King Lear 941beggar, Poor Tom. Lear realizes that, in retrospect,
he has not provided for his poorest subjects, basking
in luxury while they suffer in poverty. By falling into
madness, Lear escapes responsibility for his actions;
he is free to rail against the ingratitude of his daugh-
ters while avoiding the shame of having preferred
flattery over true filial affection. Only when he
awakens in the French camp and confronts Cordelia
does he take responsibility for his errors—an act
made doubly poignant by Cordelia’s unconditional
love and forgiveness.
Within the disrupted order of the world of King
Lear, Shakespeare examines the role of duty and the
importance of accepting personal responsibility for
one’s actions—concepts that were changing in the
playwright’s own society.
Deborah Montouri
SuFFerInG in King Lear
Having spent his life in a position of power, Lear
knows little of suffering. When he decides to divide
his kingdom among his three daughters, he expects
love, respect, and gratitude in return. His initial
reaction to Cordelia’s refusal to voice her love is rage;
she is banished, and the kingdom is split between
her sisters. Lear hopes to live out his years by stay-
ing alternately with Goneril and Regan, but his plan
goes awry when Goneril reprimands him for the
behavior of his knights. He flees to Regan, expect-
ing kinder treatment, only to learn that the sisters
have conspired against him, first demanding that he
release the 100 knights who attend him, then shut-
ting him out, unprotected, in a violent storm. The
emotional agony he feels, due to their ingratitude
and to realizing his mistake in rejecting Cordelia,
is Lear’s first experience of suffering. However, it
is not until he endures the storm that he begins to
understand the suffering of others. He rages simul-
taneously against his daughters and the forces of
nature that seem to him to take their part, ignoring
physical discomfort until he realizes that the Fool
who attends him is cold, wet, and in need of shelter.
Through his own suffering, he recognizes that the
poor suffer similarly every day and that, as king, he
might have done more to aid them. Lear falls deeper
into madness as he comes to grips with his mistakes
and misjudgments, until he is rescued by Cordelia,
who has returned from France with an army and a
plan to put her father back on the throne.
But all does not go well. Cordelia’s troops are
defeated, and she and Lear are taken prisoner. In
one of the play’s most moving scenes, he describes
an idyllic future in which father and daughter “will
sing like birds i’ th’ cage” (5.3.6–8). Demonstrating
that he has learned that unconditional love, not
power, is most important. Moments later, we learn
that an order has been given to hang Cordelia, and
Lear enters, howling, carrying his dead daughter in
his arms. His unbearable grief and suffering end
only when he breathes his last.
In the play’s parallel subplot, Edmund, Glouces-
ter’s bastard son, plots to get his half brother’s
inheritance. He plants a forged letter suggesting
that Edgar is conspiring to murder their father, and
the gullible Gloucester, heartbroken, believes it.
Once Edmund is named heir, he betrays his father,
reporting to Regan and her husband, Cornwall, that
Gloucester has committed treason by aiding Lear
and corresponding with Cordelia. In a scene of
horrific suffering, Cornwall binds the old man to a
chair and gouges out his eyes, and when he calls on
Edmund for help, Regan cruelly tells him that it was
Edmund who turned him in, adding mental anguish
to his physical pain. Blinded and bleeding, Glouces-
ter is thrust out of the castle. He enlists “Poor
Tom”—his son Edgar in disguise—to lead him to
the edge of Dover Cliffs, where he plans to commit
suicide. But the ground where Edgar places him is
flat. Believing that he has thrown himself from the
cliff, the wretched old man awakes in misery, until
Edgar, using a second disguised voice, convinces
him that his life is “a miracle.” In the final act, we
learn that when it was clear that Cordelia had been
defeated, Edgar revealed himself to his father, whose
weakened heart burst, his suffering ending at last.
As Edgar notes at the end of the play, “The
oldest hath borne most,” and indeed, Lear and
Gloucester suffer greatly. But others suffer as well.
Having lost his reputation and his father’s love,
Edgar seeks anonymity in the disguise of “Poor
Tom,” a mad beggar who wanders the countryside
depending on charity—one of the suffering people
so easily overlooked by King Lear. Edgar notes that
they often inflict injury upon themselves but feel