- Edition: King Lear
The First Blast of the Trumpet
- Introduction
- Texts of this edition
- Contextual materials
-
- Holinshed on King Lear
-
- The History of King Leir
-
- Albion's England (Selection)
-
- Hardyng's Chronicle (Selection)
-
- Kings of Britain
-
- Chronicles of England
-
- Faerie Queene
-
- The Mirror for Magistrates
-
- The Arcadia
-
- A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures
-
- Aristotle on tragedy
-
- The Book of Job (Selections)
-
- The Monk's Tale (Selections)
-
- The Defense of Poetry
-
- The First Blast of the Trumpet
-
- Basilicon Doron
-
- On Bastards
-
- On Aging
-
- King Lear (Adapted by Nahum Tate)
-
- Facsimiles
0.1Introduction
John Knox (c. 1513-1572) was a passionate and vocal protestant, one of the founders of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women was published in 1558, and is specifically directed against the catholic rule by women in Scotland and England: Mary of Guise, Dowager Queen of Scotland, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Mary I of England. The title is rather misleading to modern eyes because Knox tended to be latinate in his use of vocabulary: monstrous means the slightly less extreme unnatural, and regiment means rule. Knox's polemic agains women in general became a problem for him when the protestant queen, Elizabeth I, came to the throne (in the same year the First Blast was published) and he lost influence as a result.
0.2King Lear was written and performed almost fifty years after the publication of the First Blast. Although Knox's views were even in his time extreme, they provide a useful backdrop to the situation faced by those in the kingdom as Lear passes on his power to his daughters. It is telling that as he announces his action after banishing Cordelia he does not address his daughters but their husbands:
The sway,
Revenue, execution of the rest,
Beloved sons, be yours.
(TLN 144-146)