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The Cry of Birth:

King Lear's Hysterica Passio
Mark S. Shearer
University of South Carolina
Critics have frequen,tlycommented on the great transformation that has
occurred in Lear when he comes on to the stage for the last time, and many of
them (even some with a pessimistic view of the play) have agreed that he is
now a truly noble and heroic figure. Harold S. Wilson's comment is not
untypical. Lear is, he writes, "immeasurably enhanced in dignity, purified in
the fire and tempest of his suffering. . . transfigured to a symbol of human
grandeur. . . ."1Occasionally a critic has spoken of Lear's transformation in
terms of a new birth: Kenneth Muir writes, for instance, "the old Lear died in
the storm. The new Lear is born in the scene in which he is reunited with
Cordelia."2 As far as I know, however, no one has called attention to the
radical importance of the metaphor of birth to the ending of King Lear, an
importance which grows from the seemingly casual references to conception
and labor in Act I and which culminates in Act V when Lear comes onstage
bearing Cordelia in his arms.
In the course of the play, human suffering-especially as it is typified in
Lear's experience-is repeatedly presented in terms of conception, childcarrying, labor, and the pains of birth (both of bearing and of being born).
Lear's use of the term Hysterica passio, or "the mother," in Act II is a
significant pointer to the importance of these ideas. In what follows I propose
to examine Lear's transformation more closely in light of the idea of birth,
and in doing so I will focus my remarks on the significance and meaning of
Hysterica passio in Lear's change.
In Act I, Shakespeare introduces the metaphor of birth and several
important correlative ideas. Speaking to Kent of Edmund, Gloucester says,
"His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so often blushed to
acknowledge him, that now I am braz'd to 't." When Kent responds, "I cannot
conceive you," Gloucester replies, "Sir, this young fellow's moth~r could;
whereupon she grew round-womb'd. . . ," concluding with, "Do you smell a
fault,!,3In this brief dialogue Shakespeare suggests through image and word
playa number of ideas that have particular relevance to the rest of the play.
Gloucester's use of the smell image looks foward to Lear's remark about his
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hand in Act IV: "it smells of mortality" (vi, 133).This theme is, of course,
linked to the problem of identity, which in turn is linked through Kent's pun
on conceive to the question of knowledge. As Kent suggests somewhat
humorously, he cannot quite understand what Gloucester is saying
concerning his son. Note also that Shakespeare turns Kent's difficulty in
understanding into an image of an expanding womb. As is well-known, such
references to sex, birth, and the womb, here so lighthearted and casual, turn
increasingly bitter and pessimisstic as the play progresses. Gloucester's
remarks in Act I, for example, point forward to Edgar's lines in Act V.
Speaking to Edmund of his father's blinding, he says: "The dark and vicious
place where thee he got / cost him his eyes" (iii, 173-74).
In Act II these themes are picked up again with great seriousness as Lear
reacts to the stocking of Kent, his messenger. Lear cannot believethat Regan
and Cornwall have violated protocol as they have, and this, coupled with
Goneril's earlier discourteous treatment of him, particularly her expressed
intention of stripping him of many of his retainers, is almost more than he can
stand. As he tries to control his anger, Lear exclaims, "0 how this mother
swellsup toward my heart! / Hysterica passio, down, thou climbingsorrow"
(iv, 56-57). In trying to understand what his daughters have done, he adds
soon after:
We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body (iv., 107-09).
Here, quite significantly, Lear alludes to that which is to come, the power of
suffering to strip him of both his physical and mental self-possession.
In this scene Shakespeare returns once more to the idea of the
transforming power of passion, implying that its effect in Lear is closely
related to the problem of self-knowledge. In having become aware of his
daughters' contempt and ingratitude, Lear beginsto fall prey to an emotion as
overwhelming as it is disorienting. And as Shakespeare goes on to show in
Acts III and IV, the greater Lear's distress, the less he is able to understand
either who he is or what is happening to him. With his use of Hysterica passio
Lear himself impliesthat his suffering is very nearly life-threatening, usingthe
term in its standard Elizabethan sense to refer to a feeling of suffocation,
deriving, as Shakespeare's contemporaries believed, from an increase of
pressure in the chest because of a movement of vapors from the abdomen
toward the head.4The use to which Shakespeare puts this term, however, is
much wider. Etymologically, the phrase means womb-suffering and refers to
the travail attendant upon birth. Its use to denote the feeling of suffocation, of
"climbing sorrow" as Lear describes it, derives largely from the increasing
pressure women feel on their lungs during pregnancy as a result of the

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expansion of their wombs. As it functions in relation to the birth imagery in

the play, Lear's Hysterica passio of course carries these suggestions, but it also
has four other basically different meanings. In his development of these
meanings Shakespeare suggests that each is closely connected with the
problems of knowledge, identity, and suffering. As he dramatizes this last
problem, it is finally paradoxical, particularly as it concerns Lear, for in its
capacity to transform, suffering becomes finally both positive and negative,
creative and destructive.
One of the meanings of Hysterica passio pertains to the idea of labor.
When Act II ends, Lear has been successful in his struggle to master "this
mother," his increasing pain and anger over his daughters' behavior, that
swells toward his heart. But in Act III he begins to lose control. Out on the
heath Lear pits all his strength against the overwhelming power of the storm,
which, in the words of an unnamed gentleman, strives "to make nothing of'
him. Among other things, the storm represents not only the destructive power
of nature but also the destructive force of Lear's own anger. In his effort to
preserve his sense of self and to triumph over the swelling "mother" inside
him, Lear tries to outshout the storm and to hold himself up under all its
stress. Yet, the very excessiveness of his effort signals that he is beginning to
lose his battle with his emotions. Indeed, in giving voice to his anger as he
does, in violent curses on the entire world, Lear quickly begins to fall prey to
the same destructive forces, both internal and external, that he seeks to hold
at bay. Paradoxically, however, as he drifts toward increasing incoherence,
toward madness, he also begins to come to a better understanding of himself
and others. In fact, he comes to knowledge which humanizes him. For
example, not long after he states "the art of our necessitiesis strange/ And
make vild things precious," he indicates a new awareness of man as he exists
unprotected by the social order. On considering the "Poor naked wretches.. .
/ That bide the pelting ofthis pitilessstorm," he seesthat as king he has "Ta'en
/ Too little care of this!" referring in part to the suffering he now knows that
others he has been indifferent to have had to endure (ii, 70-71;iii, 32-33).And
now, as a result of this awareness, Lear is able for the first time in the play to
treat others sympathetically and unselfishly, his treatment of his shivering
Fool and the naked and babbling Tom being obvious examples. In essence,
then, as Lear struggles to master his passion, he increasingly breaks down.
Yet ironically, from the breakdown and from the development of his newselfawareness, a somewhat different person beginsto emerge, delivered in part by
the same "mother" he seeks to hold at bay.
A second meaning of Lear's phrase pertains to the capacity of children to
make their parents suffer. In this sense, womb-suffering suggests not so much
the travail of labor as it does the pain that often results years after labor.
When Lear makes his decision to stay with neither daughter and to go almost
alone into a hostile, indifferent world, he is prompted by his hurt and by his

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great need to retain a sense of power and dignity. But in choosing exile out on
the barren heath he reaps the consequences of his own paternity. He suffers
not only because of hisown character, but also because of the characters of his
daughters, daughters who have inherited his same traits of insensitivity,
anger, and will to power, daughters who have driven him out much as he did
Cordelia in Act I. Lear indicates that to think too long on what his daughters
have done to him is to invite madness, and although he struggles heroically
against it, he neverthelessincreasinglygivesway to its power. As Shakespeare
suggest,however,Lear'sdescent into madness is not without its compensations.
Not only does it bring him into closer community with others; it alsogrants him
even greater self-knowledge, making him aware that in large part he is
responsible for his own suffering. As Lear suggests in speaking to Edgar, he
realizesthat his sufferingis flesh-begotten. Projecting his own experienceonto
Edgar, he states:
Nothing could have subdu'd nature
To such a lowness but his unkind daughters. . . .
Judicious punishment! 'Twas this flesh begot
These pelican daughters (III, iv, 70-75).
It is significant here that Lear's suffering has brought him to a point where
distinctions between past and present, self and others are breaking down.
And in addition to helping him to experience a heart-felt identification with
others, it has also helped him to see that his painful circumstances with the
presenthavegrownout of the fruit of his own body in the past. Andas Lear
suggest, both of these realizations merge in a single principle of identity, a
principle implicit in the meaning of Hysterica passio: flesh-made-flesh
making flesh suffer.
A third meaning of this term pertains to the power of sex to create a hell
of earth. As Lear drifts deeper into madness and as his sympathy for others
widens, he becomes a kind of seer. In Act IV, for example, Lear realizes that
all his life man is oppressed, in his words, with "the smell of mortality," and
that this smell constitutes a kind of trans-social metaphysical bond uniting all
living creatures: not only are all born condemned to die but they are also
compelled to live a life of imperious desire. Consequently, transgression of
some sort and attendant physical suffering are inevitable. As Lear suggests,
this transgression and suffering are both finally necessary conditions of the
process of life. Speaking of sexual desire, for example, Lear states:
I pardon that man's life. What was thy cause?
Adultery?
Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery? No,
The wren goes to 't, and the small gilded fly
Does lecher in my sight.
Let copulation thrive (IV, vi, 109-14).

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Here Lear suggests that sexual desire, though it causes man to violate social
norms, is a perfectly natural fact of existence, that indeed it is a biological
imperative, not only to others but to life itself. As such it is thus neither evil
nor immoral. He implies moreover that adultery, since it is a consequence of
this drive, is finally a social inevitability and that to Dunisha person for this
transgression, particularly with death, is not only to ally political power with
cruelty and injustice, it is also to oppose morality in the form of social
convention against life itself. In saying "Let copulation thrive" Lear thus gives
sanction to sexual desire, or rather the life-force that is inseparable from this
desire, implying that inasmuch as a person is punished severelyfor this desire,
social and political power become destructive, life-denying, and hence evil.
Paradoxically, however, though he defends it against social and moral
convention, Lear also sees that sexual desire can and does create a kind of hell
on earth, particularly as one becomes aware of his existence in time,
maintaining that this hell has its source literally and figuratively in the womb
and that it emanates from the female genitalia. He exclaims,
But to this girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends': there's hell, there's
darkness,
There is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding
Stench, consumption (IV, vi, 126-29).
As Lear suggests in his demonic ravings, ravings we have to judge with a
degree of skepticism because he has not experienced the fullest
transformation of his powers, a true knowledge of selfand others begins when
one realizes that the womb is his initial source of discomfort in time and that it
is a prime cause of his perpetual suffering, a sufferingthat comes increasingly
to dominate his mind, will, and life. Indeed, as Lear describes man's
relationship to the world and to his point of origin, it is the womb as it is
associated with desire, sex, and violence that provides the ultimate authority
in man's life,a point he makes graphically in his description of a man fleeinga
dog and a rascal beadle lashing a whore, on whom his guilty lust has been
projected and then punished in the form of self-absolvingcruelty (IV, vi, 15763).
In these ideas of sex and violence, Lear suggests two other principles of
identity uniting all. In the process of birth, violence and sex are inextricably
bound up in each other. Moreover, they remain thereafter impersonal forces
that dictate the course of life itself, for both individuals and groups alike. As
Lear implies, when one sees life from this uncomfortable perspective,the idea
of a man as a unique personality with a distinctive history pales into
insignificance. Like all other creatures, man is simply a product of temporal
forces that have given birth to him and have shaped him both internally and

externally, forces which are perpetuated in the process of birth and whichfind
their completion in hissuffering and inevitable loss. It is at this point in Act IV
that Lear begins to see quite clearly the horror implicit in the Hysterica passio
to which all men are heir. As he tells Gloucester, "Thou know'st the first time
that we smell the air / We wawl and cry" (IV, vi, 179-80).In thus yoking an
image of the birth cry with the ideas of suffering and death, Lear thus
demonstrates a profound insight into the human condition. He sees with
uncommon clarity the violent, painful, and creative depths of life, an
understanding Shakespeare embodies in Lear's description of the hellish,
convulsive, death-dealing power of the womb itself.
The final meaning of Hysteria passio pertains to suffering that is the
result of overwhelming love. As Shakespeare suggests, contrary to the power
of violent sexuality and anger, whichare capable of reducing human beingsto
homicidal animals, the power of love is capable of transforming people into
more nearly complete human beings. In the last part of Act IV and in Act I,
Shakespeare develops this idea first with Cordelia and then with Lear. Bythe
end of Act IV, the Hysterica passio Lear has struggled to master has done
nearly all of which it is capable, having reduced Lear to a supra-rational
emotional and physical wreck, with little sense of individual identity and
almost no control over his body. In fact, when we next see Lear after his
demonic ravings, he has literally run down and out, having fallen into a deep
sleep. It is from this sleep that Shakespeare develops the transforming power
of love, particularly as he describes Cordelia's tearful and ever-gentleconcern
for her ravaged father. When Lear awakens, his great rage has passed, calmed
in part by its own excessivenessand in part by Cordelia's loving ministrations.
On seeing Cordelia for the first time since Act I, Lear kneels. After Cordelia
raises him up, he says:
For (as I am a man) I think this lady
To be my child. . . (IV, vii, 68-69)
Here Shakespeare thus dramatizes the power of love to repair the ravages of
suffering, implying as well that Cordelia's love has awakened Lear to a
stronger and more positive sense of self-identity.
Although at this point Cordelia has helped to restore Lear to himselfas a
man, the transformation of self in him has not yet become complete.
Cordelia's love has not yet borne fruit in a genuine expression oflove by Lear
himself (that comes only later as they are being led away to prison). Nor has
her love created in Lear a sense of power or prompted him to any action
revealing the depths of his powers of self. In fact the full force of Cordelia's
love does not become apparent until Lear comes onto the empty stage for the
last time, howling in mortal agony. Now, his anguished howl and his having
killed Cordelia's hangman reveal a man transformed by passion. His cry itself

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suggests the paradoxical nature of this transformation. On one hand it signals

the beginning of hisfinal death agony. As he stares in vain into Cordelia's face
for signs of life, Lear's own life has turned into an overwhelming nightmare.
Indeed, he stands as though looking into the blank face of death itself,
experiencing with unbearable suffering its foulest possible hell, arising as it
does from loss of his own flesh and blood, the daughter he has loved most. At
the same time, however, Lear's cry evokes his climactic moment in a gradual
process of birth. Goaded by unspeakable pain and love born of death, Lear
has awakened, indeed emerged, as if from a life-long pre-natal sleep, a new
and stronger person. As he bears Cordelia in his arms, Lear now is no longer
simply father, no longer mere man, or even king. He is he who loves, he who
loveswith all the anguished, uncomprehending strength of his being. Even as
he sinks to the stage, Lear is now the embodiment of all that finallygiveslifein
the world of the play meaning, order, and value. In this last sense,then, Lear's
Hysterica passio, his suffering in flesh and from flesh in an agony of
overwhelming love, has not only begun its final destruction of him; it has also
completed its transformation of him into a truly noble and heroic figure.
IOn the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), p.
197. Among other critics who have expressed a similar idea are A.C. Bradley. Shakespearean
Tragedy (London: Macmillan. 1904), p. 235; W. R. Elton. King Lear and the Gods (San Marino,
California: The Huntington Library, 1966). p. 337; William Rosen, Shakespeare and the Craft of
Tragedy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 50-51. Not everyone has agreed with
this interpretation.
L.L. Schucking, for example, though he considers Lear "completely
transformed," by the end of the play, insists that he is much less great than he was formerly. See
Character Problems In Shakespeare's
Plays (New York: Peter Smith, 1948), pp. 188-89.
Schucking's view is atypical, however.
21ntroduction to the Arden Edition of King lear (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1959), p. LV.
JAil quotations from King Lear are taken from The RIverside Shakespeare (New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1974). Hereafter all quotations will be cited parenthetically in the text.
'For comments on the meaning of Hysterics passlo see The Variorum EdItion of KIne Lear,
ed. H.H. Furness (New York: American Scholar Publications, 1965), p. 142; Lily B. Campbell's
Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes: Slaves of Passion (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966), p. 197; The
Riverside Shakespeare, p. 1270.