Gordon Bottomley, Georgian poet with an unpoetic name, wrote a play called King Lear’s Wife with which he hoped to inspire a poetic revival in the theatre. It might be interesting to see it revived — though most 19th- and 20th-century verse-dramas proved forgettable.
Nevertheless, he surely happened on an interesting subject, though one which L. C. Knights, among others, would have deplored. In a famous essay, ‘How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?’, he poured scorn on the practice of treating Shakespearean characters as if they were real people with an anterior life beyond the play. Yet surely it is tempting to do so. When Lady Macbeth says she would have killed Duncan herself if he hadn’t resembled her father as he slept, it’s natural to wonder about her relationship with Dad.
As for King Lear’s wife, we may suspect she had a hard time of it.
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