O'Neill, Stephen
(2019)
Finding Refuge in King Lear: From Brexit to Shakespeare's European Value.
Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 19 (34).
ISSN 2300-7605
Abstract
This article considers how Shakespeare’s King Lear has become a Brexit play
across a range of discourses and media, from theatre productions and journalism to
social media. With its themes of division and disbursement, of cliff edges and tragic selfimmolation, Lear is the Shakespearean play that has been turned to as metaphor and
analogy for the UK’s decision following the 23 June 2016 referendum to leave the
European Union. Reading this presentist application of Shakespeare, the article attends
to Shakespeare as itself a discourse through which cultural ideas, both real and
imaginary, about Brexit and the EU are negotiated. It asks how can we might remap
Lear in this present context―what other meanings and histories are to be derived from
the play, especially in Lear’s exile and search for refuge, or in Cordelia’s departure for
and return from France? Moving from a consideration of a Brexit Lear to an archipelagic
and even European Lear, this article argues that Shakespeare is simultaneously a site of
supranational connections and of a desire for values of empathy and refuge that
reverberate with debates about migration in Europe.
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