256 KING LEAR
daughter whose love and reverence
will be unaffected by his loss of
status, unlike Goneril and Regan
whose respect for their father
exists only while he has power.
If the kingdom had been divided
in three, Cordelia might have
served as a buffer between her
two elder and ambitious sisters.
Furthermore, banishment results
in her becoming Queen of
France, which leads her to seek
to depose the rightful rulers
of Britain with French troops.
Although Shakespeare makes clear
that her motive is “love, dear love,
and our aged father’s right” (4.3.28)
rather than ambition, the fact
remains that Lear has made
his kingdom vulnerable.
It can certainly be argued that
Lear’s actions in the first scene
set a destructive precedent. By
failing to value the genuine love of
Cordelia over the insincere flattery
of her sisters, Lear encourages a
character like Edmond to pursue
his inheritance by faking filial love,
and by slandering his brother.
As though Lear’s blindness wereinfectious, Gloucester fails to see
through the deception and fatally
places his trust in the wrong son.
But in a larger sense, the tragedy
sees suffering as something that
exists outside any simple process
of cause and effect, and as a
fundamental part of the human
condition. To be “a man / More
sinned against than sinning” is
not some kind of cosmic injustice,
but the norm.The basest beggar
Where Hamlet only pretends to
consider “What a piece of work is a
man,” King Lear offers a profound
meditation on this subject, and its
conclusions are as melancholy as
Hamlet might have wished them.
Blinded Gloucester describes the
mad Lear as a “ruined piece of
nature,” and when he tries to kiss
Lear’s hand, the King advises:
“Here, wipe it first; it smells of
mortality” (4.5.128–130). The play
relentlessly confronts man’s
physical needs. Lear’s madness
coincides with the assault upon
his body of extreme cold, wind,
and rain. It is no coincidence that
his wits are only restored once
he has been brought into shelter,
given fresh clothes, and allowed
to sleep. Earlier on in the play,
Lear had appeared to glimpse the
troubling physical similarities that
define all men, if they are deprived
of the external trappings of class
and wealth. When his daughters try
to take away his knightly retinue,
he counters: “O, reason not the
need! Our basest beggars / Are in
the poorest thing superfluous. /
Allow not nature more than nature
needs, / Man’s life is cheap as
beast’s” (2.2.438–441).
But King Lear at this point has
no idea what the life of the basest
beggar might be, and it is with a
kind of redemptive sadism thatLear is accompanied by his Fool
during the storm, illustrated here by
Scottish artist William Dyce (1806–64).
The Fool is the only character allowed
to speak the truth to the king.
Blow, winds, and crack your
cheeks! Rage, blow,
You cataracts and hurricanoes,
King Lear
Act 3, Scene 2