Act I, Scene 1
The King of France is surprised and indignated at Lear's unexpected injustice to Cordelia. Lear has just approved of her rejection by the Duke of Burgundy and addressed France, warning him of her supposedly bad nature:
[...] This is most strange,
That she, who ever but now was your best object,
The argument of your praise, balm of your age,
Most best, most dearest, should in this trice of time
Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle
So many folds of favour. Sure, her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it, or your fore-vouched affection
Fall into taint; which to believe of her,
Must be a faith that reason without miracle
Should never plant in me.
Cordelia's misunderstood, unfairly received straightforwardness and lack of hypocrisy constitute the subject of France's reply to Lear, when the latter considers them to be a major insult to universal order and, consequently, characteristic elements of a monstrous personality. France is the only person, up to this point, to openly recognise Cordelia's incapability of flattering as an invaluable virtue rather than as an irreparable flaw. He accepts her to become his wife, Queen of France, despite the fact that she is not to be given any lands, because, as he will say later, "she is herself a dowry". Flattery, "that glib and oily art" her sisters knew perfectly well how to serve and which was, at the time, a necessary evil in the royal courts, appears here as an element of attitude the ignorance or lack of which may have serious costs, signifying, first of all, a certain distanciation from the established order of the natural and the social world. It was their pompous, carefully prepared and flowered speeches that granted Goneril and Regan their father's esteem and property, while Cordelia's sincerity ("what I well intend, I'll do't before I speak") is exactly what France speaks of as an "offence of such unnatural degree that monsters it" in the eyes of a man like Lear, who, as a monarch, is used to being flattered, and more liable to fall victim to the corruption of arrogance. Another interesting point in France's speech is the one related to the sudden change of Lear's feelings towards Cordelia. A "trice of time" has been enough to turn a whole life's affection into aversion and rage. A long time will pass before Lear manages to realise, finally, the wrong he has done to his daughter; blinded by a moment's fury, he has let his "fore-vouched affection fall into taint" and deprived her of every moral and material indication of esteem. An initial clue to Lear's impulsive and at the same time obstinate character is offered here, while the fact that his two other daughters will later act completely in contrast to their initial declarations makes his position even more tragic, underlining France's ability of judgement and the genuiness of his feelings towards Cordelia. His words highlight her frankness and dignity give emphasis to Lear's moral error.
Act I, Scene 3
Oswald, badly trated by Lear, complains to Goneril about her father and his train of knights. Goneril, indignated, is detemined to take radical measures against the present circumstances: she instructs her people not to behave properly to Lear.
Put on what weary negligence you please,
You and your fellows: I'd have it come to question:
If he distaste it, let him to my sister,
Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one,
Not to be over-rul'd. Idle old man,
That still would manage these authorities
That he hath given away! Now, by my life,
Old fools are babes again, and must be us'd
With checks as flatteries, when they are being abus'd.
In this extract, Goneril is putting forth an initial contestation of her father's power; this act of disobedience is going to be followed by a series of others, more and more serious, ending up in kicking Lear, indirectly, out of her house as well as out of Regan's. Having given his royal power away to his daughters and to their husbands, Lear has already started to decline and fall, and his daughters' acts contribute to his total and final disintegration. Since he has officially stopped being a king, he must no more, according to a certain logic, demand to be treated as one. This is exactly what Goneril is trying to make him admit; by ordering her people to disobey the former king, she does nothing more than act according to the new order of things which is beginning to be formed. In her speech, besides the expression of the reversal of filial bonds, there is also a reference to old age, with all the negative consequences it implies, and which is another echo of the theme of senility, very much apparent in the play.
Act I, Scene 4
A dialogue between Goneril and the Fool - or, rather, a speech made by Goneril and followed by the Fool's comments. Goneril is reprimanding Lear for the indecent behaviour of his knights. Lear had, a while before, insulted Oswald, her loyal steward.
GONERIL: [...] Sir,
I had thought, by making this well known to you,
To have found a safe redress; but now grow fearful,
By what yourself too late have spoke and done,
That you protect t h i s course, and put it on
By your allowance; which if you should, the fault
Would not 'scape censure, nor the redress sleep,
Which, in the tender of a wholesome weal,
Might in their working do you that offence,
Which else were shame, that then necessity
Will call discreet proceeding.FOOL: [...] For you know, Nuncle,
The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,
That it's had its head bit off by its young,
So went out the candle, and we were left darkling.
Lear's gradual loss of all kind of power is the theme of the above extract, where the old king's last sign of authority, a train of one hundred knights, is severely criticised by Goneril, who considers its existence unnecessary, if not menacing for her and her party, a potential obstacle to her ploys against her father. This body of escorts, loyal to the king and Cordelia, is, of course, bitterly disapproved of by Goneril, who wishes to strip her father from every possible remnant of his royal authority. Him she considers to be too old to be taken seriously and to claim anything connected with h i s preceding status, and this becomes obvious from her tone while addressing him: not absolutely impolite, but severe, as if scolding a disobedient child. Their roles are therefore being reversed, as the Fool has already pointed out: "thou madest thy daughters thy mothers: for when you gavest them the rod, and puttest down thine own breeches, then for sudden joy they weep". Though not expressed in plain words, Goneril's intention is clear: she is determined to take charge of the situation herself, if Lear does not follow her instructions (not to say orders). Goneril appears as an excellent diplomat throughout the play, taking advantage of every occasion and imposing her own will invariably, not by infernal misunderstandings like those organised by Edmund, but in a dynamic, authoritative way. Lear is, to some extent, aware of the absolute power she exerts upon him and the general situation, but still hopes he will manage to "resume his shape" with Regan's help. As for the Fool, things are completely transparent to him and he tries to warn Lear through witty, funny comments, parables and proverbs. His reference to the young cuckoo killing the hedge-sparrow that has fed him is a very intelligent implication for Goneril's ingratitude to her father. The Fool is constantly aware of Lear's loss of authority and his general degradation, and expresses this bitter ascertainment in a very significant metaphor: "Out went the candle, and we were left darkling", as well as with that inexorable "Lear's shadow" a few lines below.
Act I, Scene 4
King Lear, overwhelmed by disappointment, casts his curse upon Goneril, who has arbitrarily taken the initiative to dismiss half of his knights, considering their number to be exaggerated and dangerous for her power:
[...] Blasts and fogs upon thee!
Th'untented woundings of a father's curse
Pierce every sense about thee! Old fond eyes,
Beweep this cause again, I'll pluck ye out,
And cast you, with the waters that you lose,
To temper clay: Yea, isn't come to this?
Ha! Let it be so: I have another daughter,
Who, I am sure, is kind and comfortable:
When she shall hear this of thee, with her nails
She'll flay thy wolfish visage. Thou shalt find
That I'll resume the shape which thou dost think
I have cast off for ever.
The theme of ingratitude is predominant in the play. Goneril's ingratitude to Lear is received with fits of temper and curses of unconceivable cruelty on his part. He has already cursed her a very short while before, in this same scene, wishing her eternal sterility or torments by her monstrous children. Lear is a tragic hero in the very sense of the term, acrobating upon extremities, preceded and surpassed by the consequences of his own actions. Having given his royal power away to his two sons-in-law (who, in their turn, are more or less being manipulated by their wives), he still refuses to reduce himself to a silent, "decorative" role and cannot admit, nor accept, the fate Regan and Goneril have prepared for him. Although he rules no more, he still behaves as a king, has his own private guards (whom Goneril cannot help seeing as a potential army), and demands his people's respect and his children's obedience. He has not ceased contemplating things in the ancient scheme of order ("Nature") in which he was the head and everyone else held a certain role as was imposed by the circumstances. As soon as Lear himself changed this context by dividing his kingdom and exiling Cordelia and Kent, the whole system altered and overbalanced, leaving him in the margin of all activity and at the mercy of everyone's ambition. Despite his own and unique responsibility for this, he is still far from blaming himself and hurls terrible curses at his daughters. This, is, in fact, the dramatic irony of his position; like another Oedipus, he menaces to pluck his "fond eyes" out and "temper clay" with their tears; for eyes are useless to him, since they cannot see not only Goneril's full malevolence and ambition, but also (though he has not realised it yet) the wrong he has done Cordelia - leaving aside what Regan, his last vain hope, has in store for him. Goneril, for her part, may of course be appearing as "Monster Ingratitude" to her father, but the audience is able to remark that her actions follow a certain logic, within the limits of power her father has handed over to her.
Act II, Scene 2
Kent, who has just arrived in Gloucester's house in order to hand Lear's letter to Regan and Cornwall, is overtaken by Oswald, who brings Regan and Cornwall a letter Goneril has given him, concerning Kent's arrival. Kent and Oswald have a violent fight before Cornwall and Regan; Kent insults Oswald in the worst possible way:
[...] A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base,
proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound,
filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action taking
whoreson, grass-grazing, super-serviceable,
finical vogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that
wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art
nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward,
pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch:
one whom I will beat into clamorous whining
if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.
This extract is a list of insults Kent casts at Oswald, who has got in his way not letting him give Lear's letter to Regan before Oswald himself could hand her Goneril's letter. It is a very acute and representative portrait of the "superserviceable" plotter, the right hand of villains, the eager executer of evil orders. Kent's characterisations of Oswald follow a crescendo of tension, ending up in a horrifying menace; Oswald, Goneril's confident servant, her "partner in crime", is but a detestable coward who only deserves to be beaten to death. Kent's insults may seem somehow exaggerated (and the comical aspect of the scene is that Oswald avoids, in the beginning, to answer them until Kent exerts physical violence upon him) but serve to portray the human type Oswald represents, reflecting the audience's (and the universal) opinion towards this kind of character.
Act II, Scene 3
Edgar, persecuted because wrongly accused of a tentative against his father, is hiding in a forest during a storm; in order to survive, he decides to disguise himself as a beggar.
I heard myself proclaim'd;
And by the happy hollow of a a tree
Escap'd the hunt. No port is free; no place,
That guard, and most unusual vigilance,
Does not attend my taking. Whiles I may 'scape
I will preserve myself; and am bethought
To take the basest and most poorest shape
That ever penury, in contempt of man,
Brought near to beast; my race I'll grime with filth,
Blanket my loins, elf my hair in knots,
And with presented nakedness outface
The winds and persecutions of the sky.
Edgar is the second character, up to this point of King Lear, who finds himself in need of adopting a different self so as to face the awkward situation circumstances have forced him into, as in that world of evil good is unable to survive otherwise. The first one to disguise himself was Kent, banished because having tried to take Cordelia's part despite Lear's fury against her. As for Edgar, he has been the victim of his half-brother Edmund's machinations: a fake duel between the two brothers and a scratch on the arm Edmund procured on himself were cosidered as enough proof for Edgar's guilt, his intention to kill Gloucester in order to take the paternal fortune. Edgar's absolute innocence, underlined and given its tragical aspect by Edmund's evil character, becomes even more dramatic as it is rewarded with his father's rage and the law's persecution. After Kent and Cordelia, Edgar too is exiled from the land, leaving those who personify every negative aspect of human nature to triumph for the time being. What is certain, however, is that Edgar, unable to escape and risking to be arrested at any moment, will have to reduce himself to "the basest and most poorest shape that ever penury, in contempt of man, brought near to beast". He will be obliged not only to extinguish every sign of his present identity, for "Edgar I nothing am", but also to identify himself to the natural environment, integrate himself into it, not only in terms of outward appearence but also by the "loss" of his reason, the "poor (Bedlam) Tom" mask he puts on in order to be able to contribute to the restitution of justice and of his own reputation.
Act IV, Scene 2
Albany, who has just been informed of Goneril's attitude to her father, starts to realise her motives and abandons his former obedience to her. Goneril has obliged Lear to leave her palace and wander alone and helpless in the storm.
ALBANY: [...] You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face. I fear your disposition:
That nature, which condemns its origin
Cannot be border'd certain in itself;
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use.GONERIL: No more, the text is foolish.
ALBANY: Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;
Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?
The theme mainly pointed at in the present extract is that of filial ingratitude as an indication of evil character. Goneril and Regan, by their common refusal of accepting their father in their respective homes, or rather of accepting him along with his complete train as would be suitable for a king, become striking examples of the case. Albany, up to then a silent and quiet "decorative" element on dynamic Goneril's side, suddenly opens his eyes and becomes aware of the fact that someone who has broken the sanctified bond between a parent and a child cannot be but expected to show indifference or contempt to other moral axioms as well. Goneril's particular behaviour is absolutely unpardonable, as she has not only treated her own father with no sign of the due respect, but also deprived a king of his right to have a number of soldiers in his train as an indication of his royal power. This kind of attitude only deserves to be redeemed by death, as it is a sign of total moral decline; a person acting this way cannot but have a deformed view of the world and its notions: "Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile", as Albany remarks while his wife and Oswald are plotting against the last representatives of good (Gloucester has already been betrayed by Edmund, his illegitimate son, and lost his eyes by Regan and Cornwall - another case of filial ingratitude parallelly evolving). And a "vile" nature can never inspire confidence to those who can tell good from evil: "I fear your disposition: that nature, which condemns its origin, cannot be bordered certain in itself". Albany's last words, "filths savour but themselves", serve to prepare the ground for Goneril's affair with Edmund, the other great evil character of the play.
The role of Albany
Albany's role in King Lear could mostly be considered as one which serves the dramatic context and evolution of the play rather than suggesting a complete moral portrait. Albany's character is almost exclusively highlighted by exterior facts (and factors), already formed circumstances, a priori situations in which he has to interveners a musical key, in order to change their tonality and course. First appearing as a tasteless and colourless creature in his dynamic wife Goneril's shadow, he suddenly changes, towards the ending of the play, into a powerful personality and a ruthless incarnation of justice. This unexpected transformation must, nevertheless, be examined in the light of the facts taking place along with it and, up to a certain point, imposing it.
Albany's first appearence on scene is characterised by an attitude of blind obedience to Goneril, a total lack of personal will and initiative, a neutral way of facing the dramatic reality. This is the image Albany presents all through the First Act of King Lear, and only in Act II, where Goneril and Regan definitely kick their father out of his own castle and their homes, does he dare express some vague moral scruples about his wife's bahaviour. This exaggerated passivity of his character has the purpose to emphasise Goneril's crushing personality and quick, venomous wit, exactly as Cornwall's dynamism complements Regan's cruelty. Far from even hinting at his following evolution, Albany's faint protests against Goneril's attitude to Lear demonstrate, at least, a side of his person which is not similar to hers. But the real turnpoint of his development is his brusque outburst, in the Second Scene of Act IV, against his wife after her tender tete a tete with Edmund. This is where Albany brings out the total subversion of his previous image and of the scheme up to here existing in his relationship with Goneril: as she herseld had claimed, just before her husband entered the scene, she felt worthier of wearing the family insignia than he was. But now Albany, who has realised her real nature and motives, refuses to continue holding the role of the inactive, decorative and finally risible husband and begins to proceed towards his complete transformation, and to some extent his justification, in Act V.
The episode of Albany and Goneril's quarell, in Act IV, may also be taken as a necessary dramatic device, allowing to present Albany as a worthy rival of Edmund, who has managed to obtain Goneril's favours. The teaming up of Goneril and Edmund, both powerful and excessively intelligent representatives of evil, would demand a counterweight, so that a certain balance of the dramatic forces can be attained. lt is now Goneril's turn to help underline Albany's integrity, since this integrity emerges from the fact that Goneril herself is evil. Another contrast is therefore introduced in the couple's relationship, in opposition to the previous one (an almost inexistent Albany beside an overwhelming Goneril), preparing thus the way for further violent conflicts which will reach their zenith in Act V.
It is in this final Act that Albany proves a clear, almost transparent character representing, along with Edgar and Cordelia, whatever reason, truthfulness and loyalty might stand for, a merciless instrument of justice, placed in the right place at the right time, in order for evil to be defeated. lt lies upon him that Edmund's plans of usurpation and treason be revealed and that Edmund himself be punished at last by Edgar's hand. What is rather surprising, however, is that in the end Albany, though rightfully expected to become king (because Goneril was the eldest of Lear's daughters), will eventually hand this role over to Edgar; but on the other hand this can be explained by the fact that Albany, unlike Edgar (who has come through an entire procedure of decline and then ascension, very much resembling the initiating course of young heros towards royalty in traditional tales), is a character who does not really develop, but only presents different aspects of one and unique personality, and so an acceptance of the throne, on his part, would probably seem inconsistent and incompatible with his initial image.
The theme of madness
The theme of madness is, among others, amply presented and dramatically exploited by Shakespeare in King Lear. It is mainly used to highlight what must be considered as the "reality" of the play, seen through a deforming mirror which transposes it to a different level. Madness appears here in three different forms, each one represented by a respective character. There is Lear's gradual mental degradation, caused by facts and leading finally to total insanity; Edgar's pretended madness, used as a disguise against his enemies; and, finally, the Fool's refined and witty intellectual recklessness, which is taken for granted, constituting a fixed characteristic with a purely conventional role in the tragic plays of the time.
Lear's madness is the most tragic of all, because it appears as the confirmation, the external manifestation, of his decline and fall. His inevitable ending up in insanity is hinted to the viewer from the very beginning of the play, where the Fool offers to exchange his own coxcomb for Lear's crown: the first irreasonable act on Lear's part was to give away his kingdom, thus becoming himself the cause and agent of the subversion of the world's sanctified order. When the kingdom, being a miniature universe, loses its head, then it can be but expected that the head will lose its wit: a royal head with no crown is, as the Fool remarks, a "bald crown" itself. The tempest in the forest, where the first "medical" indications of Lear's insanity are introduced, underlines his mental disorder which, in its turn, reflects the anarchy reigning in his former dominion. Even his mad self is the parody of his old reasonable one, a tragic caricature functioning through a code of symbols and crowned with with wild plants the best part of which were used at the time to cure mental diseases. His speech follows a fragmented logic which can only be read through idea association, inviting the viewer to assemble its specks as if they were pieces of a puzzle. Madness, in Lear's case, becomes a different level of relity (as well as of sanity) where the facts, though their deeper substance remains untouched, attain a monstrous outward quality which is represented by the insane king's "fantastical dress of wild flowers". This tragi-comic uniform completes the image of Lear's degradation, just as Edgar's fake madness adopts nakedness as an external characteristic, or the Fool's costume indicates his traditional faculty and identity.
As for Edgar, whose insanity is absolutely "reasonable", calculated, even well-studied and very convincingly performed, he has been forced by circumstances to hide himself under the identity of "poor Tom" exactly as Lear has been driven to real madness. This absurd aspect in Edgar's pretended mental derangement is that it demands no other disguise than almost complete nakedness. In order to make himself unrecognizable by those who are after him, he does not change his clothes for others, as he would be expected to do, but merely throws them away, thus dispensing with every outward element that would help identify him with his real self. His artificial madness, in his effort to make it look verisimilar, unavoidably seems somehow exaggerated in comparison to Lear's or the Fool's. His words, in most of the cases, make absolutely no sense, except when he gives a portrait of his half-brother Edmund as a supposed description of himself. Edgar's madness is his only weapon against his persecuters and also a theatrical device allowing him to pass unrecognised by his father, in addition to his "disguise" which is essential for the role he has to play and for his gradual ascension from the bottom ("basest") to the top,through a succession of other "incarnations" (merchant, country gentleman, cavalier). The part of "poor Tom" within Edgar's role suggests (as in Hamlet) a performance within a performance, so that the actor holding this part has to act at two different dramatic levels up to this point of the play.
The Fool's madness, finally, contains a considerable depth of internal wisdom; his amusing remarks, the songs and proverbs continually interfering in his speeches, are full of covered messages, interpreting the facts in a code where poetry, imagination and a fine, intelligent humor dominate and where there is truth under every word. It is a philosophised, deeply cultivated madness,on which the Fool depends to earn his living and which functions as a counterweight to the king's absolute power,as it permits to express in an indirect way the moral attitude and mentality of a certain kind of common sense. The importance of this sort of madness diminishes as King Lear's insanity becomes worse, until it finally disappears along with the Fool when Lear ends up in taking himself the Fool's place and even replacing his royal crown with another kind of coxcomb, a wreath of wild flowers. The Fool's madness is the only one which remains invariable all through the part of the play dedicated to him and vanishes from sight as soon as he does, while Edgar's madness only occupies an intervening space between two "reasonable" parts of his role, and Lear's insanity follows a slow but steady crescendo up to his complete disintegration, when no one can anymore tell between "a wise man and a fool".
It is interesting to remark, however, that all three types of madness examined above appear not in the ranks of evil, represented by Regan and Cornwall, Goneril, Edmund and Oswald, but in the group of those persecuted by them.This is an outstanding indication of moral erosion and decay, which Edgar, as "poor Tom", seems to exorcise by reciting an impressive list of evil spirits and various devils,but which,nevertheless, will go on triumphing till almost the last line of the play.
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