I am looking at King Lear in an edition of the complete works (published in 1951 and revised in 1973) edited by David Bevington, emeritus at Chicago. Bevington’s footnotes are meant for a rather well-read and self-sufficient reader, someone who wants a brief but thorough historical introduction to each work but only wants the occasional gloss or parsing of complex sentences and abstruse expressions. But Bevington also lets slip some interpretive suggestions about the role or place of religion in the play that I’d like to consider in a little detail.
(The scans I took at the library are too big to upload, so here is a Google link to view them)
In act I, scene 1, line 162, as Lear lets forth an oath “Now, by Apollo – ” which Kent brusquely interrupts “Now, by Apollo, king / Thou swear’st thy gods in vain,” Bevington’s footnote (162) tells us: “The play of King Lear is rather carefully pagan in all its externals.” He’s right, of course, as the play’s many references to gods and goddesses of nature and justice (in addition to the Greek mythical tradition) seem rather untethered to any Christian worldview. My question is whether Bevington’s observation here – i.e. Shakespeare is carefully avoiding Christian themes in the play’s “externals”– should inform his glosses for the rest of the play.
I’m thinking, for instance, of Act I Scene IV line 18, when Kent (now disguised) re-introduces himself to Lear: “I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve him truly that will put me in trust….to fight when I cannot choose; and to eat no fish” (emphasis mine). Bevington’s gloss for the “eat no fish” teaches us that “Warburton’s explanation is usually followed: Roman Catholics, who observed the custom of eating fish on Fridays, were thought of as enemies of the government.” If we buy that gloss, then Kent is defining himself in contradistinction to Catholics: the grid of interpretation we’re being offered is one that forces us back into a Christian universe, despite the earlier comment that the externals of the play are carefully non-Christian. I think Bevington is wary and subtle here — he gives us Warburton’s gloss but doesn’t it make it authoritative, leaving other interpretations possible for why Kent describes himself as an anti-pescatarian. But I’m still left puzzling: is it expected practice for an editor’s observation about the play as a whole to have a kind of binding power or be any kind of axiological principle for the rest of the glosses? Do we expect consistency and coherence from gloss to gloss across the totality of the editor’s work or is it ok for an editor to leave these kinds of apparent contradictions unresolved if it’s all in an effort to open up the text’s irresolutions and explain its oddities as best one can?