King Lear

Introduction

For the first three years of the reign of King James, Shakespeare’s productivity seemed like a thing of the past.  Since the beginning of the new regime three years earlier he had written two plays, Measure for Measure and Timon of Athens, the latter a collaboration with Thomas Middleton.  It was not unusual, during his Elizabethan years, for Shakespeare to write three or four plays a year.  But he was younger then.  Up and coming rivals in 1606 may have thought that Master Shakespeare was all but finished as a playwright, just as he was finished acting and touring.  1606 was the first year, ever since he began writing plays, that not a single publication of his appeared in print or on the stage.  He had turned 46 years old in 1606 at a time when the life expectancy was in the mid-forties.  In these plague-ridden times, he had done well to get this far.  Only one of his four sisters survived childhood and only one of his three brothers ever saw 40.  His own son, Hamnet, died in childhood.  It is believed that all of these deaths are related to the plague.

As it turns out, Shakespeare was not retiring in 1606.  In fact, 1606 would be an exceptionally good year for Will, albeit a very bad one for England.  In fact, those two realities went hand in hand.  The plague struck London with yet another vengeance and Shakespeare quietly quarantined while the theatres were closed and wrote King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra, making 1606 the most prolific year of his career.  1606 was indeed a severe plague year, but it was also the first year the Union Jack was designed and flown and the year the first English ships would set sail to the first permanent colony in America, at Jamestown.

In 1605 John Wright started selling copies of a new play called King Leir, which first appeared around London in 1590.  Shakespeare virtually lived around the corner from Write’s bookstore and no doubt picked up a copy of King Leir.  As we have noted, Shakespeare did not write many original plots.  Rather, he would overhaul old plays, most from the deep collection of The Queen’s Men during Elizabeth’s reign.  He reworked Richard III, Henry IV, Henry V and others to his own liking.  King Leir was fixated upon royal succession, as was Shakespeare, evident in Titus Andronicus, the Henry VI trilogy, Richard III, King John, Richard II, both parts of Henry IV, Henry V, Julius Caesar and Hamlet.  Again and again, Shakespeare explored just what cunning, wit, legitimacy and ambition was required to seize and hold the crown.  This obsession only increased in the final debilitating years in the life of Queen Elizabeth, who never married and had no direct heir.  In March of 1603, as Elizabeth was clearly dying, the theatres were closed due to a fear of civil unrest and they remained closed after her death to commemorate an extended period of mourning.

But then there was suddenly good news.  The new King, James I, chose Shakespeare’s company as his official troupe of players, to be known as The King’s Men.  This meant that Shakespeare and his theatrical group of 8 players were permitted to perform at court, in the Globe and across the realm, if they so desired.

Unfortunately, the plague struck again just then.  By February, 1603, just in time for the coronation of the king, over a thousand were dying of the plague every week in a town of 200,000. By August the number of dead exceeded 3,000 per week.  Nearly one-third of the population of London was infected and over 30,000 were dead.  Theatres were closed.  The King’s Men survived by playing the countryside, where the plague was nothing compared to what it was in London.  The general rule was that if the number of dead exceeded 20-30 per day, then the playhouses were closed immediately.     

Whenever the theatres were opened James requested plays be staged for him.  He called for many more plays by Shakespeare than Elizabeth ever had.  I suppose he had some catching up to do.  From early November, 1604, until February 1605, when the plague permitted, The King’s Men put on Othello, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Comedy of Errors, Measure for Measure, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Henry V and The Merchant of Venice twice.  It is thought that by 1606 James had finally seen all of Shakespeare’s productions from the Elizabethan era.   By 1606 it was definitely time for some new work and he turned to an old favourite of The Queen’s Men, King Leir.  

Shakespeare had a brilliant lead man in Richard Burbage, the single most accomplished tragedian of his time.  He was already famous for playing Richard III, Othello and Hamlet.  1606 would offer Burbage three new lead roles in King Lear, Macbeth and Antony.  Surely no actor has ever faced a more daunting challenge than to learn and play all three of these seminal roles in so short a period of time.  The troupe had lost its equally as famous comedian, Will Kemp, who set off on a solo career in 1599 and was replaced by Robert Armin, a very different type of comedian.  Shakespeare endeavored to create new comedic roles for Armin and nailed it perfectly with Lear’s fool in King Lear.  This will be the defining role of Armin’s star-studded career.  The fool would be unlike any character ever written, before or since.  He was saucy, pathetic, lonely, angry and prophetic.  In previous plays kings and fools were kept apart, but Lear’s fool accompanies him as a sidekick throughout much of the play.  In fact, Lear loves his fool and treats him like a child (a son?).  Shakespeare usually wrote a part for himself, but not this time.  By 1606 he had stopped acting and simply wrote, which meant he had much more time to compose and soon to collaborate.  Half of his last 10 plays were collaborations.  When he acted there were morning and afternoon rehearsals and acting had become a young man’s pursuit.  Very few actors continued to perform into their 40s, especially actors who happened to also be dedicated playwrights with significant pressure to produce new works every year.

King Lear is about an old king who decides to divide up his kingdom among his three daughters.  In 1599 the then King James VI of Scotland (later King James I of England in 1603) wrote a political handbook for his eldest son, Prince Henry, about the dangers of dividing a kingdom among children.  “Make your eldest son inheritor of your entire kingdom.  Otherwise you shall leave the seeds of division and discord among your prosterity.”  This royal treatise became a bestseller after James assumed the English throne.  James lectured the parliament about the dangers of a divided kingdom.  Shakespeare has Lear’s opening words launch directly into the debate on dividing your kingdom between your children: “Meanwhile we shall express our darker purpose. Give me the map there.  Know that we have divided in three our kingdom; and tis our fast intent to shake all cares and business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburdened crawl toward death.”  Two of Lear’s daughters are married to The Duke of Cornwall and the Duke of Albany.  Shakespeare’s audiences would have known well that King James’ older son was the current Duke of Cornwall and his younger (future King Charles I) was the current Duke of Albany.  James himself had once been the Duke of Albany, as had his father.  So there is much juice in Shakespeare’s King Lear for King James, right from the start, as there had been in Macbeth.  Much of Shakespeare’s earlier work, including all of the histories, had been more recent English plays.  Now, with King James arguing in favour of a united Britain of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland Shakespeare places both Macbeth and King Lear in the era of ancient Britain.  The play King Lear will focus precisely on Lear’s ill-fated decision to divide his kingdom among his three daughters rather than unite them, as James implored his son to do as recently as 1590.

King Lear borrows extensively from the earlier King Leir, but Shakespeare guts it in favour of his own framing and innovation.  This was his gift, to enhance the various flaws of earlier productions and to reinvent the characters and plots accordingly.  In this case, Shakespeare chooses to highlight a counterpoint to Lear’s blindness, by including Gloucester, who will literally be blinded and who will also be betrayed by a child and therefore play the counterpoint to Lear himself.  Shakespeare had read a romance by Sir Philip Sydney, an Elizabethan writer, in which a blinded old man is lead to the edge of a cliff by his own son.  This will be Gloucester.  Shakespeare scraps the meandering middle section of the old play and then completely rewrites the original happy ending with two of the most heartbreaking recognition scenes he will ever pen.  The first is between blind Gloucester and mad Lear and the second between Lear and his daughter Cordelia.  

King Lear is a torturously painful drama to read or watch.  The sense of nihilistic nothingness is a recurring theme throughout the play.  The words ‘never’ and ‘nothing’ appear more than 30 times, the word ‘no’ 120 times and the word ‘not’ over 200 times.  The prefix un- recurs 60 times.  The result is the darkest tragedy Shakespeare ever wrote.  In every Act of King Lear both pity and terror reach their climax.  At no point in Lear is there any loosening of the tragic tension.  Shakespeare was aiming for a total theatrical effect. This is a play for which even the gods remain silent.  King Lear is often considered the height of Shakespeare’s achievement in tragedy.  It seems to lay waste to all ideals and strips man down to the barest of essentials.  The ‘nothingness’ is all pervasive until the only ‘something’ to emerge from the play is pity.  Otherwise it is merely being confronted with unavoidable destinies and death, with little or no consolation other than pity.  No other play offers such a hopeless perspective on the tragic element of human mortality.  This is easily Shakespeare’s most devastating work.  

The great Black Death ravaged Europe in 1347-50, killing up to a third of the continent’s population.  But this same plague would revisit time and time again.  In fact, Shakespeare’s greatest accomplishment may not be King Lear or Hamlet, but merely that he managed to survive the many episodes of plague all around him throughout his life.  In 1606 the government shut down the theatres in London whenever the number of weekly dead exceeded 30.  The plague hit London very hard in each of King James’ first seven years on the English throne.  During quarantines (that’s right!) those caught leaving their homes would be whipped if they were clean and executed if they were infected.  Unlike today, they did not mess around.  Funeral attendance was limited to six persons, including the pallbearers and minister. All of the dogs who ran free in London were massacred by people paid a penny per carcass.  The homeless were all expelled from the city and the authorities posted watchmen in front of infected houses.  They had no idea what the cause of the plague was.  The top three suspected causes were interplanetary alignment, divine anger and bad air quality.  In case it was god, the best the churches could suggest was that people cease to do evil and learn to do good.  Those between the ages of 10-35 were especially vulnerable.  More centuries would pass before scientists detected the bacteria transmitted by fleas and rats and passed around by coughing or merely breathing.  Shakespeare rented his room in a house from the William Tailer family.  Their family servant died in November of 1606, then William Tailer himself died in December, followed in a week by the death of a second servant, then by William’s two sons.  Only his daughter survived and was she christened Cordelia, while Shakespeare wrote King Lear in a room upstairs.  The name Cordelia was virtually unknown in London at that time.  

King Lear is the tragic history of a slave of passion and of the ravages of uncontrolled anger.  Sheer fury and rage drive Lear relentlessly toward his madness as he struggles to gain control of his passion and abate the storm of his mind.  Shakespeare’s portrait of Lear’s increasing madness suggests his surprising familiarity of the complete onset of mental and emotional derangement.  The culmination of his madness occurs on the storm-swept heath, where the power of the tempest is a manifestation of the forces that have entered his state of mind. Earlier in the play Lear pleads: “Oh, let me not be mad… not mad.”  Somewhat later he reports to Kent that “my wits have begun to turn.”  It isn’t until he is out there near naked on the stormy heath with ‘Poor Tom’ that Lear becomes completely deranged.  His short-lived reunion with Cordelia allays his madness briefly until she dies in his arms, after which the madness returns in full.  He dies having to believe that she still lives in his arms.  Only in death can Lear find release from his profound grief, making this perhaps the darkest pessimistic expression in all of world literature.

King Lear and Hamlet baffle commentary as they transcend the very limits of literature.  They have become the secular scriptures of western consciousness.  Their profundity is beyond all other expressions in either drama or prose, Hamlet for its intellectual and philosophical musings and King Lear for its penultimate suffering.  Reading King Lear is like no other literary experience.  Lear’s torment is born of the universal and timeless architype of generational strife.  He is king, father and perhaps the best literary example of the White European Male.

As tragic as King Lear is as a play, it is important to note that however unlovable the king may appear in the first two acts he is in fact deeply loved by all of the play’s worthy individuals, just as he is hated by the villains.  The most hard-core villain, Edmund, never shares the stage for even the briefest exchange with Lear, as they are so very different.  The essence of Lear is that he is lovable, loving and greatly loved by anyone in the play at all worthy of his affections.

The tragic but brilliant poetic language between Lear and Gloucester in Act IV may be the finest art ever expressed in all of Shakespeare. Their madness and blindness out on the violent heath bind together the entire play.   They are both slain by the intensity of paternal love.  The real genius of Shakespeare is how he manages to plunge us fully into the tragedy and despair of this play, as we are made to follow the suffering of Lear and Gloucester to the very limits of their agony.

Lear himself can hardly speak without disturbing us.  Nothing in world literature wounds so deeply as Lear’s range of utterances.  As he surges through his madness and raging fury he is the finest example of love desperately sought but blindly denied ever written or staged.  He is a study in being outraged and represents paternal love at it’s most ineffectual, themes alive and well everywhere and always.  Welcome again to the tragedies of William Shakespeare.  Macbeth, King Lear and Hamlet remain in a league of their own after well over 400 years, explaining why we are still returning to them, along with so much else that he left us in a world where nothing else comes close.

Overview

King Lear is the aging king in ancient Britain, circa 800 BC.  He decides to step down and divide his kingdom between his three daughters according to which of them can most convincingly profess their love to him.  No pressure!  Goneril and Regan, the elder two sisters, flatter their father with their scheming and clearly insincere words.  Cordelia, his favourite child, says little and refuses to flatter, saying that she has no words to describe how much she loves her father.  Old Lear flies into a rage and dramatically disowns Cordelia.  The King of France says that he will marry Cordelia, and they head off to France.

It is not long before Lear learns of the foolishness of his decision, when he visits each of his eldest two daughter and is treated very badly now that they have their land.  He is furious and very deeply hurt and we see the seeds of his madness emerging, as he heads out on to the stormy heath with his fool.

It is the decision to divide his kingdom among his daughter that drives the plot of the play.  The consequences will be horrific and unbearable for nearly all of the characters.  There are no free rides in King Lear.

We meet Gloucester when his bastard son, Edmund, the play’s principle villain, deceives him into believing that his legitimate son, the heroic Edgar, is plotting to kill him.  Edgar escapes disguised as an insane beggar named ‘Poor Tom’ and winds up out there on the same death-defying heath as Lear.

When Gloucester hears that his friend Lear has been abandoned by his daughters he decides to try to help him.  When Lear’s daughter, Regan, and her husband, Cornwall, capture Gloucester, they blind him and he is left to wander the heath, craving death.

As the play plunges further and further into the depths of tragedy much of the focus in on Lear, Gloucester, Poor Tom and the punishing heath and on the cunning sisters and Edmund in their complicated entanglement.  The inhospitable heath becomes as powerful a reference point in the play as any character.

Edmund gets sexually involved with both of Lear’s ungrateful daughters.  Edgar, disguised as ‘Poor Tom’, encounters both his blinded father and Lear and tries to help them both to survive.

Finally, Cordelia is led by a small French army to rescue her father.  They are defeated by an English army headed by Edmund.  Both Lear and Cordelia are captured and in the final reckoning scene ‘Poor Tom’ reveals himself to be Edgar and he murders Edmund for all that he has done.  When Goneril learns that Edmund is dead she poisons Regan and kills herself.  Cordelia is executed in prison and Lear dies of grief.

This is a play with characters either good or bad, with very little grey area in between.  King Lear, Cordelia, Edgar, Lear’s Fool and Gloucester are victims of those more unsavory characters, including Goneril, Regan, Regan’s husband Cornwall and Edmund.  There are perpetrators and victims of evil.

Basically, there are two families:  Lear, his fool, his three daughters and their two husbands and then there is Gloucester and his two sons.  There is a deliberate parallel established between the two fathers and their one good child each and then the three pretty bad seedlings.  Lear’s figurative blindness to what he is doing is in counterpoint to Gloucester’s literal blindness, as they share the heath with the crazed ‘Poor Tom’.

This is the most difficult Shakespeare play to read because of the extreme pain and suffering endured by nearly everyone.  The only redeeming quality it brings out in anyone is pity.  In the face of such outrageous misfortune all we can do is pity one another.  The spirits, witches, ghosts and gods do not even make an appearance. Lear’s pitiful utterances are apocryphal and the rest is silence.

Act I

Scene i

King Lear begins with Gloucester introduces Kent to his bastard son, Edmund.  

Kent: “Is not this your son, my Lord?”

Gloucester: “His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge.  I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am brazened to it.  Yet his mother was fair and there was good sport at his making and the whoreson must be acknowledged.

Enter King Lear and his court.

Lear: “Meantime, we shall express our darker purpose.  Give me the map there.  Know that we have divided in three our kingdom; and tis our fast intent to shake all cares and business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburdened crawl toward death. Tell me, my daughters, which of you shall say we say doth love us most, that we our largest bounty may extend?  Goneril, our eldest-born, speak first.”

Goneril: “Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter; beyond what can be valued, rich or rare; no less than life… as much as child ever loved, or father found; a love that makes breath poor and speech unable: beyond all manner of so much I love you.”

Cordelia: (an aside) “What shall Cordelia speak? Love and be silent.”

Lear: “What says our second daughter, our dearest Regan, wife of Cornwall? Speak.”

Regan: “I am made of that self-metal as my sister, only she comes too short, that I profess myself an enemy to all other joys.”

Cordelia: (an aside) “Then poor Cordelia!  And yet not so; since I am sure my love’s more ponderous than my tongue.”

Lear: “To thee remain this ample third of our fair kingdom, no less than that conferred on Goneril.  Now our joy, what can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.”

Cordelia: “Nothing, my lord.”

Lear: “Nothing!”

Cordelia: “Nothing.”

Lear: “Nothing will come of nothing.  Speak again.”

Cordelia: “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth.  I love your majesty according to my bond, no more no less.”

Lear: “How, how, Cordelia! Mend your speech a little, lest you may mar your fortunes.”

Cordelia: “Good, my lord; you have begot me, bred me, loved me; I return those duties back, obey you, love you and most honour you.”

Lear: “So young and so untender?”

Cordelia: “So young, my lord, and true.”

Lear: “Let it be so! Thy truth, then, be thy dower!  Here I disclaim all my parental care and as a stranger to my heart and me hold thee from this forever.”

Kent: “Good, my liege.”

Lear: “Please, Kent.  Come not between the dragon and his wrath.  I loved her most.” (to Cordelia) “Hence, avoid my sight.”

Kent: “Royal Lear, whom I have honoured as my king, loved as my father. The youngest daughter does not love thee least… see better Lear… I’ll tell thee, thou dost evil.”

Lear banishes Kent from the kingdom upon death.

The King of France has come for the hand of Cordelia

Lear: “When she was dear to us, we did hold her so; but now her price is fallen.  Sir, there she stands… I would not match you where I hate.” (to Cordelia) ”Better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better.”

France: “Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.  I take up what’s been cast away.”

Lear: “Let her be thine; for we have no such daughter, nor shall ever see the face of hers again.”

Cordelia: (to her sisters) “Love well our father.  But yet, alas, I would prefer him to a better place… time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides.”

Goneril: (to Regan) “He always loved our sister most; and with what poor judgement he hath now cast her off appears too grossly.”

Regan: “Tis the infirmity of his age.”

Analysis:

It is only right that the play begins with Gloucester and his son, Edmund, as they will both emerge as very important to the story in the very next scene.  By the end of scene ii both primary plots will be well underway:  Lear’s division of his kingdom amongst his two daughters, having banished Cordelia, and bastard Edmund’s plot to destroy his brother and gain the inheritance from Gloucester, their father.

We hear Gloucester admitting to Kent that while there was ‘good sport at his making’ that he often blushes when acknowledging Edmund as his own.  So here we have our principle villain and his motivation.  Edmund is a bastard child and has no hope of success.  Bastards were an embarrassment and he has had enough.  Edmund is one of Shakespeare’s most accomplished villains for what he will get away with in this play.  Watch him weave his magic in scene ii.

The foolishness of King Lear is evident as soon as he opens his mouth.

“Meantime, we shall express our darker purpose.”  No kidding.  His decision to divide his kingdom based on the expressed love of his three daughters is what drives this play toward the horror and madness that is coming soon.  Lear comes across as a foolish old petty and jealous miser of the heart and a pathetic old man, whose insecurities will require that he be constantly reassured of his very own importance.  But his importance is much attached to the crown he wears and he is presently surrendering it.  Who will Lear be when he is no longer king? If he is hoping to hear the truth from his daughters then he should close his ears when Goneril and Regan speak because they merely want their portion of his kingdom and will flatter him to no ends in order to secure their shares.  The extent of their flattery is nonetheless shockingly boastful and self-serving, and it is into this trap of false love and flattery that Lear will plunge.  Dear Cordelia knows no such false love or flattery and cannot bring herself to be so inauthentic with her father.  The great mistake that Lear makes is that he thinks Goneril and Regan as true and Cordelia as false, just as Gloucester will think of the bastard Edmund as true and his worthier of sons, Edgar, as false.  Both Lear and Gloucester are blind to their fates that they permit. Scenes i and ii of Act I are the triggers for the tragedy that follows in King Lear.

The tremendous Shakespearean line “nothing will come of nothing” is profoundly prophetic.  There is a strong nihilistic component to this entire play and Lear simply bets on the wrong horse here.  Cordelia’s inability to quantify her love in words may indeed amount to a certain nothing for Cordelia, but she does leave beloved of the King of France and will miss much of the worst of this tragedy that will consume her in the end.  But another even more striking “nothing will come of nothing” is the false comfort Lear experiences when the other two sisters express what is truly nothing to their father, which is also what he will get back from them once they possess his kingdom. That is where the true madness begins.  First he loses his one true daughter, as Kent tries to convince him that she is true, and then he finds out that the ones he thought to be true are false indeed.  For a proud and insecure man who has just surrendered his ‘all- defining’ crown, that is all too much to withstand and off he stumbles onto the dreaded heath, where all who endure its wrath are transfixed and transformed by its pitiful and madness inspired horrors.

Act I

Scene ii

Edmund is at home in Gloucester’s castle and he is musing on his plight:

“Why bastard?  Wherefore base?  When my dimensions are as well compact, my mind as generous, and my shape as true, why brand they us bastards?  Well then, legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.  Edmund the base shall top the legitimate.  I grow; I prosper.  Now, gods, stand up for bastards.”

Gloucester enters and Edmund pretends to suddenly be putting a piece of paper away so that Gloucester cannot see it.

Gloucester: “What paper were you reading?”

Edmund: “Nothing, my lord.”

There’s that word again…

Gloucester: “What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? The quality of nothing hath not much need to hide itself.  Let’s see.”

Edmund: “It is a letter from my brother.  I find it unfit for your over-looking.”

Gloucester: “Give me the letter.  Let’s see.  Let’s see.”

Gloucester reads a letter that is apparently from Edgar to Edmund.  “This reverence for age keeps our fortunes from us. If our father would only sleep until I waked him, you should enjoy half of his revenue forever.”  

Gloucester is convinced: “Conspiracy… my son Edgar… O villain, villain! Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain!  I’ll apprehend him!  He cannot be such a monster to his father, who so tenderly and entirely loves him.  These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us.  We have seen the best of our time: hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly into our graves.”

Gloucester exits

Edmund: (an aside) “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence.”

Edgar arrives and the two brothers speak.

Edmund: “When saw you my father last?  Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him.  Forebear his presence, until some little time hath qualified the heat of his displeasure, which at this instant do rageth in him.”

Edgar: “Some villain hath done me wrong.”  (Bingo!)

Edmund: “That’s my fear.  Pray ye go.  Pray you, away.”

Analysis

These two opening scenes echo one another.  Each father has been played false.  Lear by Goneril and Regan and Gloucester by Edmund, while each true child, Cordelia and Edgar, will be rejected and banished.  In Edmund we see a complex character and villain.  He wants his proper inheritance but he also desires respectability and even handedness for being an illegitimate bastard, more the fault of his father than himself.  He has ample motivation to have his half-brother villainized for a change and have his father support him for once.  Edmund’s plan works and he wins over his father and Edgar to his device, as Gloucester swears he will get Edgar and Edgar is on the run.  

We have noted in previous plays how the heavens can display irregularities when all is not well with royal personages on earth.  Here we see it again, as Gloucester notes the eclipses of both sun and moon to Edmund.  However, Edmund views it as ‘excellent foppery’ that man, when things go poorly due to his own bad decisions and behaviours, ascribes the cause of his misfortune to the heavens and the gods.  Edmund is far too cynical, practical and intelligent to believe such a thing, although he will accept any divine intervention that suits his purposes: “Now, gods, stand up for bastards.”

Act I

Scene iii

In Goneril’s and the Duke of Albany’s palace.

Goneril: “Did my father strike my gentleman for the chiding of his fool?”

Oswald: “Ay, madam.”

Goneril: “By day and night, he wrongs me… I’ll not endure it.  His knights grow riotous and he upbraids us on every trifle.  Let him stay with my sister.  Idle old man that still would manage those authorities that he hath given away!  Now, by my life, old fools are babes again.”

Analysis

Only a few pages after Goneril spilled her guts about how much she absolutely loves and adores her father, now we see her in possession of her half of his kingdom and her attitude toward him has changed completely.  He is no more than a nuisance now and she treats him with utter disrespect.  Hence does the plot proceed.  Perhaps we begin to understand why King James I warned his son about the dividing of a kingdom among heirs.  Lear has made a dreadful mistake, as we can see in this and the remaining scenes of Act I.  But the consequences will grow greater and greater.  We have only just begun.

Act I

Scene iv

Kent, Lear’s loyal Earl, has returned in disguise, to continue to serve his king.

Lear has come to stay with Goneril and Albany at their castle.  He wishes to speak with Goneril but is told she is not well.  He also keeps asking for his fool.

Lear strikes Oswald, Goneril’s steward, for a perceived slight.  Then Kent trips him, as well.  There is clearly tension between Lear and his entourage and Goneril and hers.  

Lear’s fool arrives and Lear is thrilled to see him:

Lear: “How now, my pretty knave!  How dost thou?”

Fool: “Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech.”

Lear: “Do”

Fool: “Mark it, nuncle: have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest, lend less than thou owest, ride more than thou goest, learn more than thou trowest, leave thy drink and thy whore, and keep in a door, and thou shalt have more than two tens to a score.”

Lear: “This is nothing, fool.”

Fool: “You gave me nothing for it.  Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?”

Lear: “Why, no boy, nothing can be made out of nothing.  Dost thou call me fool, boy?”

Fool: “All thy other titles thou hast given away, that thou wast born with… Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav’st thy golden one away… I am better than thou art now; I am a fool, thou art nothing.” (again and again, that word)

Goneril finally arrives to see her father, who is exasperated by his treatment at the hands of her staff and his fool.

Lear: “Does any here know me? This is not Lear.  Who is it can tell me who I am?”

Fool: “Lear’s shadow.”

Goneril: “As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.  Here do you keep a hundred knights; Men so disordered, that this our court shows more like a tavern or a brothel.”

Lear: “Darkness and devils!  Saddle my horses.  Degenerate bastard!  I’ll not trouble thee; yet have I left a daughter.”

Goneril: “You strike my people and your disordered rabble make servants of their betters.”

Lear: “Detested kite!  Thou liest.  My train are men of choice and rarest parts, that all particulars of duty know.  O Lear, Lear, Lear!  Beat at this gate that let thy folly in. (strikes his own head) Hear, nature, hear: hear, goddess, hear.  Suspend thy purpose, if thou did’st intend to make this creature fruitful.  Into her womb convey sterility: create her child of spleen, that it may live and be a thwart disnatured torment to her, that she may feel how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.  Away, away!  I am ashamed that thou hast power to shake my manhood thus.  The untended woundings of a father’s curse pierce every sense about thee.  Ha!  Has it come to this?  Let it be so.  I have another daughter.  When she should hear this of thee, with her nails she’ll flay thy wolfish visage.”

 Analysis

The good people remain good and the bad people pretty much remain bad in this play.  It should not surprise, therefore, when banished Kent returns to loyally serve his king.

It is a bit hard to know where the division of fault lies in the scene at Goneril’s palace.  She has instructed her staff to be hard with Lear and his men, so Oswald may have provoked Lear to smack him across the face.  Then again, Lear is clearly approaching his wit’s end and had no right to hit a servant of Goneril’s.

We meet Lear’s fool in this scene and he immediately rips into Lear about having foolishly sent away his innocent daughter and given away his kingdom to these ingrates.  This fool is Shakespeare’s finest, as he accompanies his king down the rabbit hole of madness and despair.  Lear’s own reflective musings and those of his fool comprise much of the best and most insightful writing in the play.  The fool loved Cordelia and his king and now misses Cordelia and accompanies Lear’s want of his authority and wit, his lost kingdom and the loveless daughters of his inheritance.  The fool is very frustrated with Lear for giving everything away:  Cordelia, his crown, his kingdom and his sanity.  The end is near and the fool knows it and can speak with immunity, as fools are want to do.

Act I

Scene v

Lear and his fool are leaving Goneril’s palace.

Lear: “I did her wrong.”

Fool: “I can tell why a snail has a house.”

Lear: “Why?”

Fool: “To put its head in; not to give it away to his daughters. If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’d have thee beaten for being old before thy time.”

Lear: “How’s that?”

Fool: Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.”

Lear: “O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven.  Keep me in temper, I would not be mad!”

Analysis

Leaving Goneril’s is a time for reflection and Lear hits it precisely when he tells his fool that he did Cordelia wrong.  He can see it now, but it is already too late, as Cordelia is married to the King of France and Goneril and Regan have the right and every inclination to abuse their father, having been given the reigns of his kingdom.

As they proceed to Regan’s palace, she remains Lear’s only remaining hope.  She is all that remains between Lear and his madness and his date with the storm-ridden blasted Scottish heath.

“O, let me be not mad” is a foreshadowing of all that is to come, once we advance the plot in Act II with Gloucester and his two sons and Regan and her one-time king-father.

Act II

Act I introduced us to everyone important to the play.  Lear banished his one true daughter and has embraced his two scheming daughters and their husbands, who are turning against him.  Similarly, Gloucester has been tricked by Edmund into cutting off his true son and embracing the bastard, Edmund.  Lear and Gloucester will become victims of their wayward children, increasingly descending through progressive stages of suffering and madness.  Right now, they are both shocked at their predicament.  Soon they will embrace one another on the heath, reduced to despair and pity.

Act II advances the essential plots of the play.  Edmund weaves his magic, convincing his father, Gloucester, of Edgar’s worst intentions, while Lear is increasingly rejected by the daughters he has given everything to.  Act III opens upon the heath, so we see where the first two acts were headed.  

Act II

Scene i

Curan, a courtier in Gloucester’s house, has news from abroad that there could be a war brewing on behalf of the King against the two sisters and their husbands.  That would be Cordelia, the Queen of France, trying to rescue her father from his humiliation at the hands of his two daughters.

Edmund has just come across Edgar, who has been hiding about the castle:

Edmund: “Oh sir, fly this place; intelligence is given where you are hid.  I hear my father coming.  Pardon me, in cunning I must draw my sword upon you.  Draw and seem to defend yourself… Now quit you before my father comes.  Farewell.” (aside) “Some blood drawn on me would beget opinion.” (wounds his own arm)

“Father, father!”

Gloucester: “Edmund, where is the villain?”

Edmund: “Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out, mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon.  Look, sir, I bleed.”

Gloucester: “Pursue him!  He which finds him shall deserve our thanks.  Bring the murderous coward to the stake; he that conceals him, death.  All ports I’ll bar; the villain shall not escape.”

Cornwall: “For you, Edmund, whose virtue and obedience doth this instant so much commend itself, you shall be ours.”

Edmund: “I shall serve you, sir.”

Analysis

The very last thing either of Lear’s daughters or their husbands want is for Lear to get help from France to remedy his quarrel with his daughters.  Cordelia will want to help her father, as we shall see.

Bastard Edmund has done a brilliant job driving a game of creating a wedge between Gloucester and Edgar.  He also connects to Cornwall and Regan, who are as evil, if not as smart, as he.  The sides are being formed and are lining up nicely in time for the next three acts: (The good: Lear, Cordelia, the Fool, Edgar (Poor Tom), Kent and Gloucester.  The bad: Edmund, Regan, Goneril, Cornwall and Oswald)

Act II

Scene ii

Kent had a run in with Oswald in Act I and behaves very rudely when he encounters him again, calling him every name under the sun and drawing his sword on him.  Oswald still can’t figure why Kent hates him so terribly and calls for help.  Edmund, Gloucester, Cornwall and Reagan arrive and the latter two decide to put Kent in the stocks for his insult to Oswald.  Kent protests that he serves the king but Cornwall insists he be punished.  When Gloucester tells Cornwall that the king will take it ill to see his messenger in the stocks, Cornwall’s response is: “I’ll answer that.”  It would seem there is no longer sufficient cause for anyone to be frightened of the king, who has been stripped of every power.

Analysis

This scene helps to establish the lineup of good vs evil.  Kent is loyal to his king and Oswald, Cornwall, Regan, Goneril and Edmund are certainly not.  Lear’s dividing of his kingdom has caused all of this and so much more to come.

Act II  

Scene iii

Edgar has fled out of necessity.  He knows there are few places he can hide, so he covers his face with grime, dresses in naked rags, assumes the name of ‘Poor Tom’ and heads out onto the heath.

Analysis

Edgar is the first to reach the heath.  He will soon be joined by Lear and his fool, and then his own father, Gloucester.  On the heath all men are reduced to the same fate.  Nature is punishing, regardless of who you were before you arrived here.

Act II

Scene iv

Lear approaches Gloucester’s castle, wondering why Kent, his messenger, never returned.  Then he finds Kent in the stocks and can hardly believe his eyes.  He wants to hear from Kent who did this to him.

Kent: “Both Cornwall and Regan.”

Lear: “No.”

Kent: “Yes.”

Lear: “No, I say.”

Kent: “I say, yea.” 

Lear: “No, no; they would not.”

Kent: “Yes, they have.”

Lear: “By Jupiter, I swear, no.”

Kent: “By Juno, I swear, ay.”

Lear: “They durst not do it; they could not, would not do it.  Tis worst than murder… Down thou climbing sorrow.  Where is this daughter?  Vengeance! Plague! Death! Confusion!  We are not ourselves when nature, being oppressed, commands the mind… O me, my heart, my rising heart.”

Cornwall and Regan enter

Lear: “Beloved Regan, thy sister’s naught; she hath tied sharp-toothed unkindness, like a vulture, here, in my heart.”

Regan: “I cannot think my sister in the least would fail her obligation.”

Lear: “My curses on her.”

Regan: “O, sir, you are old… You should be ruled and led by some discretion that discerns your state better than you yourself.  Therefore, I pray you that to our sister you do make return: say you have wronged her, sir.”

Lear: “Ask for her forgiveness?  Daughter, I confess that I am old.  Age is unnecessary.  On my knees I beg that you’ll vouchsafe me bed and food.”

Regan: “Good sir, no more; these are unsightly tricks.  Return you to my sister.”

Lear: “Never, Regan.  She struck me with her tongue, most serpent like, upon my very heart… all the stored vengeances of heaven fall on her and strike her young bones with lameness.  You nimble lightening, dart your flames into her scornful eyes and infect her beauty.”

Regan: “So will you wish on me when the rash mood is on.”

Lear: “No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse.  Her eyes are fierce but thine do comfort and not burn.  Tis not in thee to grudge my pleasures, to oppose the bolt against my coming in.  Thou better knowest the bond of childhood, dues of gratitude, thy half of the kingdom hast thou not forgot wherein I thee endowed.”

Regan: “Good sir, to the purpose.”

Lear: “Who put my man in the stocks?”

But just then Goneril arrives.

Lear: (to Goneril) “Art not ashamed to look upon this beard? How came my man in the stocks?”

Cornwall: “I set him there.”

Lear: “You!  Did you?”

Regan: “I pray you, father, being weak, seem so.  If you will, return and sojourn with my sister.”

Lear: “Return to her.  No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose to wage against the enmity of the air, to be a comrade with the wolf and owl.”

Goneril: “At your choice, sir.”

Lear: “I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad.  I will not trouble thee, my child. Farewell.  We’ll no more meet, no more see one another.  But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter; or rather a disease that is in my flesh, which I must needs call mine; thou art a boil, a plague sore, a carbuncle in my corrupted blood.  I can stay with Regan, I and my hundred knights.”

Regan: “Not altogether so… Fifty followers.  What should you need of more?  I entreat you to bring but five and twenty.  To no more will I give place.”

Lear: “I gave you all.”

Regan: “And in good time you gave it.”

Lear: (to Goneril) “I’ll go with thee. Thy fifty yet doth double five or twenty.  And thou art twice her love.”

Gonerial: “Hear me, my Lord: What need you five and twenty, ten or five?

Regan: “What need one?”

Lear: “O, reason not the need… For true need… give me patience, patience I need. You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age; wretched in both.  You unnatural hags, I will have such revenge on you both – I will do such things – they shall be the terrors of the earth.  You think I’ll weep.  No, I’ll not weep.  O fool, I shall go mad!”

Cornwall: “Let us withdraw, twill be a storm.”

Regan: “This house is little.  The old man cannot be well bestowed.”

Goneril: “Tis his own blame… he needs taste his folly.”

Gloucester: “The king is in high rage.”

Goneril: “Entreat him by no means to stay.”

Gloucester: “Alack, the night comes on and the high winds do sorely ruffle and for many miles about there is scarce a bush.”

Regan: “O sir, to willful men the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.  Shut up your doors.”

Cornwall: “Shut up your doors.  Tis a wild night.  My Regan counsels well.”

Analysis

Lear suffers the indignity of his daughters refusing to speak with him initially, his servant being put in the stocks, being called old and weak by the daughters he has just handed over his kingdom to and not being permitted to have his servants with him were he to stay at Goneril’s or Regan’s.  He finally determines to survive on the blasted heath before staying with his daughters.  And they think that is fine too.  His sadness and anger surge, as he has always been a powerful king.  But the moment he gave up his kingdom to his daughters he is no longer their king, or anyone else’s, for that matter.  He is as vulnerable as any man. Act Three begins on the heath, where blind madness awaits.

Act III

Lear and his fool are now firmly established on the raging heath, stripped bare and increasingly mad.  In a hovel they discover Poor Tom.  Lear begins to feel pity for the wretched, including Poor Tom and his own fool.   

Gloucester is still back at his palace, getting in deeper and deeper trouble with Goneril, Regan, Cornwall and Edmund because he wishes to help his king.  Gloucester confides in Edmund that he is appalled by how Lear is being treated by Goneril, Regan and Cornwall and how furthermore he is in secret communication with Cordelia and the French forces.  Edmund enthusiastically reveals this information to Cornwall, hoping this will condemn Gloucester to death, enabling Edmund to assume the title of Earl of Gloucester.  Edmund is truly one of Shakespeare’s most ambitious and conniving villains.

Gloucester finds them all and brings them back near his castle, where there are needed provisions.  Lear is growing increasingly mad.  Gloucester directs the group toward Dover, when he uncovers a plot to have Lear killed, no doubt by Cornwall and Edmund.

Gloucester is captured and brutalized by Cornwall and Regan.  They gauge out both is eyes and send him out to wander the heath with the other lost souls.

Act III

Scene i

On the heath

Kent: “Where is the king?”

Gentleman: “Contending with the fretful elements.  He bids the wind to blow the earth into the sea and tears his white hair.  This night unbonneted he runs.”

Kent: “But who is with him?”

Gentleman: “None but the fool.”

Kent: “There is a division ‘twixt Albany and Cornwall.  From France there comes a power who already have secret feet in some of our best ports. Make speed to Dover.  If you should see Cordelia give her this ring.”

Analysis

Kent learns that Lear is somewhere on the heath with his fool.  He has also learned that help is arriving for the king at Dover, where Cordelia may accompany a fighting force intended to support her father.  Kent gives the gentleman a ring to give to Cordelia so she will know that he and others support the king as well.  

Act III

Scene ii

On the heath

Lear: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks; rage, blow.  You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires, singe my white head.”

Fool: “Good Nuncle, ask thy daughter’s blessing.  Here’s a night pities neither wise men nor fools.”

Lear: “Spit, fire; spout, rain.  Let fall our horrible pleasure.  Here I stand, your slave, a poor, infirm, weak and despised old man.”

Kent: “Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night love not such nights as these.  Since I was a man such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never remember to have heard.  Man’s nature cannot carry the affliction nor the fear.”

Lear: “I am a man more sinned against than sinning.”

Kent: “Alack, bare-headed! Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel.  Some friendship will it lend you against the tempest.”

Lear: “My wits begin to turn.  Come on, my boy.  How dost, my boy?  Art cold?  Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart that’s sorry yet for thee.  Come, bring us to this hovel.”

Analysis

We are finally with Lear and his fool out on the heath and Lear is screaming at the elements to give him all they have got.  Kent arrives and suggests they seek protection in a nearby hovel.  Lear admits that his wits have begun to turn.  However, it is at this point that he demonstrates pity toward his fool.  He is regaining his humanity through suffering.  That is the bargain. By being reduced to the lowest commoner, our one-time king knows what it is like to be rejected and to have nothing and this is what opens up his heart, even as his mind is deteriorating badly. 

Act III

Scene iii

At Gloucester’s castle

Gloucester still trusts his bastard-son, Edmund, so he speaks openly to him about what Goneril, Reagan and Cornwall have done.  They have forbid him to help the king in any way or to even speak of him.  They have also taken over his house.  He tells Edmund that he has a letter indicating a rift between the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany and evidence that a force is landing at Dover to assist the king.  Edmund tells us that he will immediately go directly to Cornwall with this information. “The younger rises when the old doth fall.”

Analysis

Edmund has betrayed both his brother, Edgar, and his father, Gloucester.  The evil ones are all working together now: Edmund, Goneril, Reagan and Cornwall.  They are essentially the law now that the king has surrendered his kingdom to his daughters and son in laws. 

Act III

Scene iv

Near a hovel on the heath

Kent: “Here is the place, my lord; enter.”

Lear: “Leave me alone.  Thou think’st ‘tis much that this contentious storm invades us to the skin; so ‘tis to thee, but where the greater malady is fixed, the lesser is scarcely felt.  This tempest in my mind doth from my senses take all feeling else, save what beats there, filial ingratitude.  In such a night to shut me out.  Pour on.  I will endure.  O Regan, Goneril!  Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all! O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; no more of that.  But I’ll go in.  In boy; go first.”

Fool: “Come not in here, Nuncle, here’s a spirit.  He says his name is Poor Tom.”

Edgar disguised as Poor Tom: “Away!  The foul fiend follows me.”

Lear: “Didst thou give all to thy daughters?  And art thou come to this?”

Tom: “Who gives anything to Poor Tom.  Bless thy five wits.  Tom’s cold.  Do Poor Tom some charity.”

Lear: “What, have his daughters brought him to this?  Would’st thou give them all?  Now all the plagues in the pendulous air that hang fated over men’s faults light on thy daughters.”

Kent: “He hath no daughters, sir”

Lear: “Death, traitor!  Nothing could have subdued nature to such a lowness but his unkind daughters.”

Fool: “This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.”

Lear: “What hast thou been?”

Poor Tom: “I swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven; wine loved I deeply’ dice dearly; and in women out-paramoured the Turk.  False of heart, light of ear, bloody in hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.  Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of pockets, thy pen from lender’s books, and defy the foul fiend.”

Lear: “Is man no more than this?  Consider him well.  Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.  Off you lending.  Come, unbutton here (tearing off his clothes).

Fool: “Prithee Nuncle, be contented; ‘tis a naughty night to swim in.”

Gloucester arrives

Gloucester: “What are you there?  Your names?”

Poor Tom: “Poor Tom.”

Gloucester: “What, hath your grace no better company?  My duty cannot suffer to obey all of your daughters’ hard commands.  Though their injunction be to bar my doors, and let this tyrannous night take hold upon you.  Yet have I ventured to come seek you out and bring you to where both fire and food is ready.  Poor banished man!  Thou sayest the king grows mad; I’ll tell thee, friend, I am almost mad myself.  I had a son, now outlawed from my blood.; he sought my life.  I loved him.  The grief has crazed my wits.  What a night’s this!

Analysis

Kent seeks to protect Lear by directing him into a hovel but Lear does not want to go in and explains to Kent that he can hardly notice the elements when he considers the greater malady, filial ingratitude.   He wants his fool to go into the hovel first, thinking that, as king, he did not do enough for the wretched and the meek.  Lear’s heart is beginning to pry open, even as his mind is leaning toward madness.  He even prays, but for the poor wretches of the world.  His humanity is expanding as his mind loses its grip.  He is accustomed to being ruler of his world and now he is a half-naked ‘bare, forked animal’ and feels the sympathetic pain of the disregarded and oppressed.  He is beginning to understand that beneath the clothing each person is very similarly naked and vulnerable.  The only difference is the clothes. 

The fool comes running out of the hovel, where he has just encountered Poor Tom, who we know to be Edgar, Gloucester’s son and Edmund’s brother.  When Lear hears Poor Tom say that devilish fiends possess his body Lear asks him if this is because he gave everything away to his daughters.  When told that. He has no daughters, Lear will not believe it, for he thinks only unkind daughters could have caused this.  He rips off his clothes to seem more like Poor Tom.  

Gloucester arrives and does not realize that Poor Tom is really Edgar, his own son.  He explains to Lear, his fool, Kent and Poor Tom that he is nearly mad with grief since he once had a son who he loved but who tried to take his life.  

Act III

Scene v

Gloucester’s castle

Cornwall: “I will have my revenge ere I depart his house.”

Edmund: “This is the letter he spoke of, which approves him an intelligent party to the advantages of France and the King.”  

Cornwall: “Seek out where thy father is, that he may be ready for our apprehension. I will lay trust upon thee; and thou shalt find a dearer father in my love.”

Analysis

Edmund is in deep now.  His brother is impersonating a madman out on the heath and he is about to turn his own father over to Cornwall.  Then he shall be made Earl of Gloucester and be set for life once Gloucester is dealt with and accompanies Lear as just one more broken man on the heath.  Cornwall claims he will find ‘a dearer father’ in him.  

Act III

Scene vi

A farmhouse on Gloucester’s property

Gloucester, Lear, his fool and Kent arrive at near Gloucester’s castle, where Gloucester hopes to secure provisions for Lear.  While he is away Lear runs a mock trial of his daughters.  Gloucester returns with news that there is a plot to kill Lear and he instructs the group to advance toward Dover, where Cordelia and the French are arriving to support Lear.  Poor Tom claims that his own suffering seems much less having encountered the greater suffering of Lear: “My tears begin to take his part so much they mar my counterfeiting.”

Analysis

All of the principle characters, other than Cordelia, are either in or about Gloucester’s castle.  Gloucester goes into the castle and finds provisions for Lear and his party.  While he is in there he overhears of a plot to kill the king and warns them to quickly leave for Dover, where they will find support for the king.  Lear’s humanity has spread to Poor Tom, who feels very little of his own suffering when he considers the enormous suffering demonstrated by Lear.  One scene remains of Act III and it is one of the most brutal scenes in all of Shakespeare.  We have seen the last of the fool in this scene.  He simply disappears from the play.  It is thought that the fool and Cordelia were played by the same person, as we never see the two together in the play.  Likely, he rushed off to change into Cordelia’s clothes as he/she will appear soon in Act IV, Scene iv.  However, it may be that Lear is so mad by this point in the play that he can no longer make sense of the witty fool and will be led by Poor Tom and Gloucester from here on out.

Act III

Scene vii

Gloucester’s castle

Cornwall: “The army of France has landed – seek out the traitor Gloucester.”

Reagan: “Hang him instantly.”

Goneril: “Pluck out his eyes.”

Cornwall: “Leave him to my displeasure.  Edmund, keep you our sister company.  The revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding.  Where is the king?”

Oswald: “Gloucester hath conveyed him hence, toward Dover, where they boast to have well-armed friends.”

Cornwall: “Go seek the traitor Gloucester and bring him before us.”

Gloucester is brought into the room 

Cornwall: “Who is there?  The traitor?  Bind fast his arms.”

Gloucester: “What means your graces?  Good my friends, consider you are my guests.  Do me no foul play, friends.”

Cornwall: “Bind him, I say.”

Reagan: “Hard, hard. O filthy traitor.”

Cornwall: “To this chair bind him.”

Reagan plucks his beard.

Gloucester: “Naughty lady.  I am your host.”

Cornwall: Where hast thou sent the king?”

Gloucester: “To Dover.”

Reagan: “Wherefore to Dover?”

Gloucester: “Because I would not see thy cruel nails pluck out his poor old eyes.”

Cornwall: “Fellows, hold the chair.  Upon these eyes of thine I will set my foot.”

Digs out one of his eyes, throws it on the floor and steps on it.

Gloucester: “O cruel! O you Gods!”

Regan: “One side will mock another; the other too.”

Servant 1: “I have served you ever since I was a child.”

The servant and Cornwall fight.  Cornwall is wounded.  Reagan kills the servant.

Cornwall plucks out the other eye from Gloucester: “Out vile jelly!”

Gloucester: “All dark and comfortless.  Where is my son, Edmund?”

Reagan: Thou call’st on him that hates thee.  It was he that made the overture of thy treason to us”

Gloucester: “O my folly.  Then Edgar was abused.”

Reagan: “Go thrust him out at the gates and let him smell his way to Dover.”

Two of Gloucester’s servants leave to join him to apply flax and egg whites upon his bleeding face.  

Analysis

Right away in this scene Cornwall wants his hands upon Gloucester.  In fact, Goneril’s first utterance in the scene is “pluck out his eyes.”  After warning Edmund that what they are about to do to his father is ‘not for your beholding’, Gloucester arrives and the violence commences.

When Gloucester is brought into the room the cruelty is immediate.  They bind him hard, pluck out his beard and Cornwall digs out both eyes.  There is much violence in Shakespeare, although a significant amount of it is suggested off stage.  Not in this scene.  Here, Cornwall actually appears to pluck out both eyes right on the stage.  At one memorable production I was seated in the second row and when Cornwall removed the second eye ball he held it high in his grip and then squeezed it so the juice spurted all over the first several rows of the audience.  This is the point of no return in the play.  Insults can be retracted but not blindness.  Lear has been figuratively blind by giving his kingdom to his daughters and soon he will be joined by his literally blind friend, blinded by the same group that has Lear’s kingdom.  However, Cornwall received a serious wound and is led off the stage bleeding badly.  The sisters and Edmund are left together and so are Lear, Poor Tom, Kent and Gloucester.  Cordelia is arriving in Dover.  The stage is set for Act IV.

Act IV

Act IV

Scene i

Edgar encounters his blinded father and leads him across the heath as Poor Tom.  Albany is furious at Goneril for the cruelty done to Lear and Gloucester.  He goes so far as to vow revenge.  Kent arrives in Dover to find Cordelia in charge of the French army and Lear unwilling to meet Cordelia, due to the guilt he feels over his treatment of her.  

Regan gets word that Cornwall has died from his injuries and she wants to marry Edmund.  Goneril also wants to have an affair with Edmund, as she and Albany are badly estranged.

Edgar and Gloucester encounter a raging Lear on the open heath.  Lear and Cordelia are finally reunited although Lear is a bit too crazed to understand exactly what is happening.  An Act V battle is approaching between Cordelia’s army and that of Edmund and his two suitors.

Act IV

Scene i

Gloucester’s old servant is leading Gloucester upon the heath.

Gloucester: “Get thee away, good friend.”

Servant: “But you cannot see your way.”

Gloucester: “I have no way, and therefore want no eyes.  O dear son, Edgar, might I but live to see thee in my touch, I’d say I had eyes again.”

Servant: “Who is there? Tis Poor Mad Tom.”

Poor Tom: “And worse I may be yet.  The worst is not so long as we can say ‘This is the worst’.” 

Gloucester: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods – they kill us for their sport.”

Poor Tom: “How should this be?  Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow. Bless thee, master.”

Gloucester: “Is that the naked fellow?”

Servant: “Alack, sir, he is mad.”

Gloucester: “’Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind.  Sirrah, naked fellow… Come hither.

Poor Tom: (an aside) “And yet I must – Bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed.”

Gloucester; “Know’st thou the way to Dover?”

Poor Tom: “Both stile and gate, horseway and footpath.”

Gloucester: “There is a cliff.  Bring me to the very brim of it.  From that place I will no leading need.”

Poor Tom: “Give me thy arm.  Poor Tom shall lead thee.”

Analysis

This is a tragically powerful scene of Gloucester being reunited with his true son, Edgar, although he knows it not because Edgar is disguised as Poor Tom.  They are both in a terrible state.  Poor Tom knows this is his disfigured father and Gloucester takes pity on Poor Tom as they head off together, father and son, to Dover, where Gloucester wishes to leap from the White Cliffs.  This is a scene of utter hopelessness and despair.  The reuniting of father and son under these circumstances is hard to witness.  Poor Tom did not think things could get any worse until he sees his tortured and blind father.  

Act IV

Scene ii

Goneril is asking Oswald where his master, Albany, is.  Oswald says Albany is happy the French troops are arriving and angry that Goneril is around.  Goneril has had it with Albany and flirts with Edmund.  Albany arrives.

Albany: “O Goneril! You are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face.  Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.  Filth savours but themselves.  What have you done?  Tigers not daughters.”

Goneril: “Milk-livered man!”

Albany: “See thyself, devil. Proper deformity shows not in the fiend so horrid as in woman.”

Goneril: “O vain fool.”

Albany: “Thou art a fiend.”

Messenger: “Cornwall is dead, killed by a servant, when putting out Gloucester’s eyes.”

Albany: “O, poor Gloucester. Where was his son when they did take his eyes?”

Messenger: “Ay, my good lord; ‘twas he who informed against him.”

Albany: “Gloucester, I live to thank thee for the love thou show’dst the king, and to revenge thine eyes.”

Analysis

This scene separates Albany from the villains, although he be Goneril’s husband.  Albany is the only one to experience redemption in this play, so at least we know it is possible.  With Cornwall dead and Albany redeemed, the villains are incestuously reduced to Edmund, Regan and Goneril, the three wayward children.  Both women crave Edmund so you know something has to give between the three of them.

Act IV

Scene iii

Kent is asking of a gentleman if Cordelia expressed any grief when she read Kent’s letters. The gentleman says that her grief was expressed not in rage but rather with patience and sorrow.  She pressed the name of her father  to her heart and cursed her sisters for putting him out in such a storm.  Kent reports that Lear refuses to see Cordelia due to the guilt he feels for banishing her as he did. His mind burns with shame.  

Analysis

We finally approach Cordelia.  Her grief has not incapacitated her but her heart is full of sorrow at the report of her father’s pitiful state.  Her genuine love for her father stands in vivid contrast to her sisters. Lear is so guilt ridden over his treatment of Cordelia that he will not even consent to seeing her.  This scene fully anticipates the next scene when we encounter Cordelia for the first time since Act I.

Act IV

Scene iv

Lear is in a neighbouring cornfield dressed in rags, crowned with weeds and singing loudly his madness.  This scene is strangely reminiscent of Ophelia in Hamlet. Cordelia sends someone to bring him to her and asks the doctor what might be done to restore him.  The doctor insists he needs sleep.  A messenger announces that the English army approaches.  

Analysis

Scene iv establishes that Cordelia has arrived to save her father from further madness.  Obviously, he requires rest.  He hides from her out of shame and she seek him out of love.  Unfortunately, the English army, led by Edmund, approaches. 

Act IV

Scene v

Regan and Oswald in Gloucester’s castle

Regan: “It was great ignorance, Gloucester’s eyes being out, to let him live; where he arrives he moves all hearts against us.  Edmund, I think, is gone to dispatch his life and to descry the strength of the enemy.”

Oswald: “I must needs after him, madam, with my letter.”

Regan: “Why should she write to Edmund?  I’ll love thee much.  Let me unseal the letter.  I know your lady does not love Albany, her husband.  I am sure of that. She gave strange looks to noble Edmund, and more convenient is he for my hand than for your lady’s.”

Analysis

Of course, the evil ones are attracted to one another and both sisters want Edmund.  This will play out badly for everyone in Act V, as we can only imagine. The great reckoning act awakes.  We can see the various characters lining up for their comeuppance.  But this is not like any other play.  In fact, for over 200 years the ending was changed into a happy one because theatre goers could not manage the tragedy as it were.  It was simply too much.  Many people have hated this play because of its nihilistic and hopeless nature.  Let’s not forget that Shakespeare was quarantined from a deadly virus for much of 1606 and was likely not in the least in any comedic mood. 

Act IV

Scene vi

Gloucester and Poor Tom (Edgar) at the Cliffs of Dover

Gloucester: “When shall I come to the top of that hill?”

Poor Tom: “Here’s the place.  And dizzy ‘tis to cast one eyes so low.  The fishermen look like mice.”

Gloucester: “Set me where you stand.”

Poor Tom: “You are now within a foot of the extreme verge.”

Gloucester: “Let go my hand. Bid me farewell.”

Poor Tom: “Fare ye well, good sir.”

Gloucester: “O, you mighty gods!  This world I do renounce… If Edgar live, O, bless him.”

Gloucester faints, believing he has cast himself down.

Poor Tom: “Alive or dead?  He revives.”

Gloucester: “Away and let me die.”

Poor Tom: “Thou hast perpendicularly fell.  Thy life’s a miracle.  This is above all strangeness.”

Gloucester: “Henceforth I’ll bear affliction till it do cry out itself.”

Enter Lear fantastically dressed with weeds

Poor Tom: “Who comes here?”

Lear: “I am the king himself.”

Poor Tom: “O thy side-piercing sight.”

Lear: “Nature’s above art in that respect.”

Gloucester: “I know that voice.  Is it not the king?”

Lear: “Every inch a king.  When I do stare, see how the subject quakes?  I pardon that man’s life.  What was thy cause?  Adultery?  Thou shall not die.  Die for adultery?  No.  Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester’s bastard son  was kinder to his father than my daughters.  Down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above; but to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiends’; there’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit – burning, scalding, stench, consumption.”

Gloucester: “O, let me kiss that hand.”

Lear: “Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.

Gloucester: O, ruined piece of nature.  Dost thou know me?”

Lear: “You have no eyes in your head and no money in your purse?  Yet you see how this world goes.”

Gloucester: “I see it feelingly.”

Lear: “What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes.  Look with thine ears.”

Poor Tom: “O, matter and impertinency mixed! Reason in madness!”

Lear: “If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.  I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester. Thou must be patient, we came crying hither.  When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.  And when I have stolen upon these son-in-laws, then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.” 

A gentleman arrives with news that Cordelia is nearby

Lear: “Let me have surgeons.  I am cut to the brain.  I will die bravely. I am a king.”

Gentleman: “A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch, past speaking of in a king.”

Poor Tom: “How near is the other army?”

Gentleman: “Near and on speedy foot.  The queen is here.”

Oswald stumbles upon the group and prepares to kill Gloucester.

Poor Tom: “Come not near the old man.”

Oswald: “Out, dunghill.”

They fight and Oswald is killed.

Poor Tom finds letters on Oswald and reads them. They are letters from Goneril to Edmund instructing him to kill Albany so that they can be a couple.  

Poor Tom: “O, indistinguish’d space of a woman’s will.  A plot upon her virtuous husband’s life and in the exchange my brother.”  

Gloucester: “The king is mad: how stiff is my vile sense.  Better I were distract: so should my thoughts be severed from my griefs, and woes by wrong imaginations lose the knowledge of themselves.”

Analysis

The scene where Poor Tom leads his own father, Gloucester, to jump off the White Cliffs of Dover, is indicative that we are nearing Act V.  Gloucester wants to die but Poor Tom protects him and then convinces him that the gods have saved him with a miracle and therefore want him to live.  He promises to better bear his afflictions and Poor Tom advises him toward ‘free and patient thoughts’.

Lear shows up and Gloucester is devastated to see his ruin.  However, then he wishes himself to be as mad as the king so that his thoughts ‘be severed from his griefs and his woes lose knowledge of themselves.  There is enough suffering to go around in this play.

Act IV

Scene vii

In the French camp

Cordelia: “O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work to match thy goodness?  My life will be too short and every measure fail me.”  

Kent: “To be acknowledged madam, is overpaid.”

Cordelia: “How does the king, Doctor?”

Doctor: “madam, he sleeps still.”

Cordelia: “O you kind gods, cure this great breach in his abused nature.”

The doctor draws the curtain and Cordelia sees Lear

Cordelia: “O my dear father!  Restoration hang thy medicine upon my lips, and let this kiss repair those violent harms that my two sisters have in thy reverence made… He wakes… How does my royal lord?”

Lear: “You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.  Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.”

Cordelia: “sir, do you know me?”

Lear: “You are a spirit.  Where did you die?”

Doctor: “He is scarcely awake.”

Lear: “Where have I been?  Where am I?  I am mightily abused.  I know not what to say.  I will not swear these are my hands.  Pray, do not mock me: I am a very foolish fond old man, and, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.  Methinks I should know you.  Yet I am doubtful.  Do not laugh at me.  I think this lady to be my child Cordelia.”

Cordelia: “And so I am, I am.”

Lear: “I pray weep not.  If you have poison for me I will drink it.  I know you do not love me; for you sisters have, as I remember, done me wrong: you have some cause, they have not.”

Cordelia: “No cause, no cause.”

Lear: “You must bear with me. Pray you now, forget and forgive.  I am old and foolish.”

Analysis

All of the good folks are coming together, as are the bad.  Dear Cordelia, loyal Kent, blind Gloucester, wronged Old Tom (Edgar) and mad Lear are near the French Camp and evil Edmund, conniving Goneril and treacherous Regan are after them, which is why there is such a thing as an act V.  Cordelia is finally with her father again and though he believes she has cause to do him wrong, she insists that there is ‘no cause… no cause’.  She has come in love and peace to her bereaved father.   She is a good soul, as we have known all along.  The final confrontation between good and evil is upon us.  Buckle in.

Act V

As the final battle approaches between Cordelia and the French forces and Edmund and the English, the two sisters are sparing over their lust for Edmund.  Edmund has led them both on and will wait till after the battle to decide which of the two he will be with.

The battle is over quickly and Cordelia and Lear have been captured.

Just as Regan and Goneril are pursuing Edmund, Edgar arrives and challenges Edmund to a duel.  Many deaths crowd the stage in this most tragic of endings, as Edgar becomes King of England.

At V

Scene I

Regan: (to Edmund) “Now, sweet lord, you know the goodness I intend upon you.  Tell me – but truly – do you not love my sister?”

Edmund: “In honoured love.”

Regan: “I shall never endure her.  Dear my lord, be not familiar with her.”

Edmund: “Fear me not.”

Enter Albany and Goneril

Goneril: “I had rather lose the battle than that sister should loosen him and me.”

Albany: “This I hear: the king has come to his daughter.”

Analysis

Act V begins with the nest of lust that exists between Edmund and the two sisters who each want him.  He leads them both on and will decide which to pursue after the battle.  He is very much enjoying this situation, as the battle commences.  

Act V

Scene ii

On a field, between the two camps

Edgar: “Here father, take the shadow of this tree for your good host.  If ever I return to you again I’ll bring you comfort.”

Edgar returns

Edgar: “Away, old man, away!  King Lear hath lost and his daughter taken.”

Gloucester: “No further, sir; a man may rot even here.”

Edgar: “What? In ill thoughts again? Men must endure their going hence, even as they’re coming hither: ripeness is all. Come on.

Analysis

A very short scene (12 lines) tells us that the armies have met and the King has been defeated and his forces led by Cordelia captured.  Edgar tries to ensure that Gloucester does not return to his bleak despair.  Not looking promising for the good guys…

At V

Scene iii

This is the final scene in King Lear.  The battle is over and Lear and Cordelia are being led away to prison.  

Edmund: “Officers, take them away.”

Lear: “Come, let’s go to prison.  We two alone will sing like birds in the cage.  We’ll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh.”

Edmund: “Come hither, Captain, hark. Take thou this note; go follow them to prison.  Either say thou’lt do it, or thrive by other means.”

Captain: “I’ll do it, my lord.”

Albany: (to Edmund) “You have the captives.  I do require them of you.”

Edmund: “I thought it fit to send the old and miserable king to some retention and appointed guard.   With him I sent the queen.”

Regan: “I am not well.” (hmmm)  

Albany pulls out the letter he has on him.

Albany: “Edmund, I arrest thee on capital treason… and this guilded serpent (Goneril)”

Edmund: “What in the world he is that names me traitor, villain-like he lies.”

Regan: “My sickness grows upon me.” (hmmmmmmmmm)

Herald: “If any man will maintain upon Edmund that he is a manifold traitor, let him appear.”

Enter Edgar

Edgar: “Edmund, draw thy sword.  Thou art a traitor; false to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father; a most toad-spotted traitor.”

Edmund: “Back do I toss these treasons to thy head.”

Edgar and Edmund fight.  Edmund falls.

Albany: (to Edmund) “Most monstrous! O, knowest thou this paper?”

Edmund: “What you have charged me with, that I have done, and more, much more.  Time will bring it out.  But what art thou that hast this fortune on me?”

Edgar: “I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund.  My name is Edgar, and thy father’s son.  The dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him his eyes.”

Edmund: “’Tis True. The wheel is come full circle.”

Albany: (to Edgar) “I must embrace thee. Where have you hid yourself?   How have you known the miseries of your father?”

Edgar: “By nursing them, my lord.  I assumed a semblance that very dogs disdained; and in this habit met I my father with his bleeding rings, led him, begged for him, saved him from despair; Never – o fault! – revealed myself unto him until some half hour past.  I asked his blessings, but his flawed heart ‘twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, burst smilingly.”

Edmund: “This speech of yours hath moved me, and shall perchance do good.”

Enter a gentleman with a bloody knife

Gentleman: “Help, help, o, help!”

Edgar: “What means this bloody knife?”

Gentleman: “She is dead.”

Albany: “Who dead?”

Gentleman: “Your lady, sir, and her sister by her is poisoned; she confesses it.”

Edmund: “I was contracted to them both.”

Albany: “Where is the king? And where is Cordelia?”

The bodies of Goneril and Regan are brought forth.

Edmund: “Yet Edmund was beloved.  The one the other poisoned for my sake, and after slew herself.  Some good I mean to do.  Quickly send to the castle; for my writ is on the life of Lear and Cordelia.”

Albany: “Run, run, O, run!  Haste thee, for thy life.”

They are too late. Enter Lear with Cordelia dead in his arms.

Lear: “Howl, howl, howl, howl!  O, you are men of stones.  Had I your tongue and eyes, I’d use them so that heavens vault should crack.  She’s gone forever.  Lend me a looking glass; if that her breath will mist or stain the stone, why, then she lives.  This feather stirs.  She lives.  If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.  A plague upon you murderers, traitors all!  I might have saved her; now she’s gone forever.  Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little. Ha!  I killed the slave that was a hanging thee.”

Captain: “Is true, my lords, he did.”

Kent: “Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves and desperately are dead.”

Lear: “Ay, so I think.”

Messenger: “Edmund is dead, my lord.”

Albany: “That’s but a trifle here.  You lords and noble friends, know our intent.  All friends shall taste the wages of their virtue, and all foes the cup of their deservings.”

Lear: “And my poor fool is hanged! No, no ,no life?  Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more.  Never, never, never, never, never.  Do you see this? Look on her. Look, her lips.  Look there, look there!”

Lear dies, perhaps believe that Cordelia is alive.

Kent: “Break heart; I prithee break. O, let him pass!  He hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer.  He but usurped his life.”

Albany: “Our present business is general woe.”  (to Kent and Edgar) “You twain rule in this realm.”

Kent: “I have a journey, sir, shortly to go.  My master calls me; I must not say no.”

Edgar: “The weight of this sad time we must obey; speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.  The oldest hath born most; we that are young shall never see so much or live so long.”

Analysis

The final scene of King Lear is Shakespeare’s most tragic and it opens with Lear and Cordelia being directed to prison by Edmund.  Nonetheless, Lear is in excellent cheer and his madness abates, as he is finally reunited with his one true loving daughter.  He says they will sing and laugh like caged birds.  

Unfortunately, we overhear Edmund instructing the Captain to ensure their fate, which he agrees to perform.  When Albany requests possession of the prisoners Edmund explains that he thought it best they be presently confined.

Things happen fast here, as Albany announces he is charging Edmund and Goneril with Capital Treason for the letters that he has in his possession from Edmund, declaring their commitment to killing Albany and betraying Lear and Cordelia.

Edmund prepares to fight a duel against any man who calls him a traitor and Edgar, still in disguise, enters the room and calls him a most foul traitor. They fight and Edmund is seriously hurt.  It is at this point that Edgar reveals his identity.  Edmund admits to his crimes.

Albany wants to know how it was that Edgar came to know of his father’s miseries and Edgar’s answer is that he knew them because he tended to them.  He explains that only in the past half hour did he reveal himself to Gloucester  as his son.  The combined joy and grief of this news took what remained of his life.  Edmund claims that he is moved by this news and determines to do good.

A gentleman arrives with news that Goneril has poisoned Regan and then has committed suicide.  Their bodies arrive.  Edmund reflects that he was beloved by both and that one killed the other and then herself for him.  He alerts Albany and Edgar that, by his orders, Lear and Cordelia are fated to be killed.  As panic ensues Lear arrives with dead Ophelia in his arms.  Lear immediately retreats back into his madness and deep despair.  He is informed that his other two daughters are dead as well.  He response is curt: “Ay, so I think.”

A messenger arrives to announce that Edmund has succumbed to his wounds.  Albany is quick to judge that “this is but a trifle here,” considering all else. 

Lear informs us that his fool has been hanged.  In his final lines he believes Cordelia is breathing, so perhaps he dies believing he has outlived her.  This is about as happy an ending as Shakespeare affords us.

Albany, Kent and Edgar are all that remain.  Edmund was killed by Edgar, Goneril poisoned Regan and then killed herself, the fool has been hung, Cordelia has died from her near hanging, Lear and Gloucester, the two old friends, both die of their prolonged grief and tragic despair.  

Albany suggests that Kent and Edgar rule England.  Kent has a date with death from old age and cannot say no to it.  So the kingship falls upon Edgar, or Poor Tom, who knows all there is to know about suffering, pity, loyalty and righteousness.  This is the only good that comes of the tragedy of King Lear.  Edgar will no doubt be a good King, but the play ends to the sound of a funeral march.  There is plenty of healing to get through and bodies aplenty upon the stage to trip over.

Final thoughts:

There are at least 10 deaths in King Lear and only 3 survivors.  All of the evil folks are dead, including Cornwall, Oswald, Edmund, Regan and Goneril.  Of the better angels, Lear, Cordelia, Gloucester, the fool and a servant to Gloucester are dead.  

It’s no wonder the 16^th century rewrote Shakespeare’s tragedy, to make it more tolerable.  It is the most nihilistic and painful play in the canon and perhaps in all of literature, as evil finally consumes itself and most of those it touches. Edmund comes dangerously close to being crowned king of England, with both dukes and sisters’ dead.  But in that sense goodness triumphs, albiet with a totally gloomy and depressed ending and the stage littered with the bodies of Goneril, Regan, Cordelia and Lear… the King and his three daughters.  The secondary family, Gloucester and Edmund, along with the fool, die off stage.

King Lear starts the play full of arrogance and ends it a broken, ragged and humbled man consumed by regret and despair.  He learns about pity and compassion and it fills him with a certain madness stained humanity that sustains him as long as it does, until that final travesty of his dead child in his weak arms.

Lear’s two evil daughters are all fire and ice, like their father, but without his dignity, honour, integrity and grace, which belong to Cordelia.  The entire play is essentially Lear figuring out a way to internalize and embody these qualities and reach Cordelia in Act V.

The fool is one of Shakespeare’s most profound characters, as he spars with Lear and others and has many great insightful punchlines.  Shakespeare will feature many fools, but none like this.  They are all wise fools but no other attain the status of such a  biting political and psychological satirist.

Gloucester is the counterpoint, or shadow, to Lear in the play; just another old man who mistakes his children as Lear has done with his daughters.  Cordelia and Edgar are true and good but spend most of the play banished, while Goneril, Regan and Edmund spin their webs of intrigue and bring the entire house of cards crashing down all around the stage.  Edmund is one of Shakespeare’s most alluring villains.  He is smart, cunning and morally vacant until the final scene of the play.

Edgar, the next king of England, has to totally redefine himself in order to survive his brother’s cunning.  Poor Tom suffers with grace and only reveals himself for who he really is in that final Act five scene.

King Lear is about what happens when we mistake reason for a monstrosity.  ‘Reason not the need’ Lear declares. He knows he is flirting with tragedy by dividing his kingdom based on which daughter expresses her love best.  Among his first words in the play are : “Meantime, we shall express our darker purpose… while unburdened we crawl toward death.” That is quite the foreshadowing.  He is nothing if not unburdened by the play’s end. The fool consistently speaks reasonably and only gives sound advice, which Lear can hear but cannot abide.

But it is out there on the blasted heath that the more admirable characters, Lear, his fool, Poor Tom, Kent and Gloucester find hope, as they embrace what little fragment of humanity remains, in the gentle caring and kindness directed to one another.  We must believe that in all of the years on his throne Lear never experienced this.  He could only learn these lessons upon the apocalyptic heath, as we all must do.  

Shakespeare connects us so well to these suffering fools that we experience their despair and madness in their most grotesque manifestations.  Lear was likely a strong and good king but his ‘darker purpose’ leads him on a whirlwind of betrayal, suffering and madness  By the time Act 5 arrives he has finally made his peace with being no more than ‘a foolish old man’.  This, of course, evaporates when he arrives with dead Cordelia in his arms.  We can only take so much.  He was loved by those who truly loved him, not by those who merely professed to love.  Hence, among the finally lines in the play in Act V, Scene iii is this by Edgar: “The weight of this sad time we must obey; speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”  In this sense the lesson has been learned from Act I, Scene I and henceforth we have come full circle.  Edmund also states in the play’s final scene: “The wheel has come full circle.”   This is the restoration scene in King Lear.   But Lear’s lessons are dealt a final, fatal blow and are learned too late to take hold in the face of the death of his beloved child in his arms.  The significance of everything pales in the face of such a terrible reckoning.  Enough is enough.  Wheh!