by Hilary Kessler-Godin, delivered at Minyan M'at

King Lear is possibly the most complex of Shakespeare’s tragedies, with many themes and levels intersecting throughout. Yet it is undeniably at least on one level an exploration of Torah’s fifth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother, that you may long endure on the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”

Lear had three daughters. All four family members end up paying with their lives when the two eldest, Goneril and Regan, demonstrate themselves either unwilling or unable to honor their father – indeed, demonstrate themselves capable of treating him eventually as an enemy.

I’d like to use the play to explore some of the issues concerning this commandment, such as the following:

1. The ability or obligation of children to observe this commandment when the children themselves may feel ill-treated by a parent
2. The placement of “Honor your father and your mother” within the ten commandments as a precursor to all other commandments dealing with interpersonal relationships
3. What happens to observance of other mitzvot concerning treatment of other people when the 5th commandment is transgressed; and
4. The consequences to society warned of in the commandment’s second part, “that you may long endure on the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”

Torah does not delve into whether all parents are deserving of the kavod that God commands children give them. Putting aside the clear-cut cases of abusive or severely neglectful parents, what about children who do not feel respected or honored by their parents? Can they learn to follow the fifth commandment? And if not, can they form a healthy relationship both with God and with other humans in a way that enables them to observe the other nine commandments?

It’s never definitively established in King Lear that Goneril and Regan turn on their father due to some long-simmering childhood resentment, but there are hints. The question is whether those resentments warrant his treatment at their hands.

In the play’s second scene, Lear demands declarations of love from each of his daughters in order that they might each in return receive a third of his kingdom. This demand already begs the question whether Lear felt secure in his daughters’ love – for why would a father sure of his childrens’ affection demand such a show from them? Goneril and Regan, however, give him what he wants to hear, platitudes of devotion and obligation that serve them well in Lear’s eyes.

It’s made clear, however, that Lear favors his youngest, Cordelia – a practice, which we know, does not engender good will in the less favored children. He stands ready to give her “a third more opulent than your sisters’.” Cordelia, however, speaks nearly as simply as the language of Torah concerning a child’s obligation to a parent. The ten commandments do not proscribe how one honors one’s parents, or how one demonstrates respect; and neither does Cordelia, as she states the following:

“Good my lord, you have begot me, bred me, lov’d me; I return those duties back as are right fit; Obey you, love you, and most honor you,” she says. But Lear, having been wowed by more flowery declarations from the two older sisters, banishes Cordelia for failing to elaborate. She becomes a victim of his insecurity, his worry that his children do not love him enough.

When Cordelia departs for France and urges her sisters to deal gently with their father, Regan tells Cordelia, “Prescribe us not our duty.” So it’s clear that Goneril and Regan, even harboring whatever resentments they might have toward a father who favored the youngest sister, know how they’re supposed to treat Lear. But they never act on it.

After Lear has handed control of his kingdom to Goneril and Regan, he turns to them for shelter with his hundred knights. And he is shown to have been rightly worried about his daughters’ respect for him – but he picked the wrong daughters in which to stake his own well-being.

Now, given the opportunity, they seek to strip him of this last vestige of power. Lear states, “I gave you all—“ and is cut off by Regan saying “And in good time you gave it.” But is even this a justification for what comes next? She and Goneril show not a second thought in casting out their father into an approaching ferocious storm.

Was Lear a flawed parent? Sure. However, one might say that whatever childhood resentments they have, these sisters do receive a kingdom from their father, which in some minds might have been enough to make up for past parental failings and merit a father at least some respect. And perhaps Lear subconsciously favored Cordelia precisely because she inherently understood a child’s obligation to even a flawed parent – and after all, what parent is not flawed in some way? Even the best parents are still only human.

So even children of flawed parents are obligated to observe the fifth commandment. But within the order of the ten commandments why does honoring one’s parents come before the commandment not to murder? Or commit adultery?

Numerous commentaries on the ten commandments state that the way they were divided on the two tablets signify the division between those commandments that relate to Bnai Yisrael’s relationship with God and those that pertain to people’s relationships with one another. Those same commentaries state that “Honor your father and your mother” is a way of honoring God. Parents and God are partners in giving us life and raising us, and to reject the former verges on also rejecting the latter.

But the fifth commandment does not mention God, and would therefore seem to also belong with the second group of commandments that are bein adam l’chavero – between one person and another.

Honoring one’s parents falls where it does in the order of the ten commandments, then, because it is a transition between the first four – the realm of the ephemeral, of honoring God -- and the last five – the often harder arena of human interactions. Our relationship with our parents is the first interpersonal relationship we have, often forming the basis for how we conduct our relationships with other people for the rest of our lives. When we honor our parents, we learn to honor other people, and have a moral underpinning that necessitates this commandment’s placement before the other five commandments dealing with human interactions.

Conversely, transgressing the fifth commandment may make it that much easier to work on flouting the next five. Casting aside the relationship with one’s parents – the first people with whom one has a bond -- makes it that much easier to fall into sins harming other people.

Coming back to King Lear, clearly, Goneril and Regan don’t have a healthy relationship with Lear. By medieval standards, it may have been par for the course, before the days of child empowerment and concern for the effects of parental behavior on childrens’ psyches. But whatever pretense or restraint the daughters may have practiced due to their place in society, the relationship not only crumbles the minute the daughters gain power, but becomes an exercise in sadism untempered by any compunction or second thoughts.

Once Goneril and Regan break past the taboo of dishonoring their father they manage, between them, to break each of the last five commandments. Having stripped themselves of the ability to regard their father with decency, they are unable to treat other people decently as well. Without honoring that first interpersonal relationship, how can they have a foundation for any others?

It is as if the fifth commandment is a fortification holding them back from pure self-aggrandizement and as long as they’ve had to obey it, their more raw impulses were kept in check. Once that fortification breaks, they slide quickly down that proverbial slippery slope and find it fairly easy to murder, steal, commit adultery, bear false witness, and covet what the other has.

This leads us to my last point, the consequences for society at large when parents are not honored – the commandment’s second half: “that you may long endure on the land that Adonai your God is giving you.”

I’m going to interpret “Enduring on the land” in this case as a metaphor for building a society. The kingdom in “King Lear” nearly disintegrates along with the family, showing in the most extreme way why the commandment comes with its condition about enduring on the land, and enduring as a society. The collapse of Lear’s family due to his treatment at his daughters’ hands does not carry consequences just for the family. It is amplified by the fact that this family is also fighting for control of the kingdom -- as goes the family, so does the kingdom. The kingdom’s wrecked state at the play’s end is a metaphor for the consequences to society at large when children who should honor their parents do not.

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