King Lear

The Earl of Kent, alone, tells us that he has disguised himself in order to return and serve King Lear. When Lear enters, Kent introduces himself to Lear as “A very honest-hearted fellow.” Lear is impressed by Kent’s recognition of authority in Lear and by Kent’s forthright manner (he says he can “deliver a plain message bluntly”). Lear tells him, “Follow me, thou shalt serve me: if I like thee no worse after dinner.” When Oswald, Goneril’s steward, enters he rudely fails to respond to Lear’s question and leaves abruptly. Lear sends one of his knights after him to call him back. The knight returns and explains that Oswald refused to come back. He adds, apologising for having to tell this to his King, that this lack of respect for Lear’s commands has become the norm in Goneril’s castle. He includes the “Duke himself” in this lack of respect. (This is rather at odds with what Albany says, respectfully, in response to Lear’s anger later in the scene, “My lord, I am guiltless as I am ignorant/Of what hath moved you.”). Lear admits that he has also noticed something similar but wonders if he has been oversensitive and has been imagining it. Lear calls for his Fool – the knight says the Fool has “much pined away” since Cordelia left for France. This suggests that the Fool has a strong affection for Cordelia and, one assumes, Cordelia for the Fool. Some readers of King Lear have argued that the Fool is, in fact, Cordelia and that she, anticipating Goneril and Regan’s cruelty and having disguised herself as the Fool, has opted to stay with Lear. One of their points in support of their (interesting but, I think, unconvincing) argument is that the Fool and Cordelia never appear in the stage at the same time. Another aspect of this Cordelia-as-the-Fool idea is that in the last scene (spoiler alert!) Lear, albeit in a confused mental state, seems to identify Cordelia as the Fool when he says, “my poor fool is hanged”.

Oswald enters again and is disrespectful to Lear. Lear strikes him and Kent pushes him out. 

The Fool now enters and Lear is hoping to be entertained; however, the Fool is in no mood for humour. A court fool has a licence to be irreverent and make fun of his master – it is an accepted part of his job.  Lear’s fool makes full use of this licence (Goneril describes him as “your all-licensed fool” 1.4.191).He is, in fact, severely critical of Lear. Given that he is so attached to Cordelia it is not surprising that he should be so cutting and bitter in his criticisms. (This would also be so, perhaps especially so, if the Fool is Cordelia!)  He offers his coxcomb (his fool’s cap) to Kent and tells him he should wear it as he is a fool since he is following Lear, a powerless king. In an indirect, cryptic way he also tells Lear that he is a fool (in the common sense of the word) because he gave his kingdom to his daughters. Although Lear threatens him with a whipping, the Fool continues in his cryptic way – and at some points a quite direct way – to call Lear a fool. A method common to his apparent ‘fooling’ is to invert things. So he says that Lear banished two of his daughters and blessed the third which is the opposite of what occurred.  He says that Lear made his daughters his mothers and gave them a rod and a licence to pull down the breeches of their child and chastise him. His underlying point being that these inversions can be traced back to their cause: Lear’s inversion of order by his handing over of kingly power to his daughters. He sums up Lear’s position with, “Thou hast pared thy wit o’both sides and left nothing in the middle.” The fool had used the word ‘nothing’ twice earlier in this exchange and ‘nothing’ has already been used at several earlier points in the play. A concordance (see the excellent Shakespeare concordance at http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org) reveals  that the word is used twenty-nine times in the play and that frequency underlines its significance as it echoes through the tragedy.  Lear chose a ‘nothing’ when he gave away his kingdom, albeit retaining “The name and all th’addition to a king” (1.1.137). This, however, as we shall see, will lead to a series of unwanted and tragic ‘nothings’. 

Goneril enters and complains to Lear about his “all licensed Fool” and his “insolent retinue” who do “hourly carp and quarrel, breaking forth / In rank and not-to-be endured riots”. In response to this, Lear asks, “Does any here know me?” And with further questions concerning his identity, he implies that he is no longer recognisable (by himself as well as others?) as Lear.  The Fool confirms the suggested split between the King Lear that was and the man he now is, when he answers Lear’s “Who am I?” with “Lear’s shadow”.  Lear then questions whether he has daughters and, in particular, who is the woman in front of him.   

Goneril ignores this and continues her complaints about the disorderly behaviour of Lear’s knights. She asks him “a little to disquantity your train”. He grows explosively angry and calls for his horses to be saddled and prepares to go to his other daughter. Albany enters and Lear calls Goneril a liar and insists that his knights would never behave as Goneril claims. He then turns on himself and blames himself for his foolish decisions, in particular his treatment of Cordelia. Albany speaks in a conciliatory manner. Lear continues to focus on Goneril. He invokes Nature as a goddess (compare this idea of Nature as a feminine creative force with Edmund’s idea of Nature), calling upon her to suspend her creative purpose and make Goneril sterile. He hopes that if she does have a child it teaches her “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child.’ In his explosive anger and the extremity of his curse upon Goneril, we see the same Lear who reacted so extremely to Cordelia and Kent. He sets off to stay with Regan, but almost immediately returns having discovered that Goneril had already set in motion a reduction in Lear’s knights from one hundred to fifty. He curses her again and leaves to stay with Regan believing she will be “kind and comfortable”. When Lear has gone, Goneril tells Albany that Lear’s knights were a potential threat to “our  lives”.  Oswald enters and Goneril asks him if he has “writ that letter to my sister?”  He says he has. In 1.3 Goneril, speaking to Oswald,  had complained of Lear’s “riotous knights” , referred to him as an “Idle old man” and ordered Oswald to behave negligently towards him, She said  she would write to her sister telling her to behave towards Lear in a similar way.  This is the letter that Oswald, acting as her secretary, must have “writ”. She tells Oswald to take the letter immediately. One assumes that the letter would be delivered to Regan at Cornwall’s castle.  She then criticises Albany for his “milky gentleness”; he cautions her with, “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well”. 

Act 1

Scene 5

Court before the Duke of Albany’s Castle

Characters involved

Kent
Lear
Fool
Gentleman

Lear sends his new servant, the disguised Kent, on ahead to take letters to Regan and let her know he is coming to stay. Kent promises, “I will not sleep, my lord, till I have delivered your letter.” Lear’s actual instructions are to take “letters” to Gloucester at least one of which is addressed to Regan (though in Elizabethan usage, letters plural coiuld be used for a letter). But why to “Gloucester”? Does he mean the place or the person? And, whether he means place or person, why mention Gloucester.? Why not to Regan at Cornwall’s ‘castle’?

Lear is left with his Fool who forecasts that Regan will be just as sour as Goneril and tells him, using an analogy from nature with obvious application to Lear, that a snail has a shell “to put’s head in, not to give it away to his daughters and leave his horns without a case”. The following dialogue of questions from the Fool and answers from Lear is interspersed with Lear’s distracted thoughts as he reflects on the wrong he did to Cordelia, on the taking back of the kingdom and the ingratitude of his daughter. The fragmentary, self-communing nature of these thoughts leads Lear to express a hope, or a prayer, that he is not going mad: “O let me not be mad, sweet heaven! I would not be mad”. This is Lear’s first mention of madness. Here it is a fear that he may go mad - a fear that is realised as the action develops. With the horses ready, they leave for Regan’s. The scene ends with the Fool making a bawdy joke though it does have a ‘moral’ in the form of veiled practical advice: the girl who is a virgin will not be one for long if she laughingly engages in intercourse unless “things” , that is, penises, are “cut shorter”. As the Fool says this, he could place his marotte, a fool’s head on a stick, between his legs. One could see this as a piece of practical realistic advice: do not engage in casual sex. As the Fool says this, he is alone on the stage and can be seen as addressing the audience. Does it have any bearing on Lear’s actions? Perhaps, in that one could say that Lear has behaved without due considerations of the consequences of his abdication and has acted impulsively in banishing Cordelia.

As we will see, in 3.1 a Knight explaining to Kent where Lear is in the storm says that he is alone except for his Fool who “labours to outjest/His heart-struck injuries”. However, as the present scene has shown, the Fool’s role goes beyond that of one who tries to soothe Lear’s feelings by means of jokes. In fact, the Fool’s ‘jests’ are a mix of barbed criticisms of Lear’s mistakes and realistic reflections on his predicament.

Act 2

Scene 1

A court within the Castle of the Earl of Gloucester

Characters involved

Edmund
Curan
Edgar
Gloucester
Servants
Cornwall
Regan

This scene takes place at Gloucester’s castle (where Edgar has been hiding in Edmund’s lodging). When Lear sent his servant (Kent in disguise) to tell Regan that he was coming to stay with her, he sent him “to Gloucester”. At the beginning of this scene, Edmund learns from a servant that Regan and Cornwall are on their way to Gloucester’s castle and that there are rumours of “likely wars toward ’twixt the dukes of Cornwall and Albany.” Edmund hopes Cornwall’s arrival will help his plans. He calls for his brother Edgar who has been in hiding and, taking immediate advantage of the rumoured Cornwall versus Albany conflict, tells Edgar that Regan and Cornwall are on their way and asks him if he has ever spoken in favour of either side. Presumably, Edmund raises this issue as a way of adding to the sense of living in dangerous times – though the more immediate danger comes from Gloucester who believes that Edgar has betrayed him. Edmund advises Edgar that “Intelligence is given where you are hid” and that he should ‘fly this place’. He sees their father Gloucester approaching and tells Edgar “pardon me / In cunning I must draw my sword upon you”, adding, “Draw, seem to defend yourself”. He shouts out, loud enough for Gloucester to hear, “Yield, come before my father” and, with lowered voice, tells Edgar to “flee”. As Edgar runs off, Edmund gives himself a wound to make his story about Edgar’s treachery more convincing. He then tells his father that Edgar tried to “Persuade me to the murder of your lordship”. Gloucester is convinced that Edgar is a “murderous caitiff”. He orders a hunt for him and declares that once caught he will be executed as will anyone who harbours him. He refers to the imminent arrival of  “The noble Duke, my master” whose authority he will call upon to proclaim his sentence on Edgar. Edmund drives home his advantage by giving a fabricated account of an argument he has just had with Edgar. He says that when he threatened to tell Gloucester about Edgar’s plot, Edgar said that he would deny it and claim that the whole plot was Edmund’s idea and that nobody would believe a bastard rather than the legitimate son. A trumpet announces the arrival of Cornwall and Regan. Gloucester plans to bar all escape routes and distribute Edgar’s picture as a form of ‘wanted poster’. He also says he will make it possible for Edmund to inherit Gloucester’s estate.

Regan and her husband arrive and since they have (somehow) heard about Edgar’s  ‘betrayal’, they sympathise with Gloucester. She refers to Edgar as “my father’s godson” and as “He whom my father named”. This reference to a godson and naming suggests Christian baptism and is one of a number of anachronistic Christian references given that the play is set in pre-Christian, pagan Britain. Regan raises the possibility that Edgar was one of the “riotous knights/That tended upon my father”. She says that she has, “this present evening”, “Been well informed of them” by her sister – this must refer to the letter from Goneril. As well as ‘informing’ her of the knights, Goneril also ‘cautioned’ her not to be at home if Lear and knights “come to sojourn” at her castle.  Edmund, seeing a further opportunity to damage Edgar’s reputation, confirms that Edgar was  “of that consort” (of knights). Regan, keen to speak ill of the knights, claims that they had probably persuaded Edgar to get rid of his father and so inherit his wealth.  Cornwall offers Gloucester whatever resources he needs to hunt and capture Edgar. He then tells Edmund “For you, Edmund, / Whose virtue and obedience doth this instant / So much commend itself, you shall be ours” . Regan tells Gloucester they are visiting him for ‘needful counsel’ on dealing with the news received from her father and her sister. Following her sister’s advice, she has left her home and, “threading dark-eyed night”, arrived at Gloucester’s in order to prevent Lear and his retinue from being able to stay – presumably, all at Cornwall’s ‘castle’ would be bolted and barred.   She says she has received letters from both Goneril and  Lear . She also says, of the letters,  that she “thought it fit/To answer from [ie., away from] our home.” The letter from Goneril was taken by Oswald (see I.4.332) and, one assumes, it was to be delivered  to Regan at her home.  The letter from Lear to Regan was given to Kent to deliver at Gloucester’s.  Regan speaks as if she was in possession of both letters when she was at home. She then decided to answer them away from home. At the beginning of 2.2 Oswald arrives at Gloucester’s and Kent says of him “You come with letters against the King”. Kent may well have presumed that this was Oswald’s mission but Oswald would have been sent to Regan’s castle and according to Regan she has already received the letters. Kent’s explanation at 2.4.218 helps to clear matters up, however, as the footnote at 2.1.124 in the Arden edition puts it, “The exchanges of letters in the play are not easy to follow”. Regan also seems to have remarkably early knowledge of the supposed Edgar plot. The scene closes with her calling on Gloucester to “bestow/Your needful counsel to our business”.  Gloucester, notwithstanding any misgivings he may have about the sisters’ treatment of Lear, ends the scene with “I serve you, madam,/Your graces are right welcome”.

Act 2

Scene 2

A court within the Castle of the Earl of Gloucester

Characters involved

Kent
Oswald
Edmund
Gloucester
Cornwall
Regan

Oswald has arrived at Gloucester’s castle and meets Kent who has also just arrived. They are both carrying letters yet, as we have just seen, Regan seems already to be aware of the contents.

Oswald does not (or claims he does not) recognise the disguised Kent as a follower of Lear and the two men argue. Kent, in a lengthy catalogue of abusive terms and threats, hurls insults and draws his sword against Oswald for carrying “letters against the king” and taking “vanity the puppet’s part against the royalty of her father”.

Regan, Cornwall, Gloucester and Edmund arrive and stop the fight but Kent refuses to back down saying “anger hath a privilege”. Cornwall asks him to explain why he is angry. Kent is angry that such a “rogue” as Oswald should hold a significant position. Turning to Oswald he curses and threatens him, ending with , “Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain,/I’d drive ye cackling home to Camelot”.  Questioned further by Cornwall, Kent says he simply dislikes Oswald’s face and that he is not impressed by any of the faces in front of him now. Oswald adds that he has done nothing to offend Kent and describes the occasion at Goneril’s home when Lear struck him – Lear struck him for his lack of respect for the King – and Kent tripped him up (he now acknowledges that he recognises Kent). Cornwall calls for the stocks to punish Kent who appeals to Regan saying “Why, madam, if I were your father’s dog / You should not use me so”. Gloucester adds,  ‘The king his master needs must take it ill’ but Regan and Cornwall are unconcerned. They have Kent placed in the stocks  before  they exit. Gloucester expresses sympathy but Kent is resilient and untroubled and says he will simply catch up on his sleep.  Left alone, Kent reveals a letter (as yet unread) he has received from Cordelia “Who hath most fortunately been informed / Of my obscured course”. He reads out a line concerning ‘giving remedies to losses’. He then turns to sleep. 

(Some editors place a scene break here so making what follows 2.3. I have followed this practice. The Arden edition puts 2.3 in brackets but the page heading keeps the action as part of 2.2.).

Act 2

Scene 3

The open country

Characters involved

Edgar

Edgar in a soliloquy explains how he escaped from his pursuers – he hid in a hollow tree. The hunt for him is still on and so he has decided to adopt a disguise as a wandering “Bedlam” beggar. That is a beggar who has been kept in Bethlehem Hospital for the mad and now wanders the roads as a homeless madman. Like such a beggar, he will cut his bare arms and wander through “low farms/Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes and mills” sometimes shouting curses, sometimes prayers. Such beggars make such a disturbing sight that people run away or are frightened into giving them alms. He will call himself Tom , ‘Tom o’Bedlam’ being a generic name for such beggars – we have met the name already when Edmund said he would “sigh like Tom o’Bedlam” (1.2.135). There is a striking vividness and sensuous particularity about the details Edgar gives of his transformed appearance and lunatic behaviour and of the country he will walk through (“low farms ,/Poor pelting villages”). By providing this foretaste of Tom’s language and behaviour, Shakespeare ensures that we are ready to discern Edgar underneath the ‘Poor Tom’ we will meet on the heath. Edgar’s soliloquy also serves as a bridge between the Tom we will meet and the Edgar we have met up to this point. The ‘legitimate’ Edgar, the somewhat naïve son of a Duke, seemed to be too conventional to use language with the grainy particularity, the cumulative rhythmic vehemence, the unhinged frenzy of Poor Tom on the heath. By giving this advance account of Tom’s behaviour with its foretaste of his vivid language we are ready to concede that Edgar ‘has it in him’ to act in this way. We should also note that Edgar says that “The country gives me proof and precedent/Of Bedlam beggars”; in other words, he has often seen them and so has picked up their behaviour and sayings. In fact. as we will see, in his role as Tom, he goes beyond merely acting and seems to become (to adopt one of Lear’s phrases) “the thing itself”. There is a truth, then, in the last words of his soliloquy, “Edgar I nothing am”. This declaration has a wider resonance in that, as we will see, Edgar develops as a character. The Edgar he declares to be “nothing” (that word again!) can be seen as the naively trusting (some commentators say “colourless”) Edgar that was, rather than the Edgar that is to be, the Edgar that grows and develops through testing experiences.

Here the Arden edition has a bracketed 2.4 for the next action but the page heading keeps what follows in 2.2.

Act 2

Scene 4

Gloucester’s Castle, Kent in Stocks

Characters involved

Lear
Kent
Fool
a Knight
Gloucester
Cornwall
Regan
Goneril

Lear arrives at Gloucester’s castle with a knight and the Fool. Speaking to the knight, Lear says he finds it strange “that they should so depart from home”, “they” being Regan and Cornwall. We now know that Lear had been to Regan’s only to find her away from home and so he has now gone to Gloucester’s. Kent, still in the stocks, wakes up. Lear is shocked at Kent’s treatment, complaining “’tis worse than murder / To do upon respect such violent outrage”. Kent explains what has been happening. From what he says, it is now clear that, notwithstanding Lear apparently sending him to Gloucester (see the beginning of I.5), Kent went to Regan’s with Lear’s letter and that, whilst he was there, Oswald arrived with the letter from Goneril. Immediately after reading that letter, Regan and Cornwall and party “took horse” and instructed Kent to follow so that he would be available to take their answer to Lear’s letter. Once at Gloucester’s, Kent had his encounter with Oswald (he must also have followed expecting to carry a reply to Goneril’s letter). Lear is outraged by the way his messenger has been treated. At several points the Fool adds his own riddling, bitter reflections on human misfortune and on Lear’s in particular. Lear suddenly feels that he is suffering a form of ‘disease’ that he calls “this mother”. This was a medical condition known to the Elizabethans as ‘the mother’. The condition was mainly experienced by women but it was not unknown in men. A sufferer felt a choking in the throat. The sensation was thought to have arisen from the womb or, in men, from the stomach. It was also known as Hysterico passio. Today it would be seen as a form of hysteria in which the patient becomes so overwhelmed by emotion that he/she experiences physical symptoms. It was thought that women were more inclined to behave in this hysterical way. Given this prejudice, it is particularly troubling for Lear, a powerful male figure, to feel that he is about to experience this female condition. As with his earlier fear of going mad, to be subjected to this condition would be another example of his fear of losing control. As the Fool keeps reminding him, he has lost control of his kingdom but he is also faced with the prospect of losing control of himself whether it be as a result of madness or this ‘female’ condition, ‘the mother’.

At this point of crisis, Lear goes inside with Gloucester determined to speak to Regan but soon returns with Gloucester.  Gloucester tells him that Regan and Cornwall will not see him (“They are sick, they are weary/They have travelled all the night”). Lear is further outraged and sends Gloucester back inside to insist that Regan and Cornwall come out to speak with him. This time, they do come out. Regan’s opening greeting, “I am glad to see your highness”, prompts Lear to say, “If thou shouldst not be glad,/ I would divorce me from thy mother’s womb/Sepulchring an adultress”. In other words, if you were not glad to see me,  it would show that you are the bastard offspring of my unfaithful wife. And if so, I would divorce my wife even though she is now dead. Having entertained this hypothetical idea, he quickly switches to addressing her as “Beloved Regan” and so truly his daughter. However, when he complains of Goneril’s treatment he is shocked and rebuffed by Regan’s insistence that her sister would not fail in her obligations and that restraining “the riots” of Lear’s knights was a perfectly reasonable action. Regan insists that Lear should return to Goneril and seek her forgiveness. Lear is astounded at the very idea that he should seek forgiveness. Rather pathetically, he goes down on his knees before Regan and begs for “raiment, bed and food”. Regan insists that he must go back to Goneril. Rising, he lists the various forms of Goneril’s ill treatment and pours curses upon her. Lear, desperately wanting Regan to be kind,  says he would never curse her as she is not harsh and would never treat him as Goneril has. 

When Oswald arrives, he is soon followed by Goneril (but no Albany – remember, from 2.1, the “likely wars toward ‘twixt the two dukes of Cornwall and Albany”). Regan says that in Goneril’s letter to her she said that she would be coming to see her. When Goneril herself arrives, Regan takes her hand as a sign of sisterly alliance which shocks Lear. Regan repeats her insistence that, with his “train” half dismissed, Lear should go back to Goneril’s for the rest of his monthly stay (remember that arrangement: a month with each sister?). Lear vehemently refuses, saying he would prefer to “abjure all roofs” and be a “comrade with the wolf and owl”. 

Lear appeals to Goneril, “daughter, do not make me mad” which once again shows Lear feels that he is close to madness. He bids Goneril “Farewell” as if he would have no more to do with her. At the same time he acknowledges her as “my flesh, my blood, my daughter” but then qualifies this with ”Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh,/Which I must call mine”. He turns to Regan again, thinking that he and his hundred knights could stay with her. Regan goes on to reduce her offer to five and twenty knights. Lear then, thinking Goneril’s acceptance of fifty knights is the lesser of two evils, decides to go to Goneril’s. Goneril, however, argues that he does not need fifty nor does he need twenty five. She questions whether he even needs ten or even five. Regan then chips in with “What need one?”. Lear then makes a long speech in which he argues that human needs go beyond the needs of bare necessity. He invokes the gods to inspire him to “noble anger” and swears that he will have terrible revenge on his daughters (they are now both “unnatural hags”). He says he is determined not to weep then turns to the Fool with “O Fool, I shall go mad” and ‘exits’ whilst a “storm and tempest” begin. Having made their various excuses for making no provision for Lear and his followers, Cornwall, Regan and Goneril take shelter inside. Gloucester, who exited with Lear, returns and says that Lear has left and expresses pity since night comes on and the “high winds/Do sorely ruffle” and “for miles about/There’s scarce a bush”. Regan argues that Lear has brought it upon himself and she regards it as just as well since in her view, and this is something she said earlier, the knights are a “desperate train” who could do much harm. They go indoors.

Act 3

Scene 1

A Heath in a Storm

Characters involved

Kent
Knight

Kent is looking for the king, and one of Lear’s knights tells him that Lear is “Contending with the fretful elements”: he is bidding the wind “to blow the earth into the sea” so that “things might change, or cease”. The knight adds that this is a night when even the wild animals keep to their lairs. The animals that he mentions – bear, lion and wolf (lions in Ancient Britain?) are in keeping with s sense of Britain as a wild, untamed place. Kent tells the gentleman of French spies in the castles of Albany and Cornwall. These spies have kept Cordelia and the King of France informed of the quarrels between Albany and Cornwall and of their mistreatment of the King. Kent asks the knight to go to Dover where he will find “Some [Cordelia and French forces?] that will thank you” for a report on the present condition of the King. To assure the knight that he is “a gentleman of blood and breeding”, Kent gives the knight a ring which, if shown to Cordelia, will prove that he has come from Kent. They then go to find Lear.

Act 3

Scene 2

Another Part of the Heath

Characters involved

Lear
Fool
Kent

Lear shouts at the stormy skies “Blow winds and crack your cheeks!”. He calls upon the powers of the storm to do terrible destruction. He calls on the storm to let “fall” its “horrible pleasure” upon him – unlike his daughters, the storm can not be accused of “unkindness”. He describes the storm as “high-engendered”, that is, originating in ‘heaven’, but, paradoxically, its elements of wind and rain, thunder and lightning are given a lowly role as “servile ministers”. These ministers, although not acting from unkindness, are said to join with his “two pernicious daughters” to abuse Lear, a “poor, infirm, weak old man”.

Kent enters and, having found Lear, emphasises the exceptional nature of the storm. Lear calls upon the storm to be even wilder.  He sees it as acting for the gods by seeking out humans that need to be punished for their wrong doings. However, he regards himself as one who is, “More sinned against than sinning”. Kent urges him to take shelter in a nearby hovel. Lear now sees his fears of madness are being fulfilled when he says, “My wits begin to turn”. Meanwhile, he, Kent, even though he has been refused admission once,  will go back to Gloucester’s and try to gain entry and shelter for Lear. Lear, slipping out of his frenzied state, recognises that his “wits begin to turn” and decides to enter the hovel with the Fool. The Fool, once again addressing the audience or, addressing an imaginary listener or listeners, ends the scene with what he calls a “prophecy”. The first four lines list corrupt practices in society; the next six describe the practices of a virtuous society.  Ironically, this latter state will be so surprising that the “realm of Albion” (an ancient name for Britain) will “Come to great confusion”  (perhaps we should read ‘to even greater confusion’ since the failings of the first part of the ‘prophecy’ already bring Albion into ‘confusion’).  He ends with the line, “This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time”. How seriously do we take this statement?  The rather cynical realism of the ‘prophecy’ is in keeping with the Fool’s character , or at least that part of it shaped by his recent experiences. But the wearing of the mantle of a Mage-like prophet, a Merlin-like wizard, seems to be too inflated a role for the Fool, whose natural inclinations are to debunk, to puncture pretension, to unmask folly.  I take it that that the Fool is posing as a prophetic sage (one who is especially prophetic since he knows about Merlin even though he lives before him!).  As such, his speech is an ironic parody of such prophetic utterances. 

        It is also interesting to note that the Fool refers to the Arthurian legend and what is also known as the Matter of Britain (look it up!) with his reference to Merlin and by referring to Britain as Albion. There is an even earlier Arthurian reference in King Lear  when Kent says to Oswald, “Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain/I”d drive ye  cackling home to Camelot” –  Camelot being King Arthur’s court and Sarum plain, which is Salisbury Plain, is a significant place in Arthurian legend. However,   according to Geoffrey of Monmouth (see my earlier reference to him), Leir and 8th century Britain belonged to a time long before King Arthur.  As has already been ponted out, King Lear is not a history play and is not bound by historical sequence. Within King Lear, Ancient Britain, aspects of Elizabethan England and Arthurian references are allowed to have a degree of simultaneous presence.  Indeed, one could argue that hints of an Arthurian presence are particularly appropriate in the ‘realm’ of a legendary Britain.

Act 3

Scene 3

Gloucester’s Castle

Characters involved

Gloucester
Edmund

Gloucester confides in Edmund his concerns about Lear. He tells Edmund of a letter locked in his closet that is “dangerous to be spoken” and that “there is part of a power already footed” to revenge “these injuries the king now bears”. Gloucester says he will go to find the King and secretly help him – even though he has been threatened with death if he were to do so. As soon as Gloucester leaves, Edmund says that he will immediately report all of this to Cornwall. He is sure that, as a result, Cornwall and Regan will dispossess Gloucester and he, Edmund, will become the Duke of Gloucester.

Act 3

Scene 4

The Heath before a Hovel

Characters involved

Lear
Kent
Fool
Edgar as Poor Tom
Gloucester

Kent has led Lear to the hovel and urges him to go in. Lear is not troubled by the storm since, as he explains, “this tempest in my mind/Doth from my senses take all feeling else.” He struggles to prevent himself dwelling upon his daughters’ cruelty for he realises that, “that way madness lies”. Before he enters, Lear thinks about the “Poor naked wretches” in his kingdom who have no shelter. Lear’s first response to the storm was marked by self-pity, by his sense of himself as a “poor, weak … old man”, a man “more sinned against than sinning”. Now, however, the storm makes him think of others, of “Poor naked wretches”. He confesses that, “I have ta’en / Too little care of this”. He tells himself “to feel what wretches feel” and so sting the consciences of the powerful – such as the imperious King that he

heavens more just”. The trauma he has experienced can both lead to madness and also – when it induces a radical reassessment of himself as King – to wisdom. At this point the Fool comes back out of the hovel, scared of “a spirit” inside it called “Poor Tom”. Edgar emerges disguised as Poor Tom, behaving and speaking like a “Bedlam beggar”. Leare’s new found sympathy for the poor comes at the right moment for the appearance of Tom, a “Poor naked wretch”.

At this point we should recall Edgar’s soliloquy at 2.3. 1-21. In 1-21 he  said that he is aware of the extreme measures that have been taken (“unusual vigilance”) to capture him. To avoid capture, he planned to disguise himself as a Bedlam beggar and call himself Tom.  He claimed to be familiar with the typical  appearance and behaviour of these beggars:  “The country” had given him “proof and precedent” of their behaviour. His almost naked body  was to be be grimed with filth and his hair tangled – (almost naked since his  ‘loins’ are to be ‘blanketed’); he would carry out  forms of self-harm typical of these beggars (sticking pins and the like in his bare arms). And going beyond mere appearance, he would mimic  their lunatic cries, their ”roaring voices”, their mix of “lunatic bans” (curses) and “prayers”. He stated, firmly, that he would no longer be Edgar.

Here we can also consider further the question (already touched upon in the summary of 2.3), ‘Who is this ‘Edgar’?’ Obviously enough, he is the legitimate son of the Duke of Gloucester and his step-brother has plotted against him. But what of his character? What do we know of him from the earlier scenes? On his first appearance (see 1.2. 138), he puts a series of questions to Edmund: “what serious contemplation are you in?”, “Do you busy yourself with that?”, “How long have you been a secretary astronomical?” The probing nature of these questions suggests a man of some intelligence and insight. They imply he had not thought of Edmund as someone inclined to deep speculations. His phrase “secretary astronomical” is rather ironic and implies that he, Edgar, is somewhat sceptical concerning astronomy. However, one might wonder whether he is too easily fooled by Edmund concerning Gloucester’s violent anger. To answer this charge we could respond as follows. We have seen something of how volatile Gloucester can be in his “These late eclipses” speech (I ii 103-114) where he turned the ‘local’ breakdowns of family relations into an apocalyptic malaise of global disorder. With this in mind, we can readily imagine that Edmund knows that his father could be roused into states of extreme emotion.  And, again with this in mind, we can understand why Edgar’s immediate response to Edmund’s warning concerning their father’s rage was not disbelief (after all he had enjoyed friendly relations with him the night before)  but, “Some villain hath done me wrong”.  We  also have to credit Edmund with being persuasive and, perhaps above all,  take note of what he says, in soliloquy, after Edgar leaves to hide in Edmund’s quarters. Edmund says that his father is “credulous’ and his brother is “noble”.  Edgar’s nobility lies in a nature whose ‘default setting’ is to trust another person, particularly a brother. His very virtue makes him, initially at least, relatively easy for Edmund to fool.

Returning to Tom’s appearance, we soon see how well Edgar must have observed the “roaring voices’, the “lunatic bans” (curses) of the Bedlam beggars that the “country” had given him “proof and precedent” of. Yet he enters into the part with an energy that seems to go beyond mere mimicry and imitation. He seems to become, to adapt some later words of Lear, “the thing itself”.  Some part of his own self, a part buried under his conventional social self, his privileged son-of-a-Duke self, seems to emerge. In his wild rants that list with cumulative power his devil-possessed world, his sinful past, his repulsive diet, he out-Bedlams the Bedlamite, he becomes an inspired genius of a lunatic Bedlam ranter. Take for example the extraordinary image in his “Who gives anything to Poor Tom” speech when he says the “foul fiend” made him “proud of heart to ride on a bay trotting horse over four-inched bridges”. This is a breath-taking image of an ‘impossible’  supernatural event  that belongs to the enchanted world of glamourie.  It reveals a side of Edgar that we would not have imagined from our first encounter – an issue previously discussed when considering the dramatic purpose of Edgar’s soliloquy at 2.1. Yet we can, perhaps, discern some outlines of Edgar, the hunted outcast, in the various versions Tom will give of being driven, hunted and pursued by the devils that seek to possess him.  

Lear seeing his own troubled condition in that of Tom’s, asks him “Didst thou give all to thy daughters?”  Tom does not answer the question, does not partake in dialogue, but describes his condition through alliteration and repetitive pairing (“through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool”), through the naming of sinister traps, and through the accumulation of emphatic speech rhythms and the snatch of a song’s refrain. His account is designed to waken a mix of pity and fear and ends with a blessing of his listeners and an appeal to their charity. Lear, projecting on to Tom his own troubles, is unable to see Tom’s plight other than one inflicted by Tom’s daughters. Although he does not answer questions, does not participate in dialogue,  Edgar must be picking up information about Lear and his mistreatment by his daughters – information, which will shortly be given added emphasis when Lear refers to his “unkind daughters” and his “pelican daughters”. Tom, however,  continues with his graphic monologues. He begins with moralising advice (“obey thy parents, keep thy word…”)  then switches into the persona of a man with a ‘dark’ past who, in a mix of boast and confession, itemises his sins before returning to deliver advice on how to live virtuously and so “defy the foul fiend”. What makes Tom’s words sound like those of a madman is the cumulative tirade-like way he delivers his ‘advice’ and the way he switches from confessing to vices to preaching virtue and then adds the non sequitur  of the bleak refrain “Still through the  hawthorn blows the cold wind”. Lear, now no longer blinded by kingly pomp and, as a result, sympathetic to the hardships of the poor, is intrigued by Tom. He refers to his “uncovered body” facing “the extremity of the skies” – we recall that when Edgar first put on his Tom disguise, he stripped off clothing and said he would “with presented nakedness outface/The winds and persecutions of the sky”. Lear sees in Tom, the Bedlam beggar, “unaccommodated man”.  That is, man without any of the most basic comforts of life, in particular, clothing; man stripped down in this way is no more than a “poor, bare, forked animal”. Wishing to identify himself with  the stark reality of this animal identity, Lear starts to take off his own clothes but is restrained by Kent and the Fool. 

At this point, Gloucester enters carrying a torch. The Fool sees him as “a little fire in a wild field”; Tom sees him as a devil (“Flibbertigibbet”) whom Swithold (St Withold) will dismiss. (Here, as at several other points in the play, we have an anachronistic  Christian reference.) It has already been suggested that we can sense Edgar speaking of his plight as hunted outcast in Tom’s pursuit by devils. In Tom’s response to Gloucester, his naming of him as “the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet… who hurts the poor creatures of earth”, we can perhaps hear Edgar responding with some anger to the man who ordered his pursuit. 

Of course, it is  Gloucester who appears, not a supernatural manifestation. However, coupled with the storm, these suggestions of nocturnal demonic powers all add to the sense of exposure  on the heath to a menacing, eldritch atmosphere without the security of ‘normal’ life. With Gloucester’s entry, Edgar, probably to deepen his disguise with his father nearby, furthers his Bedlamite identity with his extraordinary listing of what we could call his verminous and repulsive ‘frog, toad and cow dung’ diet. To which he adds being  persecuted by villagers and a resumé of a previous privileged life  with “three suits to his back, six shirts to his body,/Horse to ride and weapon to wear”. He ends returning to his diet, adding “mice and rats and such small deer”as he wanders the roads. This prompts Gloucester, with unconscious irony (‘Tom’ being his son),  to ask Lear, “hath your grace no better company?” He also adds,  “Our flesh and blood, my lord, is grown so vile/That it doth hate what gets it” – this is said as prelude to what follows when he says to Lear that “your daughters’ hard commands” have ruled that he should be barred from entering Gloucester’s castle and left at the mercy of the ”tyrannous night”.  Having heard this from Gloucester, Edgar now has a fuller picture of the unkindness of Lear’s daughters and, given their abuse of a man of Lear’s status, the dire condition of Britain. He must also realise from Gloucester’s generalised comment on “Our flesh and blood”  that he still thinks Edgar  is guilty of some terrible wrong. However, Gloucester will shortly describe his own personal condition in a way that reveals to Edgar his supposed offence. Gloucester says that he had a son, now outlawed , who ‘sought his life’. Edgar must now see the full malevolence of the plot against him and with so much of family conflict in the air he must,  surely, have decided on Edmund as the villain who has done him wrong – something which he has probably suspected for some time.

Gloucester then offers to take Lear home despite Lear’s daughters having forbidden this. Lear, however, wants to stay with Tom whom he describes as “my philosopher”. Kent fears that Lear is going mad (“His wits begin t’unsettle”) and Gloucester responds with “Canst thou blame him?” He then outlines his own problems with his once much-loved son and says that he too feels that this has driven him mad. He tells Tom to go into his hovel, Lear wants to go in with Tom since he regards him  as “unaccommodated man” and so free of the usual human falsehoods and illusions. He describes him as a “learned Theban” and as a “Noble philosopher”. He says, “I’ll talk a word with this same learned Theban:/What is your study?”  There is an ambiguity in Tom’s reply, “How to prevent the fiend and to kill vermin”,  since it is both consistent with all that Tom has said yet, once again,  we can also read into it Edgar stating his intention to deal with “the villain” who hath done him “wrong”. Kent persuades Lear from going into the hovel and, since he will not leave without Tom, they all go off together. The scene ends with Tom adding a further ‘dark’ note with some haunting lines from what seems to be a folk ballad: “Childe Rowland to the dark tower came,/His word was still, ‘Fie, foh and fum/I smell the blood of a British man.’”

Displaced from the privileged world of his kingship and losing his mind, Lear  is adrift in a  landscape where Tom does battle with devils, where a man approaching with a torch is seen as “a little fire in a wild field” and where a Childe Rowland can be imagined making his way to a storm-lit dark tower.  

You may well have noticed the many references to animals in Tom’s speeches. He refers to horse, rat, hog, sloth, fox, wolf, dog and ditch-dog, frog, toad, tadpole, cow, mice and  the wall-newt and the water-newt. As A. C. Bradley points out in his previously referred to Shakespearean Tragedy, there are many references to animals in King Lear . To those just mentioned, Bradley adds sheep, lion, bear, monkey, pole-cat, civet-cat, pelican, butterfly, worm, kite, serpent, boar, mongrel, wag-tail, tiger … You may find others. Often these references are used to characterise a person. to bring out their savagery or other vices and failures.

Act 3

Scene 5

Gloucester’s castle

Characters involved

Cornwall
Edmund

Gloucester brings Lear, Kent, ‘Poor Tom’ and the Fool to a place of shelter near his castle. Edgar continues to play a role both as detector of devils and an adviser on how to ward them off. Lear continues to complain about how his daughters have treated him, and sets up a mock trial of Regan and Goneril. Lear appoints Edgar and the Fool with legal roles and they join in the play. Edgar takes on a Fool-like role as he recites riddling verses. Lear is increasingly agitated and deluded. He speaks to Goneril as if she is present and refers to Regan as if present (“Here’s another whose warped looks proclaim/What store her heart is made on”). In Lear’s deluded state the sisters then seem to change into three dogs, “Trey, Blanch and Sweetheart”. Yet there is a kind of reason at work here if we take the dogs’ names as symbolic of the sisters: Trey is ‘betray’ abbreviated; Blanch is ‘to blanch’, to make pale (with fear) and these names could be applied to both Goneril and Regan. Sweetheart is Cordelia now restored as Lear’s darling.. He then calls on the authorities he imagines to be present to “anatomise Regan” (that is to dissect) in order to see “what breeds about her heart”. This leads him to ask, “Is there any cause in nature that make these hard hearts?”. Here we may recall that at several points in the play the supposed patricidal intentions of Edgar are described as “unnatural” (by both Gloucester and Edmund) and that Lear refers to his cruel daughters as “unnatural hags”. So cruelty to parents is against nature, it is “unnatural”, yet Lear seems to be seeking a cause in nature, a natural cause, for “unnatural” behaviour. However, perhaps we should read his question as, ‘Can there (possibly) be any cause in nature for their behaviour.?’ With an implied answer. “There can not since it is so unnatural’.

Then , with an immediate switch of subject, he addresses Tom saying that he would take him into his service as one of his knights were it not for his garments  since they are “Persian” in fashion. “Persian” equals luxurious, silken  “attire”  and this is clearly deluded for Tom’s meagre  clothing  is of the poorest kind. Yet there is perhaps a kind of ‘mad’ rationale here. Lear had just been speaking of Regan and in 2.4 in Lear’s “Reason not the need” speech he had referred to Regan’s attire as luxurious, as “gorgeous”, that is, as “Persian”. So one could speculate that one part of his disturbed mind, that part thinking of Regan, has crossed with, has ‘infiltrated’, that which is addressing ‘Tom”.   Lear’s deluded state continues when, encouraged to rest by Kent, he says “we’ll go to supper in the morning”. To which confusion of meal times,  the fool adds his ironic confusion of bedtimes, “I’ll go to bed at noon”. One can also a suggestion of Lear’s unsettling decision to abdicate in this topsy-turvy world where meagre clothing becomes luxurious clothing, supper is in the morning, and bed-time at noon. Looking back at 1.4 we can see something similar in  the various ways in which the Fool  told Lear that he had inverted the natural order of things: the one kind daughter and the two unkind daughters become two kind and one unkind (1.4. 100); and daughters become mothers who chastise the child that is Lear (1.4.162-165). The Fool’s “I’ll go to bed at noon” line is his last line in the play.

Kent eventually persuades Lear to rest but then Gloucester returns and tells Kent they must leave immediately since he has heard of “a plot of death” upon Lear. He urges Kent to take Lear in his arms and to  “drive toward Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet / Both welcome and protection.” They leave, but Edgar hangs back and, speaking as Edgar, reflects how the sight of Lear’s extreme suffering has put his own into perspective.

Act 3

Scene 6

Near Gloucester’s Castle

Characters involved

Gloucester
Kent
Lear
Fool
Edgar/Poor Tom

Gloucester brings Lear, Kent, ‘Poor Tom’ and the Fool to a place of shelter near his castle. Edgar continues to play a role both as detector of devils and an adviser on how to ward them off. Lear continues to complain about how his daughters have treated him, and sets up a mock trial of Regan and Goneril. Lear appoints Edgar and the Fool with legal roles and they join in the play. Edgar takes on a Fool-like role as he recites riddling verses. Lear is increasingly agitated and deluded. He speaks to Goneril as if she is present and refers to Regan as if present (“Here’s another whose warped looks proclaim/What store her heart is made on”). In Lear’s deluded state the sisters then seem to change into three dogs, “Trey, Blanch and Sweetheart”. Yet there is a kind of reason at work here if we take the dogs’ names as symbolic of the sisters: Trey is ‘betray’ abbreviated; Blanch is ‘to blanch’, to make pale (with fear) and these names could be applied to both Goneril and Regan. Sweetheart is Cordelia now restored as Lear’s darling.. He then calls on the authorities he imagines to be present to “anatomise Regan” (that is to dissect) in order to see “what breeds about her heart”. This leads him to ask, “Is there any cause in nature that make these hard hearts?”. Here we may recall that at several points in the play the supposed patricidal intentions of Edgar are described as “unnatural” (by both Gloucester and Edmund) and that Lear refers to his cruel daughters as “unnatural hags”. So cruelty to parents is against nature, it is “unnatural”, yet Lear seems to be seeking a cause in nature, a natural cause, for “unnatural” behaviour. However, perhaps we should read his question as, ‘Can there (possibly) be any cause in nature for their behaviour.?’ With an implied answer. “There can not since it is so unnatural’.

Then , with an immediate switch of subject, he addresses Tom saying that he would take him into his service as one of his knights were it not for his garments  since they are “Persian” in fashion. “Persian” equals luxurious, silken  “attire”  and this is clearly deluded for Tom’s meagre  clothing  is of the poorest kind. Yet there is perhaps a kind of ‘mad’ rationale here. Lear had just been speaking of Regan and in 2.4 in Lear’s “Reason not the need” speech he had referred to Regan’s attire as luxurious, as “gorgeous”, that is, as “Persian”. So one could speculate that one part of his disturbed mind, that part thinking of Regan, has crossed with, has ‘infiltrated’, that which is addressing ‘Tom”.   Lear’s deluded state continues when, encouraged to rest by Kent, he says “we’ll go to supper in the morning”. To which confusion of meal times,  the fool adds his ironic confusion of bedtimes, “I’ll go to bed at noon”. One can also a suggestion of Lear’s unsettling decision to abdicate in this topsy-turvy world where meagre clothing becomes luxurious clothing, supper is in the morning, and bed-time at noon. Looking back at 1.4 we can see something similar in  the various ways in which the Fool  told Lear that he had inverted the natural order of things: the one kind daughter and the two unkind daughters become two kind and one unkind (1.4. 100); and daughters become mothers who chastise the child that is Lear (1.4.162-165). The Fool’s “I’ll go to bed at noon” line is his last line in the play.

       Kent eventually persuades Lear to rest but then Gloucester returns and tells Kent they must leave immediately since he has heard of “a plot of death” upon Lear. He urges Kent to take Lear in his arms and to  “drive toward Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet / Both welcome and protection.” They leave, but Edgar hangs back and, speaking as Edgar, reflects how the sight of Lear’s extreme suffering has put his own into perspective.

Act 3

Scene 7

Gloucester’s Castle

Characters involved

Cornwall
Regan
Goneril
Edmund
Oswald
Gloucester, Three of Gloucester’s Servants

Cornwall urges Goneril to go to her husband (Albany) carrying the letter Gloucester received and Edmund took from Gloucester’s closet and passed to Cornwall. The letter refers to the French invaders. Regan and Goneril express anger over what they regard as Gloucester’s ‘betrayal’. Regan says, “Hang him instantly” and Goneril adds, “Pluck out his eyes.” Cornwall tells Edmund (now addressing him as “my lord of Gloucester”) to go with Goneril – Cornwall says he wants to save Edmund the pain of seeing his father punished.

Oswald arrives with news that Lear and “Some five- or six-and-thirty of his knights” (Oswald calls them “questrists”) have gone toward Dover “where they boast / To have well-armed friends.” Goneril sets off back to her castle, accompanied by Edmund, while Cornwall sends servants to bring in “the traitor Gloucester”.

Gloucester is brought in and protests, “Good my friends, consider you are my guests / Do me no foul play, friends” but he is tied to a chair and interrogated concerning the letter from France – the contents of which Cornwall and Regan already know.  He tells Regan he has sent Lear to Dover “because I would not see thy cruel nails/Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister/In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs”.  He does not mention the “well-armed friends” that Oswald referred to. In response, Cornwall gouges out one of Gloucester’s eyes but, before he can take out the other eye, one of Gloucester’s servants, identified as the first servant, calls “Hold your hand, my lord”. Cornwall fights with the servant. The servant wounds Cornwall but Regan takes another servant’s sword and stabs the first servant in the back and kills him. The wounded Cornwall then returns to pluck out Gloucester’s remaining eye, saying “Out vile jelly”. Gloucester calls out for Edmund but Regan tells him it was Edmund “That made the overture of thy treasons to us”.

Gloucester finally realises he has trusted the wrong son. Cornwall has been seriously wounded in the fight with his servant. Regan orders the remaining servants to thrust Gloucester out, “and let him smell/His way to Dover” and then helps her husband who is now bleeding profusely. One of the servants – there were three servants present – suggests leading Gloucester to “the bedlam” (beggar), that is, to ‘Poor Tom’. The other servant agrees and says he will bring “some flax and whites of eggs/To apply to his bleeding face”.

Act 4

Scene 1

The Heath

Characters involved

Edgar/Poor Tom
Old Man
Gloucester

Still disguised as ‘Poor Tom’, Edgar comes across his blinded father being led away from his castle by an old man who lived on Gloucester’s land. Edgar is horrified to see his father in this state. He hears Gloucester tell the old man, “I have no way and therefore want no eyes / I stumbled when I saw”; he also confesses that he was unjust to his son Edgar. He says, addressing the (to him) absent Edgar, “O dear son Edgar,/The food of thy abused father’s wrath,/Might I but live to see thee in my touch,/I’d say I had eyes again.” Why, when he hears this, doesn’t Edgar reveal his identity and fulfil his father’s wish? A. C. Bradley in Shakespearean Tragedy raises this question and says, “The answer must be left to mere conjecture”. We can, as Bradley suggests, speculate. Given that he must now realise that Edmund has conspired against him and fooled him, perhaps he feels that if he had acted more shrewdly, less naively, he might have dealt with Edmund effectively and so changed whatever course of events (the nature of which he does not yet know) have led to his father being maimed. In addition to feelings of shame and guilt holding him back, perhaps he also feels that to reveal himself now will precipitate such powerful and possibly overwhelming emotions in Gloucester that the moment is not right to do so. Perhaps he feels that he needs to wait until he knows the whole story of Gloucester’s injuries. What Gloucester says shows Edgar that he is forgiven and so is no longer pursued by Gloucester. But all that he has seen of Lear has shown him that these are dangerous times. Perhaps it is better to keep his disguise until he has a better grasp on what has occurred. In the meantime, his kindly treatment of his father will be his way of being a son.

On hearing that ‘Poor Tom’ is there, Gloucester says that he saw such a fellow in last night’s storm and his pitiful condition has opened Gloucester’s eyes to humanity’s lowly condition. Tom also put him in mind of his own son who has become like Tom in that he is a wanderer, a fugitive. The dramatic irony, of course, is that Tom is his son. Gloucester also expresses his current despair when he says, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods/They kill us for their sport”. Gloucester wants the “naked fellow” to lead him to the cliffs at Dover. The old man is not convinced this is a good idea but Gloucester tells him, ‘Tis the time’s plague, when madmen lead the blind.” 

 Asked if he knows the way to Dover, Tom says he does but keeps up his Poor Tom act by talking of being possessed by various devils. Gloucester gives him a purse and reflects on social justice when he calls upon the “surfeited and lust-dieted man” to feel sympathy for the poor. Like Lear’s suffering-induced sympathy for “poor naked wretches”, Gloucester’s sufferings have also brought him to a new-found recognition of the gap between the rich and the poor. At this point we can pull together (once again) the various parallels between Lear and Gloucester. They are both old men who seem to be widowers. Both men are wronged by their offspring; both treat their virtuous ‘child’ badly but the good children forgive them.  However, whilst Lear’s sufferings bring him to madness, Gloucester’s make him suicidal. So he asks Tom to take him to a particular cliff at Dover, adding that “from that place/I shall no leading need”. Given that he intends to commit suicide there, it is difficult to appreciate why he, a blind man intent on suicide, wants to make the difficult journey. Perhaps we need to think that he chooses to die there because it is the  one  place in the kingdom that is still sacred  by virtue of the presence of an “anointed King” (at 3.7.57, Gloucester referred to Lear’s “flesh” as “anointed”).

Act 4

Scene 2

Duke of Albany’s Castle

Characters involved

Goneril
Oswald
Edmund
Albany
Messenger

Goneril arrives home with Edmund and Oswald tells her that Albany is behaving oddly and smiled at the news of the French invasion. Goneril sends Edmund back to Cornwall but kisses him first and tells him “To thee a woman’s services are due”.

Albany enters and denounces Goneril as one “not worth the dust which the rude wind/Blows in your face”. He says the sisters’ treatment of Lear makes them “Tigers, not daughters”. Goneril calls her husband a “Milk-livered man” and “a moral fool” and they continue to argue until a messenger arrives with news that Cornwall has died from the wound he got fighting his servant. The messenger tells Goneril that he has a letter from her sister that requires a “speedy answer”. Albany is shocked to hear, (from the messenger) what Cornwall did to Gloucester. Goneril is concerned that Regan will make a move on Edmund now she is a widow. After Goneril has left, Albany declares “Gloucester, I live / To thank thee for the love thou showed’st the king / And to revenge thine eyes.”

Act 4

Scene 3

French Camp near Dover

Characters involved

Kent
Gentleman

Kent talks to a gentleman in Dover about the letters he sent to Cordelia about her father. The gentleman tells him that Cordelia was very emotional reading the letters so that her “tears and smiles” were like “Sunshine and rain at once”. Kent tells the gentleman that Lear is nearby but that “burning shame / Detains him from Cordelia”. The gentleman says the powers of Albany and Cornwall “are afoot”. Kent says he will lead the gentleman to Lear but, because of “Some dear cause”, Kent intends to remain in disguise.

Act 4

Scene 4

French Camp

Characters involved

Cordelia
Gentleman
Messenger
Officers and Soldiers

Cordelia is concerned about her father who has been seen “As mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud” and wearing a crown of ‘furrow weeds’, of wild flowers. She sends people to “Search every acre in the high-grown field / And bring him to our eye”. A messenger comes in to tell her “The British powers are marching hitherward” and she gets ready for battle saying “O dear father, / It is thy business that I go about”

Act 4

Scene 5

Gloucester’s Castle

Characters involved

Regan
Oswald

Regan talks with Oswald about the impending battle. Oswald has just brought a letter from Goneril to Edmund but Edmund has just left. Regan says he has gone to carry out a supposed mercy killing of the blinded Gloucester, so putting him out of his misery. She tries to get Oswald to reveal what is in the message he carries from Goneril to Edmund. She has seen Goneril giving “strange oeillades and most speaking looks/To noble Edmund”. Oswald remains loyal to Goneril and tells Regan, “My lady charged my duty in this business”. Regan gives him her own message to take to Edmund and tells him that if he, Oswald, meets “that blind traitor” Gloucester, “Preferment falls on him that cuts him off”.

Act 4

Scene 6

Near Dover

Characters involved

Gloucester
Edgar/Poor Tom
a peasant
Lear
Gentleman
Oswald

Edgar has led his blinded father to Dover, still pretending to be ‘Poor Tom’ although Gloucester recognises that his guide’s “voice is altered” and that he is “better spoken”. Gloucester also recognises that “the ground is even”, but Edgar convinces him that they are at the top of a high cliff. There is a potential for absurdity in the supposed fall from a non-existent cliff; however, Edgar’s description of the ‘cliff’ is so memorable and vivid that it offsets the potential for turning the ‘suicide’ into a bathetic pratfall. The altered voice that Gloucester refers to is one in which Edgar becomes the poetic creator of a scene. He creates the height of the cliff and the distance to the shore by viewing the scene as if through the wrong end of a telescope. Crows and choughs are scaled down to beetle-size; “The fishermen that walk upon the beach/Appear like mice”; the “anchoring barque” seem no bigger than a rowing boat. The dangers of the precipitous cliff are emphasised by describing a samphire gatherer who “Half-way down/Hangs” pursuing his “dreadful trade”. To these visual effects one can add the memorable aural effect of the sea in “The murmuring surge/That on th’unnumbered idle pebble chafes”.

In an aside, Edgar explains that he has set up this suicide that must fail in the hope that when Gloucester finds himself alive it will shock him out of despair. When Gloucester falls forward, believing he is throwing himself from the cliff top, Edgar confesses that his plan, a small fall designed to shock his father out of despair, may still be enough “to rob / The treasury of life”. He rushes to his father to check if he is still alive. He now pretends to be a passer-by on the beach who saw the old man fall and states ,“Thy life’s a miracle”. He also questions Gloucester about the person he was with at the top of the ‘cliff’. Gloucester says it was a beggar. Edgar, acting as an anonymous helper, says he saw a horned fiend, a devil – it was thought (in Shakespeare’s time)  that the devil tempted people to suicide. He adds that the “gods” have “preserved” Gloucester. Gloucester now agrees to “bear / Affliction till it do cry out itself/‘Enough, enough’ and die.” As Edgar had reckoned, Tom’s frequent ramblings concerning devils have helped to make Gloucester willing to accept that his companion on the ‘cliff’ was the devil. His willingness to accept this account becomes more credible when we recall Act 1, Scene 2 where he sees in “the late eclipses in the sun and moon” signs of non-human agencies controlling human actions.

At that moment a mad King Lear (“crowned with flowers”) joins them, behaving very oddly and ranting about his daughters. Gloucester recognises the king’s voice. Although he does not greet Gloucester with explicit recognition he does know who he is. This is seen when Lear, dramatising himself in a kingly role of offering pardons, offers “that man”, by which he means Gloucester, pardon for adultery. This shows that he knows who Gloucester is since it was Gloucester’s adulterous sex that begat Edmund – an affair that it is safe to assume that Lear knew of since Gloucester is quite open about it  – as we saw in Act 1, Scene 1 when he refers to it, even boasts of it, when talking to Kent. This implicit recognition of who the other person is without following the norms of social intercourse, is symptomatic of Lear’s mental turmoil. Parts of the mind that a sane person would keep within are brought out in speech alongside more conventional modes of conversation. The social inhibitions that govern the ‘normal’ sense of what is appropriate no longer apply. Lear’s inner torments dominate  his thinking. We see this when he expands on his reasons for pardoning Gloucester’s adultery. Lear wants to allow “copulation” to “thrive” because, as he mistakenly claims,  “Gloucester’s bastard son was kinder to his father/Than were my daughters got ‘tween lawful sheets”. His tormented feelings resulting from his daughters’ cruelty, surface in an indirect way when he launches into his misogynistic diatribe on female sexuality with, as he sees it, its hypocritically virtuous upper body contradicted by its rampantly lustful lower body. 

Lear’s sense of social injustice also surfaces when he attacks the hypocrisy of the conventionally ‘good’ authority figures whose “Robes and furred gowns” can hide their vices.  With his comment, “O matter and impertinency mixed,/Reason and madness”, Edgar recognises that  wise words are part of the mix that is Lear’s madness. Lear counsels the blind Gloucester with the idea that ‘seeing’ how “the world goes” could be a deeper form of perception than the visual.  He denounces hypocritical dispensers of ‘justice’ and figures of authority whose sins are hidden behind gold plate. After his heated, manic mix of denunciations of female sexuality and social injustice he finds a more conventional manner when he openly acknowledges Gloucester with, “I know thee well enough, thy name is Gloucester”. And he delivers words of wisdom with, “When we are born we cry that we are come/To this great stage of fools”. But such measured wisdom quickly gives way to a frenzied state when he imagines himself entering into battle with his “son-in-laws” calling out, “kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!”.

The appearance of the gentleman and “attendants” sent by Cordelia to find Lear, leads to Lear running off and inviting the attendants to follow. 

Edgar learns from the gentleman that the opposing army is “Near and on speedy foot”.                  

Edgar, still playing the part of the helper who picked up Gloucester after his ‘fall’, informs Gloucester that he is “A most poor man, made tame to fortune’s blows/Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows,/Am pregnant to good pity”. This articulates  the sufferings of both Edgar and Lear and Gloucester and the ways in which feeling what “wretches” feel made them more compassionate. In these lines Edgar, in peasant guise,  defines the play’s key transformative experience. He begins to lead Gloucester to shelter when Oswald appears. He is carrying letters to Edmund from both Goneril and Regan. We recall that in Act 4 Scene 5 Regan told Oswald that he would be rewarded if he were to find and kill Gloucester. He is now presented with the opportunity to gain that reward. When he tries to do so, Edgar defends Gloucester and warns Oswald that he is not a man to be bullied. Oswald thinks he is fighting an upstart peasant who should give way in fear to his social superior. Here we recall that ‘Tom” had been given peasant clothing by the Old Man who had helped the blinded Gloucester after he was cast out by Regan and Cornwall.  Edgar furthers his peasant guise by speaking in a West Country dialect (see, for example, his use of “Zwaggered”). Why does he emphasise his peasant status in this way? Oswald had contemptously referred to him as a “bold peasant” so perhaps Edgar is showing the arrogant Oswald just what an ‘upstart’ peasant can do. Why the West Country accent? Edgar being the son of Gloucester is from that area and the West Country dialect is proably the one he is familiar with. Oswald fights with a sword, an aristocrat’s weapon, whilst Edgar fights with a “baton”, a cudgel, yet he strikes the fatal blow and kills Oswald.  In this Edgar reveals his prowess as a  fighter, though one who did not seek violence and warned  Oswald that he should “go your gait” and not fight. He also goes on to say, “I am only sorry that he had no other deathsman”. As he is dying, Oswald gives Edgar his purse and tells him to “bury my body / And give the letters which thou find’st about me / To Edmund, Earl of Gloucester”. Edgar comments on Oswald’s sense of duty, “As duteous to the views of thy mistress/As badness would desire.”

Edgar reads aloud the letter from Goneril to Edmund which asks Edmund to take one of the “many opportunities” he will have to kill Albany so that he can marry Goneril. The implied conspiracy between the two must confirm Edgar’s sense of Edmund’s villainy. Edgar disposes of Oswald’s body while Gloucester reflects that he would be better off were he mad like Lear for then his thoughts would be severed from his griefs. Edgar returns and leads his father away.

Act 4

Scene 7

The French Camp

Characters involved

Cordelia
Kent
Gentleman
Servants
Lear
Gentleman

Cordelia asks Kent “how shall I live and work / To match thy goodness?” and he asks her not to reveal his identity until he is ready. A “gentleman” (presumably the same gentleman who appears in 4.3. 4.4 and 4.6??) tells Cordelia that the king “sleeps still” and asks if they can wake him. Lear is carried in sleeping and Cordelia is full of pity for him and says of her sisters that even if Lear had not been their father, such an old man facing a night’s exposure to a storm should have aroused their pity: “Had you not been their father, these white flakes / Did challenge pity of them.” Lear awakens and Cordelia asks, “How fares your majesty?” Lear responds with “You do me wrong to take me out o’the grave”. And adds, addressing Cordelia as if she is in heaven, “Thou art a soul in bliss but I am bound/Upon a wheel of fire that my own tears/Do scald like molten lead”. He calls himself “a very foolish fond old man.”. (He also says he is “fourscore and upward” which, given that Cordelia seems to be a young woman, Lear must have been an elderly father. Perhaps the same is true of Gloucester.) His mind starts to clear and he recognises Cordelia and says he knows that she does not love him because he treated her so badly: “Your sisters / Have, as I do remember, done me wrong: / You have some cause, they have not.” The gentleman reassures Cordelia saying, “Be comforted, good madam: the great rage, / You see, is killed in him.” Seeing some improvement in him, Cordelia asks him if he wants to walk and so Lear and Cordelia walk off together. Kent and the gentleman are left to discuss the latest developments. These are the death of Cornwall, Edward’s assumption of Cornwall’s role as leader and the battle that is about to commence between Cordelia’s forces and those summoned and led by Edward and Goneril.

Act 5

Scene 1

British Camp near Dover

Characters involved

Edmund
Regan
Albany
Goneril
Edgar as Peasant

The scene, set somewhere near Dover, begins with Edmund (now the commander of Regan’s ‘British’ forces,) seeking confirmation from Albany that he will lead his ‘British’ forces against the French invasion. It is somewhat surprising to see Albany in alliance with Regan’s forces given his rejection of Goneril, his recoil from the Regan/Cornwall treatment of Gloucester and the early rumours of conflict between him and Cornwall. However, he will soon explain that the deciding factor was the fact that France “invades our land”. Regan questions Edmund about his relationship with her sister and Edmund insists his only love for Goneril is “honoured love” and that he has not had sexual relations with her. Goneril and Albany arrive. Goneril, in an aside, says she would rather lose the coming battle than lose Edmund to Regan. Albany distinguishes between fighting to protect Britain from a French invasion and fighting against Lear and his cause. He is leading his forces against a French invasion not against Lear – whose cause he describes as “just and heavy” (serious). Edmund, ever the suave hypocrite, praises Albany when he says, “Sir, you speak nobly.” and seems to defer to him as commander-in-chief when he says, a few lines later, “I shall attend you presently at your tent.” Goneril convinces everyone to “Combine together gainst the enemy, / For these domestic and particular broils / Are not the question here.” As the others leave, Edgar, still disguised as a peasant, stops Albany and gives him a letter (the Goneril to Edmund letter carried by Oswald), saying “If you have victory, let the trumpet sound’ and “a champion” will step forward to prove the truth of the letter. Edgar exits and Edmund enters with an estimate of the opposing forces.

Albany having ‘exited’, Edmund, in a soliloquy, considers his position. He has sworn his love to both Goneril and Regan and asks “Which of them shall I take?” To take Regan would be to incur Goneril’s hostility but if Goneril is to be taken, Albany will have to be murdered. He also says that he intends to stop the pardon which Albany intends to give to Lear and Cordelia for siding with the French.

Act 5

Scene 2

A Field between the Two Camps

Characters involved

Lear
Cordelia
Soldiers
Edgar as Peasant
Gloucester

We see Lear, Cordelia and French soldiers cross the stage. We must imagine the battle taking place off stage. Edgar lets Gloucester rest and leaves to see the battle. He soon returns with the news that “King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta’en”. Gloucester wants to stay where he is, saying “a man may rot even here”, but Edgar leads him away. As he does so , he attempts to counter Gloucester’s despair with a piece of ‘philosophical’ advice, “Men must endure/Their going hence even as their coming hither./Ripeness is all.” One might question whether this philosophical mix of stoicism (“Men must endure”) and epicurean appreciation (“Ripeness is all”) is quite the right response to suicidal depression!

Act 5

Scene 3

The British Camp

Characters involved

Edmund
Cordelia
Lear
Albany
Goneril
Regan
A Captain and Soldiers
Herald
Edgar
Gentleman
Kent

Edmund calls for his officers to lock up Lear and Cordelia. Before they are taken away, Cordelia tells her father “We are not the first / Who with best meaning have incurred the worst” but he tells her, with naïve optimism, that they will live together in prison hearing “poor rogues / Talk of court news”, news of “Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out”. Removed from the inevitable changes in worldly fortunes, they will “take upon’s the mystery of things/As if we were God’s [or, to avoid suggesting the Christian God, should that be “gods’??] spies”.

Edmund secretly sends his captain after Lear and Cordelia with a note to ensure that they are both put to death, telling the captain “to be tender-minded / Does not become a sword.”

Albany enters followed by Regan and Goneril. Albany acknowledges the “valiant strain” that  Edmund has shown in the battle. He also sternly charges him with the duty of keeping Lear and Cordelia safe until, having considered both “their merits and our safety”, a decision can be made on their future. Edmund plays the part of the voice of reasoned moderation as he gives an account of how he has managed Lear and Cordelia. He has put them under guard and out of sight since their pitiful condition could win the sympathy of the common people (the “common bosom”). He counsels that once the immediate pain and struggle of battle has subsided (“We sweat and bleed, the friend hath lost his friend”, ) there will be a fitter time to consider “the question of Cordelia and her father” – in fact, he wants to keep them out of sight to allow time for them to be murdered. Albany states that Edmund acting as counsellor concerning the fates of Lear and Cordelia  is acting above his subordinate status. Regan responds by praising Edmund and telling Albany to regard him as “brother”, a position she intends to create by making Edmund her “lord and master”. Regan also mentions that she is not well otherwise she would have responded (“From a full-flowing stomach”) to some jeering remarks from Goneril 

Regan is about to make official her plan to marry Edmund when Albany arrests Edmund for ‘capital treason’, and calls Goneril a “gilded serpent” for her betrayal in promising to marry Edmund if he kills her husband. We recall that Albany has in his possession the incriminating letter from Goneril to Edmund. Albany calls for a trumpet to sound – (so following the instruction of Edgar as peasant when he gave the letter to Albany) and if none appear to “prove” by combat, the charges against Edmund then he, Albany,  will fight Edmund.  Albany throws down his gauntlet to confirm his challenge; Edmund responds by throwing down his and declaring that he will fight to “maintain/My truth and honour”.   At this point Regan falls sick and Goneril reveals, in an aside, that she has poisoned Regan. A herald blows a trumpet three times and Edgar steps forward, in armour which hides his face. In a manner appropriate to the ritual of initiating a trial by combat, Albany and the Herald question Edmund as to his purpose and identity. Edgar replies with, “My name is lost/ … / Yet I am noble as the adversary/I come to cope withal” (“cope” = encounter in combat.  So Edgar puts on another disguise as he becomes, like an archetypal figure out of Arthurian romance,  an anonymous  knight, a virtuous champion come to vanquish the evil black knight.  In an appropriately knightly manner, Edgar accuses Edmund of being a traitor; Edmund (after some references to the rules of knighthood which would allow him to delay the fight until he knew the name of his challenger) agrees to fight and so prove that his anonymous challenger is lying. Edmund and Edgar fight and Edmund is defeated. Goneril attempts to intervene but Albany says, “Shut your mouth, dame” and holds up the incriminating Goneril-to-Edmund letter. Goneril leaves. The wounded Edmund admits, “What you have charged me with, that have I done, / And more, much more”. Is this said more by way of boast than repentance? It is only a partial confession since he does not reveal what he means by “more”: the plot against Edgar, the betrayal of his father, the order to have Lear and Cordelia killed.  He also asks his victor who he is and adds, with rather surprising magnanimity and conventional valuation of nobility, “If thou’art noble/I do forgive thee”. Edgar can now return to his own identity, though it is one that has grown and developed since the naively trusting character of I.2. Edmund acknowledges that “right” and “truth” are with Edgar and that he, Edmund, has been subjected to the reversal of fortune, though not by Fortune ( a force that he scorned in 1.2)  but by “the surfeits of our own behaviour”, a force that he did  recognise in 1.2 – though he then thought that it was in his power to control that force. Yet despite these elements of confession, this recognition of his fate, he says nothing about the order he gave to kill Lear and Cordelia.  

When Edgar explains who he is to Edmund, he adds a rather severe moral judgement on Gloucester’s life.  He says to Edmund that the gods are just in that they make of our “pleasant vices” “instruments to plague us”.  He then applies the generalisation to Gloucester’s case with “The dark and vicious place where thee he got/Cost him his eyes”. In other words, the “pleasant vice” of Gloucester’s adultery begat Edmund who proved to be  instrumental in maiming Gloucester. Of these lines A. C. Bradley says, “one wishes that he had not said to his dying brother those words about their dead father”.

Edgar goes on to explain to Albany how, to escape detection, he disguised himself as 'Poor Tom' and went on to look after his blinded father. He says , when acting as guide, that he never revealed himself to him and exclaims concerning this, “O fault!” He then  describes how he finally told his father everything and, in anticipation of the coming duel with Edmund,  “asked his blessing” but, being “Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief”, Gloucester’s heart ‘Burst smilingly’ and he died. Listening to this as he dies, Edmund, revealing a better side to himself, says, “This speech of yours hath moved me, / And shall perchance do good”. However, he makes no immediate attempt to do good by attempting to save Cordelia and Lear from the killer that he appointed. At this point a gentleman runs on with a bloody knife taken from Goneril’s heart and tells Albany that Goneril killed herself, after confessing, as the ‘gentleman’ puts it, that “her sister / By her is poisoned”.

 Kent arrives dressed as himself again. Albany orders the bodies of Regan and Goneril to be brought in and Edmund says, with some pathos as if astonished that he could be loved,  “Yet Edmund was beloved: / The one the other poisoned for my sake / And after slew herself.” Edmund, having just said, “Some good I mean to do,/Despite my own nature”,  finally confesses to Albany that the Captain “hath commission from thy wife and me” to take the lives of Lear and Cordelia. Albany quickly dispatches men to try and save them.

Lear then enters carrying the dead body of Cordelia, crying ‘Howl, howl, howl’.  He veers from recognising the finality of Cordelia’s death (“she’s dead as earth”) to attempting to find signs of life – he calls for a mirror to see if it will mist over with her breath; he puts a feather over her mouth to see if it stirs. Lear orders everyone to be “away”. Kent tries to reassure him by telling him that he is “Kent, your friend”. Lear denounces all around him as “murderers” as if they were all responsible for Cordelia’s death.  Lear’s attention then switches to Cordelia and imagines that she is saying something. He then describes how he killed the “slave” that was hanging Cordelia. This leads to him recognising Kent who explains how in disguise, he acted as Lear’s servant – though he refers to this servant as Caius, a name that he does not use in all the previous scenes. Although Lear recognises Kent, he is convinced  that ‘Caius” is dead. Kent also tells Lear that his older daughters “have fordone themselves, / And desperately are dead”, but Albany tells him that Lear “knows not what he says, and vain is it / That we present us to him.” A messenger arrives with the news that Edmund is dead.  Albany dismisses this news as “a trifle” and resigns his absolute power and promises to restore to Edgar and Kent their rightful positions and that “All friends shall taste/The wages of their virtue and all foes/The cup of their deservings”.  Just before Albany made this conciliatory speech he had judged that Lear was lost in his own world (“He knows not what he says”); however, when he sees Lear move towards Cordelia (kneeling beside her?) he abruptly ends his speech as he exclaims, “O see, see!”. Lear then exclaims “My poor fool is hanged”.  Have his words just emerged out of a stream of disturbed inner thoughts, thoughts that have imagined the death of the fool (he has not been seen since 3.6.82) and has he conflated them with the hanged Cordelia?  Lear laments that she will “come no more” and underlines the finality of this when he says, “Never, never, never, never, never.”  Immediately after saying this, he calls on Edgar to “undo this button”.  It seems that he has in mind his earlier realisation of the true nature of “unaccommodated man” in 3.4, when he saw man as a “poor bare forked animal”. To “unbutton” would be to  strip away his literal clothing and its associated social identity and so become “unaccommodated man”. However, no sooner does this thought  surface  but it is displaced by his desperate search for signs of life in Cordelia.  He imagines some movement in her lips, “Look on her, look, her lips”.  So in this troubled state with its mix of delusion and momentary realisation , Lear dies and Kent wonders how “he hath endured so long”.

Albany invites Edgar and Kent to “Rule in this realm and the gored state sustain”: does “sustain” suggest that they should play a supportive part under or alongside Albany or that they should govern instead of him?  Kent, however, feels that he is close to the end of his life and is ready to follow Lear into death. The play closes with Edgar’s, “The oldest hath borne most; we that are young/Shall never see so much, nor live so long”.