Shakespearean Drama
By Fuat ÖZKUL, (April 13, 2006; METU – Ankara)
MAN IN LEAR
Lear: The Blind, Sinful and Insane Old Man
Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear is a detailed description of the consequences of one man’s decisions. This man is Lear, King of England, whose decisions greatly alter his life and the lives of those around him. As Lear bears the status of King he is, as one expects, a man of great power but sinfully he surrenders all of this power to his daughters as a reward for their demonstration of love towards him. This untimely abdication of his throne results in a chain reaction of events that send him through a journey of hell. King Lear is a metaphorical description of one man’s journey through hell in order to expiate his sin. Through the description of this metaphorical journey, the audience is given a chance to witness several different kinds of man such as kind, cruel, wise, foolish, disloyal, political, loyal, natural, selfish, faithful man three of which will be discussed in this paper:blind, sinful and insane.
The first kind of man seen in King Lear is the blind man. The issue ofsight and its relevance to clear vision is a recurring theme. Shakespeare’s principal means of portraying this theme is through the characters of Lear and Gloucester. Although Lear can physically see, he is blind in the sense that he lacks insight, understanding, and direction. In contrast, Gloucester becomes physically blind but gains the type of vision that Lear lacks. It is evident from these two characters that clear vision is not derived solely from physical sight. Lear’s failure to understand this is the principal cause of his demise, while Gloucester learns to achieve clear vision, and consequently avoids a fate similar to Lear’s.
Throughout most of King Lear, Lear’s vision is clouded by his lack of insight. Since he cannot see into other people’s characters, he can never identify them for who they truly are. When Lear is angered by Cordelia, Kent tries to reason with Lear, who is toostubborn to remainopen-minded. Lear responds to Kent’s opposition with, “Out of my sight!,” to which Kent responds, “See better, Lear, and let me still remain” (1.1.160). Here, Lear is saying he never wants to see Kent again, but he could never truly see him for who he was. Kent was only trying to do what was best for Lear, but Lear couldnot see that. Kent’s vision is not clouded, as is Lear’s, and he knows that he can remain near Lear as long as he is in disguise. Later, Lear’s vision is so superficial that he is easily duped by the physical garments and simple disguise that Kent wears. Lear cannot seewho Kent really. He only learns of Kent’s noble and honest character just prior to his death, when his vision is cleared. By this time,
however, it is too late for an honest relationship to be salvaged.
Lear’s vision is also marred by his lack of direction in life, and his poor foresight, his inability to predict the consequences of his actions. He cannot look far enough into the future to see the consequences of his actions. This, in addition to his lack of insight into other people, condemns his relationship with his most beloved daughter, Cordelia. When Lear asks his daughters who loves him most, he already thinks that Cordelia has the most love for him. However, when Cordelia says, “I love your Majesty/According to my bond, no more nor less” (1.1.94-95), Lear cannot see what these words really mean.Goneril and Regan are only putting on an act. They do not truly love Lear as much as they should. When Cordelia says these words, she has seen her sisters’ facade, and she does not want to associate her true love with their false love.
Lear, however, is fooled by Goneril and Regan into thinking that they love him, while Cordelia does not. Kent,who has sufficient insight, is able to see through the dialogue and knows that Cordelia is the only daughter who actually loves Lear. He tries to convince Lear of this, saying, “Answer my life my judgment,/Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least” (1.1.153-154). Lear, however, lacks the insight that Kent has. He only sees what is on the surface, and cannot understand the deeper intentions of the daughters’ speeches. As his anger grows from the argument, his foresight diminishes as he becomes increasingly rash and narrow minded . When Lear disowns Cordelia, he says, “we/Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see/That face of hers again” (1.1.264-266). He cannot see far enough into the future to understand the consequences of this action. Ironically, he later discovers that Cordelia is the only daughter he wants to see, asking her to “forget and forgive” (4.7.85). By this time, he has finally started to gain some direction, and his vision is cleared, but it is too late for his life to be saved. His lack of precognition had condemned him from the beginning.
Lear depicts Shakespeare’s theme of clear vision by demonstrating that physical sight does not guarantee clear sight.Gloucester depicts this theme by demonstrating clear vision, despite the total lack of physical sight. Prior to the loss of his eyes,Gloucester’s vision was much like Lear’s. He could not see what was truly going on around him. Instead, he only saw what was presented to him on the surface. When Edmund shows him the letter that is supposedly from Edgar, it takes very little convincing for Gloucester to believe it. As soon as Edmund mentions that Edgar could be plotting against him, Gloucester calls him an “Abhorred villain, unnatural, detested, brutish villain” (1.2.81-82). He does not even stop toconsider whether Edgar would do such a thing because he cannot see into Edgar’s character. At this point, Gloucester’s life is headedb down a path of damnation similar to Lear’s because of a similar lack of sight.When Gloucester loses his physical sight, his vision actually clears, in that he can see what is going on around him. When Gloucester is captured by Cornwall, Gloucester provokes him to pluckout his eyes:
But I shall see
The wingèd vengeance overtake such children.
Cornwall. See’t shalt thou never. Fellows, hold the chair.
Upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my foot. (3.7.66-69)
When Gloucester is saying this, he still lacks clear vision, and wouldnever have seen vengeance taken upon Cornwall. When Cornwall puts out his eyes, Gloucester’s vision becomes clear from this point on, and he later discovers that Cornwall was killed. Ironically, Gloucester does not see vengeance until after he is blinded. In this sense, Cornwallalso suffers from clouded vision because his death is a direct result of his blinding of Gloucester, when a servant kills him. As a result, Gloucester is spared and his vision is cleared, while Cornwall is left a victim of his own faulty vision. From this point onwards, Gloucester learns to see clearly byusing his heart to see instead of his eyes. It is evident that he realizes this when he says: I have no way and therefore want no eyes;
I stumbled when I saw. Full oft ’tis seen,
Our means secure us, and our mere defects
Prove our commodities. (4.1.18-21)
In this, he is saying that he has no need for eyes because when he had them, he could not see clearly. He realizes that when he had eyes, he was confident that he could see, while in reality, he could not see until his eyes were removed. Afterwards, he sees with his mind instead of his eyes. Gloucester’s vision can be contrasted with that of Lear. While Lear has the physical sight that Gloucester lost, Gloucester has the clearer vision that Lear will never gain. When Lear and Gloucester meet near the cliffs of Dover, Lear questions Gloucester’s state:
No eyes in your
head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are
in a heavy case, your purse in a light, yet you
see how this world goes.
Gloucester. I see it feelingly.(4.6.147-151)
Here, Lear cannot relate to Gloucester because his vision is not clear, and he wonders how Gloucester can see without eyes. Although Lear has seen his mistakes, he still believes that sight comes only from the eyes. Gloucester tells him that sight comes from within. Vision is the result of the mind, heart, and emotions put together,not just physical sight. This is a concept that Lear will never understand. In King Lear, clear vision is an attribute portrayed by themain characters of the two plots. While Lear portrays a lack ofvision, Gloucester learns that clear vision does not emanate from theeye. Throughout this play, Shakespeare is saying that the world cannot truly be seen with the eye, but with the heart. The physical world that the eye can detect can accordingly hide its evils with physical attributes, and thus clear vision cannot result from the eye alone.Lear’s downfall was a result of his failure to understand that appearance does not always represent reality. Gloucester avoided a similar demise by learning the relationship between appearance and reality. If Lear had learned to look with more than just his eyes, he might have avoided this tragedy.
The sinful man is the second type of man depicted in the play.As the play opens one can almost immediately see that Lear begins to make mistakes that will eventually result in his downfall. The very first words that he speaks in the play are :
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
rawl to death.(1.1.38-41)
This gives the reader the first indication of Lear’s intent to abdicate his throne. He goes on further to offer pieces of his kingdom to his daughters as a form of reward to his test of love: Great rivals in our youngest daughter’s love,
Long in our court have made their amoroussojourn,
And here are to be answered. Tell me, my daughters
(Since now we will divest us both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state),
Which of you shall we say doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend
where nature doth with merit challenge.(1.1.47-53)
This is the first and most significant of the many sins that he makes in this play. By abdicating his throne to fuel his ego he is disrupts the great chain of being which states that the King must not challenge the position that God has given him.This undermining of God’s authority results in chaos that tears apart Lear’s world. Leaving him, in the end, with nothing.Following this Lear begins to banish those around him thatgenuinely care for him as at this stage he cannot see beyond the mask that the evilwear.He banishes Kent, a loyal servant to Lear, and his youngest and previously most loved daughter Cordelia.This results in Lear surrounding himself with people who only wish to use him which leaves him very vulnerable attack.This is precisely what happens and it is through this that he discovers his wrongs and amends them.
Following the committing of his sins, Lear becomes abandoned and estranged from his kingdom which causes him to loose insanity. While lost in his grief and self-pity the fool is introduced to guide Lear back to the sane world and to help find the lear that was ounce lost behind a hundred knights but now is out in the open and scared like a little child. The fact that Lear has now been pushed out from behind his Knights is dramatically represented by him actually being out on the lawns of his castle.The terrified little child that is now unsheltered is dramatically portrayed by Lear’s sudden insanity and his rage and anger is seen through the thunderous weather that is being experienced.All of this contributes to the suffering of Lear due to the gross sins that he has committed.
The pinnacle of this hell that is experienced be Lear in order to repay his sins is at the end of the play when Cordelia is killed. Lear says this before he himself dies as he cannot live without his daughter.
Howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones.
Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gonefor ever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives.
he’s dead as earth. Lend me a looking glass.
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives.(5.3.306-312)
All of this pain that Lear suffered is traced back to the single most important error that he made. The choice to give up his throne. This one sin has proven to have massive repercussions upon Lear and the lives of those around him eventually killing almost all of those who were involved. And one is left to ask one’s self if a single wrong turn can do this to Lear then what difficult corner lies ahead that may cause similar alterations in one’s life.
The last (but not the least) type of man described in the play is the insane man. Lear’s descent toward madness is foretold further, and more explicitly, when he cries, “O fool, I shall go mad!” (2.4.281). During Act II, the symbolic components in addition to the cruelty of Goneril and Regan surpass Lear’s threshold for sanity and he is thrown out into the elements and left to find himself. Lear after this point will move toward what essential man,stripping himself of the pretense and artifice and assumed importance he has drawn around himself as King and ruler and father.
The theme of madness is explored deeply in Act III, in which three different forms of madness in three different characters can be seen. King Lear most notably goes, or is driven, to a madness he had predicted in this Act, but he is accompanied by two others whom are meant to be playing fools or madmen but to whom he grants the greatest sincerity. These two men, the two Lear places on the bench of his fictitious jury, are Edgar as poor Tom and Lear’s Fool. Edgar feigns a madness as poor Tom that provides a great contrast to Lear’s actual madness by bringing into question what madness is. Edgar’s character was believable on the level of a mad trickster, a common character in the day who was known to trick others into believing him out of his wits. The reasons which justify his serious plunge into insanity are many as the audience is caused by the actions of his daughters and the indignity he has been shown since giving up his title which could easily drop an old proud former king into madness.
The horrific action of all but two children in the play, Cordelia and Edgar, is summed up in a neat sentence by Gloucester as he enters the hovel to speak to Lear. He cries, “Our flesh and blood, my lord, is grown so vile/ That it doth hate what gets it” (3.4.136-137). The vileness, the evil, of Lear’s two daughters and of Edmund is such a betrayal that it has made wish to reject the beings it helped to create. They have forsworn any human tie to their parents in such a vile way that hatred is the only word which can describe the relation. Not only have they stripped him of all dignity, condescendingly and hypothetically turned many of his own knights against him, and thrown him unsheltered out into a raging dangerous storm, but they have finally cut the corner of pretense in which they said they would accept their father if he came without train and resolved to kill their own father who gave them all of his kingdom.
Lear’s fault in facing them was a quick temper and a love quantified into value and material weight. This love could not have always existed in this form because of Lear’s reaction in Act I that Cordelia had been his favorite daughter and that she had never rejected him or his wish previously. Thus, the self-centered plea for love seems to be a fault of old age as well as ego. As Gloucester mentions flesh and blood, Lear’s daughters have turned out for blood and power to which they have no need to battle for but of which they can seemingly not get enough. Their undoing, their evil, is thus based on an arrogant ambition and a horrific filial ingratitude.
This evil leads Lear to his belief that madness on a large scale can only result from the betrayal of daughters. He has sincerely been led astray in his trust and loyalty and thus plunges into a darkness and a madness which the storm, the hovel, and the night quite literally and symbolically portray. Vividly Shakespeare portrays the transformation of man into storm and storm into man as Lear goes mad. Personifying the storm with himself and the children he has begotten, Lear wails, “Rumble thy bellyful. Spit, fire. Spout, rain./ Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters” (3.2.14-15). The storm is given a belly and the elements are compared to daughters. Lear’s conclusion that his madness must be the result of the betrayal of his daughters (3.4.59-61).
In this state of rugged, stripped, essential man, Lear is able to focus on some important human issues that he has overlooked as king. Left to battle the elements of nature and the storms that are its products like the poor, Lear is forced to think on the daily lives of the homeless and his ignorance of the poor’s situation. He comments:
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this!(3.4.28-33).
This is a climactic moment for Lear, as he stands on the threshold of madness. He will descend, as soon as he comes face to face with Edgar the reflection of madness he holds as philosophy and wisdom. And perhaps Lear comes much closer to a wisdom of humankind as a result. Madly, he attempts to strip himself naked only moments later before being stopped by the Fool, whose madness when compared with Lear’s becomes simple and superficial as he tries to look out for his master’s safekeeping. In this, it is again easily seen how sane the Fool has been all along and how real Lear’s madness is to make the Fool’s speech become so practical.Lear is trying to physically strip himself of the artifice he has noticed within himself and most of mankind. He wishes to be put on par with poor Tom, a man who has lived much closer, he thinks, to the truth of nature.
Edgar’s character of poor Tom of Bedlam was based on the surreptitious “foul fiend” which plagues Tom constantly, biting at his back and instigating other evils upon him. With a feigned demonic madness, Tom’s character is questioned less by the other characters allowing Edgar to provide commentary through his asides and the irony he often provides, especially in the contrast established between the disguised and acted madness he chooses and the uncontrollable, anguished madness which overtakes Lear. Tom also provides the physical character to represent the man Lear realizes he has ignored during his rule as King of Britain. Immediately after Lear cries out in recognition of his ignorance, he meets poor Tom. This allows Shakespeare to give more distinct meaning to Lear’s, and later Gloucester’s, wish for greater equality among the population in terms of money and favors. Lear exclaims:
Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just(3.4.33-36).
Shakespeare here promotes a system where the rich would share their excess, their artifice, with the poor in order to even out the ranks a bit. Lear, in this manner, places himself at an equitable level with Tom and refuses to leave the stormy outdoors for shelter unless he can bring Tom with him. Lear has made his greatest leaps in humane awareness since his descent toward madness and his acquaintance with Tom. He states this for the audience when he remarks,
Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou ow’st the
worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfumes
Thou art the thing itself; unaccomodated man is no
more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.(2.4.97-102).
Clothing, excesses such as Lear referred to when speaking to Regan and Goneril about the need of his train, is superfluous and a great symbol of the artifice Lear has finally stripped from his body. Lear sees in the naked lunatic someone who has taken nothing wrongfully from anyone, and is the essential human being. Saying that “unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art,” the king rips off his clothes.Later when Cordelia assesses Lear’s condition, she says, he is:
As mad as the vexed sea; singing aloud;
Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
With hordocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow. (4.4.2-5)
Lear’s madness, which is indicated here by both his singing and his self-adornment with flowers, is marked by an embrace of the natural world; rather than perceiving himself as a heroic figure who transcends nature, he understands that he is a small, meaningless component of it.
King Lear is not about wrongs being righted.The good survivors see the passing of a man who was larger than life. It is a parable, encrusted with symbolic figures and actions toward a predicted and fabled end. Not surprisingly, spectators can find various kinds of man suffering because of mental blindness, sinful deeds committed against nature and madness described in the play and different ideas about the relationship between human beings and the natural world.
On the figurative and more appropriate level, Lear is a allegorical figure in a parable and must move blindly toward this character demise in order to be resurrected to honesty and the goodness his fallen daughter represents in the end. He committed a fatal and selfish human error which cannot be mended without the journey and transformation he must undergo. He learned the truth only in the storm in Act III when he says that “when we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” King Lear deals with how children and parents treat each other, whether human society is the product of nature or something they create so as to live better than animals do, and whether human nature is fundamentally selfish or generous.
WORK CITED
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988
