Sympathy For The Marchmains In Shakespeare's King Lear

Paula Byrne claims ‘Ryder and his creator do not love lords indiscriminately.’ Far beyond Waugh’s apparent default sympathy for aristocrats through his condemnation of their world’s destruction, Waugh shows very specific sympathy for the Marchmains. In many ways, their rise and fall resembles the workings of traditional tragedy, beginning as an Arcadian ideal, and ending in addiction, adultery and eventual death of the family patriarch. Connections between their family and characters in Shakespeare’s King Lear are explicit. Cordelia Flyte shares a name with Lear’s youngest daughter, and both seem the most virtuous family member. Julia even compares Charles, his wife and herself to ‘Lear, Kent, Fool […] only each of us is all three of them.’

In aiming his richest panegyric towards the world the upper classes live in rather than the principles they live by, one may sweepingly deem Waugh as unsympathetic to his aristocrats, neglecting to nurture their increasing alienation and instead leaving them to be battered by fragments of his traditional satiric technique. However, Waugh can successfully create a strongly critical depiction of the class as a whole, by creating extreme pathos for isolated Catholics within it. Thus he shows religion is the key to preserving the best aristocratic sentiments of a vanishing era, and in bringing about the positive existence of humanity. For those adopting a religious system of morality, if the coffin Waugh speaks of is empty, it is because the religious aristocracy have been spiritually resurrected, their actions on earth transcending social classes and having a deeper theological salvation and significance beyond their physical