dramatic effect and purpose of madness in shakespeare

Shakespeare for Overseas StudentsID NUMBER 0917057

Dramatic Effect and Purpose of

Madness in Shakespeare’s King

Lear

Shakespeare composed King Lear a few years after James I accession to the throne

(1603), between late 1605 and late 1606. The registration of his play in the Stationer’s

Register in the year 1607 reveals that King Lear was performed for King James I at the

Whitehall Palace on St Stephen’s night, 26th December of the year 1606. This fact

provides evidence of the great fame that King Lear already achieved at that time. In

fact, after this royal performance, King Lear maintained being represented in many

theatres. Even though, it was a very controversial play and there were also many people

that did not understand it, or did not like it.

King Lear is one of the greatest Shakespeare’s tragedies. Scholars such as Grace

Iappolo1 consider that, since 1605 Shakespeare seemed to be very interested in

portraying family relationships between fathers and daughters in a tragic way. He

observes that Shakespeare’s later plays such as Hamlet, Othello, Pericles, The Winter’s

Tale, The Tempest, and, especially King Lear, present ‘the bond between father and

daughter often bordered on incest or tragedy, threatening the foundations not just of the

family but of society itself’. (Grace Ioppolo, 2003:2).

Causes of Lear’s madness

1 Grace Iappolo, A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on William Shakespeare’s King Lear (2003).

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Lear was the king of Britain during the Celtic and pre-Christian times. In this play

we are told the Lear tried to divide his kingdom between his three daughters attending

to their quatity of love towards him. As a consequence of his rational mind and lack of

feeling, his family will also result divided and, finally, he will become mad and die.

Shakespeare also introduced another parallel story, considered a subplot of the

play, this is the story of Gloucester’s family. In this case, his little knowledge about his

sons will cause his own physical blindness. There are a lot of similarities between these

two fathers, and this is why they are related and compared in most of the cases.

King Lear is continuously thinking about the fact that turned he mad. He considers

that the main thing that caused his madness is his daughters’ ingratitude. Kenneth Muir

and Stanley Wells2 talk about shocks, instead of causes, that happen in chronological

order and provoke Lear’s insanity. As Goldberg says in his essay, King Lear is a ‘play

commonly thought to represent a man moving from blindness and folly, through the

bitter lessons of his consequent suffering, eventually to see the truth’3.

1. The first shock that emotionally affects to Lear is the attack made by Gonoril

when she wants him to reduce his retinue. He is angrily surprised at her

aggressive behaviour to him. He even asks her: ‘Are you our daughter?’. This

represents the first action in which Lear begins to realize that his judgements

about his daughters were wrong.

‘I’ll tell thee. (To Gonoril) Life and death! I am ashamed

That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus,

That these hot tears, that break from me perforce

2 Their work is entitled Aspects of King Lear (1982, pp.27-30).3 S.L Goldberg’s An Essay on King Lear. (1974. p.4)

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And should make thee – worst basts and fogs upon

thee!’4.

At this point he already seems to recognize that he ‘wronged Cordelia’.

‘O most small fault,

How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show! ...

O Lear, Lear, Lear!

Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in,

And thy dear judgement out!5’.

And, as a consequence of this, Lear begins to regret himself of his behaviour

towards Cordelia. He is even scared of becoming mad: ‘O, let me not be mad,

not mad, sweet heaven!/ Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!6’. This fact is

very significant because, in fact, he will become mad. Therefore, we can say that

he is absolutely recognizing that he banished Cordelia unjustly, and this is why

he is punished by being turned insane. This fact reminds to the Christian

religion, Lear is punished because he committed a sin: he misunderstood his

daughters’ feelings because of his lack of knowledge about them.

2. The second shock that Muir and Stanley Wells consider appears later, in the

seventh scene7. This happens when Shakespeare goes to Gloucester’s home and

he finds Kent in the stocks. At the beginning he cannot believe that Cornwall

and Regan could have been able to sent him to such a humiliating place:

‘What’s he that hath so much thy place mistook

4 Stanley Wells, The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear, 2001. Scene IV, pp.1405 Kenneth Muir’s and Stanley Wells’s, Aspects of King Lear (1982:27).6 Aspects of King Lear (1982:27)7 The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear is not divided into acts, instead it contains 24 scenes.

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To set thee here? ...

They would not, could not do’t.’Tis worse than murder,

To do upon respect such violent outrage’.

(The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear, 2001:163-164)

Then, as Muir and Stanley Wells observe, Lear shows his first physical

symptoms of ‘hysteria’, that is, of his madness:

‘O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!

Hyterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow;

Thy element’s below’.8

3. Muir and Stanley Wells propose a third shock. This is the last one and takes

place immediatly after the second shock. It is based on Lear’s rejection by his

daughter Regan. Regan was the only daughter that Lear finally trusted, but, then

he realizes that both are treacherous, and that the only faithful daughter was

Cordelia. Therefore, this betrayal also influences to develop his illnes.

‘No, I’ll not weep....

I have full cause of weeping, but this heart

Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws

Or ere I’ll weep. –O fool, I shall go mad!’

(The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear, 2001:175-176)

Even though these three facts contributed to provoke Lear’s madness, we should

admit that it was also Lear himself the main cause of it. As Grace Ioppolo says in his

work9 King Lear represents the classical Aristotelian concept of a great man’s fall by

means of his own actions and faults. Lear is portrayed as a very rational being and his

8 Aspects of King Lear (1982:28).9 William Shakespeare’s King Lear (2003)

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fault is that does not pay attention to people’s feelings. We can see his obsession for

quantitative norms he measures and compares how much his daughters love him:

‘Tell me, my daughters,

Which of you shall we say doth love us most,

That our largest bounty may extend

Where merit doth most challenge it?

(The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear, 2001:102)

This dialogue belongs to the scene of the division of his kingdom, which can be

seen, metaphorically as the source of the division of his own family. Lear banishes

Cordelia while he was trying to divide his kingdom. The reason is that Cordelia is the

only daughter that sincerely recognizes that she cannot love him all. Then, the other two

daughters, who had lied about their love to Lear, receive the whole kingdom. But, as

soon as they get the kingdom, they conspire against their father to assure their

inheritance. And, finally, the two eldest daughters also fight between themselves

because of their greed; they try to achieve as much wealth as possible. Therefore, at the

end the whole family is divided and destroyed because of the kingdom division.

Representation of Lear’s madness in different ways

Robert Bechtold Heilman10 proposes the term pattern to refer to the different

motifs in which the madness theme appears in this play. He assures that ‘... the reader

soon becomes aware that the madness functions in more ways than one’11. The most

10 Robert Bethtold Heilman’s This Great Stage. Image and Structure in King Lear (1948). pp. 173- 17411 This Great Stage. Image and structure in King Lear. (1948). p. 173

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outstanding way of interpreting madness in this play is as a psycho-physiological

phenomenon suffered by Lear caused by his daughters’ ingratitude towards him.

Related to this there is another way of considering madness in this play, and this is

as an intellectual phenomenon. Bechtold calls it ‘intellectual’ because he says that it

appears as a way of expressing a ‘failure of understanding’ the complex situation

between Lear and his three daughters.

This critic observes more ways of perceiving madness in this play. He considers

that madness also appears at a different sphere, that is to say, at a moral sphere. In this

sense, the fact that Lear failed at understanding his daughters’ behaviour provokes the

achievement of better knowledge at the end. Lear becomes mad not only as a

consequence of his daughters’ actions, but also as a way of escaping from the chaotic

sphere that governs his kingdom. This way he is able to analize and understand the

situation that is taking place. Madness represents a means of liberating his own

problems and imagination, which helps him reconsider all his actions and attitudes and

apologize to Cordelia. Many critics and scholars characterize this play as a cautionary

tale because the main characters, Lear and Gloucester, improve at the end as a

consequence of their faults.

There is a similar problem in the case of Gloucester, but, in his case, instead of

turning mad, he is punished by means of turning him blind. The symbolic meaning of

this physical blindness is related to the fact of being able to see or not be able to see

who the good son is and who the evil son. Shakespeare plays with the word sight and

insight. Therefore Gloucester’s lack of insight causes his own loss of sight, that is, his

blindness.

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Madness is reflected in a broader sense according to Bechtold’s theories. It is a

symbol of the disordered and unstructured society that appears when the patriarchal

norms break down and the social order is altered. This play is contextualized in a

patriarchal society where social orders and positions are very fixed at the beginning and

any kind of disturbance or change is a threat to the natural order. As Gonoril and Regan

tried to deceive their father by getting his position as ruler, they also provoke the

destruction of this established society. When Lear is already mad, he talks about

fantasies and apparent nonsenses, but, in fact, Shakespeare sets this kind of dialogues on

him on purpose. It is a way of criticising his society through an indirect way. One of

Lear’s discourses is about social order, and he blames women on the destruction of the

established social order. Modern critics consider that Shakespeare may have tried to

warn about the negative consequences of the society portrayed in this play. This is a

patriarchal society, and mysogynist in a certain way, therefore women should not be

allowed to rule it. Lear considers that the source of this disorder and chaos are his

daughters, that is to say, women. Shakespeare may be trying to show the disastrous

consequences of women’s reign.

Finally, he observes that madness is related to other facts in this play. It is related

to the assumed madness of Edgar as Poor Tom, the ‘madness’ of the Fool and all the

comments about madness that appear throughtout the play:

O, let me not be mad, sweet heaven!

I would not be mad.

Keep me in temper. I would not be mad.12

12 Stanley Wells, The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear (2000) p.144. These words are said by Lear after having an argument with his daughter Gonoril. He begins to be afraid of turning insane.

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...

Now I prithee, daughter, do not make me

mad.13

...

Here, sir, but trouble him not; his wits are

gone.14

Celeste Flower considers that the madness developed by the Fool is ‘professional,

eccentric, witty, exposing weakness and folly: ‘The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so

long/ That it’s had it head bit off by it young’’15. This is a clear metaphor of Lear’s

family. But more interesting is Edgar’s assumed madness disguised as Poor Tom of

Bedlam. Edgar disguises himself as Poor Tom of Bedlam as a way to be hidden because

his father is pursuing him to kill him. As Ioppolo says in his work16, the fact that Edgar

includes the name Bedlam in his own ‘name’ already implies that Edgar is representing

a madman because Bedlam is a slang term that was employed to refer to the Bethlehem

Hospital, a London insane asylum.

Poor Tom’s madness: assumed madness

Lear’s identification with the storm is a symbol of his madness. This rhetoric

feature whereby the weather reflects the behaviour or the mood of the characters is

known as pathetic fallacy. As Celeste Flower17 considers in her essay, in this case, the

stormy weather shows us the inner torment that Lear is suffering as a consequence of

the cruel treatment that he received from his daughters. Muir and Wells assure that in

13 Stanley Wells, The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear (2000) p. 173. Again Lear makes allusions to madness. This happens when Lear begins to realize that his two eldest daughters are deceiving him.14 Stanley Wells, The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear (2000) p. 203. Kent says this to Gloucester referring to Lear.15 Cambridge Student Guide. Shakespeare. King Lear (2002) p. 7316 Grace Ioppolo, A Routledge Literay Sourcebook on William Shakespeare’s King Lear. (2003), pp. 11917 Cambridge Student Guide. Shakespeare. King Lear, pp. 73

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this scene Lear is not totally mad yet. They consider that when he turns completely mad

is when Poor Tom appears. This character represents both ‘a living embodiment of

naked poverty and one who is apparently what Lear had feared to become. Edgar, in

acting madness, precipitates Lear’s’ (Aspects of King Lear, 1982:28).

John Reibetanz18 argues that Shakespeare must have followed the theory of

Renaissance iconographers in portraying truth without clothes. According to Heilman,

‘Lear’s redemptive experience is manifested in a sucession of tableaux

relating to Lear’s headgear: the King goes from crown to bare head, to crown

of weeds’19.

This way Lear loses his crown as King of England, and as a consequence his wits

become wrong. We also see the relation between madness and nakedness in Edgar

disguised as Poor Tom because this character is supposed to be mad, and he does not

wear clothes20.

In Shakespeare’s times, mad people were considered to be possessed by devils and

they were marginalized in dark and isolated places. Madness was a topic that did not

like to the society at that time and people talked about it by employing severe terms and

in an uncomfortable way. This is the main reason why this great play did not achieve

huge audiences at the beginning of its performances.

But the main purpose of Shakespeare to include madness as one of the main topics

of this play is because it helped him talk about different topics in a free way. King Lear

emerges a series of taboo issues at that time. Therefore, he was able to deal with

18 In The Lear World, A Study of King Lear in Its Dramatic Context. (1977)19 This Great Stage. Image and Structure in King Lear (pp. 67-87)20Stanley Wells, The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear, ‘Edgar is often presented as virtually, sometimes (in modern performance) entirely, naked; in this play ... he wears a blanket round his loins’.

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suicide: Gloucester’s attempt to commit suicide, and also the murder and suicide of

Lear’s two eldest daughters; rivalry inside families and violence: King Lear is a play

full of violence, the most cruel scene is when Gloucester is taken his eyes off by the

Duke of Cornwall and Regan. Uncontrolled sexuality is another topic that appears, for

example, between Edmund and Gonoril. The adultery theme also appears as in the case

of Edmund (illegitimate son of Gloucester), and even as in the case of Lear. Some

critics such as Muir and Stanley Wells consider that when Lear is becoming mad, he

alludes to the fact that his wife, to whom we find no other mention than this one, could

have been unfaithful to him:

Regan, I think you are. I know what reason

I have to think so. If thou shouldst not be glad

I would divorce me from thy mother’s shrine,

Sepulcring an adultress (...)21

All these topics were considered taboo at that time, they were not common topics

and it was very dangerous to talk about them. But, there is another main topic in this

play, in fact, from this political topic the rest of the action follows: the division of the

kingdom. The division of the kingdom provoked the division of Lear’s family as well.

Medieval and Renaissance historians confirm that, during the pre-Christian Celtic age,

which corresponds to the period in which King Lear ruled, Britain was just one country,

it was not divided yet. Later, as a consequence of invasions, it became divided into three

separate countries: England, Scotland and Wales. These three separate countries were

those that Lear wanted to create at the beginning of the play.

21Stanley Wells, The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear (2000), p. 168

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King Lear was written during King James I reign, in which James I unsuccessfully

tried to reunite Scotland and England. Therefore, Shakespeare may have composed

King Lear as a way to warn his King, James I, not to attempt to unify both countries,

otherwise England could be invaded by other coutries. In King Lear we see that as a

consequence of the division of the Lear’s kingdom, the country was left unattended, so

England was invaded by France and Lear’s monarchy disappeared.

Orwell also regarded Lear’s madness as a protective technique that allowed

Shakespeare to deal with dangerous and difficult themes for society. He talked about

this topic very well:

‘Shakespeare is noticeable cautious, not to say cowardly, in his maner of

uttering unpopular opinions. Almost never does he put a subversive or sceptikal

remark into the mouth of a character likely to be identified with himself. Throughout

his plays, the acute social critics, the people who are not taken in by accepted

fallacies, are buffoons, villains, lunatics or persons who are shamming insanity or are

in a state of violent hysteria. Lear is a play in which this tendency is particularly well

marked. It contains a great deal of veiled social criticism ... but it is all buttered by

the Fool, by Edgar when he is pretending to be mad, or by Lear during his bouts of

madness. In his sane moments Lear hardly ever makes an intelligent remark. And yet

the very fact Shakespeare had to use these subterfuges shows how widely his

thoughts ranged22’.

King Lear has provoked many different reactions on both theatrical and literal

audiences. Since it was published, it has been characterized in many different ways. It

has been considered a distressing play, shocking, horrific... But, in fact, critics consider

22 G. Orwell, Selected Plays (1957), pp. 116. This quotation was taken from Muir and Wells, Aspects of King Lear. (1982), pp. 24

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that no other Shakesperian play has caused such contradictory reactions simultaneously.

They believe that King Lear is the most representative play of Skakespeare’s skills as

playwright and poet. In addtion, as Muir and Wells assure in their work Aspects of King

Lear, Shakespeare achieved a very realist and good depiction of madness following the

16th century theory about madness.

In this play, both kinds of madness, the assumed madness of Edgar and the true

madness of King Lear represent the destruction of social or natural order as a

consequence of treachery and ingratitude. Madness symbolizes the breaking of the fixed

social structure, and the following chaotic world without norms and full of violence and

selfishness.

REFERENCES:

Bechtod Heilman, Robert. This Great Stage. Image and Structure in King Lear. USA.

Louisiana State University Press. 1948

Flower, Celeste. Cambridge Student Guide. Shakespeare. King Lear. Cambridge.

Cambridge University Press. 2002

Goldgerg, S.L. An Essay on King Lear. London. Cambridge University Press. 1974

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Grace Ioppolo. A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on William Shakespeare’s King Lear.

London. 1st published in 2003

Muir, Kenneth and Wells, Stanley. Aspects of King Lear. Cambridge. Cambridge

University Press. 1982

Wells Stanley. The Oxford Shakespeare King Lear. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

2000

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dramatic effect and purpose of madness in shakespeare

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