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An Exploration of Narrative Momentum Garnered Via Absence in King Lean and Hamlet
Nothing- not any (material or immaterial) thing: nought. This is the first definition given by the
Oxford English Dictionary under this particular entry. Nothing is complex; easy to understand as a
concept, yet almost impossible to truly conceptualize. Our only understanding for the concept of nothing
rises from comparison. The number zero holds a degree of nothingness within it by virtue of representing
less than one. A room can be seen as containing nothing only in relation to previous experiences of
spaces filled with furniture, people, art, etc. Nothing is antithetical to the concepts of something and
anything, and so holds within it the concept of lack. Vacuity. And Nature abhors a vacuum. King Lear
may be, on one level, correct in his assertion that Nothing comes from nothing (I. i. 99.) yet, on a
different plane of logic, he is entirely incorrect. As we try to build an image of the nothing within our
minds, we are confronted by the paradox of conceptualizing a non-concept, inevitable failing, and
beginning to think of things, rather than no-things. As if a breached vacuum, images are pulled into the
space we tried, in vain, to keep void. Nothing comes from nothing, perhaps true, but nothing pulls into its
vacuity anything it can. Within the action of both King Lear and Hamlet, William Shakespeare
masterfully uses this presence of absence as a force to drive the action of the narratives forward. Nothing,
seems to be, in fact, the thing which acts as a catalytic agent in two of his most renowned works.
Nothing, this pervasive presence of absence, is what begins the action of King Lear in earnest.
Robert Fleissner correctly reads what comes before this first nothing to be simply a prologue (67).
There are, however, a few notable moments where this absence is gestured towards before Cordelias
damning statement. The darker purpose (I. i. 37) Lear is engaged with nods toward the recurring
images of blindness throughout the play, which are another form of absence or lack. Though not truly
blind, Lears inability to see, understanding Cordelias words as untender rather than true (I. i. 118-
119) is perhaps as true a blindness as Gloucesters. Cordelias aside after hearing Gonerils saccharinely-
sweet praise of her father, What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent. (I. i. 68), again holds a lack
within it; silence, the absence of speech, would be more meaningful than her sisters boot-licking. When
Cordelia has her time to speak, even though the King merely wants to corroborate his previous
arrangements by a formal question-and-answer session (Fleissner, 67), she chooses a very different path
Lear
what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
Cordelia
Nothing, my lord.
Lear
Nothing?
Cordelia
Nothing.
Lear
Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again. (I. i. 95-99)
For an excerpt filled with no much nothing, the narrative weight in those few lines is massive. As
Fleissner attests, this moment is the true commencement of the tragic action of King Lear (67). Cordelia
here defers the action of the play for a moment, creating a vacuum which collapses upon its self and
drives the action onward. In contrast to his words, many things come of this nothing as L. M.
Storozynsky points out. Lear, in his metaphoric blindness, sees Cordelias honesty for a lack of love
and gives her nothing in return for the nothing she offered him. Kent, another figure of honesty, points
out Lears madness, so he, like Cordelia, is banished, his offence honesty (2.111). (Storozynsky 164).
From the nothing Lear offers Cordelia in return for her honesty, a war comes, and from the banishment he
forces onto Kent (another instance of absence) he gains a trusted advisor in the disguised Kent. It seems
Burgundy
Royal King,
Give but that portion which yourself proposed,
And here I take Cordelia by the hand,
Duchess of Burgundy.
Lear
Nothing. I have sworn. I am firm. (I. i. 279-283)
Lears decision to be firm in his dowery of nothing for his once favourite daughter makes her at once less
France
Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich being poor;
Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised,
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon,
Be it lawful I take up whats cast away.
France finds wealth in the lack of wealth, quality in what was forsaken, and person fit to be loved who
was perceived to lack loving nature. Once again, we are sucked forward by vacuity.
The secondary plot within King Lear also begins with the concept of nothing; as Edmund plots
against Gloucester, we are confronted with the presence of absence again. When asked what news
Edmund removes his paper from view (absence) and replies none (I. ii. 27-28). When pressed regarding
the paper, Edmund offers nothing in answer (I. ii. 33), to which Gloucester replies No? The quality
of nothing/has no such need to hide itself. Lets see. Come, if/it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles
(I. ii. 34-37). As Storozynsky notes, Like Cordelia, Edmund introduces [nothing]; like Lear, Gloucester
defines itEdmunds proof of Edgars conspiracy amounts to nothing, in so much as it is false, but this
nothing becomes something in Gloucesters mind (165). Again, terrible circumstances rise from nothing.
Not needing spectacles, as the letter holds no-true-thing, he shares an inability to see with Lear, though in
the unfortunate case of Gloucester his metaphoric lack of sight becomes literal in III. vii. Lear drifts into
madness (an absence of logic) and Gloucester is blinded (an absence of sight) but their movement into
personal realms of nothingness gives them opportunity to see the nothings that have caused the tragic
action, and begin to make sense of them. Something, here, rises from nothing.
There are many personifications of nothingness within the players of King Lear. Cordelia (speaks
nothing, and is given nothing), Kent and Edgar (both protected by their disguises, or absence of identity),
and Lear and Gloucester (as described previously) all fit within this definition, yet The Fool is perhaps the
truest personification of absence, and the purest example disproving Lears statement nothing will come
of nothing (I. i. 99). The Oxford English Dictionary defines foolish as Fool-like, wanting in sense or
judgement yet this particular Fool seems full of what should be lacking. Of his nothing (absence of
sense) comes a twisted type of clarity. He sees Lears mistake of dividing the kingdom. Where Kent is
put in the stocks for fighting against a greater force (Cornwall and Regan), The Fool sees the error of
Kents action and enlightens him. Let go thy hold when a great wheel/runs down a hill lest it break thy
neck with following (II. iv. 78-80): advice Kent could have used earlier. Where learned you this, Fool?
asks Kent, grasping the disguised wisdom. The Fool offers an answer by way of absence: Not i th
stocks, fool (II.iv. 93-94). Fleissner sees The Fool as a personification of absence as well. It may well
be the Fool he writes, who symbolizes the inevitability of this tragedy. Like the skull of Yorick in
Hamlet, he may stand for tragic grotesqueness, even death itself (69). Death, the ultimate absence, is the
outcome of the action which began with absence. Nothing(ness) from nothing.
Where the Fool of King Lear is a figure of absence, Yorick in Hamlet is a fool entirely absent
from the action, yet from his skull pulled from the earth (a symbol of death and absence), Hamlet draws
memories of happiness (which are otherwise absent from Denmark) and poignant musings of mortality.
We discover here that death is the end-all, that there is nothing but dust beyond it; that the only
difference among men after death is in their rate of decomposition (Peter Phialas, 231). In this scene
filled with so much nothingness, we find a twisted calming in the idea that, in the end, nothing else
matters. As David McDonald describes it, Hamlet is a tragedy of the mimesis of absence: the mimesis
that adds-on, that stands-in-place-of-itself, that is and is not the thing itself (37).
The action of Hamlet begins with nothing as well. At the opening, the players await The Ghost,
but none recognize each other initially in the vacuity of the scene (McDonald, 39). The Ghost of his dead
father is death given form (absence) which forces Hamlet to action, and in the end draws all his family
into the nothingness of death from which he reached at the opening of the action. The Ghosts silence
spurs Hamlet to follow (I. iv. 70). The words of this spectre show to Hamlet the true circumstance of his
fathers death, an event from which he was absent, which drives the prince forward on his quest for
revenge. In this case, as in King Lear, all he will gain from this action, motivated by nothingness, is
nothingness. The Ghost enters from nothingness and, as Hamlet will at the close of the action, returns
thusly in silence.
Hamlet feigns an absence-of-sense, and at times seems to sink into his own performance and
become what he is pretending to be, yet throughout the action logic flows from him. Absent a fool,
Hamlets own madness stands in for the wise-fool character, for as Polonius remarks, this be madness,
yet there is/method int (II. ii. 223-224). Not trusting fully the words of the ghost of his father, Hamlet
weaves a masterful web to corroborate the information using a wind-fallen troupe of players. The pivotal
moment in the action, where Hamlets course is solidified, occurs when a play (a structure typically
absent truth) is used to tease out the truth of The Ghosts provided narrative. Hamlet claims he is
sustained by consuming air alone, and remarks you cannot feed capons so (III. ii. 100-101). The cries
of a rooster had previously forced away the absent-presence of his fathers ghost, yet Hamlets diet -
opposite of a castrated rooster - positions him as a force which will beckon forward his Fathers truth,
rather than force it away. Claudius, making nothing of these words (III. ii. 102), positions himself
opposite to Hamlet, and zeugmaticly links himself to a neutered Cock. A related image comes lines later,
as Hamlet refers to the no-thing which lies between maids legs (III. ii.128), perhaps subtly gesturing to
the emasculation of Claudius to come. The ensuing dumb-show and play makes this implied removal of
Ophelia
The King rises.
Hamlet
What, frightened with false fire?
Queen
How fares my lord?
Polonius
Give oer the play.
King
Give me some lights. Away!
Polonius
Lights, lights, lights!
Frightened by a (false?) fire, Claudius is so emasculated that he loses his ability to speak. Absent
response to either Hamlets or the Queens questions, and waiting for Polonius to end the show, he asks
for light (which Polonius must second) and leaves briskly, tail, if he still possesses it, tucked between his
legs.
Perhaps an oxymoronic statement, but there is too much nothing within both Hamlet and King
Lear to be able to discuss the many moments of absence in the plays in their entirety within the confines
of this essay. (I seem to have made too much of nothing!) Therefore, I am forced to briefly alight on a
few intermediary points before discussing the closing moments of these two works where nothingness
envelopes the action quite completely. Please excuse the ensuing brevity.
Hamlet, within the chambers of his mother, kills Polonius (seeing nothing of him before hand)
which forces his removal to England and absence from Denmark, returning to his country only to find the
skull of his fathers fool, and Ophelia, dead, after her truer decent into madness. He dispatches
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with a letter containing no-true-thing, and then enters into the final dual of
the narrative. Nothingness pushing him toward his own entry into vacuity. In King Lear, we find
absence of order in both the mind of Lear, and in nature as the storm rages. A disguised Edgar leads his
blind father to Dover, saves him by fooling him into thinking he survived a suicide leap, and dons another
disguise. His daughters plotting to kill him, a Lear who has sunk deeper into madness is finally reunited
with Cordelia. In a lovely twist, Cordelia (a figure of nothingness) recognizes the disguised Kent (a
figure of the same). Again, a prevalent nothing pushes the drama forward.
The two tragedies end in much the same fashion. In King Lear Gloucester is saved from suicide
again by Edgar, but his suicide is avoided by a death seemingly caused of shock and joy when he
discovers the identity of his son (the reintroduction of identity to the vacuum of disguise creates further
nothingness). Goneril and Regan die, the first by knife, and the latter by poison. Cordelia and her
counterpoint, The Fool, perish, and Lear dies, heartbroken, holding his daughter who gave him nothing,
and forced him to nothingness in the end. Two of the three survivors of this scene of death are Edgar and
Kent, two who have hidden in nothingness for so much of the action of the play. Lears penultimate
words, Never, never, never, never, never (V. iii. 372) mirror the five nothings he and Cordelia shared in
I. i., and close the tragic loop of absence. The end of Hamlet is similarly dark: Hamlet and Laertes both
die of nothing more than a scratch of the foils they dual with (albeit poisoned blades), Claudius dies of the
same poison (intended for Hamlet) which killed his wife. The last of his family to fall, Hamlet speaks the
rest is silence (V. ii. 395), and as he slips into the void, the ruling house of Denmark falls into silence as
well. Hamlet is the pharmakos of Death, a mimetic substitute for essential absence. The carrying out of
the dead Hamlet at the end of the play is parallel to the folk-custom of carrying out of Death
(McDonald, 46). Just as the death march which closes King Lear, in the midst of all this death, we find a
different nothing. Death has been removed in a bloody cleansing, and one can hope that from all this foul
nothingness there may an absence of death, a nothing of peace. Nothing, from nothing, one final time.