King Lear was the first of the Shakespeare Conversations series between Michael and Dusty.

Dusty:

Some things are obvious about I, i:

In preparation for the upcoming marriage of Cordelia (to either Burgundy or France), Lear pretends to be staging a kind of love-contest, but in fact he has already decided how to divide up the kingdom, with equal shares to Goneril and Regan, and “a third more opulent” to Cordelia, his favorite. Goneril and Regan play along, but Cordelia won’t. (This sets up a choice for the director: should Cordelia speak quietly, modestly, even hesitantly, or should she be a little hard-edged, stiff-necked?)

The Gloucester plot already parallels the Lear plot: again there is a father (n.b., no mother) who treats his children unequally and doesn’t see any problem with that.

-Kent and Cordelia are allied and aligned in their plain-speaking, their love of Lear, and their readiness to speak back to him. Regan and Goneril are similar in their speech — I love you just as much as she does — and by the end of the scene are planning to work together. (Should actors present them as already clearly evil, or just wary and a little tired of Lear’s impetuous manner?)

Lear’s denunciations of Cordelia and Kent are really shocking (even Goneril and Regan recognize that). He not only formally disowns Cordelia but “disclaims” his paternity. He banishes his most faithful servant and threatens to kill him.

Some key words: see/eye, folly/mad, nothing.

Some technical things (concerning the way the story unfolds) struck me that I don’t think I have fully registered before.

It’s very long for an opening scene, more than 300 lines. (Compare Hamlet, where the opening scene — with a lot going on — is about 175 lines.)

Both the family explosion and the political breakdown come in the very first scene. (The explosion and breakdown, both common features in Shakespeare plays, usually come later in a play.)

In the opening 30 lines, Kent and Gloucester are distinguished by the length of their speeches. Kent speaks in short, declarative sentences. Gloucester, who seems rather full of himself, goes on and on, perhaps a bit like Polonius.

I also began wondering what Lear had been like for the period leading up to the beginning of the play. He has already been acting erratically, as Goneril and Regan have noticed. Didn’t Cordelia notice too? Is she also a little tired of playing his games?

Michael:

That opening bit with Gloucester, Kent, and Edmund always strikes me as strange. Yes, it’s narrative to explain Albany and Cornwall’s rivalry (if that’s what it is), the coming division of the kingdom, and Edmund’s presence. But the jokiness about Edmund’s bastardy seems uncomfortable: the pun on conceive, the sort of wink in “do you smell a fault,” the insistence that Edmund’s mother was “fair,” and that there was “good sport at his making.” And “whoreson.” The emphasis on the unnamed Edgar’s legitimacy rather strikingly puts Edmund in his place. I wonder if Jacobeans were more used to speaking of their children’s conception in front of their children than we are. Does the revelation that Edmund has been “out” nine years and will shortly return there (wherever “out” is) explain anything about his disposition in what’s to come? Yes, Gloucester is a bit Polonius-like, and I wonder if Kent is meant to be played as a bit embarrassed by what he’s going on about. And can we see how Edmund is reacting? All rather strange.

There’s definite shock in Cordelia’s “Nothing” and what follows. Up to this point, everything has seemed rather ceremonious, the map, the speeches of the older sisters, Lear’s division of the kingdom. I think we don’t even notice at this point that it’s not really a contest, just a performance to justify what’s already been decided. In retrospect we see all this as false and dangerous. But up to “Nothing” it seems like courtly routine, even the speeches of the sisters seem rhetorical performance, nothing much to worry about. This is the kind of thing to say when asked who loves the most. Then the radical distinction, and shock, between what’s real and what’s false. Yes, the denunciation of Cordelia and Kent is shocking and suggests a mind breaking up. I like the way this gets into the language, when Kent responds to Lear’s “The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft,” by shifting to the disrespectful and plainspoken second person singular, “What wouldst do, old man.” Suddenly Lear is no longer a king, just a crazy old man. Suddenly the play takes off, off to where it will get in Act 4 when Lear finally recovers — or comes to — a sense of what authority really is.

Even Goneril and Regan don’t seem evil at this point, just apprehensive about what Lear has become and what the division between the ceremony and reality will become. But Cordelia slices through it. The little morality play with Burgundy and France surprises even France. Suddenly he knows where he stands. G & R seem strikingly realistic about Lear (G’s “The best and soundest of his time . . .”) Clearly we’re done with the ceremonious performance and courtly language.

It’s an extraordinary scene, isn’t it, where the whole play is set up?  I hadn’t thought about its length, but that length is amazing in what it encompasses.

I think people sometimes worry about whether Cordelia seems too insistent about things, a bit self-righteous, etc., but the scene suggests the need for the basic distinctions, in language and mental understanding.

Dusty:

1.2, much shorter than the first scene, opens the second plot (I hesitate to say “subplot”). I think it’s designed to be accessible, readable, even funny. Only one new character is introduced: Edgar. And we already know the relationships among Gloucester, Edmund, and Edgar. Again we have a family in which the children are trying to get their hands on their father’s “revenue,” so there is less need for exposition. Again we have that powerful word “nothing” — out of Edmund’s mouth this time rather than Cordelia’s. Gloucester want to “see . . . see,” and we know what comes of that.

Edmund is in charge of the scene. He opens and closes it with soliloquies (which invite us to see things from his point of view), and has more lines than his father or brother. I think we are supposed to be engaged by his energy and wit, even his conscious villainy.

A couple of things are puzzling: is Edmund the elder brother or not? (You would think that he is illegitimate because his parents were not (yet) married when he was conceived, and that Edgar came along after the wedding. But in 1.1 Gloucester says that Edgar is the older one (“some year elder than this”). And just what does Edmund mean by “Nature.” Presumably he is contrasting it to “custom” and to law (“natural” son vs. “legitimate” son).

Shakespeare seems to set up Gloucester as a gullible, foolish old man, a patsy, an easy mark (for Edmund, and for the audience). He’s “credulous,” he’s superstitious. He’s sententious. We think Edmund is right about him, which makes us side with Edmund. Interesting that Gloucester’s first speech consists of a series of questions (just as the heart of Edmund’s soliloquy is a series of questions), but the tone is different. Edmund knows the answers to his questions.

Does Edmund’s speech (“suspend your indignation,” “auricular assurance”) sometimes imitate Gloucester’s windiness, and mock it?

Edgar is unsuspecting  — does that make him less “credulous” than his father? He is naive. Maybe simple. Should a director have him emphasize his simplicity, simple-ness? His speeches are all short, most just one line. Edmund’s are longer, and are used to draw out Edgar’s one-line responses, as if he has cast his brother in the role of fool (and even knows Edgar’s responses in advance). Are we supposed to form a low opinion of Edgar here, and revise it later when we see him on his own?

The scene is almost all in prose (as opposed to the poetry of scene 1), except for Edmund’s opening and closing soliloquies. Does that induce the audience to think that this plot is subsidiary to the royal plot?

Michael:

I think the center of the scene is to characterize Edmund and contrast him to Gloucester. His invocation of Nature I take to mean his “modern,” almost scientific cast of mind, over against Gloucester’s more superstitious, backward-looking understanding. Interestingly it doesn’t really set him off from Edgar, who expresses surprise at Edmund’s pretended expounding of astronomical lore. Edmund plays the Iago-like temptation of Gloucester in the business over the letter, and it does seem comic, or almost comic, since it works so well. I think there may be some inattention on Shakespeare’s part on the issue of the relation of Edmund and Edgar. The real point is Edgar’s legitimacy, and therefore his claim to succeed his father, so I take it that the brothers’ birth rank doesn’t really matter. Edmund aims to take Edgar’s place in Gloucester’s affection through his plot, and this would mean the vigorous, virile bastard, devotee of pure “nature,” usurping the customary legal ranking.

I like the reference to the “old comedy” in Edmund’s noting of Edgar’s entrance. I think this suggests the underlying relation of the tragedy to the earlier dramatic traditions of the morality play, which suddenly become relevant. Edmund becomes a vice character, which makes Edgar the character who will be tested. Edgar’s decision, coming a few scenes later, to take the part of Tom o’ Bedlam doesn’t really make sense on the surface; he could protect himself with a much less onerous personification. But he makes himself the complete opposite of Edmund’s intellectually sophisticated “new man.” I think it’s this contrast that the play starts to emphasize rather than Edgar’s credulity or simplicity. Is it implied that anyone would be tricked by Edmund’s machinations? Edgar’s Tom o’ Bedlam seems part of the way the play has everyone and everything going to extremes.

Can I venture briefly into I. iii? What Goneril speaks here of Lear’s misbehavior seems realistically sensible. The old man is causing unreasonable trouble, and her directions to Oswald seem to make a certain sense. This will seem wrong only when we’re forced to see the consequences of such realistic and “reasonable” chastising of the old man. But the play will only sneak up on that gradually. In Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres (I think that’s the title) Goneril and Regan’s positions are made to seem quite sensible; the old buffer is clearly losing it, and he has to be treated like a misbehaving child — if not for his own good, then everyone else’s. But here too Goneril makes sense, and the play may draw us to an understanding that we will only later have to realize is inhuman.

I agree “subplot” doesn’t really describe the Gloucester family plot; it’s too prominent and comes to a relation to the Lear family that’s an essential commentary.

Dusty:

Does there seem something arbitrary and even unnatural about Edgar’s legitimacy? Does Shakespeare draw attention to that by seeming to make Edmund the elder?

Good point about “old comedy. You suggest that Edmund is the Vice character, but is he also staging a little dramatic scene, arranging for Gloucester and Edgar to “play their parts” in what is really a pre-scripted scene?

Our eyes are on Edmund, and Edgar is harder to read. It seems a long way from this scene to the Tom o’ Bedlam scenes, and then to the return of Edgar as challenger. He seems less like a plausible “character” than anybody else in the play.

Michael:

In further response to I.2, I agree that Edgar is hard to read. He takes on several disguises over the course of the play, seeming to play roles in response to Lear and Gloucester. It’s as if he’s a sort of instrument rather then a person. But I rather like Edgar, maybe because of his various functions. We remember his weird identity as Lear’s godson.

I.4 of Lear is even longer than the first scene, and terrifying in Lear’s mad curse of Goneril. Kent’s disguised return and his insistence on plain speech might seem heartening, but then the quarrel with Oswald darkens things and leads to the encounter with Goneril. I suppose the biggest question for performance and a director is how much to make of Goneril’s accusation of the disorder and mayhem of Lear’s knights. Strikingly, the riots of Lear’s train are entirely textual, aren’t they, just reported by Goneril? Albany seems unaware of the problem and is inclined to blame Goneril for making too much of it. And Lear defends them as well behaved. I’ve seen the knights performed as riotous, confirming G’s ire and anxiety. But is that right? Common sense of course would suggest that a hundred knights under Lear’s separate command would create problems, and G’s suggesting that he disquantify his train makes sense. But Lear’s reaction pays no heed to anything practical; it becomes an attack on him and drives him to extremes. Maybe the reality of Lear’s train is best left offstage as a symbolic element?

And of course we love the fool, who does the wonderful work of stripping down Lear with his mockery. Lear of course takes all the mockery without fighting back, as if the fool is somehow a part of him. I once did some poking around the fool’s songs and rhymes and found that much of it came from mid-16th cent. moralities. He’s spokesman for a common sense of a rather basic type. The effect is clearly to make Lear realize he’s no longer king, just a foolish old man who did something quite stupid in giving away everything (except those hundred knights). Lear’s seemingly ironic question about his apparent lack of identity, “Who is it that can tell me who I am?” has of course more resonance that he knows.

And the fool, like Kent, seems to value and love Lear. Freud once wrote that Lear’s death was forecast in the opening scene in Cordelia’s “nothing” and her objection to flattery. I don’t think the details of his argument are very persuasive, but I did write something not long ago that suggested that the summons of death morality paradigm  (as in Everyman) may lie at some level in the tragedy. If there’s anything to this, the fool’s mockery serves to strip Lear of any pretensions of wisdom in preparation for his discovery of his human weakness. So the “Who is it can tell me” means more than Lear intends?

Lear’s curse of Goneril (“Hear, Nature, hear . . .) must be one of the most terrible passages Sh. ever wrote. And does it suggest the utter ruin of Lear’s self? To curse fertility and one’s own generative power?

What’s your take on this very painful scene?

Dusty:

1.3 and 1.4 constitute a pair of related scenes. Both are about service, good vs. bad service. The good servant is not the one who does what the master orders, but does what is right. They are also linked superficially by the business about “dinner” (the last word in 1.3). Interesting that from Goneril’s point of view Lear is now just “my father” — no longer “the king.” Oswald takes the cue.

In 1.4 Kent takes on a new identity, just as Edgar will later. Lear’s question to him, “Dost thou know me,” and Kent’s answer, suggest that Lear is not only not wearing a crown (and the Fool is going to make much of Lear’s having given it away) but presumably not wearing royal raiment. “Thou art nothing” picks up Cordelia’s “nothing” and looks ahead to more fearful versions.

Goneril’s speech at line 27 seems stiff and formal, as contrasted to Kent’s plain speaking.

You raise a good point about Lear’s knights. I think that in the productions I have seen they are usually riotous, but you are right to note that we don’t get any independent confirmation of that. Interesting that you never see Lear speaking to them (unless the exchange at the end of the scene with a “Gentleman” is meant to be an exchange with a knight.)  What would Lear do with a hundred knights? (He’s beyond practicality now, fully occupied with his grievances and with the Fool.)

Lear’s appeal to “Nature” of course recalls Edmund’s invocation of “Nature.” The curse is indeed violent and extreme. Lear, having disowned his own children, is now trying to make sure that they have no children (and we never hear a word about any existing grandchildren, even though he is supposed to be old and maybe even 80). He is in effect trying to ensure that he has no descendants of any kind. Lear is driven nuts more by his thankless child than by his reduced train. For him, this is personal and familial rather than political.

When Lear speaks about plucking out his eyes, Goneril hears the idea, and saves it for later.

I’d like to see your piece about Lear and morality plays .(Doesn’t Mack talk about that a bit in his King Lear in our Time, especially in relation to the trial-by-combat scene later?) Did you ever submit it for publication?

I’ll say a bit about 1.5. Again a short scene following a long one. It’s all in prose, as compared to the previous scene, which is mostly in verse.It serves partly as transition from Goneril to Regan. The Fool’s fooling seems very similar to that in 1.4, though perhaps it’s a little more pointed. And it gets a strong response: “O, let me not be mad.” Lear is already on his way to the madness in Act 3. The Fool announces his “departure” — he is not seen until Act 3.

Michael:

Here’s some response on I.5 and 2.1 and maybe some anticipation of 2.2 since I.5 is so short. In the former the Fool’s fooling seems to become a bit thinner, and though Lear responds, he also seems more distracted by what he’s learned about Goneril and feels about Cordelia (“I did her wrong”) and senses the onset of his mental dissolution. And the next scene returns to the Gloucester plot and develops the success of Edmund’s plot against Edgar. It may be slightly amusing that Edmund’s wounding himself to gain Gloucester’s sympathy seems initially ignored, though G. does mention it at 107-08. The sides are being joined up, with Cornwall and Regan coming to sympathy with Edmund. 2.2 continues the opposition in a rather comic way, Kent still the truth teller and almost instinctively opposed to Oswald. I suppose we’d ordinarily sympathize with Oswald over what may seem rather nutty and extreme abuse from Kent, but instead we know Kent’s on the right side, and I’m guessing an audience enjoys Kent’s taunts. (Interestingly, none of ll. 14-23 appear on my coffee cup of Shakespearean insults.) Oswald has to be humiliated in the encounter for the oppositions to become clear. And Edgar’s taking on the Poor Tom disguise continues this.

You’ll see my take on Kent in the stocks in the essay. I think this was something that an audience understood from the moralities, and it developed the sense of opposing goodness and evil.

I don’t think we really like Oswald; I meant that the sudden outbreak of Kent’s abuse would ordinarily cause our sympathies to go to his opponent. But the play constantly pushes us to embrace extremes, doesn’t it? In a similar way, we might ordinarily be annoyed by Cordelia’s disinclination to go along with Lear’s game. But of course our sympathies go to Kent, Cordelia, Edgar, the Fool, and after the heath scene (?) to Lear.

Dusty:

2.1

As before, I am interested in the shifts from prose to verse (and verse to prose), and why they occur when they do. The shift at l. 17 coincides with Edmund’s brief soliloquy — perhaps a reason for the shift — but continues for the rest of the scene.

I think you are right to note that Gloucester does not seem to notice that Edmund was been wounded, and this is a potentially comic — Edmund getting carried away with his performance, and it misfiring. A director could play it either way: either have Gloucester ignore Edmund, and even have Edmund react in some exasperation so that the audience sees it but Gloucester doesn’t; or have Gloucester react physically (but wordlessly) to the wound. Again, Edgar says almost nothing in this scene, which makes him seem weak, or somebody to be manipulated, at least passive.

By line 58 Edmund has said enough to get Gloucester enraged, but then at l. 66 he keeps going — it’s more than he needs to say.  Do we think him even more evil, or that he (comically?) overdoes it?

When Regan refers to Lear’s “riotous knights” Gloucester does not correct her. So maybe it’s true that they behave riotously.

2.2

Kent certainly behaves riotously. His abuse of Oswald seems excessive indeed, comically excessive. Is he playing the part of The Railer who enjoys giving abuse? And doesn’t the audience enjoy it as a performance? (Compare Touchstone on seven ways of giving the lie — in Kent’s case it’s coarse Billingsgate abuse rather than sly courtier abuse). But what is the practical purpose as the kingdom falls into chaos? How does it advance Kent’s business, or Lear’s business?

Interesting that Kent shifts into verse at l. 73, confirming that the previous abuse was a calculated performance. And then changes his manner of speech, first at l. 107, where he parodies court speech, and then at l. 111, where he “goes out of his dialect.”

Your comments, in the 2009 essay, about putting Kent in the stocks, are very interesting and persuasive. Something more is going on here than plotting and counterplotting. Something emblematic, or allegorical.

But in some respects Kent’s punishment seems fittingly naturalistic/realistic. He was acting like a low rogue, and is here punished like one. (He had earlier behaved “inappropriately” to the courtier Oswald, tripping him up the way you might trip up a country clown.) And the characters on stage discuss whether or not it’s fitting.

It’s important, at the end of the scene, that the opposing forces are firming up their alliances: Gloucester aligns himself with Kent (and Kent with Cordelia), and all of them with Lear, as opposed to Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund. But some of the participants are not clearly aligned. Earlier Regan and Goneril seemed aligned with each other, but now there are hints of sister vs. sister. At this point Edgar is a still a freebooter, a victim and not yet a plotter/planner.

Kent’s soliloquy at the end of the scene changes the mood, as if we are invited to look at the “enormous state” of Lear’s world from 30,000 feet. Fortune seems to rule the world: Kent senses it first (unless the Fool has already been joking about it). Edgar will sense it later. And Lear himself.

Dusty:

Here are some thoughts about the long scene 2. 4, the one beginning “‘Tis strange that they should so depart from home,/ And not send back my messenger.”

The Fool comes in with Lear, and makes a few jokes, but Lear pays no attention to him. A director might choose to have the Fool stand aside, like a Chorus, commenting on the action. Later, when Lear leaves, Kent does engage with the Fool.

Lear is outraged by the stocking of Kent, but when Kent is released Lear pays no attention for 65 lines– he has already shifted his attention to his daughters. This suggests that his outrage had nothing to do with Kent, but with the fact that it was an offense to HIM: “who put MY man i’ th’ stocks?”

When questioned why he was put in the stocks, Kent does not tell the whole story. He omits the fact that he treated Oswald disrespectfully, tripping him up. Perhaps there is a kind of tit-for-tat justice in putting Kent in the stocks, i.e.,  in treating him disrespectfully.

When I read the scene this time I did not find Regan and Goneril unreasonable. It’s Lear who is out of line: rash, cursing his own child.  You could play R and G as the grown-ups in the room, reasoning calmly about how many knights Lear “needs” — 50, 25, 10, 1, none. Or you could play them as mean-spirited, stingy, sarcastic. It’s ironic that the talk of “need” is actually introduced by Lear, who play-acts the asking of forgiveness (which he in fact considers beneath him), kneeling and saying with grim irony that he doesn’t need anything: “Age is unnecessary” (154)  — cf. “Necessity’s sharp pinch” (210). Then the sisters pick up the idea of “need” and bandy it back and forth (237, 260, 262) until Lear break out “O reason not the need” (263).

Lear has been drawn back in to the “how much do you love me?” game from 1.1., declaring that if Goneril will allow him 50 knights, she loves him twice as much as Regan does, who will only allow him 25.

Later he sounds like a dotty and impotent old man: “I will have such revenges on you both . . . I will do such things — What they are, yet I know not, but they shall be/ The terrors of the earth.”

Interesting that just as he exits, he thinks of the Fool (whom he has ignored for 160 lines): “O Fool, I shall go mad!” (285).

Michael:

I think Lear pays less and less attention to the Fool as this scene and the following ones unfold; the Fool’s “truth” has already been played out, that Lear was foolish in giving up his power, and he’s now little more than an old man who’s dependent on his daughters. And eventually, the Fool disappears, and Lear’s attention seems more taken by Edgar’s Poor Tom. But the Fool does continue to interest the audience. And his little joke about a man in the stocks wearing wooden — as opposed to woolen? — netherstocks raises Lear’s question about who’s responsible for the stocking (a pun? or almost a pun) of Kent.

When Lear exits, then returns with Gloucester, I sense a change, or maybe a change of direction, in him. Rather than kingly, he now seems more petulant, more like an angry old man who has been offended by his family. He seems to catch himself at l. 294 (or 102) and suggests, reasonably, that Cornwall may not be culpable. But then he sees Kent in the stocks and becomes angry again. I think G & R do seem plausibly reasonable, and to me it sounds like wonderful family discussion about curbing an old man’s unreasonable expectations. The back and forth about how many retainers Lear really needs does seem like a sensible (but insensitive?) family discussion. (This always reminds me of a family discussion about 50 years ago, when my father suggested to his brother, then in hospital and clearly dying, that he should sell his car; my uncle became upset and angry, which I recall puzzled my father.) At Regan’s “what need one? Lear’s anger does reach a point of insight (“Reason not the need . . . “) that doesn’t help him much, except that he comes to the realization that he is simply “a poor old man/ as full of grief as age, wretched in both.” Which is something like what the Fool has been saying. So maybe it seems right he should turn to the Fool with his fear of going mad. Yes, he does seem a dotty and impotent old man.

The conclusion of the scene, with Cornwall and the two sisters deciding that the old man should suffer what his foolishness has brought him to, may be the turning point at which we see what the divisions among the characters has led to: the cruelty of the doors being shut against Lear.

Now on to the heath.

Dusty:

In my edition, Act III has seven scenes. I’ll comment on scenes 1, 2, and 3. I’ve read the play many times and taught it several times, but I’m trying to read the lines with fresh eyes.

3.1  I had never noticed before that the scene begins the way Hamlet begins: “Who’s there . . .?” This play is maybe not, as Mack suggested, “in the interrogative mood,” but it;s an important question. Lear asks at one point who can tell him who he is. And in the treacherous world of the play it’s important to know who other people are, and whether they are friend or foe. (The “face” of “division” in the kingdom is “covered/ With mutual cunning.”) In this scene Kent says to the Gentleman “I know you” — and that’s reassuring, maybe an important moment in the restoration of some order.

Interesting that the Gentleman responds that he is “one minded like the weather most unquietly” — which is precisely like Lear himself.

Then the Gentleman — Kent may know who he is but I don’t think we do, but he seems to be somebody who knows Cordelia — has an extraordinarily long (12 lines) and powerful speech, giving us the first account of Lear on the heath. It’s one long sentence, and it seems rhetorically charged. Is it like the Pyrrhus speech in Hamlet?

Kent’s long speech then sets the conflict between Lear and his daughters into a wider political context: division in the kingdom, invasion by a foreign power.

3.2

Initially there is a kind of antiphonal response between Lear and the Fool : he rages, and the Fool makes jokes, but tries to get the King to take shelter. In the previous scene Lear had called down curses from “nimble lightnings” on his daughter, and now calls down greater curses from “thought-executing fires” on the entire world. It’s not just a “thankless child” but “ingrateful man.” But Lear seems deranged: he thinks of the lightning and thunder as his agents, doing his will; then he is their “slave” and they are allies of his pernicious daughters. Later in the scene they are “dreadful summoners,” the punishers of crimes. But Lear still thinks he is “more sinned against than sinning.”

“The art of our necessities is strange” gives another spin to the idea of “need” from the previous scene.

In his rant Lear seemed to forget the Fool, but then remembers him, and is even “sorry” for him. In a sense they have changed places. At the beginning of the scene the Fool had tried to get Lear to take shelter. Now at the end of the scene Lear seems to take charge: “Come on, my boy . . . Come, your hovel.”

The scene ends with a strange speech from the Fool, what he self-consciously, apparently addressing the audience, calls his “prophecy.” It seems to be a kind of exit line: ” . . . before I go.” (But in fact the Fool does not exit the play until the next scene.) It consists of seven rhymed couplets. The first two seem to refer to times when things are not as they should be, perhaps a corrupt present. The next three refer to some utopian future. The sixth predicts “confusion” for Albion — as if in confirmation of Kent’s speech at the beginning of the scene. But the seventh seems to be a throwaway joke.

The anachronistic reference to Merlin seems another meta-theatrical moment, the Fool separating himself from the action being presented on the heath.

3.3

We cut to Gloucester and Edmund. Gloucester is still blind to Edmund’s savagery, thinks he “knows” him but in fact does not. Gloucester’s news picks up what Kent was saying in 3.1 about “division” and a foreign “power.” He also takes up a theme from his earlier scene with Edmund (1.2) , where he warned of “strange” things happening. Previously we thought Gloucester a superstitious old man, but now we see that he is right to be worried. Gloucester has now chosen sides — he will incline to the king. He also undertakes to deceive the Dukes. Edmund closes the scene with an aside to the audience, echoing the closing aside from the Fool in the previous scene.

Michael:

One small point backwards into 3.2, just to amplify your point about Lear’s change of roles with the Fool: his concern for him, as his “wits begin to turn,” seems the first time he has shown concern for another: “How dost, my boy? Art cold?” And when they come to the hovel, Lear’s urges him to go in first. Lear has matched himself to the storm as he grows crazier, but the storm seems to prod him as well.

This seems to go along with his strange awakening to the needs of the “Poor naked wretches” whom he prays for just as he’s encouraged the Fool to enter the hovel. The realization that he’s taken too little care of their plight and his self-directed “Take physic pomp” seem an extraordinary thing for a king to say on stage. (Was this really played before James?) And it’s a kind of pat lead to the entry of Poor Tom, just as Lear has come to a sense of a reality of the naked wretches.

Edgar is playing a role, of course, but he does it so well, with all the crazy stuff from Harsnett, that we may take him for a wretched beggar. One interesting thing about the Poor Tom’s role is that it seems to come in part from morality interludes; he advises to “obey thy parents, keep thy word,” etc. etc., then says he has been a serving man who did all the things that lead to perdition, a kind of almost comic list of morality play sins. Lear responds with his mad insight that Poor Tom is utter humanity, striped down to the most basic level: “thou art the thing itself.” And this stimulates Lear to want to throw off what makes him “sophisticated,” to make himself like Tom. (And the request for help with his button will be repeated at the very end — whatever that may mean.)

Is it another pat entry that the Fool says a little fire in a wild field will be like an old lecher’s heart just as Gloucester enters, the old lecher who spoke about “good sport” at Edmund’s conception?

Lear’s identification with Poor Tom seems at once crazy and touching, making Tom his “philosopher.” And of course it continues into the following scenes as he imagines the reasons for Tom’s madness and makes him the justicier in his mock trial.

Dusty:

A few retrospective glances at 3. 4:

“In such a night as this . . .” is a weird echo of the lovely line near the end of Merchant of Venice.

At l. 36 Lear introduces (or reintroduces) the idea of “justice”: his action of taking physic will somehow “show the heavens more just.” We are going to hear a lot more later about whether justice prevails in Lear’s world.

We have not seen Edgar since 2.3, and here he takes as his disguise “the basest and most poorest shape.” It’s clear that such a shape is well suited for Lear’s imaginings of “unaccommodated man,” but is it really a disguise that suits Edgar’s needs? As you suggest, Edgar seems to shift registers: from Bedlam beggar to moralizer (from morality plays). At l. 85 he shifts into a surprisingly continuous account of his errant ways. Where did Edgar, simple and earnest when we first meet him, learn all this demonology? Are we to assume that he has read Harsnett? Interesting that although Lear invites him to be his “philosopher,” Edgar refuses the invitation to play that role.

3.5

We quickly switch to Edgar’s brother, now successfully manipulating Cornwall. (We’ve also switched from verse to prose, maybe to emphasize the change of scene, maybe to signal that it’s really just an expository interlude.)

3.6

At  l. 2 Gloucester’s “comfort” picks up Edmund’s “comforting” of just seven lines before, but for E. it has a legal meaning while for G. it is more humane and sympathetic.

At l. 5 Kent’s apparent throwaway line — “The gods reward your kindness” —  keeps us thinking about whether or not the gods do in fact reward kindness in this world. This leads directly to the “arraignment” that Lear proposes. He is still obsessed with the ingratitude of his daughters, even though back at 3.4.21 he had tried to stop thinking about them: “let me shun that./ No more of that.” Obviously he cannot forget them. At first neither Fool nor Edgar play along. Why not? Maybe because, like Edgar, they pity the king, and cannot keep up the “counterfeiting.” But Edgar tries to keep up with the king as his madness leads him to talk about dogs, and then anatomizing, and then suddenly imagines that Edgar is one of his knights.

The Fool speaks his final line, perhaps because his work is done, and he has been supplanted by Poor Tom. But in fact he apparently does not leave the scene for another 15 lines or so. Gloucester’s arrival reminds us of the political plotting going on while the king is raving. After Gloucester, Kent, and Fool escort Lear off the stage — is it odd that they just abandon Edgar, the poor naked wretch? — Edgar remains, and has a long speech, in rhyming couplets, signalling that he has dropped his disguise and that he, like the king earlier, has begun to look beyond his own suffering. He still thinks that Gloucester has disowned him, the way Lear’s daughters have in effect unseated the king: “he childed as I fathered.” His “philosophical” apothegms make him seem the voice of the play. As a dramatic character, he now has a double mission: to reconcile with his father and to help the king escape danger.

Dusty:

A few further comments on 3.7 and 4.1, and I will proceed to 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5.

Edmund is dismissed from the scene because the punishments of Gloucester “are not fit for your beholding.” Maybe that’s compassion, but since Cornwall is speaking maybe not: maybe Cornwall just wants a free hand. Later,  in 4.2, we are told that Edmund left the house “on purpose” so that “their punishment/ Might have the freer course.” Sounds like both Cornwall and Edmund were complicit.

Lear still seems to have 35 or 36 knights. First we have heard of them for a while. Where are they lodged? Who’s in charge?

Regan wants to hang Gloucester, Goneril to “pluck out his eyes.” Goneril seems to have remembered that back in 1.4 Lear had spoken of “plucking” out an eye so he would not have to see his daughter. That word “pluck” echoes horribly through this scene (line 58) and the next (lines 78, 85.)

Yes, the stage business would be difficult. The blinding takes place on stage, yet maybe we are not supposed to “see” the actual scooping of vile jelly. Gloucester is bound to a chair that faces forward, and then perhaps the chair is tipped all the way back so that it lies on the floor, with Gloucester now looking up.

The sisters and Cornwall and Edmund have, without trial, declared Gloucester a traitor — the word appears five times in 35 lines. Their only evidence is the report that Gloucester has received “letters” from France.

When the servant resists Cornwall, he does “better service” just as Kent in resisting Lear in Act 1 was a good servant.

The blinding of Gloucester, after the cruelties Lear suffers, raise questions about justice. Clearly Goneral, Regan et al are unjust. But what about the gods? In 3.7 it is suggested by one character or other that the gods are “kind” (3.7.16, 3.7.93), that they will avenge injustice, and will “help” Gloucester. But in 4.1 Gloucester himself concludes that the gods kill men for sport. (We get more about the heavens — they send “plagues” to Poor Tom (4.1.66) but in 4.2 Albany thinks they are “spirits” who will tame offenses (44) and “justicers” (79).

Gloucester’s “superfluous” recalls Lear’s “superflux.”

Dusty:

4.2

The sexual innuendo between Goneril and Edmund confirm that Lear’s outrage against her in earlier acts is fully justified.

This is Albany’s big scene. He stands up to Goneril, but is he a moral force or a “moral fool” (58)? In the world that the play imagines, is he enough of a counterweight to oppose it or redeem it? It’s interesting perhaps that none of his speeches are memorable or quotable. Oddly enough he calls for “revenge”  — at l. 80 he is confident that the gods will “venge” crimes, and at l. 96 swears that he will “revenge” Gloucester’s eyes. But back in 3.7 it is Cornwall who is swearing “revenges” (8) for Gloucester’s reason and Gloucester expects to see “vengeance” overtake his daughters. What’s the relationship between revenge and justice?

4.3

The scene opens with a report (in prose) that the King of France has gone back home: that makes Cordelia’s approach look better, and lends color to her later claim that she acts out of “love” and not “ambition” (4.4.27-28). Kent’s report (in verse) of Cordelia’s tears assures us that she is not cold and unfeeling, as we might have thought in 1.1.

She is loaded with devotional associations  — holy water, heavenly eyes (31), and in the next scene her father’s “business” (24). Will she serve to redeem the time?

4.4

Why does Lear wear flowers on his head? As the notes tell us, some are supposed to have curative powers, others harmful ones. Are they a sign of his madness, or of fumbling attempts to cure it?

The scene prepares us for war between the “British pow’rs” and “great France.”  This makes it sound like an invasion.

At the end of the scene Cordelia speaks of her father’s “right”? What rights does an abdicated monarch possess?

4.5

We cut from Cordelia (and the French forces) to Regan (and the British powers), from Cordelia’s tears, pity, and love to Regan’s ruthlessness and self-seeking. The scene is also important politically, in that it clarifies the division between Regan and Goneril, along with their competing sexual interest in Edmund. The two sisters are also in effect competing to attract Oswald’s services. Oswald carries Goneril’s letter to Edmund, but won’t let Regan see it. Does she send her own letter to Edmund (“give him this”) or is she she saying, as my note suggests, “tell him that he’s a better fit for her”? She tries to win Oswald by promising preferment, and, having surmised earlier that Edmund was going to kill Gloucester, now tells Oswald to do it. Oswald’s ambiguous answer — that he will ” show/What party I do follow” — means both that he’ll make clear to Gloucester that he follows Gloucester’s enemies, and that he will in time show whether he follows Goneril or Regan.

Michael:

On to 4.6., with two long and affecting scenes. Edgar, now no longer Poor Tom, but just a poor peasant, enacts a sort of morality play to try to cure his father’s despair. The strangeness of it, I feel, is the way it seems to toy with early modern stagecraft: the audience must become unsure what it’s supposed to understand. The usual way of setting a scene is through the verbal poetry. Here Edgar suggests that he and Gloucester are walking up a steep hill and hearing the sea. Gloucester resist this, but Edgar insists it’s because his blindness makes his other senses less acute. Then he describes vividly the supposed scene from a high cliff. Is that what we as audience are supposed to see? Meanwhile I understand them on the level mainstage. The Q text has Gloucester kneeling, then simply falling forward.  Is it comic, or almost comic? Edgar worries that just the thought of the fall might kill his father. Then he assumes yet another disguise, the attentive beach-dweller who comes to rescue the attempted suicide and assures him that he’s been miraculously saved. It’s a kind of ersatz morality play — comic, but somehow serious? — and carried out with imagined morality imagery. Edgar the imagined beach-dweller describes a monstrous fiend, who must be the personified Despair. Gloucester agrees with the “meaning” of Edgar’s morality and seems to recall Edgar’s earlier madman disguise. Edgar’s “Bear free and patient thoughts” ties up the “morality” with a convenient meaning. But what do we understand of it? As audience we’ve been tricked like Gloucester; Edgar’s scene-painting was not “real” in the usual way of the Jacobean stage. And yet Gloucester accepts it, presumably cured, at least for now, of his despair. Edgar had said, “Thy life’s a miracle.” Is it? Edgar had been the great optimist, until he saw his blinded father. Now he has enacted a kind of cure of what had seemed understandable despair. How do we take this?

Does he go back on this as he sees the mad Lear come in apparently crowned with weeds and wild flowers? And calls this a “side-piercing sight.” Lear of course is quite mad and sees Goneril with a white beard in blinded Gloucester, then the icon of Cupid, but also with some retention of the insights of the heath. And does he sneeze when he admits “I am not ague proof”? The misogynistic strain in Lear’s mind continues, and the insistence on adultery mocks Gloucester’s history, even though we know he’s wrong about Edmund’s being kinder than his own daughters. Hard to know what to make of Lear’s dark sexual imaginings. But his insistence that he must wipe the hand that Gloucester would kiss because it “smells of mortality” seems part of his new-found sense of his frailty (different from G. Will’s “low rent Lear”). The note in my Arden edition says that “glass eyes” refers to spectacles, which does make better sense than our understanding of glass eyes. Again, the lines about the hypocritical justice, the farmer’s dog as the “great image of authority,” and the rascal beadle seem rather amazingly to round upon kingship. His final recognition of Gloucester and his lines on the tragic recognition that he imagines in childbirth seem to me very touching. I recall seeing a video of Peter Brook’s 60’s (late sixties?) Lear in which Lear and Gloucester sit together on a fallen log as Lear (was it Paul Scofield?) “preaches” to G. But it ends very suddenly and strangely in the delicate stratagem of shoeing horses with felt and the “kill, kill, kill . . . ” What sort of stage business accompanies this? I can’t picture it, unless Lear tries to run off before he’s grabbed by the gentleman — and does run off at “sa, sa, sa.”

Edgar seems to play yet another role in regard to Gloucester at this point, but still doesn’t reveal himself. Oswald’s thought that Gloucester was “first formed flesh” to be killed by him and raise his fortunes seems another of those bizarrely horrid moments in the play. It does reconcile us to his death, which follows in Edgar’s fight with him. Momentarily Edgar had spoken in a Somerset dialect, another disguise, but then drops that as he read’s Goneril’s letter to Edmund. Edgar’s “Thee I’ll rake up” of Oswald’s body doesn’t have any stage business attached to it; the “murderous lecherers” nicely sums up Goneril and Edmund. But a modern text needs to have Edgar drag off the body of Oswald.

So on to what must be the most touching scene of the play, when Cordelia awakens the sleeping Lear. Which I’ll leave to you.

Dusty:

Some backward glances at 4.6.

Aren’t there three “scenes” in this scene rather than just two: 1) the cliffs of Dover, 2) mad Lear, and 3) the killing of Oswald?

In the first of them Edgar displays yet another talent, what you call scene painting. It has a plausible dramatic purpose: to persuade Gloucester that he stands on the edge of a precipice. But as you say it seems to be something more. There was a lot of discussion of the passage by 18th-century critics, Addison greatly admiring it, Johnson pushing back and noting that if you were really standing on a precipice you wouldn’t notice all the details. It does seem to be a demonstration of poetry’s power to imagine a scene. It made me think of the prologue to Henry 5. This part of the scene gives us Gloucester’s cure.

In the second of them, Lear’s sexual imaginings are lurid, but borne out by Goneril’s letter to Edmund, uncovered in the next part of the scene. Do we remember his “kill, kill . . .” (5x kill) when we hear the 5 x “nothing” at the end of the play? When Lear talks about shoeing horses with felt, I think he enacts quietly sneaking up on (“stol’n upon”) his sons-in-law rather than running, as he does as he exits.

In the third of them, Edgar in effect adopts a role assigned to him by Oswald, who calls him a “peasant.” The role also enables Edgar to insult Oswald — a mere peasant presumes to fight with a gentleman.

In 4.6 Gloucester is “cured” and in 4.7 Lear is “cured.” Each of them in effect awakes, or is restored from death. Again the scene is tripartite: 1) Kent and Cordelia and the doctor discussing the condition of the sleeping Lear, 2) Lear and Cordelia, and 3) Kent and the gentleman.

In the first, Kent wants to continue his disguise, just as Edgar continues his disguise. Cordelia calls for music because Lear is “untuned” and needs to be restored to harmony and temper. The fresh garments are yet another change of clothing in a play about poor naked wretches.

In the second, there seems something folkloric about Cordelia kissing Lear in order to awaken him to new life. When he awakes the change is remarkable. Not only is he restored to reason. The “rage” in him is “killed” — maybe echoing his “kill, kill. . .” in the previous scene. In the previous scene he is still madly claiming his rank. Now he kneels to his daughter and has cast aside any idea that he is or was a king: “I am a very foolish, fond, old man” and later “as I am a man” and “old and foolish.” Cordelia insists on treating him as a king who is now “in your own kingdom” but he will have nothing of it. One thing about this scene that has always puzzled me. Lear says he is 80 years old. How are we to work out the age of his daughters, one of whom just married, and two of whom are still very sexually active. (But notably not mothers.) Are the daughters supposed to be younger than their father by “a generation”? If so, they would be 50ish. I think they are usually played much younger. So either Lear had his children very late, or we aren’t supposed to focus on the math.

The third part oddly breaks the mood of the previous part. Maybe it’s necessary because we have to be reminded of the political-military situation. Maybe too because we need a reminder of the forthcoming reunion between Lear and Kent.

How shall we handle Act 5? The first two scenes are quite short. And the final scene is the longest in the play (328 ll. in my Signet edition). For purposes of commentary, shall we break it up?

Michael:

Yes, 4.6 has three sections that each seems a scene, even though they’re not textually distinct. Mad Lear and the fight with Oswald seem to take place in the same location.

4.7 is the awakening, and maybe the “repentance” of Lear. You’ll recall that I suggest in the essay this scene seems to resemble to the scenes of the mankind figure finally repentant, clothed in a fresh garment of penitence, and submitting himself to the figure of grace. It was a common enough scene that I suggested it was visible in Cordelia’s awakening of Lear, especially when he insists on kneeling before her and confessing his actual state (“foolish, fond old man”) and asking for whatever punishment she’ll exact. And he calls attention to his fresh garments. And the fact that it’s accompanied by music, presumably soft music, also gives it a sort of mythic — or folkloric –status. It all suggests a kind of restoration of Lear.

I guess I’ve assumed that his “four score and upward, not an hour more nor less” was just an imprecise fantasy, and I hadn’t thought about the problem of the daughters’ ages. But you’re right about the problem if we take him at his word. Maybe we can’t and just have to assume he’s aging himself in his imagination of approaching death.

At the end of the scene we learn of Cornwall’s death, which seems to set up the contest between the sisters over Edmund, and, in the next scene, Goneril’s interest in, claim on, Edmund. The scene develops the political situation, which seems to lessen in significance as the play develops.

Michael:

I’ll go a ways into act 5, but leave the final scene for our mutual response.

Edgar’s plan to challenge Edmund is quite briefly, perhaps even obscurely, mentioned in his exchange with Albany at 5.1.39ff. I hadn’t thought of this before, but his later response to the trumpet must seem strange to the audience. He’s now disguised again, this time in armor that keeps an audience from recognizing him. In reading the play we have the character identified, but an audience cannot know unless they can recall and put together what he says to Albany some minutes of playing time earlier, which seems unlikely. I wonder what the effect is of Edgar’s defeat of Edmund, the audience, as I think, puzzled by who this is. Does Edgar appear a kind of nemesis or sacred avenger? Of course a director may choose to have Edgar reveal himself in some way, but the text does not suggest this, and there’s something that remains mysterious about him.

The gentleman with the bloody knife wraps the sisterly contest up rather neatly; we had earlier seen Regan complain of oncoming sickness, but not known of Goneril’s act of poisoning her. If it’s too neat, we don’t seem to notice that in what comes right after. What motivates the nasty Edmund to want to do some good “Despite of mine own nature”? Are we to suppose his exchange of charity with his brother and the account of his father’s death have somehow changed him? The three “marry[ing] in an instant” had seemed a kind drain of evil in the play, but now Edmund tries, vainly of course, to do some good.

So let’s both comment on the last part of the scene, from 255 on. I think this is the part that Dr. Johnson said he could never read again until he edited it.

Dusty:

I think you are right that the political situation comes to seem less important by Act 5. It’s even less important to Goneril and Regan, who are more interested in Edmund than in winning any war.

In 5.1 the talk between Edmund and Regan is pretty raunchy: she asks him if he has ever found a husband’s way to “the forfended place”!

It’s quite convenient (for Edgar) that everybody but Albany leaves the stage so that Edgar can enter solus to Albany solus. Is Shakespeare straining probability here?

5.2 Interesting that Shakespeare provides no “battle scene.” The whole war — off stage — is over in 11 lines, again suggesting that politics have faded and we are now faced with familial treachery, sister against sister, wife against husband, brother vs. brother.

5.3 Lear and Cordelia are captives, but calm. And Lear is now comforting her, rather than vice versa. It’s as if the play comes to a close at 5.3.26, as Lear and Cordelia exit.

The trial by combat scene is indeed strange. I had not noticed before that it is introduced by Regan, who at l. 82 seems to call for combat between Albany and Edmund (who has just insulted Albany) to decide which sister gets Edmund: “Let the drum strike . . .” And Albany interrupts her to accuse Edmund of capital treason, which shifts the trial to focus now on Edmund’s alleged crime: “Let the trumpet sound.” (Does Albany wave Edgar’s letter, his only evidence?) If nobody shows up, Albany says, he himself will fight Edmund. It’s odd that nobody seems to have any real evidence against Edmund: Edgar’s letter is perhaps only an accusation. Maybe — since there’s no hard evidence —  that’s why there has to be trial by combat. I think you are right that the audience cannot be sure who the helmeted knight is. The trumpet is a clue that’s it’s Edgar, but then Edgar had only said that he could “produce a champion” — i.e., does not say that he himself will appear.

Edmund repents, and I’m not sure why. He was at least as guilty as Goneril, Regan, Cornwall, and Oswald. Some of his guilt seems to be sloughed off on Gloucester: “the dark and vicious place where he thee he got/ Cost him his eyes.” But Edmund’s one attempt at a good deed — trying to recall his order to kill Cordelia — fails. Too bad he didn’t speak up about his order at l. 202 instead of l. 245. The delay was perhaps just enough to let the hanging take place, and it means that Cordelia is lost and Shakespeare gets the ending he wants.

Lear’s entrance with Cordelia in his arms is heartbreaking: she was almost saved. Lear is sure she is dead, then not sure: the feather stirs, he seems to hear her soft voice. But then Lear seems to get foggy: he is distracted by Kent, and has a verbal exchange with him. By this point Lear seems to be losing it: “he knows not what he says.” Again an interruption, as the audience is invited to think about Edmund’s death and then to hear words from Albany that are meant to be reassuring. He declares that he will “resign . . . our absolute power” — in a weird echo of what Lear did back in 1.1, but does Albany have “absolute” power? He then promises that the wicked shall be punished and the virtuous shall be rewarded. Another false and complacent ending, and its peace is shattered when Albany looks at Lear: “O, see, see.” Again Lear seems to be unsure whether Cordelia is dead or not: on the one hand “Thou’lt come no more” but on the other “Look, her lips.” When he asks someone to “undo this button” he could mean Cordelia’s button or his own.

When Edgar says, after Lear’s death, “Look up, my lord,” does he imagine he sees Lear’s “ghost” hovering over his body and passing into the other world? Is he dead or is he not? It’s another version of Lear’s uncertainty about Cordelia’s death, with the same verb: “Look there, look there.” But while Lear looks for any indication at all that some life remains, Kent says, in effect, ‘let him go’.

In the closing lines Edgar asks us to think about what Lear has borne, what he has seen, and how long he has lived. Odd that the emphasis, at the closing word, is on how long he has lived — as if length of life means length of suffering.

Michael:

Edgar’s lines to Edmund about their father, “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices/ Make instruments to plague us:/ The dark and vicious place where thee he got/ Cost him his eyes” may suggest that there’s a kind of distributive justice in the Gloucester family story, but in contrast to the Lear family, where everything seems in extreme unbalance. Lear’s awakening and repentance seem to forecast a fortunate ending, and his projection of their life together in prison appears to respond to that. But the too late arrival of Edmund’s note undoes all, of course, and the scene of Lear with Cordelia in his arms” brings on the most painful scene Shakespeare ever wrote. I find it interesting that we as playgoers may not be sure of her death at first. Lear’s “Howl, howl, howl, howl” I think is more stage direction than dialogue; clearly the actor is meant to convey a sustained cry that leads to Lear’s certainty that she’s dead. But then his play with the mirror and the feather leads to his attempt to hear her voice and may raise a momentary hope. I suppose we understand fully that she is dead during the exchange between Lear and Kent, then hear it confirmed in Lear’s painful lines after “No, no, no life” and the reiterated nevers. I’ve always thought the business with the button reiterates his line when he throws off his clothes on the heath, but it doesn’t really have to mean anything.

Albany’s “See, see” suggests something happens just before Lear speaks these lines, so it must give actors and directors suggestion of some stage business then. Does Lear suddenly rise up? It does put an end to any thought that Cordelia still lives. It must be a physical action that draws the focus entirely to Lear and his grief. Following these lines his “O, o, o, o” from the Q text must be like the earlier repeated howl, an indication of some extreme cry of Lear. Or maybe it’s a deluded vision of some sort, and his insistence that they all look at her lips suggests again that he sees her live. But if so, it leads to his immediate death, as if perhaps he dies “into” Cordelia’s death. Kent seems appropriately to encourage Lear’s dying. Edgar’s final lines seem to cancel his earlier attempts to encourage a positive understanding of Gloucester’s situation; he’s been the one to say what we ought to say. Albany of course speaks these lines in the Q text, but it seems right (to me at least) that Edgar speaks them.

Yes, the suggestion that long life has meant long suffering seems strange, but maybe it’s just to emphasize that Lear’s long life exceeds what the young can understand.

If Lear’s death was implicit in the play, as my understanding that the summons-of-death pattern was somehow woven into it, the tragedy doesn’t appear to allow for any redemptive or uplifting sense of death. Cordelia’s death is simply unexpected and unmotivated, and Lear responds to it with suffering and his own death.

Dusty:

I agree that the play does not seem to allow for any redemption. I think “lived so long” supports that: the longer you live, the more you suffer. As Kent says, “The wonder is he hath endured so long.”

The Gloucester plot in some sense acts as a modest counterweight. Gloucester suffers horribly, but at least he dies happy, and reconciled to Edgar, knowing he is loved. But we don’t get to see his happy death. And maybe knowing you are loved is not enough: even Edmund knows that he “was beloved.”

As you suggest, there is some sense of “distributive justice” in the Gloucester story, though I’ve always thought that having your eyes gouged out is an excessive penalty for adultery.

Michael:

Agreed — having eyes gouged out seems an excessive penalty for adultery! Then we think of Leontes.