This essay focuses on Act 111, Scene 4 of Shakespeare's King Lear, a tragic and powerful scene in which we see the spirit of Lear tragically gives way to the threat of madness, which pursued him relentlessly throughout the play. However, the character of Lear represents only one of the three forms of madness depicted in the scene: he is perhaps the only truly mad character, but there is also the feigned madness of Poor Tom and the professional madness of the Fool. These different forms of madness are all represented in different ways via different styles and forms of language, images, movements, and verbal styles. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay By the time this scene takes place, Lear has gone from being a powerful and respected monarch with hundreds of followers to a loner. , a rejected man, driven out of his own kingdom, his family and all his fortune and wealth. He was cast out at night to wander the earth, accompanied by the only subjects who remained loyal to his Fool, and the Earl of Kent, disguised as Caius. The Fool and Kent came together in the scene to support the king, both physically and mentally. The fact that Lear finds himself here is a mixture of the results of his own madness and the cruelty he experiences at the hands of his own flesh and his own madness. blood. In the first scene of the play, Lear makes a series of errors that ultimately prove fatal for the king. First, he mistakenly rejects Cordelia, his only faithful daughter, then he divides his kingdom between the two remaining "pelican daughters" (111.4.72), leaving himself only to trust in his daughter's love for him . However, as their title suggests, his two daughters betray their father's trust by seizing all power and banding together to place him in the miserable situation he now finds himself in. Even though Lear has been reduced to so few, his voice remains commanding. It preserves the language of the central character, the hero of the piece. He specializes in hyperbole, inciting the stars at every opportunity, including here, when he is cast out from his family and he orders the stars to blame their illnesses on those who have caused him pain: Now, all the plagues that hang in the air Suspend the destiny of men's faults on your daughters! (111.4.64-5) He conducts the trials, ordering one who is entirely unqualified, but in Lear's demented eyes, "the most learned judge" (111.6.21), poor Tom, to be judge at the imaginary trial of Regan and Gonerill, he gives sermons and prays. Lear's prayer in Act 111, Scene 4, shows him taking his final footing before falling into the abyss of madness. As Danby claims, Lear has already learned humility and patience - now he learns charity (Danby 1948, p. 186) and also repentance of his "pompous" (111.4.33); Lear is oblivious to the physical damage such a storm causes him, informing Kent that "This storm in my mind / Doth of my senses takes all the rest / Saves what beats there." » (111.4.13-15), and this is why he prays instead for those who are at the mercy of the gods and the storm. When he refers to himself, it is not to pray for his salvation, but to reprimand himself for the way he has lived his life and to command himself to "take care, pomp" ( 111.4.33) - to become morally healthy by rejecting old habits. When Lear prays, he walks a thin line between madness and reason. AC Bradley wonders whether, if the king had been allowed to sleep, as was his intention before prayer, he would actually have regained health, as he does in Act 1V, scene7 (Bradley, 1948, 287). . As it stands, this sleep and eventual healing is prevented by the arrival of poor Tom, who bursts onto the stage angrily, with curses and outbursts that, along with his gruesome appearance, serve as a catalyst. ultimately pushes Lear to the brink of madness. The sights and sounds of poor demented Tom have an immediate effect on the king, sending him into madness made all the more tragic by the contrast between him moments before, when he seemed almost lucid, and his now completely demented character . He now speaks the first words of a truly mad king. His descent into madness is represented by the question: “Have you given everything to your daughters?” And did you get there? (111.4.47-48). His question seems almost hopeful: has he now found someone who is in the same plight as him? Is he no longer alone in his suffering? The king cannot conceive that any thing or event could cause such pain and destitution as poor Tom seems to suffer, his own flesh and blood, his daughters. He clings to his idea and repeats it again and again (111.4.60-61, 64-69), refusing to listen to the futile voice of common sense and reason that manifests itself in the figure of Kent, who remains patient with the king throughout his life. .The reason for Tom's powerful effect on the king is that the king immediately identified with his pitiful situation. Lear was cut off from his family, both because of his own folly in giving away his entire kingdom, and because of the betrayal and deception of the first two daughters. He sees himself and his daughters as part of one body, a body that Regan and Gonerill have mutilated: is this not how this mouth should tear apart this hand to bring him food? (111.4.16-17)As he identified with his daughters, now that he has been cut off (or bitten), he is lost, he is desperately looking for someone to identify with, and in the meantime he is fleeing the madness which in his time at every turn threatens to take possession of him, as he cries, “Oh, so lies madness; let me avoid that; / None of that anymore” (111.4.2122). Tom, like complete and utter human deprivation, suggests this person that Lear is looking for. Lear, in his madness, gained as much as he lost. He effectively loses his dignity, his identity, all the power and respect he was so accustomed to commanding - with Lear existing in a world where the ruler of a country is, in authority, almost equal to God, his imperialism n 'has known no limits and has never been questioned or resisted. Today, his perception of reality is completely turned upside down. But, as a result of this reversal, he acquired knowledge that he had never possessed in a healthy way, learning truths that he had never before been able to conceive. His way of thinking has been reversed: he no longer cares about status or politics, because they have no relation to his new reality. He now sees beyond all the false flattery of his daughters and those around him, of all the so-called loyal servants, who so easily abandoned him, just like the ants who learned that "you don't work in winter” (11.4.66). He slowly emerges from the political world in which he was so immersed and begins to see the importance of individual human life over status and, as Danby argues, morality over politics (Danby, 1948, p. 171 ). where the “quality” (11.4.91) of the individual personality is what counts, and where position has lost its meaning. Therefore, for Lear, poor Tom provides a picture of man exactly as he should be naked before the world, not shrouded in lies and falsehoods, unprotected from the elements and facing life exactly as he is. it is: “You don’towe no silk to the worm. , the beast without skin, the sheep without wool, the cat without perfume. Ha! Here are three that are sophisticated. You are the thing itself! The unaccommodated man is nothing more than a poor naked and forked animal like you. (111.4.100-104) Lear therefore sees the beggar as a "Theban scholar" (111.4.150), someone who knows the secrets of life and nature better than he, and so Lear begins to question him : “What is the cause of the thunder? (111.4.147). Lear goes on a quest to share his new mentor's knowledge of the world, hence tearing off his clothes in an attempt to imitate him (111.4.105). Edgar invented a character fitting what was, in Shakespeare's time, the stereotypical image of madness and despair. He constantly speaks of the “bad demon” (111.4.44), the devil who is supposed to haunt madmen; he claims to have received the Devil's traditional gifts: knives, halters and ratsbane (111.4.52-53); he claims to see the devil "Flibberdigibbet" when Gloucester enters, an accusation which perhaps reflects Edgar's rejected feelings towards his father at this point in the play. Also, he defends himself against Gloucester's derisive remark on the low caliber of his company (111.4.135) by replying that he is accompanied by nothing less than 'Modo' and 'Mahu' (111.4.136-7), great commanders of legions. devils. He goes to great lengths to present a complex, coherent and convincing picture of himself and his existence, with his wild images of demon chases and his long speech describing his past life, when there was little need to go that far. immediately caught up in his act, and the other characters are so busy dealing with other events and problems that they have little tendency to pay attention to these disjointed stories of crazy wanderers. Poor Tom's physical appearance on stage would certainly make one look poor Tom. begging in total destitution, he is almost naked (111.4.62-3), and his physical injuries are indicated by Lear's words: "is it fashion that rejected fathers / should have so little pity for their flesh? presumably referring to his nudity and the injuries or scratches he received due to this lack of protective clothing. However, despite this verbal and physical appearance, poor Tom, in his "madness", does not appear as tragic as Lear, for many reasons, the most obvious being that the audience knows that he is a number put on by the disguised character. Edgar. The audience feels pity only for Edgar, not for his manifestation of the “beggar of Bedlam” (11.3.14). Moreover, a touch of humor in Poor Tom undermines his tragic circumstances, for example his imitation of a sailor navigating the deep, dark depths of the hovel through which his imaginary ship sails. The cry of “Fathom and a half, fathom and a half!” » (111.4.37), is not the cry of a soul in the deepest torment at the hands of the “filthy demon” (111.4.43). Indeed, he seems to have a strange energy for someone so deprived. The Fool is another character who represents yet another form of professional madness. The Fool spends his life singing songs, riddles and nursery rhymes - ostensibly to entertain the king and by comparing the linguistic styles of the king and his sidekick The Fool we see how different the positions of the two characters are. While the king, so accustomed to total authority, screams at the stars, ordering them to carry out his orders, the madman whispers little songs in his ear, addressing only the person, and not the the universe, which he rightly understands, is out of order. its control. But the king would have done better to listen to this humble fool from the start, because beneath the veil of absurdities lies an ocean of common sense. When the king rejects Cordelia, the..