King Lear and the Rhetoric of Alienation
A R Buck
King Lear is a play about a monarch who legally alienates his property and
as a consequence suffers severe personal alienation. In this article I will
explore the relationship between these two meanings of alienation in the play.
This will involve, first, an examination of recent developments in the legal
discourse of property theory; in particular, the work of the legal theorist
Margaret Jane Radin on the dual meanings of ’’property" and "alienation".1
Second, Radin’s insights on the moral consequences of the multiple meanings
of property and alienation are applied to the historical literature on the
relationship between the rise of capitalism and the changing concept of
property in early modem England. Third, the focus on material factors
evident in the historical work on the history of property is complemented by
an examination of the intellectual factors shaping the concept of property in
the sixteenth century; in particular, the role played by the notion of the "Fall
of Man". Fourth, the intellectual justifications for private property articulated
in the sixteenth century are then juxtaposed to the argument against property
expressed in More’s Utopia. Through such an analysis it will be shown, on
the one hand, that an application of the findings drawn from the theory and
history of property can yield rich insights into our understanding of King
Lear, while, one the other hand, the insights provided by a humanist source
such as King Lear can illuminate our understanding of the historical
development of property in early modem England. In this way, finally, we
may reflect on the potential afforded by and the problems associated with
interdisciplinary analysis.
M J Radin, Reinterpreting Property, University of Chicago Press, 1993.
49
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
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I
King Lear was adapted by Shakespeare from sources including Holinshed’s
Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland and a play entitled The True
Chronicle History of King Leir} In Shakespeare’s Lear the King pays dearly
for his decision to divide his kingdom. He loses his property, his status, his
power, his sanity, his daughter and, ultimately, his life. Shakespeare’s Lear
was the product of a particular time as well as place. Almost a century later,
in 1681, Nahum Tate could present an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Lear
where Cordelia and Edgar marry and Lear lives to give away the bride.23 But
Shakespeare’s Lear is much darker.
The play was written, it seems, between late 1605 and early 1606.4 A year
before King James announced his intention to assume the style of King of
Great Britain.5 In 1605 he was publicly celebrated in London as the second
Brutus, fulfilling Merlin’s ancient prophecy to reunite the kingdom. This
desire to unite Britain under one Crown was the fulfilment of a long-standing
desire on the part of James. Even before he had ascended to the throne he
had written to his son that in the event of England, Ireland and Scotland
being united under his rule, he should leave to his own eldest son:
all your kingdoms; and provide the rest with private possessions:
Otherwayes by deviding your kingdoms, yee shall leave the seed of
division and discord among your posteritie.6
In 1605, when Shakespeare’s Lear was apparently written, James had three
children; his sons were the Duke of Cornwall and the Duke of Albany.
Much has been made of these facts in recent years in the world of literary
scholarship, and variations on an interpretative theme have been developed
in order to see connections between these events. Marie Axton, in her essay
2
3
J L Halio, "Introduction", in The Tragedy of King Lear, J L Halio (ed), CUP, 1992, p 2.
Laura Rosenthal uses Tate’s version for an interesting exegesis on the history of intellectual property
rights in early modern England. See L J Rosenthal, "(Re)Writing Lear: Literary Property and
Dramatic Authorship", in Early Modern Conceptions of Property, John Brewer and Susan Staves
(eds), Routledge, 1995, p 323.
4
Halio, above, n 2, pp 1-2. See also R Fraser, "The Date and Source of King Lear", in The Tragedy
of King Lear, R Fraser (ed), Signet, 1963, p 190.
5
The following passage draws on R Halpem, The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation: English
Renaissance Culture and the Genealogy of Capital, Cornell UP, 1991, pp 219-220.
6
Halpern, above, n 5, p 219.
50
KING LEAR AND THE RHETORIC OF ALIENATION
"The Problem of the Union: King James and King Lear",1 John Turner, in
his essay "The Tragic Romances of Feudalism",78 and Richard Halpem, in his
Marxist study of English Renaissance culture,9 are but three examples of the
attempt to explain King Lear in the light of concurrent political
developments. Indeed, Constance Jordan has gone so far as to ask if:
assuming the parallels to be valid, is Shakespeare criticizing James
for believing that the mystery will work politically, as James own
speeches suggest it would? Is he warning James that he might
acquire the means of enforcement if he is to get his way? Or is he
painting such a terrible picture of the bestial politics this policy
would occasion in order to encourage the Commons to hold to their
principles in English law?10
How we could ever hope to discover the answers to such questions is an
issue which Jordan leaves unresolved.
The question of James’s politics and its possible relationship to King Lear is,
moreover, merely one example of a vast range of political and historical
interpretations of the play. John Danby was an early and influential exponent
of an historical and, although Danby was no Marxist, Marxiant interpretation
of Lear.11 Danby interpreted Lear by reference to the transition from
feudalism to capitalism (or, more precisely, though Danby does not make this
clear, the model of the transition from feudalism to capitalism). Danby
presented this interpretation by juxtaposing the societal values of Edmund
with the societal values of Lear. Thus Edmund:
belongs to the new age of scientific enquiry and industrial
development, of bureaucratic organisation and social regimentation,
the age of mining and merchant-venturing, of monopoly and empire­
7
M Axton, "The Problem of the Union: King James and King Lear", in Axton, The Queen’s Two
Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession 131-43, Royal Historical Society, 1977.
x
J Turner, "The Tragic Romances of Feudalism", in Shakespeare: The Play of History, G Holderness,
N Potter and J Turner, Macmillan, 1988, pp 83-154.
9
Halpern, above, n 5, pp 219-20.
10
C Jordan, "King Lear and the ‘Effectual Truth’ of Machiavellian Politics" in , Law, Literature and
the Settlement of Regimes, Proceedings of the Folger Institute Center for the History of British
Political Thought, G J Schochet (ed), The Folger Institute, 1990, Vol 2, p 94.
11
J F Danby, Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature: A Study of King Lear, Faber and Faber, 1966.
51
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
(1996) 12
making, the age of the sixteenth century and after: an age of
competition, suspicion, glory.12
Lear, on the other hand, represents, for Danby, the world of feudalism. Or as
Danby has it:
Edmund’s is a society of the New Man and the New Age: it is a
society based on unfettered competition and the war of all against
all. Lear’s is the feudal state in decomposition.13
This interpretation was re-worked in an explicitly Marxist, rather than
Danby’s Marxiant, analysis by Paul Delany.14 For Delany, King Lear:
represents the neocapitalist economy of the Renaissance, not directly,
but rather through an exploration of the philosophical concepts and
moral values that are typically associated with that economy.15
The theme was again re-worked by John Turner, who interprets the play, not
so much as the clash of feudalism and capitalism, but rather as the collapse
of feudalism under its own internal contradictions.16
Another influential example of applying the findings of political and social
history to the play has come from Rosalie Colie, who, in her article "Reason
and Need: King Lear and the "Crisis" of the Aristocracy",17 attempts to
explain Lear by reference to Lawrence Stones’s The Crisis of the
Aristocracy18, itself a book whose findings are not unquestioningly accepted.
In the course of her essay, Colie examine the question of inheritance in the
play, arguing that:
The problem raised by the inequality of inheritance are twice
dramatized and very differently stressed. Lear takes a "modem"
12
Danby, above, n 11, p 46.
13
Danby, above, n 11, p 185.
14
P Delany, "King Lear and the Decline of Feudalism" (1977) 92 PMLA 429 (1977).
15
Delany, above, n 14 at 432.
16
Turner, above, n 8, pp 89-118.
17
R L Colie, "Reason and Need: King Lear and the ‘Crisis’ of the Aristocracy", in Some Facets of
King Lear: Essays in Prismatic Criticism, R L Colie and F T Flahiff (eds), Heinemann, 1974, pp
18
L Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1642, Clarendon Press, 1965.
185-219.
52
KING LEAR AND THE RHETORIC OF ALIENATION
solution to his predicament, the absence of a male heir: he divides
his kingdom justly among his co-heiresses, attempting to prevent
strife later. Gloucester, on the other hand, acts as the old aristocrat
would, not noticing, until he thinks himself betrayed by Edgar, the
injustice of what Stone calls "the winner-take-all doctrine of
primogeniture.19
This issue of primogeniture and inheritance has itself been re-worked by
Stephen Greenblatt, who argues:
We should note that primogeniture was never so inflexibly
established in England, even among the aristocracy, as to preclude
the exercise of parental discretion, the power to bribe, threaten,
reward, and punish. Lear’s division of his kingdom, his attempt to
set his daughters in competition with each other and to dispose of his
property equitably among them, seems less a wanton violation of the
normative practice than a daring attempt to use the paternal power
always inherent in it.20
Unfortunately, both Colie and Greenblatt invoke the law and practice of
primogeniture incorrectly in the context of their arguments: Colie because
primogeniture was applied with a substantial degree of flexibility in Tudor
and Stuart England, and Greenblatt, because in the absence of a male heir the
question of primogeniture was irrelevant.21
This raises a point about all the interpretations of Lear mentioned so far
which have utilised the insights of another discipline, notably history: and the
point is that historical insights may only be of use if they are applied with
both accuracy and a degree of qualification which, by and large, are not
found in those literary interpretations of Lear which have drawn upon the
disciplines of history and law. On the contrary, the tendency seems to be to
make outrageously definitive statements about questions where, in the
discipline of history at least, there is no agreement. The definitiveness with
which the words "feudalism" and "capitalism", for example, are used in the
studies referred to, is quite breathtaking. This reaches absurd lengths in
19
Colie, above, n 17, p 193.
20
S J Greenblatt, Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture, Routledge, 1990, p 86.
21
J Thirsk, "The European debate on customs of inheritance, 1500-1700", in Family and Inheritance:
Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800, J Goody, J Thirsk and E P Thompson (eds), CUP,
1976, pp 177-91). See also, E Spring, Land, Law and Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England,
1300-1800, U of North Carolina P, 1993.
53
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
(1996) 12
Walter Cohen’s Drama of a Nation.22 On the question of definitional
characteristics, Cohen tell us that: "In feudalism surplus is extracted by extraeconomic coercion; in capitalism it is extracted by a voluntary wage contract.
The classical locus of the capitalist mode of production is accordingly
industry, rather than agriculture or even trade and finance."23 Cohen then
informs us, alternatively, that: "King Lear offers a devastating attack on
capitalism";24 that: "Lear’s division of the country works against historical
trends by reintroducing feudalism";25 that: "the catastrophic collapse of the
old order primarily results from the combined effect from the deviation from
properly absolutist rule and the depredations of capitalism";26 and that:
"Although capitalism is irretrievably evil, feudalism may perhaps be
redeemed if it can combine its traditional human bonds with moral
content".27 Cohen then sums up the play by helpfully informing us that:
demystification and retotalization do not possess inherently opposed
ideological valences either in drama or in cultural theory. ... King
Lear ends, however, not with retotalization but with the
acknowledgement of its impossibility. The inherent contradiction
between artisanal base and absolutist superstructure in the public
theatre extends, both dramaturgically and ideologically, from the
social relations between play and audience to the aristocratic action,
and even beyond, to an assimilation into the private and public
experience of the ruling class as well.28
As Cohen himself noted: "Since one cannot simultaneously assent to all these
judgements, it is tempting to assent to none of them."29 Yet it not my
intention to debate the strengths or weaknesses of literary interpretations of
Lear. Clearly, that a rich potential is afforded by interdisciplinary analysis
is evident in the literary interpretations of Lear referred to, even if the
execution has not realised that potential. Consequently, let us turn to an
issue in the play which requires an interdisciplinary analysis in order to
reveal its importance to the play—the question of property. This will require
22
W Cohen, Drama of a Nation: Public Theater in Renaissance England and Spain, Cornell UP, 1985.
23
Cohen, above, n 22, p 163.
24
Cohen, above, n 22, p 332.
25
Cohen, above, n 22, p 330.
26
Cohen, above, n 22, p 332.
27
Cohen, above, n 22, p 332.
28
Cohen, above, n 22, p 345.
29
Cohen, above, n 22, pp 328-29.
54
KING LEAR AND THE RHETORIC OF ALIENATION
an examination of both the theory and history of property in order to
illuminate the importance of this issue to the play. Let us turn first, to the
important work of the legal theorist Margaret Radin in the legal discourse of
property theory.
II
Radin, in her recent collection of essays on property, distinguishes between
two meanings of property and two meaning of alienation.30 Property, she
argues, can mean either object-property, what Radin calls "fungible" property,
or it can mean attribute-property, what she calls "personal" or "constitutive"
property. Fungible property is that type of property which we treat as a
commodity, and, as a commodity, is expressed in terms of market rhetoric.
Constitutive property is the type of property we associate with our
personhood and is not, or should not be, expressed in terms of market
rhetoric.31 None of us, for example, would think it correct to talk of a
market for selling babies, as if they were just another marketable commodity.
Alienation, also, possesses two separate meanings. In law, alienation refers
to the transfer of property and is closely linked to the ideology of capitalist
private property. As Radin notes:
Alienability of property rights, or freedom of alienation with respect
to property is one of the most important indica of liberal (capitalist)
private property. The infrastructure of the free market is a system
of private entitlement linked to a system of private transferability:
private property plus free contract. Freedom of alienation of
property rights expresses the "free contract" part of this nexus. The
market theorist argues both that in order for private property to be
complete or well developed it must be freely alienable and that in
order for free contract to flourish there must be a well-developed
system of private entitlements. Everything must be ownable and
saleable.32
30
Radin, above, n 1, pp 191-202.
31
Radin first outlined this dichotomy in "Property and Personhood" (1982) 34 Stanford Law Review
957. At that time she labelled that kind of property bound up with personhood as "personal"
property. As she notes in the introduction to Reinterpreting Property. "Perhaps I should have called
property that is bound up with personhood ‘constitutive’ rather than ‘personal’, since ‘personal
property’ already means something else" (at 2). For this reason I will use the word ‘constitutive’ in
this paper.
32
Radin, above, n 1, p 192.
55
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
(1996) 12
The other meaning of alienation is expressed as a psychological state of
estrangement. Radin points out:
It is more familiar to users of ordinary language. Alienation in this
sense means estrangement, painful or hostile alienation of the self,
a feeling of being cut off or ostracized from one’s appropriate social
environment, a psychological malaise caused by lack of commitment
or loss of meaning in life.33
The first type of alienation she refers to as contract-alienation, the second as
estrangement-alienation. Contract-alienation is linked to fungible property;
it involves the transfer of commodities in the market-place. Estrangementalienation occurs when aspects of our personhood are tom apart. Now, as
Radin points out, in the English language at least, "the two meanings of
alienation can be linked in an ironic pun about capitalist private property".34
Why? Because in the modem liberal ideology of property there is an attempt
to treat all property (both fungible and constitutive) as if it were objectproperty. This means that all property would, or could, be alienable in the
contract-alienation sense. But, as Radin points out:
When property is a property of persons, my liberty is my property.
Does this mean I abdicate personhood if my liberty is voluntarily
relinquished? Apparently yes, if property means attribute-property.
But if at the same time property also means object-property, then
voluntarily relinquishing my liberty is also an instance of contractalienation, and in the traditional liberal ideology this is an instance
of self-expression and fulfilment of personhood rather than its
negation. Abdication of liberty is both destructive of personhood
and expressive of it.35
Consequently, the pun, as Radin points out, "is a surface manifestation of a
deep fissure in liberal ideology".36 It is precisely that liberal ideology of
freely alienable private property, moreover, which was emerging in early
modem Europe, particularly in sixteenth and seventeenth century England.
33
Radin, above, n 1, p 192.
34
Radin, above, n 1, p 193.
35
Radin, above, n 1, p 194.
36
Radin, above, n 1, p 194.
56
KING LEAR AND THE RHETORIC OF ALIENATION
By far the most pervasive, if not necessarily persuasive, historical
interpretation of the development of property in early modem England has
been a Marxist one. Within this interpretation the development of modem,
alienable private property is woven into the model of a transition from
feudalism to capitalism. Perhaps the chief exponent of this interpretation has
been C B Macpherson who argued:
It has long been recognised by social and economic historians that
the emergence of capitalism was accompanied by changes in the
concept and institutions of property.37
In an article entitled "Capitalism and the Changing Concept of Property",
Macpherson argued not only there was a clear correlation between the origins
of private property and the transition from feudalism to capitalism, but that
there was a quite precise timing of these developments.
From the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on, more and more of
the land and resources in settled countries was becoming private
property, and private property was becoming an individual right
unlimited in amount, unconditional on the performance of social
functions, and freely transferable, as it substantially remains to the
present day.38
This scenario has become part of our commonsense historical reading of the
origin of the modem world.
Where then did the juxtaposition of private property, capitalism and the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries originate? There seems to be general
agreement on the importance of Marx and Weber as the starting points for
much subsequent investigation. "In so far as historians and sociologists have
considered the relation between law, property and property relations", note
David Sugarman and G R Rubin:
the tendency has been to focus on a key feature of the transformation
from feudalism to capitalism; the rise of absolute private property.
This concern with the rise of absolute private property is not
37
C B Macpherson, "Capitalism and the Changing Concept of Property", in Feudalism, Capitalism
and Beyond, E Kamenka and R S Neale (eds), ANU Press, 1975, p 105.
3K
Macpherson, above, n 37, p 109.
57
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
(1996) 12
surprising; it informs the work of influential writers such as Marx,
Weber and Macpherson.39
Sugarman and Rubin go on to point out: "Marx’s analysis of the rise of
absolute private property and the chronology he suggested has greatly
influenced non-Marxist, as well as Marxist historians".40
The dominant Marxist/Weberian scenario has been challenged by one
particular revisionist interpretation which has not so much attacked the
scenario itself as attempted to revised its chronology. For Alan Macfarlane
in his provocative The Origins of English Individualism,41 "individualism" for which we may read Macpherson’s "possessive individualism"42 - was
alive and well in the thirteenth century. There never was a peasantry in
England, Macfarlane argues through rather selective examples drawn from his
local studies there was evidence of individual and absolute ownership of
property well before the seventeenth century.43 What we would recognise
as "capitalism" was alive and well in the thirteenth century, argues
Macfarlane.
Yet while there may be disagreement between Macfarlane and Marx on the
chronology of the emergence of capitalism, there is little dispute as far as
Macfarlane is concerned on the relation between private property and
capitalism. "In capitalism", notes Macfarlane in his recent book, The Culture
of Capitalism:
there is a full development of individual, private property. No
longer is property communal, owned by the state, community or
family, or even by the lords, as in earlier social formations, but it is
fully owned by the individual. This applies not only to real estate,
but to the ultimate "property" of an individual, his labour power. In
39
D Sugarman and G R Rubin, "Towards a New History of Law and Material Society in England,
1750-1914", in Law, Economy and Society, 1750-1914: Essays in the History of English Law, G R
Rubin and D Sugarman (eds), Professional Books, 1984, pp 24-25.
40
Sugarman and Rubin, above, n 39, p 25.
41
A Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property and Social Transition
Basil Blackwell, 1978.
42
C B Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Egalitarianism: Hobbes to Locke Clarendon
Press, 1962.
43
For a refutation of Macfarlane’s argument, see R D White and R T Vann, "The Invention of English
Individualism: Alan Macfarlane and the Modernization of Pre-Modem England" (1983) 8 Social
History 345.
58
KING LEAR AND THE RHETORIC OF ALIENATION
capitalism, all become alienable, everything is a commodity to be
traded on the market, people can buy and sell objects, and their own
and each other’s labour. All is apparently set "free" and given a
monetary value. Thus the emergence of individual private property
and of widespread wage-labour are central characteristics of
capitalism. These features allow the emergence of classes; the
owners and the owned; the landlords, farmers and labourers; the
capitalists and the workers.44
This differs little from Marx, who argued:
the legal view ... that the landowner can do with the land what every
owner of commodities can do with his commodities ... arises ... in
the modern world only with the development of capitalist
production.45
Indeed, Macfarlane quotes this passage, without criticism, in The Origins of
English Individualism.46
Consequently, when looking for the emergence of capitalism, one is led, by
the reference points of the debate, to look for the point at which property
becomes truly privatized, that is when it becomes "apparently" free, as even
Macfarlane is prepared to admit. For Macfarlane, property was "free" to be
alienated and transferred well before the seventeenth century. In the
orthodox scenario, which calls upon Marx, the seventeenth century is the
critical watershed. One can see the changed attitudes in Locke, so the
argument goes, one can see "modern" ideas of property in the Putney
debates.47 This is not the place to debate the veracity of this model of
transition. One point that may be apparent from my summary of the model
is that material factors are prioritized. Yet we should not forget that early
modem England was a deeply religious society. In particular, writers and
44
A Macfarlane, The Culture of Capitalism, Basil Blackwell, 1987, p 223.
45
K Marx, Capital, Lawrence and Wishart, 1954, Vol 3, p 616. On the question of property in Marx,
see D Sayer, "The critique of politics and political economy: capitalism, communism and the state
in Marx’s writings" (1985) 33 The Sociological Review 226. See also D Sayer, The Violence of
Abstraction: The Analytical Foundations of Historical Materialism, Basil Blackwell, 1987, pp 59-61.
46
Macfarlane, above, n 41, p 39.
47
Macpherson, above, n 42, pp 107-59. The literature on this question is extensive. See, for example,
G E Aylmer, "The Meaning and Definition of ‘Property’ in Seventeenth century Thought" (1980)
Past and Present 87. See also, D McNally, "Locke, Levellers and Liberty: Property and Democracy
in the Thought of the First Whigs" (1989) 10 History of Political Thought 17.
59
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
(1996) 12
thinkers, including Sir John Fortesque, Thomas More, Thomas Starkey, Sir
Thomas Smith, and William Shakespeare were all influenced by the notion
of ’’the Fall of Man". This notion, as we shall see, also profoundly
influenced contemporary reflections on the question of property.
.............................
Ill..............................................................
Man’s fall from a state of innocence, resulting in his being cast out of the
Garden of Eden not only introduced evil into the world, it was believed, but
brought about Man’s personal ruin, his estrangement, his alienation, if you
will. As Timothy Kenyon has pointed out:
The notion that Man’s sinfulness has introduced a substantial
element of chaos into the cosmos inspired the belief that whatever
order still pervaded the universe must be at best fragile and
continually susceptible to dissolution.
The ideal affording
perspective of this apprehension was that of the ordered universe
regulated by a "great chain of being", in which various elements,
both spiritual and temporal, existed in balanced correspondence with
an hierarchical ordering. Hence the understanding that human
sinfulness had disrupted the orderly functioning of the system.
Social and political unrest was perceived as the most dreaded
evidence of the disarray thus precipitated.48
As a result, the institution of private property was justified as a way of
providing order to the chaotic world caused by Man’s Fall. As A J Carlyle
has noted:
When men were innocent there was no need for private property, or
the other great conventional institutions of society; but as this
innocence passed away, they found themselves compelled to organise
society and the diverse institutions which should regulate the
ownership and use of the good things which men had once held in
common. The institution of property thus represents both the fall of
man from his primitive innocence, the greed and avarice which
refused to recognise the common ownership of things, and also the
4X
60
T Kenyon, Utopian Communism and Political Thought in Modern England, Pinter Publishers, 1989,
p 30.
KING LEAR AND THE RHETORIC OF ALIENATION
method by which the blind greed of human nature may be controlled
and regulated.49
Consequently, as Richard Schlatter explains:
The Fall of Man provided the social and political theorists of
Christendom with a conservative argument more persuasive and
more subtle than Aristotle’s theory of natural inequality and natural
slavery. It accepts the position that men were created equal and
insists that even now their souls are of equal worth in the eyes of
God. But at the same time it insists that since the Fall the natures
of men, all of them depraved, makes necessary [the] instruments of
social domination.50
In this way, conservative justifications for private property could be mounted.
Both Sir Thomas Smith and Thomas Starkey, for example, justify private
property as a necessary mechanism to curb Man’s sinfulness. As Neal Wood
notes of Smith:
Smith’s economic analysis and recommendations seem to rest on his
conception of man. ... By his fallen nature man is weak and selfish,
ambitious, avaricious and lustful, an egoist with little concern for the
good of others.51
As a result, Smith argues that government use law to harness this
acquisitiveness for national prosperity.52 Thomas Starkey’s writings also are
highly representative of the conservative political implications of a belief in
the Fall of Man. For Starkey, with individuals blinded by self-interest, they
will, as Wood has noted, "invariably disregard the common interest, thus
proving incapable of governing themselves well".53 This is particularly
49
A J Carlyle, "The Theory of Property in Medieval Theology", in Property: Its Duties and Rights C
Gore (ed), Macmillan, 1915, p 122.
50
R Schlatter, Private Property: The History of an Idea George Allen and Unwin, 1951, p 35.
51
N Wood, "Foundations of Political Economy: the new moral philosophy of Sir Thomas Smith", in
Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth, P A Fideler and T F Mayer (eds), Routledge, 1992,
p 145.
52
Wood, above, n 51. Smith’s principal works were published posthumously. A Discourse on the
Commonweal of this Realm of England (1581); De Republica Anglorum (1583).
5'1
N Wood, Foundations of Political Economy: Some Early Tudor Views on State and Society, U of
California P, 1994, p 133.
61
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
(1996) 12
clear in his writings on the law of property in general and inheritance in
particular. As Starkey argues, through the character of Thomas Lupset, in his
Dialogue between Pole and Lupset:
for thys is bothe certayn & sure, that yf the landys in every grete
famyly were dystrybutyd equally betwyx the bretheme in a smal
processe of yerys, they hede famyly wold dekey & by lytyl & lytyl
utturly vanysch away & so they pepul schold be wythout rularys &
hedys the wych then by theyr rudenes & foly wold schortly dysturbe
thys quyat lyfe & gud pollycy wych by many agys they have lade
here in our cuntre, such schol be the dyssensyon & dyscorde one
wyth another.54
I have argued elsewhere:
here is the real import of the reflections on the law of inheritance.
There are political considerations that far outweigh issues of equity,
reason, or the appeals to natural law. Starkey reiterates, through
Lupset’s answer, the conservative bent of his mind. The people are
too ignorant, and too easily given to anarchy, to run their own lives.
They need rulers, and that is why primogeniture exists, and that is
the end that is served by the consolidation of a ruling elite.55
But it is not simply the politically conservative implications of the question
that are of interest. Rather, it is the implications that the notion of the Fall
of Man has on the developing ideas of property in early modem England.
Early modem thinkers argued, not only that before the Fall, in a state of
innocence, all things were held in common, but also that since private
property emerged as a consequence of the Fall, that the attributes of private
property correspond to Man’s fallen nature. For this reason, a thinker such
as Sir John Fortesque could develop a theory of property in which, as Neal
Wood has pointed out:
A portion of one’s very being, one’s persona, is transferred to and
embedded in the object acquired by labor. The individual’s property
so acquired embodies his personality, becomes part of his self and
54
T Starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, T F Mayer (ed), Royal Historical Society, 1989,
p 74.
55
A R Buck, "Rhetoric and Real Property in Tudor England: Thomas Starkey’s ‘Dialogue between
Pole and Lupset’" (1992) 4 Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 31.
62
KING LEAR AND THE RHETORIC OF ALIENATION
thus a part of the patrimony to be transmitted through inheritance,
just as a portion of his persona is reproduced in his children.56
In other words, a theory of property is emerging in Renaissance England
embodying those characteristics which Radin has identified as indicative of
modem capitalist private property.57 Consequently, with the reflections of
Radin on the two meanings of property in mind, let us return to King Lear.
IV
Lear alienates his kingdom and the result is personal alienation. Why?
Precisely because his property and his personality are bound together. Rather
than separating fungible from constitutive property, the two are merged.
Thus when he alienates his land—his fungible property— his own personhood-his constitutive property—is alienated in the process. While we can see in
the writings of thinkers such as Fortesque and Starkey their justification for
private property, we can see in the writings of a dramatist such as
Shakespeare the moral consequences of private property. The setting of King
Lear, a mixture of myth and history could be said to correspond to that
lengthy period of time (which St Augustine calculated at more than three and
a half thousand years) between prelapsarian innocence and the time of
modem government; in other words, precisely that period when early modem
thinkers who accepted the story of Man’s fallen nature, argued that the
institution of private property was developed.58 This was the time of chaos
before the coming of cosmic harmony which thinkers such as Fortesque,
Smith and Starkey, for example, all argued was dependent upon the
institution of private property. As Arthur Ferguson has argued:
Civilization did not as yet have a name, but Renaissance thinkers
were sensitive, and increasingly so, to the elements that came to be
expressed by it. They were keenly aware of the contrast between
barbarism and civil society.59
Also, as Ferguson reminds us:
56
Wood, above, n 53, p 56.
57
See also D J Seipp, "The Concept of Property in the Early Common Law", (1994) 12 Law and
History Review 29. Seipp argues that the English common lawyers only came to equate "property"
with property in land after 1490.
58
Wood, above, n 53, p 54.
59
A B Ferguson, Clio Unbound: Perception of the Social and Cultural Past in Renaissance England,
Duke UP, 1979, p 346.
63
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
(1996) 12
The tradition of Christian humanism that, more than any other,
served the ideological purposes of Elizabethan intellectuals, pointed
in both directions; it embodied a view of human nature in which a
Christian consciousness of man’s fallen state and his consequent
propensity for error vied with the humanist’ faith in the potentialities
inherent in man’s "excellent nature and dignity".60
It is in this context that writers such as Smith, Starkey and Shakespeare are
located. These were intellectuals whose world view was shaped by a belief
in, or at the very least, a keen awareness of, the Fall of Man and the conflict
between chaos and cosmic harmony. Indeed, James Daly goes so far as to
claim Shakespeare as a harmonist.61 At the very least we can agree with
Ferguson that:
To those who responded more readily to Christian traditions, the
history of civilization needed no more explanation than that it
provided in the story of man’s Fall, Redemption and Ultimate
Judgement.62
Whether Lear’s journey itself can be fruitfully interpreted as just that is not
my concern here. Rather my concern is with the implications such a belief
had on developing perceptions of property. This may be usefully explored
by an examination of the argument against property articulated in
Renaissance England, of which Thomas More’s Utopia is perhaps the best
known example.
In Utopia an argument is presented in the course of the dialogue that the
abolition of private property was necessary for the good of society.63 Man
could not live under a regime of private property, it is argued, precisely
because he was fallen and therefore destined to use property to ill effect. But
there was more to this argument than the notion of the Fall of Man, of
course. Indeed, we should not prioritize unduly this one particular aspect of
Renaissance thinking. While we all might keep a battered copy of Tillyard’s
Elizabethan World Picture in our back pocket, as it were, we should
nonetheless heed the advice of Margot Heinemann that in Renaissance
60
Ferguson, above, n 59, p 385.
61
J Daly, "Cosmic Harmony and Political Thinking in Early Stuart England" (1979) 69 Transactions
of the American Philosophical Society 5.
62
Ferguson, above, n 59, p 347.
63
Wood, above, n 53, p 133.
64
KING LEAR AND THE RHETORIC OF ALIENATION
England there "were at the least ... several world pictures to choose from".64
Consequently, when examining the question of Renaissance attitudes to
property, and arguments such as More’s in favour of the abolition of private
property, the issue of Man’s fallen nature was but one factor. Another
important factor has been emphasised by Quentin Skinner; the claim that
Skinner describes as "almost a slogan of humanist political thought: the claim
that virtus vera nobilitas est, that the possession of virtue constitutes the only
possible grounds for regarding someone as a person of true nobility".65
From this, Skinner argues that More:
is putting a challenge to his fellow humanists, and in particular
raising a doubt about the coherence of their political thought. On the
one hand they liked to claim that they wanted above all to prevent
inherited wealth from being treated as a criterion of true nobility.
But on the other hand they continued to insist on the indispensability
of private property, of heritability and in general of "degree, priority
and place" as preconditions of any well-ordered society. The
question we are left with at the end of Utopia is whether we can
really have it both ways. If we are serious about the claim that
virtue constitutes the only true nobility, it may be incoherent simply
to endorse the usual justifications for private property. It may
instead be necessary to consider the Utopian case for abolishing it in
the name of ensuring that virtue alone is honoured, and that the best
state of the Commonwealth is thereby attained.66
With this in mind let us examine the reflections on property and communism
contained in the play.
Danby draws attention to the implicit communism of Lear’s prayer on the
heath in Act 3, Scene 4, arguing: "The primitive communism of the prayer
comes, I think, from Shakespeare’s reaction to "the times" and from the
Christian tradition".67 Indeed, it is on the heath the whole question of
property and alienation in the play is thrown into sharp relief. The heath, as
has recently been pointed out "can be regarded as the play’s ‘political
64
M Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early
Stuarts, CUP, 1980, p 14.
65
Q Skinner, "Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and the language of Renaissance humanism", in The
Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe, A Padgen (ed), CUP, 1987, p 138.
66
Skinner, above, n 65, p 154.
67
Danby, above, n 11, p 187.
65
AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
(1996) 12
unconscious’".68 With reference to the question of property, perhaps it can
be so regarded because the heath represents a world without property. This
is not to say the heath represents the world of prelapsarian innocence, but
rather, by representing a world of no-property, the heath as a metaphor
illuminates the moral implications of the world of property. What we find
in the course of the play is that property is a double-edged sword; it brought
Lear comfort, status and power - all those things denied to his subjects as he
comes to realise on the heath - but it also demands a terrible price, in that it
brings estrangement between father and daughter, between father and son,
between the person and his personhood. It is the cause of greed and envy
and precisely because there is no difference between the object-property and
the property of personhood, when it is alienated in the sense of transfer it
brings alienation in the sense of estrangement. Only on the heath stripped
of property, is Edgar revealed as the embodiment of virtus vera nobilitas est,
precisely because he is stripped of property. As a metaphor, the world of no­
property the heath represents allows us to see the implications of the
developing concept and institution of property in Renaissance England.
The modem conception of private property slowly emerging in Renaissance
England was not only articulated in political thought but was also expressed
in English law. Of particular importance to the legal history of property was
the possibility of contract-alienation through devisory capacity occasioned by
the Statute of Wills in 1540.69 That legislation allowed for greater discretion
to be exercised by devisors when transferring their property through
generations than was possible under the rules of inheritance. Radin has
explained how one important moral implication of the modem concept and
institution of property is the intertwining of the fungible and constitutive
aspects of property, the consequences of which are evident through an
examination of the relationship between the two meanings of alienation contract-alienation and estrangement-alienation. In Lear’s experience through
the play and particularly on the heath we can see not only elements of early
modem thinking on property being expressed in dramatic form, but also a
dramatic expression of the multiple meanings of property and alienation
articulated by Margaret Radin.
P Holbrook, Literature and Degree in Renaissance England, U of Delaware P, 1994, p 135.
M
66
A R Buck, "The Politics of Land Law in Tudor England, 1529-1540" (1990) 11 Journal of Legal
History 200 at 214.
KING LEAR AND THE RHETORIC OF ALIENATION
V
The history of property is a subject usually claimed by legal and economic
historians. Humane sources can offer much to the legal and economic
historian. As Anthony Low remarked in The Georgic Revolution:
an interpreter who proceeds with caution and requisite tact may learn
a great deal about the implicit or unacknowledged attitudes of the
author and his presumptive readers and thus about the society to
which they belong.70
Yet the study of literature and language is usually eschewed by economic
historians in particular, even if, as Sharpe and Zwicker remind us: "It was a
fundamental tenet of Renaissance humanism that language participated in
authority".71 Literary critics, of course, have long realised the potential that
historical knowledge on questions such as the changing concept of property
can have for the understanding of literary form. Andrew McRae, for
example, has recently pointed out how "etymological developments were
intertwined with a heightened appreciation of personal property", which he
relates to historical developments in the concept of property.72 In this
article I have approached the question from the other direction, as a legal and
economic historian, utilizing humane sources in conjunction with recent
developments in the legal discourse of property theory in order to shed some
light on the relationship between property and alienation in Renaissance
England.
What such an analysis has shown is the rich potential implicit in
interdisciplinary analysis. Yet we need to be sensitive to the demands
imposed by such an approach. Renaissance England was a society in
transition, as writers as varied as Macpherson and Danby have realised. The
sixteenth century witnessed substantial economic change, significant social
dislocation, important demographic shifts, and profound religious conflict.
These were but some of the characteristics of societal transformation in early
modem England. Words such as "feudalism" and capitalism" carry enormous
historiographical and etymological significance. Consequently, we need to
70
A Low, The Georgic Revolution, Princeton UP, 1985, p 5.
71
K Sharpe and S N Zwicker, "Introduction", in Politics of Discourse: The Literature and History of
Seventeenth Century England, K Sharpe and S N Zwicker (eds), U of California P, 1987, p 7.
72
A McRae, "Husbandry Manuals and the Language of Agrarian Improvement", in Culture and
Cultivation in Early Modern England, M Leslie and T Raylor (eds), Leicester UP, 1992, p 49.
67
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(1996) 12
proceed with great caution when utilising them in relation to cultural change.
To claim, as Cohen does, that: "King Lear offers a devastating attack on
capitalism"73 may prove more confusing than helpful to an understanding
of both King Lear and capitalism. Perhaps this is a problem implicit in the
use of statements with pretensions to definitiveness. When Komstein claims:
"King Lear is a powerful and compelling argument against inherited
wealth"74 he may be illuminating one aspect of the play, but King Lear is
undoubtedly more than that. Yet the exercise of requisite caution should not
discourage us from embracing the possibilities of interdisciplinary analysis.
73
Cohen, above, n 22, p 332.
74
D K Komstein, Kill All the Lawyers? Shakespeare’s Legal Appeal, Princeton UP, 1994, p 217.