King Lear Second lecture

The Fool One of the most wonderful conceptions, and wonderful roles, in the play. He’s a jester, Lear’s “all-licensed fool,” who’s 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. Lear’s 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 lady’s 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? It’s 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.

The characters dividing along “moral” lines Kent’s 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.

Moral polarities Goneril and Regan’s opposition to Lear at first seems understandable, commonsensical. Their brief dialogue at the end of I.1. Goneril’s objections to the Fool, her problems with the hundred knights ( ff). Her desire that he “a little to disquantity your train.” Lear’s terrible curse of Goneril: But Albany’s reaction complicates. Regan’s 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.

Moral polarities (cont.) Edmund and Edgar Edmund’s 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. Edgar’s choice of disguise – “Poor Tom,” the poorest, craziest, most abject sort of person to be found in Jacobean England. Why such a role? He’s the son of an earl. His feigned madness in stark contrast to Edmund?

Lear’s journey Freud, in essay “The Theme of the Three Caskets,” thought death was somehow implicit in Cordelia’s “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 Regan’s 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.” Lear’s journey seems to be one of discovering who he is – before he faces death.

The Fool’s lesson for Lear To the Fool, Lear is “this fellow who has banished two on’s daughters, and did the third a blessing against his will.” He deserves a coxcomb. The Fool’s “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: Lear’s irony at l But the Fool answers: “Lear’s 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 Lear’s madness: ll

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.

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 His “prayer” that recognizes the “Poor naked wretches.” And the “pat” entrance of Edgar as Poor Tom. Poor Tom’s role as repentant Mankind. And Lear’s embracing of him as “unaccommodated man,” “the thing itself” and attempting to imitate, identify with Poor Tom: “Off, off, you lendings!” “Tom” becomes Lear’s “philosopher.”

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 Lear’s discourse is madness, how much a new clarity? See Edgar’s “reason in madness. Gloucester: “O let me kiss that hand.” Lear: “Let me wipe it first. It smells of mortality.” Lear’s mad insights into authority: “a dog’s obeyed in office”; “thou rascal beadle” And the newborn infant’s tragic understanding of life.

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. Lear’s “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.