ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how Lear's mourning over Cordelia also resonates with the Virgin Mary's laments for Jesus as depicted in the medieval English Passion plays. The resonances in structure between the medieval Passion plays and Shakespeare's King Lear suggest that the taboo pietà, which had once served as catalyst and emblem of communal empathy in the English place of worship, is resuscitated in the breath of the tragic actor on the English stage. In King Lear, the motifs of ritual lament are fragmented, not only by Lear' disjointed thoughts, but also because Shakespeare distributes them among different characters. The laments of the mourning women of medieval English drama, and especially the Virgin's, are a surprising analogue for Shakespeare's King Lear, one that reconceives the debates over the inscrutable power of Lear's final lines. Shakespeare' King Lear, like Donne' sermon, indicates that woman' tears have become a site of cultural volatility and contention.
