Shakespeare and Lamentations

(In this analysis I am taking the book of Lamentations literally and not the way Origen describes it. An excellent argument explaining a large portion of my rationale in this decision can be found in Carissa’s post The Function of Allegory.)

The second scene of Act I in William Shakespeare’s King Lear is a dialogue between a father, Gloucester, and his two sons Edgar and Edmund. Edmund lies and warns his father (behind Edgar’s back) that Edgar is planning to assassinate him. Gloucester is of course upset with this news and, being superstitious, passes along the blame of his misfortune, proclaiming:


“These late eclipses in the sun and moon por-
tend no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature
can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
scourged by the sequent effect.” (King Lear, Act I scene 2)


In this passage Shakespeare, a master of human nature, hits a human characteristic that I will argue, in a secular analysis of religion, is the inspiration behind the book of Lamentations. Gloucester’s speech here reveals a fundamental human habit to assign explanations. In King Lear Gloucester excuses and explains his son’s plot to murder him with movements of celestial bodies. I argue that this human characteristic is the driving force behind the book of Lamentations, because the entire book describes and attempts to rationalize the fall of Jerusalem by placing blame/responsibility on the supernatural. The book makes God guilty of (or responsible for) the fall Jerusalem, and the evil and misfortune that plagues its citizens. In other words, the sack of Jerusalem is like Edgar’s supposed plot to kill his father, and divine intervention in Lamentations is like Gloucester’s set of astrological excuses and explanations.

I want to end this post with another quote from King Lear that is the direct response to the passage cited earlier. However, I would first like to clarify that the following quote is not meant to reflect my personal belief in the origins of religious writings. I merely find this to be an interesting perspective on the origin of humans’ explanations/excuses for all things, religion and religious works included.


“This is the excellent floppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own
behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the
moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity;
fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars,
and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary
influence; and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting
on.” (King Lear, Act I scene 2)