SOURCE: “Myth and History in King Lear,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 3, Summer, 1975, pp. 227-42.

In the following essay, Hardison traces parallels between King Lear and the story of the mythological king Ixion.

Ever since A. W. Ward's History of English Drama (1899) scholars have recognized that the plot of Gorboduc is a compound of two heterogeneous elements. First, there is the pseudo-history derived ultimately from Geoffrey of Monmouth. In its original form, this material lacks shape. A second element, a framework, is needed within which it can be articulated. Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton might simply have “invented” such a framework, but instead, following the habit of the age they drew on a classical myth previously used by Seneca. Ward and later scholars agree that this myth is “the ancient Theban story of the sons of Oedipus and Iocasta and their fatal strife.”¹ I do not wish to...