By: Nathan Walz, Mia Hendrickson, Samantha Kim, Lauren Bieniek, Caleb Martin, Madelyn Perry
In class, we have focused on these three key terms: liquid/liquidity, swapping, and of course, expulsion. We talked about how language has multiple meanings and can be interpreted in many different ways. For example, Investopedia defines liquidity as the efficiency or ease with which an asset or security can be converted into ready cash without affecting its market price. Google, on the other hand, defines liquidity as “the availability of liquid assets to a market or company.” Interestingly, the word liquid itself also refers to “a substance that flows freely but is of constant volume, having a consistency like that of water or oil.” As for swapping, Investopedia defines swap as “a derivative contract through which two parties exchange the cash flows or liabilities from two different financial instruments.” A more general definition from google says, “an act of exchanging one thing for another.” In King Lear, these terms interact in a way that produces an outcome of expulsion from positions of power, homes, countries, and ultimately, life.
In King Lear, what marks the whole chain of events throughout the play starts at the very beginning in Act 1 Scene 1 where there is a significant swap of power. Lear, a King who is getting too old to hold power over his entire kingdom, decides he is going to divide the power between his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia based on how much they say they love him. This gives the first example of swapping, with King Lear swapping positions and power with his daughters. Goneril, the eldest daughter, starts off by saying to her father, “Sir, I love you more than the world can wield the matter” (1.1.60a), meaning she loves him more than words could ever describe. When it is Regan’s turn, she gives a very similar speech and it seems that the two of them may be acting in bad faith when saying their love simply because they want power over parts of the kingdom. When it gets to be Cordelia’s turn, she has a harder time overemphasizing her love for her father and says, “I love your majesty According to my bone, no more nor less”(1.1.102) She basically states that she loves the king because he is her father and not for the over exaggerated reasons Goneril and Reagan shared. In return, Cordelia gets expelled from the kingdom by Lear while the other two sisters are granted power over sections of the kingdom. Lear, having turned away his favorite daughter, Cordelia, when she did not fulfill his wish and claimed her heart could not be only for him, also cost himself his only ally. Lear utterly rejected Cordelia, disowning her from both his realm and his heart. This swap of power is the beginning of the end for King Lear.
It is impossible to trade without some sort of sacrifice. There will always be a consequence to follow as shown in the beginning of Act 3. We see time and time again that the search for power and status through liquidity and swapping only causes harm and suffering. Having been repeatedly expelled from the castle and treated worse and worse by his daughters, King Lear finds himself stranded out in a storm. Throughout scenes 1 and 2 Lear devolves more and more into a manic state, rambling and crazed. His state of mind is much like a liquid losing its form and spilling uncontrollably. He had traded his land and crown for the dream of freedom, only for it to cost him his status and power. Lear’s rapidly devolving mental state is a direct consequence of ultimately swapping his daughters for his status, “I am a Man more sinned against than sinning.” (3. 2. 62) Lear’s belief that his daughter’s “love” was something that could be traded only led to the suffering and expulsion that follows in the rest of the story. We see this through Lear and his loss of status and family, as well as Gloucester and his relationship with his sons, and the many deaths that end the tragedy. As Edmund attempts to swap himself and his brother Edgar as Gloucester’s favored son, he only serves to tear apart their lives. Initially, his expulsion of his brother, and ultimately his father does serve to upgrade his status as he grows closer to Goneril and Regan, it ends with himself and his father dead and Edgar at the top. He sacrificed everything he had only for it to turn against him in Act 5. Lear’s choice to liquidate his land was only the catalyst, as following Edmund’s fraud and the expulsion of everyone and their status we see nothing but death and pain. In King Lear, Edmund questions the fairness of existence, Lear starting after witnessing Cordelia’s death, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, / And thou no breath at all?” (5.3.370). His early questioning of the fairness of life and status foreshadows his terror throughout the tragedy. Similarly to Lear, his selfish pursuit cost him his status, his relationships, and his life.
In comparing Shakespeare’s play King Lear to the 2008 Global Housing Crisis, it becomes ever more clear how Lear’s warning to Cordelia that “Nothing will come of nothing” (1.1.99) proves false in both the play and for those expelled from their homes. Despite the fact that the very definition of swap should make it abundantly clear that the transaction demands sacrifice to make a gain, there are points in which people are plainly and simply taken advantage of. That is to say, just as Lear sacrifices his kingdom to his daughters with the expectation that he will be able to effectively retire, there is the “fine print” of this transaction: his expulsion. His other expectation, that he is to be loved as much as his daughters first proclaim, also proves to be opposite in execution. Lear is left without that which is promised to him, thus illustrating how nothing can come from something. This experience is not unlike those of people who enter into loans and mortgages that are constructed for the sake of being confusing. The homeowners of 2008 that assumed they would be capable of paying their loans because the bank deemed them worthy of receiving said loan, like King Lear, learned that nothing can come from something- the nothing coming in the form of the loss of a home, and the something being a loan that homeowners thought they could pay off. Despite there being a clear chain of events which begins with the liquidation of Lear’s kingdom, progresses into multiple swaps of identity, and ends with total expulsion, compared to the Global Housing Crisis of 2008, the chain of events is much less capable of being organized. Ultimately, however, in both instances it is clear that despite the order in which they occur, liquidation and swapping result in expulsion.