How Moby-Dick or, The Whale drew on King Lear
A documented line of influence: Herman Melville demonstrably engaged William Shakespeare’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
King Lear
William Shakespeare · c. 1605
ShakespeareThe influenced
Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Herman Melville · 1851
The Age of the NovelRelevance
8/10
On Moby-Dick or, The Whale’s page
- Ahab didn't come from nowhere — Melville consciously built him on Shakespeare's tragic heroes, Lear foremost
- He had just bought and heavily annotated a seven-volume Shakespeare set when he wrote Moby-Dick, and Lear was among his most marked plays
- Read Lear first and Ahab's grandeur reads true: the great man cracking himself against an indifferent universe, raging at the storm
On King Lear’s page
- Ahab is a Shakespearean tragic hero by design — built on the Lear/Macbeth model of the great man undone by his own will
- Melville bought a seven-volume Shakespeare set in early 1849, his "edition in glorious great type," and marked Lear more heavily than almost any other play
- Scholars credit Lear with the deepest creative impact on him — its storm, its rage against the heavens, its ruined king all surface again on the Pequod