Shakespeare’s presentation of madness and blindness in King Lear are pervasive. Madness and blindness occur in the plot and in the sub-plot – in a literal and a figurative sense; they are frequently referred to in the language and imagery of the play; they are inextricably linked – the mistakes that certain characters make due to blindness lead inevitably to their insanity; some characters pretend to be mad or blind. In short, madness and blindness are far more than themes of the play – they are the play. Shakespeare weaves his entire play around madness and blindness and presents them so that they become an integral part of what it means to be human in this play.
Insanity occupies a central and pivotal place in the play and is associated with both disorder, within the individual, within society and within the entire nation, and hidden wisdom. Lear’s descent into madness can be clearly traced in his character development throughout the play. Act One establishes his tendency to mental instability. It is seen in the bizarre test of his daughters’ love, his abrupt banishment of his most loyal and devoted follower in Kent, and in his complete disowning of Cordelia. A contemporary audience would have seen Lear’s division of the kingdom into three parts as an act of madness in itself. The violence of Lear’s language also suggests an underlying propensity to madness: the vehemence of his curses suggesting someone used to exercising power (he is the king) and not used to being contradicted or disobeyed in anything. In Act Two Lear becomes obsessed with the ingratitude and lack of consideration shown to him by Goneril and Regan, who throughout the act strive to strip him of all power and all his followers. Regan refuses to speak to him and it is slowly dawning on Lear that his giving up of his kingdom has been a grave error of judgment, now that his two older sisters are in alliance to reduce his power still further. The decision to put Kent in the stocks (he is in disguise but has pledged his loyalty to Lear) further enrages him and, explicitly afraid of gong mad, he storms violently out of Gloucester’s castle, rejected by both his daughters.
It is Act Three that Shakespeare’s presentation of madness becomes original and reaches new heights of emotional and philosophical insight. Wells (23) points out that the original play, King Leir, which was Shakespeare’s main source, contains no insanity, nor is it mentioned in Holinshed – whose chronicles of early English history were another resource for the story. To begin with Shakespeare uses a violent storm as pathetic fallacy to suggest the turmoil Lear’s mind, but also the wider chaos in the country and in society. His insanity is enhanced and thrown into relief by the presence of Edgar, who is disguised as Poor Tom and is pretending to be mad, and the Fool, whose punning and gnomic utterances often seem irrational and verging on the insane. In this act Lear veers from monumental rages against his daughters’ ingratitude, and calmer moments when he is moved by the fate of the homeless –the “poor naked wretches” that he has ignored when he was king. His mind has completely gone when the mock trial of Goneril and Regan occurs. What is most important, however, in Shakespeare’s presentation of Lear’s madness is that Lear, through his insanity, discovers truths and insights which he had ignored as king. There are reasons within the play for this. Many of the Fool’s speeches have already had the purpose exposing folly in the powerful and great. In addition, because Lear is effectively homeless and at the mercy of the elements, he is forced into a realization of the plight of those less fortunate than himself. Edgar’s presence as Poor Tom also makes Lera aware of the plight of the outcasts in society’s underclass. Smith (58) writes;
Lear in his madness now realizes that the hierarchical social system of which he was the leader as king is a false social construct: “a dog’s obeyed in office.” Having given away his kingdom and his power Lear is now just a man with nothing and this leads to enormous compassion on his part: in the mock trial scene he says, “We pardon that man’s fault,” suggesting that social justice is corrupt and weighted against the homeless and the poor. Madness allows Lear, ironically, to see the truth about the least well off in society and he says what is almost a prayer for the homeless who are out in the storm, as he is:
Poor, naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
This is a radical questioning of the social order, and it leads Lear to question what his own priorities as king has been; he realizes that he had not given enough thought to the homeless when he was king and only realizes that now because he is homeless;
O I have ta’en
Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp,
Exposé thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more jest. (3, 4, 32 -36).
‘More just’ – Lear’s sense of injustice at the way Goneril and reign have treated him has made him aware, keenly, compassionately aware, of the injustices throughout society. His rejection of society’s mores (which, as king, he had authorized and given royal authority to) is finally complete when he tears off his clothes – it is an imaginative act so that he too can experience what his poorest subje3cts – the “poor, naked wretches” feel. In Act Four Lear’s progression to a ‘natural man’ is shown when he appears on stage decked in flowers. His insanity reveals a strong sexual loathing along with hallucinations of hell, mortality and damnation. As soon as he is re-united with Cordelia his mental torment ceases and in the final act of the play he dies with the dead Cordelia in his arms. Lear is the focus of Shakespeare’s presentation of madness, but insanity is pretended btYEdgar, hinted at by the Fool’s surreal utterances, and takes a different form with the mad and evil actions of Goneril, Cornwall, Regan and Edmond.
It is in the sub-plot that Shakespeare foregrounds the theme of blindness, but it is inextricably linked to madness. Rosenblatt puts it very simply: “Obviously when someone is behaving intelligently, he has vision. Conversely, he acts blindly when he does something foolish.” Lear acts blindly in giving away his kingdom; Gloucester acts blindly in believing Edmond’s lies about his half-brother Edgar. Through his madness Lear learns to see better – he learns and expresses the truth. Similarly, Gloucester’s’ physical blinding leads him on a course of great suffering through which he too finally ‘sees’ the truth even though he is blind. Shakespeare, in presenting the theme of blindness, is addressing another preoccupation which occurs in other plays – appearance and reality: in other words, how can we trust the evidence of our eyes if we live in a world obsessed with appearances or peopled by individuals who are deceptive and do not tell the truth – in this play, Edmond, Regan, Goneril, Cornwall and Albany. There is, of course, a sense in which Lear and Gloucester cannot be trusted either – in the sense that their judgements cannot be trusted until they have suffered and learnt how to ‘see’ properly, how to distinguish reality from appearance.
Gloucester’s blindness symbolizes the figurative blindness that afflicts both Gloucester and Lear. The imagery of the play contains many references to sight and seeing. In Act One Lear banishes Kent with “Out of my sight!” Kent’s response “See better, Lear!” demonstrates Lear’s poor judgment. Ironically Gloucester, in a similar display of poor judgement says he does not need spectacles to read Edgar’s letter of betrayal –which, of course, has been forged by Edmond. Edmond asserts that he can clearly “see the business,” while Lear refers to his own “old fond eyes” about to weep. Gloucester’s literal blinding leads him to enormous physical suffering but also to the realization that “I stumbled when I saw” – meaning that in his blindness he can see the truth about his two sons. The meeting of the blinded Gloucester with the mad Lear in Act Four is one of the most moving in Shakespeare, and it is replete with thematic significance. Halio (230 argues that "in the lunatic king, Gloucester recognizes a “ruined piece of nature”, the mirror image of his own behaviour in believing his bastard son Edmund and precipitatively.” The meeting is so moving for the audience because the two men have so much in common and have both suffered at the hands of ungrateful children. Again Halio (23) writes that “in Gloucester Lear recognizes a reflection of himself. Literal blindness reflecting the mental blindness that lead him to give away his kingdom, banish Cordelia and trust his two elder daughters.”
Certain characters are not recognized by others. Kent and Edgar both adopt disguises which means that they cannot be recognized: both have pressing reasons to remain disguised – Kent has been banished from England by Lear at the start of the play for daring to criticize Lear’s decision to split the kingdom and to reject Cordelia; Edgar is a wanted man because his father ahs believed everything Edmund has told him about Edgar’s duplicity towards their father, indeed, Gloucester ‘sees’ Edgar hurrying away, seemingly desperate to avoid meeting him, but this has been manipulated by Edmond and what Gloucester 'sees’ is not the truth. The parallels between the two men are clear: both have loyal children and disloyal children, both are blind to the truth, and both end up banishing or rejecting the loyal children and making the evil ones their sole heirs. Only when Gloucester has lost his eyes and Lear has gone mad does each realize his tremendous error. Both also have a large measure of self-deception – so convinced are they both that their interpretation of events is correct. It is appropriate that Shakespeare brings them together near Dover in Act 4 to commiserate about how their wilful blindness to the truth about their children has cost them dearly. However, although we are moved by the intense suffering that both men have undergone, there is a genuine sense of catharsis, made possible by the fact that they have both learnt important lessons from their experiences.
Works Cited
Halio, Jay L..The Tragedy of King Lear. 2005. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosenblatt, Arthur S.. William Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’. 1984. Barron’s Educational Series.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. 1992. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, William. King Lear. 2011. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wells, Stanley W.. Aspects of King Lear. 1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
