William G. Elton’s King Lear and the Gods (1966) exemplifies “history of ideas” scholarship. Most critics, Elton claims, read the play as sympathetic to Christianity. In contrast, Elton sees the play as a paganized version of a Christian play. Shakespeare adapted the Lear story from an earlier King Leir, emptied it of Christian allusions, and substituted pagan references that questioned divine providence.
I’ve only read half of it, but what follows is a covenantally-tinged summary.
TRANSCENDENCE: Elton documents two interpretations of providence that clashed with orthodox doctrine. First, skeptics claimed that the gods didn’t care what happened to people. Second, theologians insisted God’s ways were past finding out and incomprehensible to human reason.
HIERARCHY: Elton identifies four worldviews in the play. The first rejects Christianity. The second superstitiously believes in Fortune and Chance. The third holds pre-Christian beliefs which, though pagan, are virtuous. The fourth believes in the gods but maintains that they are cruel.
ETHICS: Elton sees Cordelia and Edgar as adherents of Prisca Theologia (“ancient theology”). In short, they are virtuous pagans. Cordelia demonstrates fidelity to the truth and Edgar to his feelings. Elton shows that Protestants debated how eternally efficacious these virtuous pagans’ good deeds were. Cordelia and Edgar are the play’s best candidates for Christianity, and Lear rejects their interpretations of the gods as kind and just.
SANCTIONS: Elton identifies Lear’s reaction to Cordelia’s death as consonant with skeptical responses to God’s providence. A good God wouldn’t let Cordelia die. Her death invalidates beneficent providence.
SUCCESSION: Shakespeare makes the explicit Christian references in King Leir either more ambiguous or explicitly pagan. On the other hand, Shakespeare echoes the complex theology of Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.
Experiments in Criticism 