'Within a Foot of the Extreme Verge': The Book of Job and King Lear

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Out in the weather a naked old man howls. Fallen from eminence, betrayed by his loved ones, crazed with illness and grief, he shakes a fist at the sky. To a reader of Shakespeare and of the Bible, he seems familiar. But is it Lear or is it Job? Jan Kott called King Lear a 'new book of Job'. The two works recall one another not only through verbal echoes, thematic parallels, and similarities in plot, also through their remarkable intensity. To read either is, in the words of John Keats, 'to burn through . . . the fierce dispute | Between damnation and impassioned clay'. Both works attract superlatives. Stephen Mitchell, a recent translator, calls the book of Job 'the greatest Jewish work of art'. Coleridge called King Lear 'the most tremendous effort of Shakespeare the poet', and Harold Bloom commented that 'Like King Lear, which is manifestly influenced by it, the book of Job touches the limits of literature and perhaps transcends them'.

Considering the book of Job and King Lear in tandem allows their parallel elements of plot, character, theme, and language to illuminate one another. Study of these parallels can reveal how Shakespeare's imagination may have been inspired by the Bible and also how he responded to the earlier text with interpretive revision. Such study can also highlight the changes produced by adapting an ancient sacred text into an early-modern theatrical script. Comparing some contrary critical interpretations of each emphasizes the final indeterminacy of meaning in two works that share an equal urgency of ultimate concern.

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Moses and Henry V are the superlative leaders of their nations. Deuteronomy names Moses the greatest of all prophets (34: 10), and Shakespeare's chorus names Henry V as 'the mirror of all Christian Kings' (2.0.6). Concern with leadership belongs to the genre of history. That genre occupies the first half of the Old Testament, which is ordered by chronology and tells the history of the Jews from the beginning of time to their return to Israel following captivity by the Babylonians in the fifth century BCE in a roughly continuous series of books extending from Genesis to Esther. In the second section of the Old Testament, chronological order gives way to grouping by literary convention: a collection of devotional lyrics (the Psalms), a collection of love lyrics (the Song of Solomon), a collection of wise sayings (Proverbs), and a lyrical-philosophical meditation (Ecclesiastes). The first of these non-historical works is a tragic drama: the book of Job.

Like the Old Testament, the first collection of Shakespeare's plays is organized by genre, as its title indicates: Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. After he completed Henry V, his ninth history play, in 1599, Shakespeare stopped writing histories for many years. In King Lear, as generally in tragedy, emphasis shifts from the local to the universal, from the chronological to the mythic, from what individuals did to what they experienced. Events in King Lear take place not among English, but among prehistoric Britons. Similarly Job, the first of the non-historical books of the Bible, is set outside of chronology 'in the land of Uz', a vaguely specified place outside the land of Israel. In both works much of the action takes place in a no man's land–a dunghill or a heath.

The idea that the book of Job is a tragedy was formulated in the fourth century by Theodore of Mopsuestia, and it was supported in the sixteenth-century by the Renaissance biblical critic Theodore Beza. The book's emphasis on self conscious poetic devices–dramatic dialogue, grandiose sound patterns, luxuriant metaphor, irony, and sarcasm–rather than on chronicle, law, or homily, also differentiates it from anything in the historical sections of the Bible. Sir Philip Sidney mentions 'the writer of Job' along with 'David in his Psalms; Solomon in his Song of Songs, in his Ecclesiastes, and his Proverbs; Moses and Deborah in their hymns' as examples of the extraordinary literary value of biblical poetry.

The book of Job critiques two underlying principles of the preceding historical chronicles: that the Bible should concern itself only with God in relation to his chosen Israelite people, and that God works in history by punishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous. Modern scholars refer to this second principle as the Deuteronomic doctrine because it is so strongly asserted in the last section of the Pentateuch, the book of Deuteronomy, and in the sequence of books following it, referred to as the Deuteronomic History. Job's three friends repeatedly support this doctrine, but Job repudiates it, insisting that much suffering is unmerited and the wicked are often rewarded. After their long debate, God himself finds that Job speaks 'the thing that is right' (42: 7) and thereby seems to revise his own earlier precepts.

The tragedy of King Lear similarly questions the orthodox providential outlook of the histories, whose two tetralogies conclude with the triumphs of Henry V and Henry VII, the righteous and God-favoured English leaders. In the True Chronicle History of King Leir, Shakespeare's main source for King Lear, the providential pattern and the triumph of the king at the end is reinforced by a repeated reference to the biblical God who 'is just and vengeful against sinners . . . instills conscience and remorse for evil and provides "heavens hate, earth's scorne and paynes of hell" as well as the blessings of immortality'. By contrast, the deity in King Lear, though desperately called upon in sincere prayer, remains silent while the good are punished along with the evil. This king is not restored to his throne and his state is left tottering.

Along with the biblical books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, the book of Job belongs to a category of ancient texts that question God's plan and purpose known as 'Wisdom Literature'. Wisdom or 'Sophia' is what Socrates and the other Greeks who called themselves philosophers loved and pursued. Wisdom, or 'Hochma' in Hebrew, is both the teacher and the principle by which God created the universe (Prov. 3: 19). Some Wisdom works expressed enlightened optimism–that wisdom is easy to find through instruction: 'For the Lord giveth wisdom, out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding' (Prov. 2: 6). Others suggested that truth was unknowable because of the limits of human knowledge: 'But where is wisdom found? And where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof: for it is not found in the land of the living' (Job 28: 12—13). Some, like Ecclesiastes, were even more sceptical: 'For in the multitude of wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow' (1: 18). Such pessimistic wisdom is often expressed in tragedy: 'Zeus . . . lays it down as law | that we must suffer, suffer into truth . . . ripeness comes as well'. Like Job, King Lear is part of this Wisdom Literature tradition. Wisdom is what Lear seeks from Poor Tom, whom he refers to as 'a philosopher' (3.4.165), and 'a good Athenian' (l. 169). 'Wisdom' is taught by Lear to Gloucester: 'I will preach to thee. Mark . . . . When we are born, we cry that we are come | To this great stage of fools' (4.5.176—9), and then reiterated by Edgar: 'Men must endure | Their going hence, even as their coming hither. | Ripeness is all' (5.2.9—11). Tragedy is Wisdom literature dramatized.

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Aristotle declared that the 'the soul of tragedy is the plot', which he defined as 'the imitation of a complete and whole action having . . . a beginning, and a middle and an end'. Job and King Lear share a similar plot. Both begin with what biblical and Shakespearian critics call a 'folk-tale motif'–a test of love by which the ruler subjects his most faithful subjects to a humiliating ordeal to test and prove their loyalty. Just as God strips his servant Job to impress Satan, Lear strips his daughter Cordelia in the presence of his court. But before the end of the first act, Lear himself joins Cordelia and Job as the victim of incomprehensible punishment.

In the middle part of the story, Job and Lear face poverty, neglect, and illness that lead them to an encounter with cosmic nothingness and a loss of self-control. First attracted by quiescence and suicide, and then resistant, they rage against their fates with curses and lamentations. They argue bitterly against false comforters–wife, friends, and daughters–who try to shame, reproach, and frighten them.

At the end of both stories, each protagonist experiences a divine or quasi-divine encounter with the one whose presence he most longs for: Job, with an angry God who causes him both regret and comfort, Lear with an angelic daughter who is merciful and nurturing. This encounter completes the process of humbling and self-discovery and validates his side in the battle with his opponents. At the end of the book of Job, after the divine encounter, the protagonist is restored to the privileged position he filled at the outset and dies at a peaceful and prosperous old age. In Lear, after the joyous encounter, the hero is restored to his sanity, his family, and his throne (4.6.70). The Lear plot diverges from Job's in the last scene, when the murder of his daughter plunges the old king back into agony and he dies experiencing an ambiguous final vision. King Lear's secondary plot, tracing the actions of his contemporary Earl of Gloucester, has a similar outline. It begins with an old man's fall from grace into an ordeal of disproportionate suffering which leads to a desire for death, a new level of self- knowledge, and an encounter with a kind of divinity. At the end, his lost good child is restored to him and he too dies in a mixture of ecstasy and grief.

Lear experiences the reversal of misfortune during his self-serving abdication ceremony when his favourite daughter Cordelia is forced to abandon him, and Regan and Goneril conspire to humiliate and expose him. By the middle of the second act he has lost his lands, his retainers, his authority, and his wits. The reversal to restoration occurs in the fourth act when he is rescued by his daughter Cordelia. Reduced to weakness and shame, he expects only punishment but instead is rewarded with love and consideration. Despite the defeat of their armies at the beginning of Act 5, he feels completely fulfilled by the prospect of living out his days in her company. A last minute reversal to misfortune occurs with the murder of Cordelia, but it is partially mitigated by his own satisfaction in killing her attacker, the destruction of his enemies, and possibly by his dying hope of her recovery in this world or the next.

Recognition, also referred to as agnorisis or discovery, is the subjective correlative of reversal in the action. It denotes the character's shift of perception, perspective, and attitude that develops as the plot unfolds. As suggested by its etymology, recognition suggests that the character discovers a deeper truth that somehow was already known but ignored. Both the book of Job and King Lear trace the way the misfortune of the first reversal strips characters of existing beliefs in benevolent gods, the political and moral order, and the value of life, and causes them to discover disillusioned and sceptical truths. The second reversal brings a new outlook incorporating the lessons of loss.

During Job's first reversal he recognizes that the goods that he had cherished–wealth, family, prestige, friendship, and spiritual complacency–are fragile, a suspicion he harboured even in prosperity. He learns that those he supported could not be depended upon. He learns that neither pious acceptance nor blasphemous protest will change the course of his fate, that pain can worsen and continue long beyond the point it seems unbearable. He learns that the righteous and the wicked often do not get what they deserve and that his own unmerited suffering is shared by many others.

Through his second reversal, Job learns that God's action cannot be predicted, comprehended, or limited by human judgements; that nature in both its destructive and creative aspects has a beauty that passes understanding; that counter to what his comforters assert, suffering is not a sign of guilt, and righteousness is worth pursuing even if not rewarded. In his direct encounter, Job discovers not only his own insignificance in the face of God's grandeur, but also his capacity to receive, withstand, and feel blessed by God's direct attention: 'I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. Therefore I abhor my life, and repent in dust and ashes' (42: 5—6). This capacity is acknowledged when God designates him as a more accurate interpreter of the truth than his antagonists and as a suffering servant, a redeemer whose pain serves to shield them from punishment.

During Lear's first reversal, he discovers a range of follies to which he has succumbed. He learns the imprudence of dividing and giving away his kingdom and expecting nevertheless to retain sovereign power. He also learns the folly of believing flatterers: 'They told me I was everything; Tis a lie, I am not ague-proof' (4.5.104). Sharing the experience of those on the wrong side of the law, he sees the hypocrisy and incompetence of the justice system that as king he was responsible for. He learns that the 'heavens', who he thought would make his cause their own, were as merciless as his daughters: 'Here I stand your slave, | A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man' (3.2.19—20). In his debasement, Lear first notices the support of his poor retainers and begins to reciprocate. 'My wits begin to turn. | Come on, my boy . . . art cold? | I am cold myself . . . Poor Fool and knave, I have one part in my heart | That's sorry yet for thee' (3.2.67—73). Their love for him awakens his attention to all those in the kingdom he has previously ignored: 'Poor naked wretches, . . . O I have ta'en | Too little care of this' (3.4.28, 32—3). At the fulfillment of the second reversal, when his health, his sanity, and his dignity are restored to him, Lear recognizes his own body–'Let's see: | I feel this pin prick'–(4.6.47—8) his own mind–'I am a very foolish, fond old man' (l. 53)–and the presence and love of his daughter–'For as I am a man I think this lady | To be my child Cordelia' (ll. 62—3). Joining her, he experiences a discovery of ultimate reality: 'the mystery of things, | As if we were God's spies' (5.3.16—17), which foretells his final unutterable epiphany: 'Look there, look there' (5.3.287).

In addition to reversal and recognition, Aristotle names the third component of the tragic plot 'suffering . . . which results from painful or destructive action such as death on the stage, scenes of very great pain, the infliction of wounds, and the like'. The most disturbing suffering to watch is that inflicted on the weak by the powerful. In the book of Job and King Lear, interrogation, browbeating, and torture are repeatedly endured by those in the grip of higher authorities. God and Satan playfully wager how their innocent subject will react after God says, 'Lo, he is in thine hand, but save his life' (2: 6). Job is afflicted with boils and nightmares and harangued by three friends who blame the victim and try to make him confess to fabricated crimes. In King Lear, Gloucester is tied to a chair and his eyes are gouged out by the Duke of Cornwall who smugly warns, 'Though well we may not pass upon his life | Without the form of justice, yet our power | Shall do a curtsy to our wrath, which men | May blame but not control' (3.7.23—6).

Kent is locked in the stocks all night, naked Edgar shivers in the storm, Lear imagines himself bound on a wheel of fire. Kent's concluding lines speak of 'the rack of this tough world' (5.3.290).

Another form of suffering inflicted in the book of Job and King Lear is the continuous stripping down of a formidable personage into someone who has nothing and is nothing. Job's wealth is enumerated at the opening of the book: 'And he had seven sons, and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses' (1: 2—3). These possessions are taken in quick succession: 'There came a messenger and said: "the Sabeans came violently and took them: yea they have slain the servants . . . and I only am escaped alone to tell thee." And whiles he was yet speaking, another came . . . And whiles he was yet speaking, another came . . . ' (1: 14—18). Job tears his robe, shaves his head, and lies down in the dust. 'Naked came I out of my mother's womb and naked shall I return thither' (l: 21), he says. Then he loses his health, his home, and his recognizable appearance. King Lear too creates the queasy feeling of the bottom dropping out with images of stripping, invoking the recurrent biblical motif of nakedness as a divestment of kingship. Lear strips Cordelia of her inheritance as he bargains down her value. After relinquishing his lands, he is stripped of his retainers, of the roof over his head, and eventually of the clothes on his back: 'off, off you lendings! Come unbutton here' (3.4.102—3). Edgar experiences a similar reduction as he is stripped of Gloucester's patrimony and reduced to the 'most poorest shape | That ever penury in contempt of man | Brought near to beast' (2.2.170—2), approaching closer and closer to the limiting condition of 'nothing': 'That's something yet. Edgar I nothing am' (2.2.184).

Such material reduction is accompanied by reduction of respect. Both great men are subject to humiliation by inferiors. Job's messengers are sardonic, his wife is scornful, and his friends go from silent sympathy to reprimand–'Behold, blessed is the man whom God correcteth: therefore refuse not thou the chastising of the Almighty' (5: 17)–and then to indictment: 'How long wilt thou talk of these things? And how long shall the words of thy mouth be as a mighty wind?' (8: 2). Lear is first gently and justifiably corrected by Cordelia, then curtly and sarcastically lectured by Goneril, then insulted by her servant, then condescended to by Regan–'O sir, you are old. . . .You should be ruled and led | By some discretion that discerns your state | Better than you yourself' (2.2.319, 321—2).

After being stripped of wealth, power, health, and dignity, all that Job and Lear have left is their beliefs, their confidence that things will get better and eventually make sense. Job has feared, served, and loved God all his life. At first his faith sustains him in affliction: 'The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken: blessed be the name of the Lord' (1: 21). But as his ordeal continues, he feels abandoned by a master he can no longer trust: 'He destroyeth me with a tempest and woundeth me without cause. He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with bitterness . . . should God laugh at the punishment of the innocent?' (9: 17, 23). Lear grieves for the familial and ethical bonds he thought held the world together. He tries to invoke the gods that he has assumed protected him both as a king and as an elder: 'O heavens | If you do love old men . . . if you yourselves are old | Make it your cause! Send down, and take my part' (2.2.362—5). But he finds their neglect as cruel as his children's: 'Here I stand your slave | A poor infirm, weak and despised old man' (3.2.19—20).

One thing that is not stripped from either Lear or Job is the power of speech. As their sufferings increase, so does the intensity and eloquence of their language. The language of tragedy, according to Aristotle, 'has been artistically enhanced by . . . linguistic adornment . . . I mean . . . rhythm and harmony and song'. The 'linguistic adornments' in Lear and Job are onomatopoeic representations of painful cries. After seven days and nights of silent buildup, Job explodes:

Lear too, though unable to call down universal chaos, absorbs some of the destructive energy that torments him in his verbal expression of agony:

In addition to the roar of elements, one hears cries of animal pain: 'He hath taken me by the neck and beaten me . . . his archers compass me round about: he cutteth my reins and doth not spare and poureth my gall upon the ground. He hath broken me with one breaking upon another' screams Job (16: 12—13). 'Howl, howl, howl, howl' (5.3.232) howls Lear like a beast.

The language of the tormentors is as violent as that of the victims: 'Splendid to read, the verbal equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion . . .' God's speech in Job mimics the voice of the whirlwind from which it thunders: 'who is this who darkeneth the counsel by words without knowledge? (38: 2) . . . who hath shut up the sea with doors when it issued and came forth as out of the womb? When I made the clouds as a covering therof, and darkness as the swaddling bands thereof, When I established my commandment upon it and set bars and doors, and said "Hereto shalt thou come but no farther"' (38: 8—11). Gloucester's son Edmund roars and blasts as he works himself into a malevolent frenzy: 'Why "bastard"? Wherefore "base", . . . why brand they us | With "base", With "baseness, bastardy–base, base–"' 1.2.6—10). Such cacophony, bordering on gibberish, fits the decorum of tragedy: 'It recalls the original terror, harking back to a world that antedates the conceptions of philosophy, the consolations of the later religions, and whatever constructions the human mind has devised to persuade itself that its universe is secure. It recalls the original un-reason, the terror of the irrational'.

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In addition to shrieks and curses, the extreme suffering portrayed in tragedy elicits urgent intellectual questioning. Characters search for understanding of a higher order or general principle to explain their pain, and they express what they have found in utterances that delineate the themes of the work. According to Aristotle, 'theme' or 'thought' is another essential component of tragedy, expressed not as a claim by the author but 'that which is found in whatever things men say when they prove a point or . . . express a general truth'. A central theme of both the book of Job and King Lear is the nature of the deity, and both represent that nature in various ways.

The first chapter of the book of Job depicts God as anything but 'blameless and upright' like his servant Job. He is cruel and arch and also insecure–a companion to Satan, the adversary of humanity, whom he is trying to impress with boasts about the virtue of his servant Job. At Satan's goading he agrees to a playful wager that allows the adversary to test Job's loyalty with tortures. This God resembles those pagan deities whom Gloucester appealed to as his eyes were being poked out: 'Give me some help. | –O, cruel! O you gods!' (3.7.68), and whom he later indicts: 'As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods | They kill us for their sport' (4.1.37—8).

The God who speaks directly to Job near the end of the book is less malevolent but no more merciful. He has created and symbolized himself as Leviathan, the sea monster: 'He maketh the depth to boil like a pot . . . He maketh a path to shine after him: one would think the depth as an hoar head . . . He beholdeth all high things: he is a King over all the children of pride' (41: 22—5). He is like the God of nature who reveals himself in Isaiah 45: 7, 'I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things'. In King Lear this energetic and ruthless deity manifests itself in various ways. Edmund, the 'natural' illegitimate son of Gloucester, prays to it as he invokes the unregulated energies of desire and aggression that he will tap to topple the legitimate order of society: 'Thou, nature art my goddess' (1.2.1). Lear links it with the refusal of the world to live up to his expectations at the beginning of the play: 'Ingratitude. . . . More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child | Than the sea-monster–' (1.4.237—9). Later it is the force that he encounters in the 'wrathful skies' (3.2.43) and 'pitiless storm' (3.4.29), 'the dreadful pother' (3.2.50) of 'the great gods' (3.2.49) from whom he demands an accounting: 'Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?' (3.6.36).

Other characters expound an orthodox theology of the deity as creator and enforcer of Justice–the one who punishes the evil and rewards the good. Adhering to the institutionalized Deuteronomic teachings of the earlier books of the Bible, Job's friends or 'comforters' believe in such a God and assume that Job's suffering shows he has done something to merit it that he refuses to confess and repent for: 'Is not thy wickedness great, and thine iniquities innumerable? For thou hast taken the pledge from thy brother for nought, and spoiled the clothes of the naked' (22: 5—6). Their theology allows them to construe all apparent evil as a greater good, explained by God's hidden but rational plan. But any comfort to be gained by such theology is discredited both by the reader's knowledge of the falsehood of their accusations and by God's own declaration at the end that they have spoken falsely.

Some characters in King Lear share this orthodox theology, and, like Job's friends, try to confirm it with their interpretation of causes and effects. Albany, upon hearing that Cornwall has been killed by a servant after gouging out one of Gloucester's eyes, says, 'This shows you are above | You justicers that these our nether crimes | So speedily can venge' (4.2.46—8). Albany ignores the reported fact that the servant was killed and the next reported fact that Gloucester's other eye was also taken. Grateful to the 'judgement of the heavens' (5.3.206) for the deaths of Regan and Goneril, he prays to them for Cordelia–'The gods defend her' (5.3.231)a moment before her corpse is carried on stage. And when Edmund piously states the Deuteronomic theology at the beginning of the play–'I told him the revenging gods | ’Gainst parricides did all their thunder bend' (2.1.44—5)–he does so only to gull his father.

In addition to encountering deity as cruel, brutal, and inscrutable, characters in both the book of Job and King Lear expound the theme that the gods are kind. Eliphaz generously imagines that the Lord will heal and save those that he has disciplined: 'For he maketh the wound, and bindeth it up: he smiteth, and his hands make whole. . . . Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue, and thou shalt not be afraid of destruction when it cometh . . . . Thou shalt go to thy grave in a full age, as a shock of corn in due season into the barn' (5: 18, 21, 26). In the midst of an elegy lamenting human mortality, Job imagines God hiding him in the grave to shelter him from God's own passing fit of parental fury and then reviving him and treating him like a doting father playing with his child: 'Thou shalt call me, and I shall answer thee: thou lovest the work of thine own hands' (14: 15). In the midst of a plea for pity from his friends, he states his faith that the same God who afflicts him will some day come to his aid: 'For I am sure, that my redeemer liveth, and he shall stand the last on the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet shall I see God in my flesh. Whom I myself shall see, and mine eyes shall behold, and no other for me, though my reins are consumed within me' (19: 25—27).

In King Lear, the idea of a healer, saviour, and redeemer is embodied in the figures of Cordelia and Edgar, whose compassion and self-sacrifice allude both to the parental and redeemer God imagined by Job, as well as to the suffering servant of the book of Isaiah and the sacrificial Christ of the New Testament. Cordelia prays to 'kind gods' who can 'Cure this great breach in . . . | Th’ untuned and jarring senses . . . | Of this child-changed father!' (4.6.12—15). Edgar, while dissimulating, nevertheless speaks a kind of truth to his father when he explains 'the clearest gods, who make them honours | Of men's impossibilities, have preserved thee' (4.5.73—4), for that deliverance is provided in Edgar's very presence. Gloucester responds by revising his concept of the deity from demonic to angelic: 'You ever gentle gods, take my breath from me. | Let not my worser spirit tempt me again | To die before you please' (4.5.215—17), and Edgar reinforces his father's new faith with a religious blessing: 'Well pray you father' (l. .218).

The gods' role in such unlikely passage from 'impossibility' to 'honour' recurs as a theme in both works. 'Blessed is the man God correcteth' (5: 17) asserts Eliphaz, reversing his earlier assertions that those who suffer are punished by God for some infraction. 'He delivereth the poor in his affliction, and openeth their ear in trouble' (36: 15). Pent up all night in the stocks, Kent avers that 'Nothing almost sees miracles | But misery' (2.2.156—7). France appreciates Cordelia's poverty from the start:

Lear learns that 'The art of our necessities is strange, | And can make vile things precious' (3.2.70—1). Gloucester discovers that 'Full oft tis seen | Our means secure us, and our mere defects | Prove our commodities' (4.1.19—21).

The pressure of tragedy which makes people seek divinity and invert their values brings other fundamental questions about the human condition to the fore. 'What is man, that thou doest magnify him, and that thou setteth thine heart upon him'? (7: 17) asks Job. 'Is man no more than this'? asks Lear contemplating Edgar masquerading as the Bedlam beggar. 'Consider him well. Thou owst the worm no silk . . . thou art the thing itself' (3.4.96—100). The same answer is offered in both works. 'How much more a man, a worm, even the son of man which is but a worm?' says Bildad in the book of Job (25: 6). 'I such a fellow saw | which made me think a man a worm' (4.1.3—3), says Gloucester in King Lear.

The agony of humanity so reduced to its bare essentials leads to the thought and theme of suicide. Job's wife recommends that he 'curse God and die' (2: 10). Soon after piously silencing her, Job curses the day of his birth, moaning 'Or why was I not hid, as an untimely birth, just as infants, which have not seen the light' (3: 16) and praising the comforts of the grave. Lear says to Edgar, 'Thou wert better in a grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies' (3.4.95—6). And Gloucester resolves to take the best way out by jumping off a cliff: 'This world I do renounce, . . . | Shake patiently my great affliction off!' (4.5.35—6). Gloucester uses the word 'patiently' here in a peculiar sense. For him, suicide becomes a kind of acceptance of a hostile fate, giving up a life of resistance against the gods' 'great opposeless wills' (l. 38). Gloucester's son Edgar is convinced that patience is both morally and psychologically necessary, but for him suicide is the opposite of patience, like Hamlet's impulse to 'take arms against a sea of troubles' (Ham. 3.61). Instead Edgar tries to teach his father patience by tricking him with a false miracle and repeated counselling: 'Bear free and patient thoughts' (4.6.78); 'Men must endure | Their going hence, even as their coming hither' (5.2.9—10). Lear gives him similar advice–'thou must be patient; we came crying hither (4.5.174).

With such patience, Job first responds to his afflictions: 'Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thereafter: the Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken it: blessed be the name of the Lord' (1: 21). But after seven days of silence, patience gives way to complaint: 'Therefore I will not spare my mouth, but will speak in the trouble of my spirit and muse in the bitterness of my mind. . . And why dost thou not pardon my trespass? And take away mine iniquitie?' (7: 11, 21). This shift to impatience can be regarded as a healthy transition from depression to anger, or as a heroic protest that defines the tragic protagonist against the patient piety of the chorus. At the end of the book, Job returns to humble silence after God addresses him directly, but Job's impatience is what elicited God's response and what finally vindicates him. After telling Lear to be patient earlier, Kent says, 'Anger hath a privilege' (2.2.70). Impatient righteous anger is part of what gets Lear into trouble in the first place, but it is also what drives him to kill Cordelia's murderer and express the full range of response to the atrocity of the crime–'O you are men of stones | Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so | That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever' (5.3.232—4).

The theme of justice, both divine and human, is central to the thought of characters in the book of Job and King Lear. Job stands upon his record as a pillar of justice in his community: 'I put on justice . . . my judgement was as a robe and a crown. . . . I was a father unto the poor' (29: 14, 16). He is outraged by the violation of the law's Deuteronomical principles he feels in his own torments. Lear remembers his role as dispenser of justice in the kingdom: 'When I do stare, see how the subject quakes. | I pardon that man's life' (4.5.108—9). Though he acknowledges his mistakes, he mounts his own bareheaded defence before the 'dreadful summoners' of the storm: 'I am a man | More sinned against than sinning' (3.2.58—9). Cordelia, Edgar, Kent, the Fool, and Cornwall's servants all have endured miscarriages of justice: 'We are not the first | Who with best meaning have incurred the worst' (5.3.4).

Their own experiences of being unjustly punished lead Job and Lear like prophets to protest the suffering of innocents and the reward of the wicked everywhere. 'The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; he covereth the faces of the judges thereof' (9: 24), cries Job. 'He that is ready to fall is as a lamp in the opinion of the rich. The tabernacles of robbers do prosper and they are in safety that provoke God, whom God hath enriched with his hand' (12: 5—6). 'Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar . . . and the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority. A dog's obeyed in office' (4.5.150—5), rails Lear.

In both works, the critique of justice is elaborated through inconoclastic scenes in kangaroo courts that undermine the legitimacy of regular court proceedings. Job and Cordelia are first tested in public show trials by an adversarial prosecutor and judge. After the comforters bring Job to court again, accusing him of unnamed violations of the Deuteronomic law, he turns the tables and devotes long speeches to putting them and their God on the stand. Parodying both the forensic metaphors with which Bildad attacks him and the terms of the covenantal relationship between God and humans invoked in other sections of the Bible, Job addresses a jury with arguments that combine pathetic appeal and sarcastic challenge:

In the Quarto text, Lear stages a disorderly mock trial of the daughters who have subjected him to interrogation and judgement (Q 3.6). Mad Tom is judge, the Fool is prosecutor, and a joint stool is one of the defendants. The trial is broken off by allegations of corruption in the court. In the succeeding scene, which takes place inside his castle, Gloucester is tied to a chair to be tried and punished by Regan and Cornwall, who brags that this procedure is no more than 'a form of justice' (3.7.24). In the next act Lear again stages a trial, this time completely in his mind. Here he decides first to pardon all the accused because their accusers are equally guilty–'none does offend, none I say' (4.5.164)–and then he screams for the blood of his enemies: 'Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!' (4.5.183).

In both works, rage against the oppressor is balanced by compassion for the victims. Job grieves,

It is likely Shakespeare recalled this passage when he had Lear cry

5

Observing linguistic echoes, thematic parallels, and similarities in plot between the book of Job and King Lear highlights significant contrasts between the two works. As in all the other paired texts considered here, Shakespeare's treatment of biblical materials, like that of many other Renaissance artists, shifts the emphasis from theocentric to anthropocentric. In the Bible, God is a primary speaker and protagonist. In King Lear the deity remains silent. In fact the most potent theological language of Shakespeare's play reverses the biblical hierarchy by making human choices about human beings the determinants of divine behaviour and approval:

And show the heavens more just.

And later, 'Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, | The gods themselves throw incense' (5.3.20—1).

Readers of the book of Job discover a vast gulf of understanding and sympathy separating humans and God. Though Shakespeare's godlike characters–Prospero, Henry V, and the Duke in Measure for Measure–imitate God's practice of hiding from, tricking, testing, and saving his subjects, they remain human. In King Lear Edgar plays God to Gloucester by creating an experience of death and rebirth in order to forestall his father from the sin of suicide and to strengthen his patience and faith: 'Why I do trifle thus with his despair | Is done to cure it' (4.5.33—4). But Edgar takes on no divine attributes and the miracle is bogus. Cordelia is several times identified with Christ. She is referred to by the gentlemen as one 'Who redeems nature from the general curse | That twain have brought it to' (4.5.201—3), and she echoes Jesus' words in Luke 2: 49–'I must go about my father's business'– when she states 'O dear father it is thy business that I go about' (4.3.23—4). But her humanity and mortality are all the more prominent because of the resemblance.

Another contrast between the biblical and the Shakespearian works appears at their endings. Both Renaissance and modern commentators have taken pains to explain how the conclusion of the book of Job justifies the ways of God to man. The 'Argument' that prefaces the book of Job in the Geneva Bible states that Job provides 'the example of a singular patience . . . afflicted not only in body but also in mind by temptations of wife and friends . . . [who] came under pretense of consolation but actually to make him despair. . . . He did constantly resist them and came to good success'. God's repudiation of the orthodox comforters and his apparent sanction of Job's rebellion are disposed of by the commentator's scholastic distinction: '[Job] had good cause and handled it badly–good cause was that man could not know God's secret reasonings; bad handling was that he protested against God. . . . [The comforters] had bad cause in that they wanted to bring him to despair, and good handling in that they maintained God's providence and justice'. Similarly, a modern commentator argues that the book of Job teaches the lesson that God demands and eventually rewards righteousness if it is coupled with patience: 'The beacon of the righteous is not hope of reward but the conviction that, for man, cosmic wisdom is summed up in the duty to fear God and shun evil, whether or not these virtues bear fruit . . . . The case of Job is a stern warning never to infer sin from suffering (the error of the Friends), or the enmity of God toward the sufferer (the error of Job)'.

Many critics contrast these restorative endings with the ending of King Lear. Dr. Johnson found he could not bear it and preferred the version rewritten by Nahum Tate that allowed Lear and Cordelia to survive. Jan Kott observes that the parallels with the book of Job serve to mark the ending of King Lear not as an adaptation but a bitter Beckett-like parody. 'The book of Job is a theatre of the priests. Whereas in . . . Shakespeare . . . the book of Job is performed by clowns . . . the gods do not intervene. They are silent'. The fact that Albany prays, 'the gods defend her' (5.3.231), just before Lear carries the dead Cordelia on stage and that when he sees them Kent asks, 'Is this the promised end?' (5.3.238), conveys a nihilistic tragic irony rather than a pious theodicy.

And yet Shakespeare might have also entertained a less orthodox reading of the ending of the Book of Job than the Geneva Bible's commentators. Like many modern scholars, he might have dismissed the final prose section as a pious add-on–a kind of Nahum Tate revision–that detracted from the more tragic conclusion of Job's repentance in dust and ashes. Or he might have been thinking of John Calvin's 'description of the Divinity [that] comes at times to resemble a tyrant who arbitrarily and unpredictably saves and damns, just as in Luther He seems at times the enemy . . .'. Or if Shakespeare read the Bible with the imaginative freedom of modern interpreters such as Carl Jung or Jack Miles, he might have found in the happy ending of the book of Job the story of a primitive god challenged and transformed by one of his own creatures, an ending like The Tempest's, in which the servant Ariel teaches the master Prospero a lesson about humanity.

On the other hand, Shakespeare might have intended the final section of King Lear to reflect the more pious reading of the end of the book of Job. A. C. Bradley suggested that the play's title be changed to 'The Redemption of King Lear' to signify that the final lines allow Lear to reach a transcendant revelation of sacrificial love–Cordelia's as well as his own–a love intensified by loss and comparable to that of Christ and the disciples at the crucifixion. And Paul Siegel regards Lear's final cry as the utterance of his departing soul's sighting of Cordelia's on the way to heaven.

Recent critics have tried to sort out these apparently contradictory endings of both the book of Job and King Lear by attributing them to separate originals of the transmitted text. Most biblical scholars believe that the afflicted Job's last speech of repentance for presuming to understand God (42: 1—6) concludes a verse tragedy that has a different textual source from the book's final prose narrative in which God justifies Job and compensates his suffering (42: 7—17). Two distinct early printed versions of King Lear also have different endings. In the Quarto, Lear's dying line is 'Break heart, I prithee break' (Q 5.3.306). In the Folio, this line is reassigned to the onlooker Kent, and a new inconclusive but possibly hopeful utterance is added as Lear's last words: 'Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, | Look there, look there' (5.3.286—7).

According to Kenneth Muir, 'Job was much in his mind while Shakespeare was writing King Lear'. If so, more than one version of the story was in his mind. In the book of Job, clamorous voices shout each other down, each claiming to speak God's word. To end the dispute, the character named God speaks loudest, but his last words are framed by Job's, by a narrator's, and by those of many later commentators. The plurality of surviving texts and of commentaries also remove certainty about which version of his own play was in Shakespeare's mind while he was writing King Lear.

Aristotle says that theme or thought in a tragedy is what the characters say, not what the work as a whole or the author says. Readers are driven to search for the wisdom hidden in the book of Job and in King Lear as urgently as the characters within the works seek the truth, in passages of such intensity that they promise a glimpse of the unknowable. It is a paradox of literary language, particularly the language of biblical and Shakespearian tragedy, that its most profound words are least decipherable–perhaps because they come 'within a foot | Of th’ extreme verge' (4.5.25—6).