ACT III
SCENE i
Kent hears that Lear continues to wander with his Fool in the storm, “Contending with the fretful elements” (III.i.4), “the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage” (III.i.8). He reports that the King of France (Cordelia’s husband now, presumably) knows about Lear’s treatment and the enmity between Cornwall and Albany and plans to invade England. Kent sends a gentleman to Dover to inform the people of Lear’s plight. If the gentleman meets Cordelia, she will recognize a ring he gives the man to carry, which will reveal with whom the gentleman really has been speaking here.
SCENE ii
Lear rants in the storm:
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
You sulfurous and thought-executing fires
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world
Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once
That make ingrateful man! (III.ii.1-9).
Throughout his career, both in the works and in at least one of his letters, Oxford associated overwhelming tragedy with “storms” and “tempests” (Ogburn and Ogburn 123). I’m not sure that “the tempest in Lear’s mind makes him insensible to the tempest without” (Goddard II 147), that perhaps instead he’s bellowing for the universe to do its worst, dammit. He essentially is calling for chaos, and “Behind this terrifying image we can see the specter of Shakespeare himself in the shape of a murderous giant, ransacking the world for his lost identity” (Beauclerk 296-297).
Lear ignores the Fool’s advice to find shelter. “No, I will be the pattern of all patience, / I will say nothing” (III.ii.37-38). “Lear is a Job-like character, a man who has everything (family, wealth, honor) and loses everything” (Garber 660). But here, “like the flashes of lightning that momentarily illuminate the landscape for the lost traveler, there is a spiritual lightning that illuminates the lost soul” (Goddard, II 147). But, by the way, what happened to his many followers? (Smidt 130).
Kent arrives and urges Lear to rest in a hovel. He will return to the castle doors “and force / Their scanted courtesy” (III.ii.66-67). But Lear ignores this and “thinks for the first time of someone else’s suffering before his own” (Goddard, II 147): “My wits begin to turn. / Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy. Art cold? / I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?” (III.ii.67-69).
The Fool sings a verse of the rain song that we also hear at the end of Twelfth Night, and then offers a prophecy about social disorder and chaotic times for Albion: “This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time” (III.ii.95-96). Actually, “The Fool’s couplets mock such prophecies by listing four conditions that are always true, and then six that can never come true” (Asimov 30). “Shakespeare probably thought he was parodying Chaucer in the opening lines of the Fool’s verses, and directly quoting the same passage (wrongly ascribed to Chaucer) in lines 91-92, yet he goes well beyond parody into an obliquely powerful condemnation of a Jacobean England where priests, brewers, nobles, and tailors all cheerfully are condemned” (Bloom 498).
SCENE iii
Gloucester complains to Edmund about Cornwall and Regan. Edmund feigns concern. Gloucester tells him of a letter that tells of help coming for Lear and vengeance against his abusers. Gloucester asks Edmund to cover for him: he’s going to find Lear. But Edmund plans to rat him out to Cornwall: “The younger rises when the old doth fall” (III.iii.24).
SCENE iv
Kent brings Lear to the hovel, insisting that “The tyranny of the open night’s too rough / For nature to endure” (III.iv.2-3) — but which “nature”? Human nature? Lear says that the tempest in his mind is the real problem, and he continues ranting about “filial ingratitude” (III.iv.14), cutting off further tormenting thoughts only when he realizes “that way madness lies” (III.iv.21). But Lear has changed for the better as evidenced by his insistence that Kent and the Fool enjoy the shelter first. “Lear, … in his madness, vividly expresses the idea that physical suffering can bring mental revelation — that people will not begin to see until they learn to feel” (Wells 270). Lear feels empathy with the “Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are” who always have to endure foul weather, and he laments, “O, I have ta’en / Too little care of this!” (III.iv.28-33). If Henry V demonstrates how a man becomes a king, “King Lear is an account of how a king became a man” (Goddard II 141).
The Fool runs from the hovel, fearing that the “Poor Tom” already in there is a spirit. The disguised Edgar emerges, playing Poor Tom and babbling incoherently as a mad religious fanatic. Madness, like being an “allowed fool,” allows one to speak truth in Shakespeare (Garber 678). [Much of “Poor Tom’s” gibberish is explained, or decoded, by Beauclerk (310f).] The line, “go to thy cold bed and warm thee” (III.iv.46-47), appears in The Spanish Tragedy (a suspected Oxford play, not Kyd) and in The Taming of the Shrew Induction (Clark 880-881).
Lear insists only ungrateful daughters could have brought about this man’s misery, and he labels his own as “pelican daughters” (III.iv.74). The way parent pelicans feed their young makes it look like the young are tearing at body of parent (Asimov II 33), although bestiaries also associated the pelican with the self-sacrifice of Jesus (Garber 688).
When asked, Edgar testifies that he was “A servingman! proud in heart and mind; that curl’d my hair; wore gloves in my cap; serv’d the lust in my mistress’ heart, and did the act of darkness with her…. Wine lov’d I deeply, dice dearly; and in woman out-paramour’d the Turk” (III.iv.83-90). “The Turks did not enter history till some sixteen centuries after the supposed time of Lear” (Asimov 33). But “Turk” was Elizabeth’s nickname for Oxford: we can only guess why. His wildness?
Lear is moved and waxes eloquent: “thou art the thing itself. Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art” (III.iv.104-106). He tears off his clothes to emulate Edgar’s state. Gloucester finds them all and invites them to a farmhouse next to his castle. Gloucester remarks ruefully on the state of matters, and Lear agrees to go if accompanied by the brilliant philosopher Poor Tom, whose frequent utterance is “Poor Tom’s a-cold” (e.g., III.iv.143).
SCENE v
Cornwall, pleased by Edmund’s having produced a letter revealing Edgar to be treasonous in conspiring with France, awards him the Gloucester title and estate. Edmund’s new self-appointed mission is to catch his father aiding Lear, which will mean more trouble for the old men.
SCENE vi
Lear, Kent in disguise, the Fool, and Edgar disguised as the lunatic Poor Tom — all enter a room in the farmhouse while Gloucester goes in search of supplies. Lear insanely establishes a courtroom trial with the others taking the parts of judges and footstools serving as his daughters (a spiffy insult regarding insignificance). Lear suggests, “let them anatomize Regan; see what breeds / about her heart” (III.vi.73-74).
Oxford may have learned about “distracted minds” from his days at Fisher’s folly. Bedlam, the insane asylum, was located across the street (Anderson 156). (Having gone for woodland walks with my grandfather which emerged behind the Hudson River State Hospital [for the Insane] with batshit lunatics shrieking out of back third-story windows, I’ll say the experience can make an impression.)
Kent persuades Lear to rest. Lear babbles, “So, so, so; we’ll go to supper in the morning so so so” (III.vi.81). The Fool quips, “And I’ll go to bed at noon” (III.vi.82), meaning that he’ll also be a fool. It may also obliquely refer to the 1590 dissolution of Oxford’s theatrical company despite it being at its high point (Ogburn and Ogburn 1124). This is the Fool’s last line before disappearing inexplicably from the play.
Gloucester returns with news of an assassination plot against Lear: the King must be carried to Dover. Edgar prays for Lear’s safety.
SCENE vii
Cornwall instructs Goneril to bring his letter to her husband Albany regarding the landing of the army of France. He also wants Gloucester found. Regan wants Gloucester hanged as a traitor; Goneril wants his eyes poked out (III.vii.4-5). Cornwall tells Edmund to accompany Goneril — he shouldn’t be there for his own father’s torture. (How considerate.) Edmund has no lines and weirdly drops out of the play until the last act (Smidt 136).
Oswald brings news of Lear’s arrival in Dover with knights, followers, and friends. Servants quickly bring in the old Gloucester who reminds them that they are his guests (III.vii.30) and he is their host (III.vii.39). Accusations and insults from the sisters and some questioning ensue. Worsening the horror is “the banality of the setting, a domestic interior” (Garber 680).
Asked repeatedly why he sent the king to Dover, Gloucester finally says to Regan, “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” (III.vii.55-57). “See shalt thou never,” says Cornwall. “Fellows, hold the chair; / Upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my foot” (III.vii.66-67). Cornwall puts out one of Gloucester’s eyes. Regan cries for the other eye to be put out: otherwise “One side will mock another” (III.vii.70). But one of Cornwall’s servants can’t take it and attacks Cornwall, wounding him before being stabbed in the back by Regan.
The wounded Cornwall pokes out Gloucester’s other eye: “Out, vild jelly! / Where is thy lustre now?” (III.vii.82-83). The old man calls for Edmund and is told that Edmund was the one who turned against him. Gloucester realizes to his horror that he has maligned Edgar. Regan commands: “Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell / His way to Dover” (III.vii.92-93). The bleeding Cornwall wants the dead servant’s body thrown on a dunghill. The other servants secretly agree to help “the old Earl” Gloucester (III.vii.102) and to get that lunatic Tom of Bedlam to escort him.
King Lear, Act by Act
King Lear Introduction
King Lear Act III