King Lear

In analyzing the passages in Act III, Scene 2, beginning “Blow winds, and crack your cheeks…” to “…I live before this time” I will show how the scene is significant in relation to the action of the play up to that point, in that it is this scene that confirms King Lear’s spiral into madness, which in turn brings about a change in the audience’s perception of the character.

I will also show what political implications there would have been for Shakespeare’s contemporary audience, and in particular Shakespeare’s patron, King James I of England, and his subjects.

Act III, Scene 2, is significant in that it confirms King Lear’s descent into madness with his speeches that switch erratically between differing tones and themes.

“Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, (drowned) the
cocks.
You sulph’rous 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’ th’ world.
Crack nature’s molds, all germans spill at once
That makes ingrateful man”.

(King Lear III 2 1-11)

Here we see Lear crying for hurricanes to drown the tallest buildings, followed by the lines, “You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,” which are so “densely impacted and mouth-filling that they come to their auditors more as enormous sounds than as precise sense.” The audience then catches “the violence of, “Singe my white head”” who’s tone is then “picked up in his next speech in, “Why then, let fall/Your horrible pleasure.”

Finally we see that “the tone suddenly switches to pathos – “Here I stand your slave / A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man’ (19-20) – and then … rises again to defiance (”But yet I call you servile ministers”).

It is very important in relation to the action of the play up to this point for the audience to see the King go mad in this manner upon the heath. As J.S.H. Bransom asks, “Was Shakespeare aware that Lear’s conduct in the first scene was affected by the same causes as were responsible for his insanity?”

It seems ridiculous that Shakespeare would not have had a plan on how the play was going to unfold before he started writing, and in showing Lear losing his sanity upon the Heath, he makes the audience sympathize with the King, whereas in the first scenes many would have disliked him and would have believed that with the treatment meted out to him by his daughters, Regan and Goneril, he got what he deserved. The fact that the King’s madness is illustrated through his language, plainly for all to see, drastically changes the way we feel about the character, and thus makes Act III, Scene 2 a significant scene indeed.

Shakespeare wrote King Lear as a servant of King James I, who had the reputation of being the wisest fool in Christendom, and more than likely Shakespeare would have borne this in mind when penning the play. However, it must be noted that Shakespeare was not trying to portray an image of James through the character of King Lear, however Lear’s greatness would have mattered to James and Shakespeare’s royal patron in all likelihood sympathized with the kingdom-dividing Lear.

One feels though, that James I would not have been able to sympathize with a sane Lear, who had divided his kingdom in the earlier scenes, when James’ own great ambition was to unite the countries of England and Scotland.

The only way James would have felt sympathy with Lear would have been in seeing how the madness of the great king, which we only fully begin to see in Act III, Scene 2, drove him into making this decision. Lear’s greatness would have mattered to James, and without Lear’s spiral into madness, James would have possibly come to the conclusion that Shakespeare was trying to tell him that a divided kingdom (in James’ case a separated England and Scotland) was the intelligent thing to do, rather than something only a mad king such as Lear would ever set about creating.

Instead James would have seen in the play a great king dividing his kingdom, but dividing it under the influence of his insanity. This in turn would have told him that a sane king would have kept his kingdom united and would have confirmed in his own mind that the unification of England and Scotland was the best way forward.

As important as this message would have been for King James I, it would also have resonated with other members of Shakespeare’s contemporary audience who were mostly James’ subjects. The joining of England and Scotland into one United Kingdom was James’ passion, but it was a passion not shared with many of his citizens. Therefore the message that only an insane king would divide his kingdom, may have helped to sow the seeds in people’s minds that maybe James’ aim of uniting the two countries was not as bad as had been initially thought.

Therefore, the passages in Act III, Scene 2 from “Blow winds, and crack your cheeks…” to “…I live before this time,” are vitally important to the play as a whole, as they confirm to the audience that Lear is spiralling into the depths of insanity. This notion of the king being mad is significant in relation to the action of the play up to this point, because it goes some way to explaining why Lear divided up his kingdom like he did and changes the way the audience feels about the character.

Also for Shakespeare’s contemporary audience, including his patron King James I, Lear’s madness as demonstrated in these passages, help to justify James’ own stance on the unification of England and Scotland, for only an insane king would wish for a divided kingdom.