Care and Contagion in King Lear, by way of Introduction

Care and Contagion in King Lear, by way of Introduction

This chapter examines the unexpectedly rich deployment of varieties of care in King Lear and the way that figures into the play’s engagement with notions of contagion. In King Lear, Shakespeare brings together contemporary understandings of contagious air, deleterious environmental conditions, and humoral overload all fused with the depiction of careworn, familial rupture. I give particular attention to the oft-neglected scenes of caregiving in Act 4 Scene 7, where Lear’s ravaged body and mind are treated by Cordelia and the Gentleman (Folio; or Doctor in the Quarto) in a combined image domestic and official practices that may have reminded audiences of the ways in which women and men often worked together in the provision of care in the period. More broadly, this reading serves as a way of introducing the central concerns and individual chapters of Care and Contagion in Shakespeare’s Changing World.

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