A Comparison of Pride in King Lear and The Duchess of Malfi Essay

The Sin of Pride Exposed in King Lear, and The Duchess of Malfi In this brief monograph, we shall be hunting down and examining unlike creatures from the bestiary of Medieval/Renaissance thought. Among these are the fierce social lion of imperious, egotistical power, a pair of fantastic peacocks, one of vanity, one of preening social status, and the docile lamb of humility. The lion and the peacocks are of the species known as pride, while the lamb is of an entirely different, in fact antithetical race, that of humility and forgiveness. The textual regions we shall be exploring include the diverse expanses, from palace to heath, of William Shakespeare, the dark, sinister Italy of John Webster, and the perfumed ladys chambers of Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick. The tragic hero of Shakespeares King Lear is brought down, like all tragic heroes, by one fatal flaw, in this plate pride, as well as prides sister, folly. It is the Kings egotistical demand for total love and, whats more, protestations of such from the daughter who loves him most, that set the stage for his downfall, as well as traffic to the minds of the Elizabethan audience of Shakespeares day the above-cited biblical edict. This daughter, Cordelia, can be seen as the humble lamb mentioned earlier, and her love and filial devotion go not altogether beyond that of her sisters (which is nil) but beyond words, thus enraging the proud king whose subsequent petulant rebukes extend to a bit of ironic Freudian projection let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her (I.i.125). Here, Shakespeare is emphasizing Lears pride by having him indulge in the common tendency of despising in others (and in this case wrongly) what one is most guilt-ridden of oneself. Lears rash pride ... ...in which it is supposed to have been written for a certain Lady Haughty, a name indicative of not a little correspond of pride, pardon my litotes. So, to sum up, we have captured, examined, and tagged our various creatures of pride, and it is now time to set them free once more, to run wild over the four corners of the earth. The lions will devour all in their path with arrogant derision the peacocks will peck and claw at one another as they jockey for localise in their petty social circles, all the while pouting and preening, painting feathers on their feathers and the lambs will go on being slaughtered in their docility, uttering never a haughty word, so that we may have lamb chops with mint jelly at Ruths Chris with our beautiful, precisely made-up girl friends. Pride goeth to begin with destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 1618