SOURCE: Levenson, Jill. “What the Silence Said: Still Points in King Lear.” In Shakespeare 1971: Proceedings of the World Shakespeare Congress, Vancouver, August 1971, edited by Clifford Leech and J. M. R. Margeson, pp. 215-29. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1971, Levenson contends that silence in King Lear is integral to the play's structure, characterization, and thematic development.

Only he who has attained to his own identity, can be silent, only when thinking has reached reality, will it come to a stop.¹

At the end of Stravinsky's Les Noces, an extraordinary series of pauses punctuates the music. Creating and disappointing expectation almost simultaneously, the pauses compel the listener's attention, his energies, with at least as much force as the sounds. When the last vibration from the percussion blends completely with the stillness in which it began, we experience all the resonance...