By Diana Major Spencer
By act 1, scene 1, line 10 of King Lear, Kent reveals that Lear plays favorites with his daughters and their husbands and Gloucester makes jokes about begetting bastards—in the presence of his own. By line 90, Lear banishes the daughter he has repeatedly called his favorite; before scene 1 ends, the banishment includes Lear’s favorite and most loyal advisor. Scene 2 includes a brief soliloquy by which Edmund, the bastard of scene 1, celebrates his genius in designing war on his father, his half-brother, and the institutions that preclude his social acceptance—which he immediately sets in motion to the destruction of his father’s house. By the end of the first act of Shakespeare’s most tragic tragedy, Lear’s status has diminished from lording over all to bartering for a roof over his head. Gloucester is beholden to his manipulative bastard at the expense of his good, loyal son, who is now exiled with the price of death on his head.
And it goes downhill from there—with nary a speed-bump or mere slippery slope to slow the wreck. The stark reality for King Lear is the utter vulnerability of civil society, the infinitesimally fragile veneer between order and chaos, and the plodding terror of its inevitable collapse. Pluck one card from the carefully balanced “house,” and the entire structure collapses. Disrupt the etiquette, the protocols, the laws that frame civility, the codes and commandments, then anarchy ensues. How are we, the audience, to endure the anguish expressed by Edgar as he sees his blinded father? “O gods! Who is’t can say, ‘I am at the worst’?/ I am worse than e’er I was . . ./ And worse I may be yet: the worst is not/ So long as we can say ‘This is the worst’” (4.1.25–28). Mercifully, Shakespeare gives us small moments of grace to brace against the terror.
Lear sets up his ingrate daughters to quickly tire of his company once he transfers the reign. As the exiled Cordelia predicts, “I know you what you are/ And like a sister am most loath to call/ Your faults as they are named” (1.1.269–71); and before act 1 ends, Goneril instructs her servants to reduce their attention to Lear’s commands. Next, she halves his rowdy retinue, chiding his lack of decorum. “You strike my people/ And your disorder’d rabble make servants of their betters” (1.4.255–57). Albany, oblivious to the furor, counsels “patience,” as Lear rages about “ingratitude in children”: “Oh, Lear, Lear, Lear! Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in [Striking his head.]/ And thy dear judgment out!” (1.4.270–72). He curses Goneril that “all her mother’s pains and benefits [may turn]/ To laughter and contempt, that she may feel/ How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is/ To have a thankless child!” (1.4.288–89).
“They durst not do’t,” Lear explodes at finding Kent, his servant, in the stocks at Gloucester’s palace. “They could not, would not do’t. ‘Tis worse than murther” (2.2.23–25). The sisters, taking turns, begin the downward bargaining of Lear’s “privileges.” Why do you need 100 retainers? Why 50? Why—? “I gave you all—” (2.4.249) “What need one?” Regan sneers. “O reason not the need!” Lear challenges. “Our basest beggars,/ Are in the poorest thing superfluous./ Allow not nature more than nature needs,/ Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady;/ If only to go warm were gorgeous/ Why nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,/ Which scarcely keeps thee warm” (2.4.264–70) Lear begs the heavens to give him patience as he vows revenge, then leads the Fool, his “basest beggar,” out into the gathering storm, determined not to weep.
The physical storm may be symbolic of Lear’s inner rage, but it’s real enough that the Fool twice asks for shelter before Kent arrives to lead them to a hovel. Lear shows his first tenderness toward the Fool, “In boy, go first.—You houseless poverty/ Nay, get thee in; I’ll pray and then I‘ll sleep./ Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,/ That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,/ How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,/ Your [loop’d] and window’d raggedness, defend you/ From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en/ Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp,/ Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,/ That thou mayst shake the superflux to them/ And show the heavens more just” (3.4.26–36). Before he can enter the hovel, the Fool bursts out, followed by Edgar, disguised, [Storm still].
Meanwhile, Gloucester brings a torch and some unwitting grace notes, tries to converse with Edgar, and tells Kent that Lear’s daughters seek his death. “Ah, that good Kent!/ He said it would be thus, poor banish’d man” (3.4.164–65), he says to the disguised Kent. “I had a son,/ Now outlaw’d from my blood; he sought my life . . . I lov’d him, friend” (3.4.166–68), he says as he leads the disguised Edgar into the hovel.
Less than 100 lines later, Gloucester returns with a litter to carry Lear to Dover to escape the sisters’ plot on his life, for which Gloucester knows he must, of course, be punished. Regan and Cornwall interrogate him, demanding, “Wherefore to Dover?” With breathtaking irony, Gloucester chooses the image of “poor old eyes”:
“Because I would not see thy cruel nails/ Pluck out his poor old eyes, nor thy fierce sister/ In his anointed flesh [rash] boarish fangs” (3.7.56–58). “See’t shalt thou never,” snarls Cornwall, as he blinds Gloucester’s eye. A servant, a mere functionary, challenges the abomination of Cornwall’s act with a sword, wounding Cornwall even as Regan kills the servant. Cornwall blinds Gloucester’s other eye, then is led away, mortally wounded. Two remaining servants treat Gloucester’s wounds and take him to “the Bedlam,” Edgar. Again, the lowliest servants display the greatest compassion, and Edgar somehow maintains his Poor Tom guise, erroneously sparing his father the comforting knowledge of the son who loves him.
“Is it a beggar-man?” asks Gloucester. “I’ th’ last night’s storm I such a fellow saw,/ Which made me think a man a worm. My son/ Came then into my mind, and yet my mind/ Was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more since./ As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods,/ They kill us for their sport” (4.1.29–37).
Deep in despair, Gloucester thrills to a grace note in act 4, scene 6, after his “fall” from Dover’s high hill: Lear runs by, covered with flowers and weeds. “I know that voice,” Gloucester marvels. Lear utters ten lines of nonsense. Gloucester reiterates, “The trick of that voice I do well remember/ Is’t not the King?” “Ay, every inch a king!” Not quite lucid; not quite not—in Edgar’s words, “O matter and impertinency mix’d,/ Reason in madness!” (174–75)—Lear addresses “How this world goes” (147) for 70 lines, then says “If thou will weep my fortunes, take my eyes./ I know thee well enough, thy name is Gloucester./ Thou must be patient; we came crying hither./ Thou know’st, the first time that we smell the air/ We wawl and cry . . ./ When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools“ (176–83), as he trails off to thoughts of killing his sons-in-law and runs off to avoid his caretakers.
Lear has yet to enjoy that brief hopeful encounter with Cordelia, followed by yet another gut-wrenching disappointment at her hanging. Edgar has yet to assume the unknown warrior role with his father’s final blessing, and Kent completes his task of keeping his master out of harm’s way. There’s no satisfaction in the deaths of the villains, no redemption in new leadership. At last, at least, the onslaught ends—with Kent: “My master calls me, I must not say no” (5.3.323). Poor Edgar’s final lines are a mere postscript.
