Shakespeare Project 2020
And I thought Hamlet was whacked! King Lear's fall into madness beats him out!
There are very few likeable characters in this play: Cordelia, but she is banished in Act 1 so we see very little of her. Edgar and Gloucester who are wronged by Edmund and Kent, whom one must admire for his honesty and loyalty at least.
Cordelia's honesty in not flattering her father for his kingdom gets her banished:
I.1
Cordelia: "Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth."
But Lear's ego is too large:
I.1
Kent: What wouldst thou do, old man?
Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows?"
And our man Kent has the best insults:
II.2.
Kent: A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining...."
***
and my favorite: "Thou, whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter!"
As Lear starts his slide into madness he sounds a bit like Dr. Seuss:
II.4.
Lear: "They durst not do't;
They could not, would not do't;..."
He threatens his ungrateful daughters, Regan and Goneril, sort of:
II.4.
Lear: "...you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall - I will do such things -
What they are yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth."
I love the imagine of Lear raging at the storm:
III.2.
Lear: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks; rage, blow.
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks.
You sulph'rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Sing my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world;
Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,...
***
Rumble thy bellyful. Spit, fire; spout, rain
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters."
As the once mighty King must now bed down in a hovel, he is checking his ego:
III.2.
Lear: "...The art of our necessities is strange
That can make vile things precious."
He has already regretted how he treated Cordelia and now has empathy for the homeless and rues that he did not do enough for them when he was in power:
III.4.
Lear:"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From season such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just."
Oh and did I mention the horrific plucking of Gloucester's eyes??
III.7.
Cornwall (husband to evil sister #2, Regan): "Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot....
***
Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly!"
Though this is the symbolism of King Lear. When Gloucester had eyes, he couldn't see what was right in front of him - the deception of his bastard son Edmund and the goodness of his son Edgar.
IV.1
Gloucester: "I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;
I stumbled when I saw:..."
The Duke of Albany, married to evil sister #1, Goneril, discovers her true nature:
IV.2.
Albany: "O Goneril!
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face."
Not only do I learn new insults with Shakespeare, but new fun words (and such descriptive phrases):
IV.3.
Gentleman (describing Cordelia): "You have seen
Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears
Were like a better way. Those happy smilets
That play'd on her ripe lip seem'd not to know
What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd..."
Of course, this is a Shakespearean tragedy, so we know how it ends....say it with me, Everyone Dies.
V.3
Kent (after King Lear has just died): "Vex not his ghost. O' let him pass! He hates him
That would upon the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out longer."
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