ABSTRACT
This chapter considers King Lear in the context of one particularly contentious element of the Union project, specifically, the question of mutual naturalisation of Scottish and English subjects. The critical spectrum ranges from reading the drama as one which, like the Elizabethan play Gorboduc, demonstrates the dangers of national division and thereby supports James VI and I's Union project, to more ambivalent readings that focus on King Lear's shortcomings as a misguided and even tyrannical monarch. The correspondence between James and Elizabeth represents a process of self-fashioning, of rewriting parentage in order to construct a new identity. This strategy also appears in King Lear, but instead of a peaceable succession, the consequences of manipulating seemingly fixed structures such as parentage prove disastrous. Lear ends with the king's death, but Shakespeare, unhindered by the constraints of historical accuracy, can show the full extent of illegitimacy's danger by leaving the audience without the reassurance of a re-established legitimacy and a clear successor.
