocalypse by turning responsibility for the shaping of history over to man” so as to “secularize the Christian prophecy.”

In Lear’s horrors, Shakespeare pushes us to the edge so as to gain perspective on our predicament: “for Shakespeare the present is a time of amelioration, not of history’s apocalyptic transformation; it is a time for man’s moving toward perfection but not a moment in which that perfection is achieved. We are brought to the edge of the world and end of time not because the world is about to end, but because, for Shakespeare, from this perspective man can be contemplate the horrors of human existence and negotiate his way around them” (195).

Two comments: First, emphasizing “amelioration” doesn’t at all put Shakespeare outside orthodoxy, or suggest a secularization; it sounds perfectly Augustinian. Second, it’s hard to see how Lear exemplifies Shakespeare’s desire to emphasize human shaping of history, when the history found in the play so manifestly escapes human control. Gloucester is wrong that “like flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods.” But there is something if not someone presiding over the world of the play.