9. Lear's diatribe I: On the Rich and Famous

It is the next morning in a meadow near Dover. I imagine sunshine and birds chirping. Lear is "crowned with wild flowers" (IV.vi.79)--as opposed to thorns, perhaps. Lear was brought there so as to join Cordelia, landing with a French army. In that attire he meets his old friend Gloucester, led by the disguised Edgar. I have already cited the beginning of his speech to Gloucester, where he laments having taken flattery for truth. Later in that speech he pretends to suspect Gloucester of faking his blindness. He demands that Gloucester read him something; Gloucester protests that he can see nothing. Is Lear taunting his old friend? They continue:

Lear ...No eyes in your head, nor money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light one. Yet you see how this world goes.
Glou. I see it feelingly .
Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears; see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places, and, handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?
Glou. Ay, sir.
Lear. And the creature run from the cur--there thou mightst behold the great image of authority; a dog's obeyed in office.
Thou rascal beadle [parish constable], hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thy own back,
Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind                
For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener [petty cheat].
Through tattered clothes great vices do appear;
Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate [armor] sins with gold [a soft metal],
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
None does offend, none, I say none; I'll able [warrant] 'em.
Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
To seal th'accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes,
And, like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not. Now, now, now, now,
pull off my boots; harder, harder, so.
Edg. [aside] O matter and impertinency mixed,
Reason in madness!  (IV.vi.141-168)

Lear is reflecting on the nature of secular power: he defines it as "a dog's obeyed in office." It is an indictment that includes not just kings and politicians, but judges and even church officials.

This sort of charge, that the appearance of the powerful often masks a reality that is opposite, was of course not original with Shakespeare. Examples can be found in Dante, Chaucer, and elsewhere. Erasmus had made the most eloquent and popular statement of the general point in his 1515 essay “Sileni Alcibiadis,” the Sileni of Alcibiades, an essay quickly translated from Latin into English (Erasmus 1992, translator’s notes). These “Sileni,” Erasmus says, were carvings of ugly satyrs that opened up to reveal beautiful gods inside. In Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades called Socrates such a figure, ugly on the outside but the most beautiful lover inside—of truth, that is. Erasmus charged that rulers and church officials in his day were often Sileni “turned inside out,” that is, beautiful on the outside but ugly inside, because of deeds which strayed far from Christian conduct. Similarly, in Lear’s diatribe “robes and furred gowns hide all.” The particulars, of course, fit 17th century England rather than ancient Britain.

In Lear’s indictment he is thinking, to be sure, of his daughters and their cohorts, who locked the doors on him and plotted to kill him. The audience can add to their crimes. they put out Gloucester's eyes and sent him into the storm. Goneril offered her steward a reward to kill Gloucester. And both daughters, although married, want Edmund, Edgar's false accuser, as their lover. In all this Shakespeare is holding up the mirror to human nature.

But by now Lear is also thinking of himself as one of these dogs, who use their robes and crown to make themselves appear as God's representative on earth, to do unto others what they could not tolerate others doing to them. It was he who had cursed Goneril for cursing him, and who humiliated Cordelia for humiliating him.

At the end, Edgar sees through Lear's seeming madness to the truth behind it. "Reason in madness!" (IV.vi.170) he says. Lear has penetrated the "veil of illusion" (Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy) which civilization casts around us. The world is an evil place, and those in power, including Lear himself, are the worst in having greater opportunity, for good and for ill.

When Lear is done, he looks at Gloucester--whom he had first mocked, for his claim of blindness, and then harangued--and says, "I know thee well enough; Thy name is Gloucester" (IV.vi.173). So was Lear mad or sane in his monologue about justice? It seems to me that his madness is a kind of defense--it is as if to say that no king in his right mind could say such things as he is saying now. Anyone who does must, in the eyes of the world, be mad. He is also being playful: acting mad and then saying he is not mad.

This perspective is also that of the ancient Gnostics. As the heretic-hunter Irenaeus paraphrased the Gnostic Ptolemaeus, the Devil was “also called World-Ruler” (Barnstone 1984, 616). This is not to say that the world created by the demiurge is wholly evil, or even mostly. It is simply to say what, or who, is in power, in the soul as well as in the state. Revolutions may be fought to overturn this principle, but all they do is to confirm it even more. The lust for power--including money and the things that these will bring--continues to rule our world.

The Cathars of 13th century Languedoc also said that Satan ruled the world, pretending to be God. Within Satan's domain they counted the Catholic Church, the force most relentless in its persecution of the Cathars. Cardenal, while not going as far as the Cathars, is unsparing both against the secular powers of this world and against the Church. In a passage reminiscent of Lear, he describes what the rulers call justice:

If some beggar steals a bridle,                      S’us paubres a emblat une veta,
He'll be hung by a man who's stolen a horse. Pendra lo tals q’a emblat un ronci.
There's no surer justice in the world    Aquest dretz es plus dretz c’una sageta  than that
Which makes the rich thief                                                       Que.l ricz laire
    hang the poor one.                                                        penda.l lairo mesqui.(Bonner 1972, 198-199)                                                                  (Bergin 1973, 199)

The parallel to Lear's images is striking, especially the parallel hangings: Cardenal's bridle-thieving beggar hung by a horse thief, Shakespeare's petty cheat hung by a usurer; in today's world it might be a government regulator who rules against one company, only to become a well-paid consultant to its competitor later. Of the Church Cardenal is equally vitriolic:

Kings and emperors,                               Rei e emperador,
Dukes, counts, and viscounts,                Duc, comte e comtor,
And knights as well,                                E cavalier ab lor
Used to rule the world;                           Solon lo mon regir;
But now I see                                          Ara vei possezir
Churchmen holding sway,                       A clers la seinhoria                          With their thefts and treachery               Ab tolre e ab trair
And their hypocrisy,                                E ab ypocrezia,
Their violence and their preaching.        Ab forsa e ab prezic;
Since they can’t bear                               E tenon s’a fastic
Not being given everything,                   Qui tot non lor o gic,
They procure it by any means.                E sera, quan que tric.
    (Bonner 1972, 195)                                    (Goldin 1973, 290)

In another song, he adds: "Clerics pretend to be shepherds,/ but they are the killers” (:Clergue si fan pastor/ son aucizedor”) and “a worse breed I never saw" (“C’anc peior gent non vic”) (Goldin 1973, 290-295). After the Gnostics, Cardenal remains one of the most acute portrayers of the Church's power-complex until Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals.

In this context Lear’s phrase “a dog’s obeyed in office” takes on another meaning. The dog, as we saw looking at the Fool card in tarot, was the symbol of the Dominican Inquisition, the “dogs of God.” The Inquisition was stronger than any king or even emperor; for at its behest a crusade could be called, and a king or emperor deposed or slain in battle, as had happened to King Pedro of Aragon in 1212 near Toulouse and Manfred in 1266 near Florence. It could have happened to Queen Elizabeth, had England lost to the Spanish Armada. Such Inquisitors are indeed dogs, Lear’s phrase could be taken, and the world’s “justice” is rule by such dogs.

In the face of his awareness, Lear's new detachment from the world of authority and privilege, what saves him from despair is his growing playfulness. At the end of the scene, soldiers approach Lear, to take him by force if necessary. He simply plays with them, saying, "There's life in" this old man, and "You shall get it by running" (IV.vi.198-199). He is playing a kind of "catch me if you can" with them. He is not simply reverting to childhood.. He has become his own Fool, which in fact he has been doing all through this scene. As commentators have noticed, he was treating Gloucester in the way that the Fool had earlier treated Lear.