of theatrical performance. To do so, I shall consider a case-study: Gloucester
on the cliffs of Dover.
In Act IV Scene VI ofKing Lear, the blind Gloucester is led by his son,
Edgar, who is disguised as the madman, Poor Tom. Gloucester wants to kill
himself, but Edgar devises a scheme to cure him of his suicidal thoughts.
He tells Gloucester that he is leading him up a steep slope to the cliffs of
Dover; in fact, they are in aflatfield. Standing at what Gloucester thinks
is the very edge of the cliff, Edgar, as Poor Tom, tells him:
How fearful
And dizzy‘tis to cast one’s eyes so low.
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles. Half-way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
Thefishermen, that walk upon the beach,
Appear like mice, and yon tall anchoring barque
Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge,
That on th’unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. I’ll look no more,
Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.^56Now that we have analysed the term, we are in a position to appreciate
the varieties ofmimesisused in a performance of this scene. As for imita-
tion: the actors may be dressed to look like their characters (Gloucester’s
eyes may really look damaged, having been‘plucked out’on stage); Edgar
is dressed up as a beggar; Edgar himself is impersonating a mad man (and
there are hints in his conversation with his father that he isn’t very good
at it). More generally, the scene is part of a longer story, an action that, in
Aristotle’s terms, is being imitated before us. As for imagination: cer-
tainly, we are to imagine that we are in Dover, hence that the characters
have travelled some distance and that certain other facts hold. But we are
also to imagine theflatfield and hence the difference between where they
‘really’are and where Gloucester thinks they are. Sensory and proposi-
tional imagination are required, then, tofill in the gaps in the story and
the scene itself. But as we listen to Edgar’s powerful and imaginative
description of the edge of the cliff, we also imagine the cliff-face and
the vertigo felt by Gloucester as he waits to jump. We are, therefore, in three
places at once: at a performance, with two actors on a simple stage; in a
field in Dover, with Edgar and his blind father; at the edge of the cliffs of
Dover, with Gloucester and a madman called Poor Tom.
42 From the World to the Stage