King Lear

1
King Lear

• Second lecture

2
The Fool

• One of the most wonderful conceptions, and
  wonderful roles, in the play.
• Hes a jester, Lears all-licensed fool, whos
  allowed to say anything.
• Court jesters were originally mental defectives,
  retarded adults.
• But later professional entertainers, comedians
  allowed to enliven court proceedings.
• King James had a jester, Archie Armstrong, who
  was well known for an impudence verging on
  arrogance.
• Lears fool is certainly impudent, cheeky.
• But he has an almost filial relation with him.
• Calls Lear nuncle, uncle Lear calls him boy
  (even though Armin was in his early 40s).
• His strange link with Cordelia Since my young
  ladys going into France, the fool hath much
  pined away.
• And my poor fool is hanged, Lear says in the
  last scene he seems to mean Cordelia, but speaks
  of the Fool?
• Its the Fool who needles Lear mercilessly about
  the foolishness of what he has done in giving up
  his kingdom.
• And the fool disappears from the play after Act
  III, scene 6.

3
The characters dividing along moral lines

• Kents intervention begins ceremoniously l.
  140ff
• But Lear demands plainness.
• So Kent lets him have it Be Kent unmannerly/
  When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?
  Note the familiarity of thou.
• And his rhyming at 185ff seems to round off the
  exchange.
• The play is dividing characters according to
  their language and rhetoric, their relation to a
  core truth.
• The Burgundy/France test Cordelia becomes more
  desirable to France because of her dowerless
  poverty.
• When Kent returns in disguise in 1.4, plainness
  becomes his middle name, devotion to Lear his
  absolute truth.
• And his truth defines his quarrel with Oswald.
• And his opposition to Oswald at II.2 his
  wonderfully inventive list of insults at l. 13ff.
• No contraries hold more antipathy/ Than I and
  such a knave.
• And even to Cornwall Sir, tis my occupation to
  be plain./ I have seen better faces . . .
  (89ff).
• Characters seem to run to the moral poles of the
  world of the play Cordelia vs. her sisters, Kent
  vs. Oswald, Edgar vs. Edmund.

4
Moral polarities

• Goneril and Regans opposition to Lear at first
  seems understandable, commonsensical.
• Their brief dialogue at the end of I.1.
• Gonerils objections to the Fool, her problems
  with the hundred knights (1.4.195ff).
• Her desire that he a little to disquantity your
  train.
• Lears terrible curse of Goneril 1.4.271.
• But Albanys reaction complicates.
• Regans sympathy with Goneril, II.4
• And they whittle down his 100 knights.
• Oh reason not the need! What gives us our grip
  on life?
• By this point their opposition seems to involve a
  basic opposition to Lear.

5
Moral polarities (cont.)

• Edmund and Edgar
• Edmunds role as a sort of renaissance new man
  his soliloquy at 1.2.
• With a new sense of Nature almost Darwinian?
• His opposition to Edgar and Gloucester.
• And his eventual alliance with Goneril and Regan.
• Edgars choice of disguise Poor Tom, the
  poorest, craziest, most abject sort of person to
  be found in Jacobean England.
• Why such a role? Hes the son of an earl.
• His feigned madness in stark contrast to Edmund?

6
Lears journey

• Freud, in essay The Theme of the Three Caskets,
  thought death was somehow implicit in Cordelias
  Nothing, that she somehow represented death for
  Lear.
• The parallel in an old morality play, The Pride
  of Life again the choice of three.
• Lear says he wishes to unburdened crawl toward
  death.
• But Goneril and Regans complaints about the
  course of his life he hath ever but slenderly
  known himself.
• The best and soundest of his time hath been but
  rash.
• Lears journey seems to be one of discovering who
  he is before he faces death.

7
The Fools lesson for Lear

• To the Fool, Lear is this fellow who has
  banished two ons daughters, and did the third a
  blessing against his will.
• He deserves a coxcomb.
• The Fools wisdom, which is nothing.
• Dost thou call me fool, boy?
• All thy other titles thou has given away that
  thou wast born with.
• Who is Lear Lears irony at l.4.220.
• But the Fool answers Lears shadow.
• And in I.5 the Fool decides that Lear would make
  a good fool himself.
• If Lear were his fool, he would have him beaten
  for being old before his time.
• Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst
  been wise.
• And the first stirrings of Lears madness ll.
  43-44.

8
Second stage of that journey

• In II.4 Lear meets with Cornwall and Regan, who
  similarly chips away at his self.
• O sir, you are old . . .
• And she and Goneril begin to strip away his 100
  knights.
• And he feels himself becoming less and less.
• You see me here, you gods, a poor old man/ As
  full of grief as age, wretched in both.
• And he is on the verge of tears and madness.
• The storm begins and Lear goes out into it.

9
Third stage the heath in the storm

• The storm as a great anti-pastoral nature
  that shows humanity its utter insignificance.
• But Lear madly -- tries to match the ferocity
  of the storm?
• And seems to revel in its ferocity?
• His concern for the Fool III.2.69ff.
• And at III.4.28.
• His prayer that recognizes the Poor naked
  wretches.
• And the pat entrance of Edgar as Poor Tom.
• Poor Toms role as repentant Mankind.
• And Lears embracing of him as unaccommodated
  man, the thing itself . . .
• . . . and attempting to imitate, identify with
  Poor Tom Off, off, you lendings!
• Tom becomes Lears philosopher.

10
Fourth stage Lear completely mad

• IV.6 Lear on the heath, mad, bedecked with
  weeds . . .
• . . . stripped of all his identity he too
  unaccommodated man?
• . . . encounters the blinded Gloucester.
• How much of Lears discourse is madness, how much
  a new clarity? See Edgars reason in madness.
• Gloucester O let me kiss that hand.
• Lear Let me wipe it first. It smells of
  mortality.
• Lears mad insights into authority a dogs
  obeyed in office thou rascal beadle
• And the newborn infants tragic understanding of
  life.

11
The meeting with Cordelia

• There was a climactic scene in the old morality
  plays when the penitent protagonist was given a
  garment of repentance by the saving Virtue
  character.
• IV.7 Lear brought in, freshly clothed, asleep in
  chair.
• Cordelia slowly wakens him with music, kisses
  him.
• Lears true delusion Thou art a soul in bliss
  . . .
• And in kneeling plays the part of the morality
  play.
• And slowly recovers a sense of himself.
• But only in a relational sense to Cordelia? as I
  am a man, I think this lady/ To be my child
  Cordelia.
• His guilt? No cause. No cause.
• And then in V.3 he imagines his contented life in
  prison with Cordelia.