[In the following excerpt, Elton argues that Goneril and Regan fit the Renaissance conception of pagans and that they are modeled after the Machiavellian villain.]

Renaissance expectation was to view the pagan as "saved," superstitious, or atheistical. Through loose construction of both of these last terms, the superstitious person could in his deviation from the Christian mean also be considered atheistical, and so, by a similar construction, might the converse occur. But, in general, … the two were conventionally paired; the first erred by excessive and irrational fear of the deities, while the second erred by inadequate and too rational regard for the heavenly powers. As the whole problem of Renaissance "atheism" is vexed, suffering, it would seem, from an ambiguous use of terms, any attempt at definitive solution is here out of place. But whether or not atheists, in the modern sense, existed in Shakespeare's day, the facts are, first, that pagans could be, and often were, identified as such; and, second, that the religious Renaissance, far from being the relatively monolithic age that recent medievalizers seem to have projected, was fissured by incipient, if not fully formed, doubts.

Through the suggestion of Gloucester as related to the conventional Renaissance conception of the superstitious pagan and through the indication of Cordelia and Edgar as Renaissance "exempted" pagans, we are left with the alternatives that the Renaissance spectator could have with regard to an "ethnic": either (1) the latter was superstitious, (2) he was virtuous enough perhaps to become like the viewer himself, or finally (3) he was atheistic. This last alternative is clearly applicable, with the exception of Lear himself, to all the other major characters: to Goneril, to Regan, and to Edmund.

Whatever their particular religious inclination, however, pagans were, by definition, expected to be polytheistic and probably naturalistic—that is, to find divinity in nature itself through a kind of pantheism. These characteristics the personages in King Lear share; but the particular bias the pagan données take in the individual cases is, of course, of primary interest. In Gloucester … polytheistic naturalism involves superstition; in Cordelia and Edgar the same groundwork also supports an exempted heathenism; but in the villainous trio the emphasis is on naturalism to a maximum degree and thus on a preoccupation with nature and with self, with a minimizing of supernatural interposition, unless that should immediately accrue to the benefit of the natural self.

Well known and frequently rehearsed in the scholarship is the tradition of the Machiavellian villain, with which the pagan naturalist in Lear becomes interwoven; this union is facilitated by the common ground of atheism which both types share, the Machiavellian, virtually by axiom, being a politic libertine and hypo-critical disbeliever. Thus Shakespeare had at hand a conventional character type, already sketched, with some important differences, in Iago and elsewhere, by which he could make dramatically viable his pagan free-thinkers and libertines.

GONERIL AND REGAN

Ethics, in the universe of Goneril, Regan, and Edmund, are Protagorean and extemporized, in a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes. As mankind, according to Hobbes, is determined by nature to acts of natural hatred and hostility, "What more savage, wild, and cruel, than man," observes Hooker, "if he see himself able either by fraud to overreach, or by power to over-bear, the laws whereunto he should be subject?" Although during the play femina viro lupa, at the end the sisters also tear animalistically at each other. "For whiles," points out Fitzherbert in the Second Part of a Treatise, "everie one seeketh his owne private good, without respect of the publike, all become for the most part treacherous, & perfidious, one towards an other: whereby there is neither anie true friendshipp amongst them, nor care of covenant, or promise, nor respect of fidelity, nor regard of oath, nor consequently any common welth" (p. 71).

Analogously, a Renaissance audience could have interpreted Goneril's contempt for her "mild husband" as disdain for the associations of that adjective. Stressing the body, rather than the soul, her scale of human value is measured in terms of force and physical virtù—when Albany calls her "a fiend," she retorts, "Marry, your manhood—mew!" Her motive is rapidity in action, based upon will: "Our wishes on the way / May prove effects."

Compared to direct action, ethical consideration is folly: "a moral fool" she calls her husband. Thus pity is excluded from her cosmos:

Fools do those villains pity who are punish'd
Ere they have done their mischief,
                                        (IV.ii.54-55)

and the selfish end justifies the cruel means. "The ways to enrich," noted Bacon, "are many, and most of them foul." "Honour" is equated by her with action in defense of self-interest, twisted, as is "judgment" above, from its traditional uses; "honour" is clearer to her than it is to Hamlet, for she berates Albany in terms similar to those in which Hamlet accuses himself: "Milk-liver'd man! / That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs", a conception of honor she shares with Macbeth's own lady. Contempt for traditional values accompanies disdain for religious forms: "the text is foolish", she sneers at Albany's warning. Returning evil for good—evil, be thou my good—Goneril and Regan parody Christian charity.

In fact, despite her paganism, the striking thing is that Goneril never mentions the gods at all, an indication that her Renaissance garb has completely covered her natural condition; totally self-preoccupied with her lusts and the expansion of her will, she is deaf to such counsels as Edgar's to Gloucester, "do but look up", and Edgar's to Lear, "Look up, my Lord" (V.iii.312). Instead, Goneril bids Edmund, "Decline your head," her kiss "stretching" only his "spirits," in an amatory sense, "up into the air". In contrast to Cordelia's view of marriage, Goneril and Edmund here enact an adulterous and blasphemous parody, the ritual sealed appropriately by Edmund's "Yours in the ranks of death". Like those of the wicked in A Pake of Knaves (after 1640) and unlike those of even such villains as Claudius, her eyes "Looke a Wayes douneward never on the skies" (p. 9). The dimensions of the evil sisters' universe and their self-centeredness are described in Nathanael Carpenter's Achitophel (1629): "Having all their cares bounded in this world," such worldlings "runne alwayes in the same circle, and respect onely their owne center, disdaining … any interest in any superior Orbe. This, they esteeme their highest heaven; without the which … they can imagine neither Locus nor Tempus; neither place to containe their treasure, nor time to adde to their mortality … motif (p. 55).

As Edgar complements Cordelia in goodness, moreover, Regan complements her sister in evil. Like Goneril, she reduces divine reason to practical consideration ("We shall further think of it,") and action ("our businesses, / Which craves the instant use,"); and, like her, she measures value by material gain. Déracinée, like Goneril, Regan also spares mentioning the gods, except once, hypocritically, before Lear, "O the blest Gods!"—a silence which may be eloquent regarding her beliefs. She thus represents an antithesis to Gloucester's concern regarding the heavenly forces. Her ethics are pat. They involve vengeance of inordinate kind ("If it be true, all vengeance comes too short,"); a devilish parody of poetic justice; an ironic perversion of the relation between goodness and pity ("it was he … / Who is too good to pity thee,"); and the proper place of weakness vis-a-vis power ("I pray you, father, being weak, seem so").

As a heathen villainess, sprung fully grown from the head of the Renaissance Machiavel, Goneril exhibits few differences from her sixteenth-century Italianate model; the implication is that, sharing the common ground of atheism, the pagan and the Machiavellian are expected to behave in a similar manner against God and their fellow men. Like all Machiavellian opportunists, the sisters, little worlds made cunningly, exist in a material time-space world, whose dimensions are present minutes rather than eternity. "And in good time you gave it", Regan sneers at her astounded father. Further, in contrast to Cordelia's "governance" and "knowledge," Goneril's ideals are practical judgment and action; remarking Lear's "poor judgment" in worldly self-regard, she is quick to act in what she conceives as her own self-interest: "We must do something, and i' th' heat", she replies to Regan's "We shall further think of it". Indeed, for her, "mind" is almost the same as will, a far leap from the Aquinian or Hookerian nous, or reason; her world is a visible one, without cosmic hierarchy and principle, and must be constructed through frenzied acquisition, status claims, climbing, and opportunism; lacking Cordelia's bond, Goneril ironically creates disorder and is, indeed, in herself an aspect of disorder—chaos and evil being twins in the Elizabethan view.

Like Marlowe's Pride, the evil sisters "disdain to have any parents"; and they combine the features of the three daughters described in Nashe's Christs Teares over Jerusalem (1593), pride in gorgeous attire, delicacy, and disdain. Moreover, in her pride Regan is like her sister, above the laws of God, man, and nature: "A peasant stand up thus!", she shouts, ironically regarding a point of protocol neglected by her betters. Similarly, it is ironical that Goneril should, at her moment of loss, summon up a legal reference. When Edmund falls at the hands of his brother, she shrieks,

              This is practice, Gloucester:
By th' law of war thou wast not bound to
  answer
An unknown opposite;

for immediately thereafter she exclaims, "the laws are mine, not thine: / Who can arraign me for't".

Parodying Genesis, Regan, in turn, creates chaos: giving herself to Edmund, she pronounces, "Witness the world, that I create thee here / My lord and master". "In my rights, / By me invested," she informs her sister and the latter's husband. In like fashion, "They have made themselves," shouts Lady Macbeth, with unconscious irony, at her recalcitrant partner. Similarly, Albany's reply to Goneril, "Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame, / Be-monster not thy feature", suggests self-generation and self-creation, monstering nature. In addition, since "cover," in a relevant sense, is used mainly of horses, it suggests a link with the Ixion-centaur motif.

Where Edgar can be "pregnant to good pity," sympathy being a creative force, the evil sisters can only, like Iago, labor in sterile activity, bringing forth chaos (Iago's "Muse labours," for example, creating "this monstrous birth,"). Paralleling Lady Macbeth in relation to her husband, Goneril's injunction to Edmund, "Conceive", and her use of "fruitfully" involve an ironic reversal, as do her sneers at Albany's "cowish terror". In Lear's "Centaurs", as in his "Ha! Goneril, with a white beard!", the reversal is further emphasized, the centaurs being male, notoriously addicted to rape.

In addition, for Regan as for Goneril the body and its uses are all that exist. Thus weakness of the body should be ruled by those who have strength, where nature is equated with physical nature in the pagan sense; their contempt for the aged Lear is partly involved with their criterion of natural potency. Hence sexual concerns and jealousies arise, as in V.i.10-11, with regard to Edmund. Although Goneril exclaims over Edmund and Albany, "Oh! the difference of man and man", the difference of woman and woman displays itself in the contrast between Cordelia's sapientia and the evil sisters' sapientia carnis. In Donne's terms ("Elegie III," 1. 12), more "hot, wily, wild" than beasts, "Their blood," as Mendoza exclaims in Marston's The Malcontent (1600-1604), "is their onely God".

Yet, while they can add, like Edmund and the accumulator Don Juan, they cannot, being a breed of barren metal, multiply. In acting alone, in uniting through lust, in being above the law, the sisters have in truth cast themselves outside order, which is the law of heaven, into chaos and loss. Theologically, then, Goneril and Regan as depraved pagans who never regard their gods are, like Cornwall and Oswald, atheists, reprobate by action and belief.

THE CHAOS OF QUANTITY

Goneril and Regan move within a universe of confused proportions in which the only unit of measurement is quantitative, and the main value word, "more." Their motive is not service but the new appetitus divitiarum inflnitus. For them "love" means both physical and material gratification. "I'll love thee much", Regan promises Oswald, if he lets her unseal the letter. Indeed, "love" early signified both "appraise, estimate or state the price or value of," as well as, from a different root, its more common meaning. To Lear's love test, Goneril replies with a detailed and material catalog, and Regan estimates her love in the imagery of "metal". While filial piety is for Cordelia an unshakable duty, for her sisters it is a means of extracting "more" from their father. Whereas, in reply, Cordelia asserts a fixed and due proportion, Lear's desire for "more" love violates the eternal bond of "proportion, season, form." As Antony, when asked "how much," was to observe, in another context, "There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd" (Antony and Cleopatra,). Though the king would "love" according to the affection tendered him, the good characters, such as Kent, demonstrate a love and service beyond price.

Indeed, as Goneril and Regan know the price of everything and the value of nothing, so Lear unvaluingly throws away a pearl richer than all his tribe. His initial question, "How much?" throws open the tragedy to the ironical consequences of posing quantitative human measurements against the cosmos. Further, the conjunction of ignoble quantitative attitudes seems acted out in the joint departure near the close of the first scene of the like-minded Lear and Burgundy and verbalized in the king's exit line, "Come, noble Burgundy". Conflicting appraisals emerge when to Goneril's claim, "I have been worth the whistle," Albany rejoins with an estimate of her self-valuation: "You are not worth the dust …". Although, like the Stoics (for example, Epictetus), Cordelia recognizes a distinction between outward and inward "worth"—she is, says France, "herself a dowry"—it is only the body and its show that exist for her sisters. While they, acceding to his demand for "more" and professing "to love their father all," would violate their avowals, Cordelia would continue, in due proportion, her duties as daughter and wife. Previously, in the proposed, and severed, match between Burgundy and Cordelia, Shakespeare has effectively contrasted the antithetical values of quantity and the bond.

Later she is accompanied by the Doctor, who orders a louder music, which may "wind up" Lear's "untuned and jarring senses" and restore him to his "better tune". Her healing "restoration" extends even to the balance between the loss of his knights and the company of soldiers she issues to seek him: "A century send forth". In contrast to her "numbers" and the ancient and hermetic Renaissance union between number and universal harmony, the villains' sterile quantitative chaos "untunes that string" and produces only harsh "divisions" and disharmony. In short, shattering the old personal bond of love as loyalty and service beyond compensation, the evil characters bring in the nexus of the new acquisitive society, lust and money.

Significantly, Goneril and Regan's conception of love as quantitative finds its seventeenth-century analogue in the quantitative lover, Don Juan; prefigured by Edmund, for him units of physical experience are endlessly computed and scored. Appropriately, the credo of Molière's Dom Juan, "that two and two make four … and that four and four make eight," evokes his valet's practical judgment, "Your religion is arithmetic, I see".

In the seventeenth century's new atomistic and fragmented universe, "all in pieces, all coherence gone," the hard clarities of number began to be shored up against the frustrating mysteries of providence: if humankind could not "know," it could at least reckon. Circumscribing the limitless space of which the mathematician Pascal expressed terror, the seventeenth century commenced its quantification of mystery. Thus, despite his occasional bad dreams, mathematical man bounded himself, relatively, in a nutshell and counted himself a king of infinite space. But if Pascal could apply the game of chance to eternal bliss, and "infinity" come to replace eternity, what was to become of the valuation of man himself? In Lear's "nothing" and in the acquisitive scrambling of his villains Shakespeare, entering the world of quantity, provided an answer: "Nothing can come of nothing." " … what is man," demanded Pascal, "in Nature? A cypher compared with the Infinite.…"

As in the case of Sophocles' Oedipus (the name suggesting "foot" or "measure"), number thus furnishes a grid against which the ironical evaluation of Shakespeare's characters might be perceived. Although Aeschylus' Prometheus considers number, which he invented for man, "prime sovereign of all sciences," man, in his pride, becomes not only the measurer but the measure. Yet, between Pythagorean number mysticism and Protagorean exaltation of man as the measure, Sophocles' chorus, adding up the sum of mortal generations of men, derives the total, zero. Like Sophocles, auditing the Protagorean equation of man as the center of the universe, Shakespeare reckons up and finds wanting man's traditional role as Creation's most exalted and cherished object.

In Lear those characters who are busily quantifying mystery finally divide up nothing and at the end become, like the hero of the first act, "an O without a figure." For it is an irony of calculation that precision is ultimately meaningless under the ambiguous "pudder" of the thunder and within a shifting world without a frame. Both the villains' ethic of calculation and the hero's hubristic quid pro quo are ironically thrown up against the screen of cosmic ambiguity. In Shakespeare, as in Sophocles, the self-confident pursuer and measurer becomes the thing enigmatically pursued and measured, but by mysterious divinities themselves beyond rational reckoning.

In this hard new world of number the Fool, many of whose jests involve figures, teaches Lear the simple arithmetic of division and subtraction. But it is only at the close of two scenes of ciphering lessons that Lear's arithmetical proficiency is approved. When he can discern the obvious and see that "The reason why the seven stars are no mo than seven," which is "a pretty reason," is "Because they are not eight," Lear is declared to develop from a monarch imprudent to a fool practical. "Yes, indeed," the Fool, with ironic foreshadowing, applauds his graduation into the clear light of common sense, "thou would'st make a good Fool". Between those two scenes, as well as in the next act, Goneril's "disquantitying" of her father's knights also offers him a vivid worldly lesson in lower mathematics. One hundred … fifty … five-and-twenty … ten … five … nothing. It is "as hard," complained Swift, "to get quit of Number as of Hell". As Goneril continues inhumanly to subtract and divide, Lear, in his critique of practical "reason," cries, "O! reason not the need".