Heterodox Shakespeare by Benson Sean;

Author:Benson, Sean;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

If humans have free will in general ethical matters in Shakespeare’s plays, a point that Cavell, again, affirms, they nevertheless in their fallenness—Plantinga’s transworld depravity—choose perversely with distressing frequency. Lear’s “darker purpose” in dividing his land points to a degree of inscrutability and irrationality in human decision-making (1.1.36), as does the rashness of his decision to disown Cordelia. Edmund’s adulterous pledge of fidelity to Goneril—“Yours in the ranks of death” (4.2.25)—similarly underscores the dark stirrings of the human heart. People sometimes go wrong in their choices, and in King Lear there appears to be no less than a depravity of decision-making. Frustrated by the moral evil he sees, Albany well understands the idea of transworld depravity:

If that the heavens do not their visible spirits

Send quickly down to tame these vile offenses,

It will come,

Humanity must perforce prey on itself,

Like monsters of the deep. (4.2.47–51)

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