Illegitimacy as a ‘Disability’ in King Lear

Abstract

Ben Jonson’s remark that Shakespeare is “not of an age, but for all time” reveals the universality and timelessness of the bard. Chronologically Shakespeare has been rediscovered through the culture of each age, the  seventeenth century saw his plays as a glimpse of ‘real life characters and situations’; the  eighteenth century treated him as a lover of nature, the nineteenth century read him psychologically and traced the infinity of human characters. The first half of twentieth century gave importance to his form, use of rhetoric’s, imagery and had a close reading of his plays. The second part of the twentieth century read him in feminist, New Historicist, Marxist and Post-Structuralist perspectives. These readings gave a paradigm shift in interpreting his characters. This paper reads Shakespeare in a New Historicist dimension and traces the modern concept of ‘disability’ which was prevalent in Elizabethan era.  The modern concept of ‘Disability Studies’ is applied to Shakespeare’s King Lear to trace how Edmund was marginalized due to his illegitimacy.