MOST modern criticism of King Lear directs itself resolutely against the notion, said to be held by some critics, that the play forms part of the Christian tradition, that it ultimately affirms the victory of good over evil, specifically, the victory of love over hate, and that it therefore makes virtue prevail in the end.1 On the contrary, Dr. Johnson felt that “Shakespeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the natural ideas of justice” (“Notes” to King Lear), and the majority of modern critics holds, as Swinburne did,2 that the play is deeply pessimistic, that in writing King Lear Shakespeare deliberately examined such Christian concepts as divine providence, retributive justice, or the existence of some universal moral order, and came to the conclusion that at best man's world was a “great stage of fools” (iv.vi.182), whose false sense of security should make the philosopher chuckle; or that at worst it was a “wheel of fire” (iv.vii.47) upon which not only Lear but every man is bound, an image that should make the poet cry in agony.3
Cultures of rejection at work: Investigating the acceptability of authoritarian populism
