Thiher, Allen. Revels in Madness. Ann Arbor, MI, USA: University of Michigan Press, 2004. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 23 December 2015.Copyright © 2004. University of Michigan Press. All rights reserved.

84 • Revels in Madness

insanity- or, more interestingly, whether insanity can maintain a rela tion [Q

a context of shared meanings. Hamlet's examp le obliged one to ask if, in this world of hermeneutic necessi ty, even mad ness can interroga te itself, with all the possible paradoxes that self-referential discourse can have. Is the statement " I am mad," spoken by an insane person, a ration ::! l statement? On the model of the classical paradox of the Cretan liar, Hamlet offers us the modern paradox of the rational madman .

Shakespearc's other great madman, King Lear, can enrich this argu­ment. T he ravi ng king has been vario usly interpreted by critics as sane, as a victim of mere irascibility or, later in the play, as struck with feverish delirium. However, within the phly, Kent judges Lea r to be mad in the very fi rst act (1.1) . Kent sees from the outset, I think, that Lear cannot judge how language functions . Asking his da ugh ters how muc h they love him, Lear ca nnot see that, in their answers, his da ughters Goneril and Regan use hyperbole, or figural language. Lear takes this language liter­ally. Conversely, when he hea rs the literal language of his honest daughter Cordelia, he takes it as figural language and disowns her for not loving him. Lear cannot intetpret the literal, and I, as Ken t does, would interpret this incapacity to interpret as a serious mental diSTurbance. Like many medieval minds, he confuses rhe li teral with the rhetorical, the ex istential with the semantic. In the context of the play these confusions must be fur­ther interpreted . And all-including Regan and Goneri l-pursue this deci­phering.

Lear is interpreted by every character. His fool sees in him a fool, which provides an image of hermeneutic mirroring among characters who are also fo ils to madness . Facing this fo il Lear interprets his own distress as madness and implores the gods, in an omcry Tha t harks back to the Greek determi ­nation of tragedy, nor to infliCT insanity upon him. In the play of foils, then, the fool seems to be what Lear should be, which is an image of wisdom in madness. Kent hi msel f, though he has judged Lear co be mad, aTTempts to defend the king's interests, and for this he is called a deranged subject and put in stocks. The disinherited son Edgar also mirrors madness in the play of fo ils and misleading interpretations: he chooses the role of a Bedlam beg­gar. He is driven to act the madman after the bastard Edmund, in villainy bordering on insanity, has fa lsel), accused him of wanting to murder their father Gloucester.

The betrayed Gloucester has his own interpretation of madness. Blind Gloucester longs fo r madness as a balm that would help him through the intolerable night, and envies the madness he perceives in the king: