The journey of the old king in Shakespeare's immortal
tragedy, King Lear, is a journey from folly to wisdom through
madness and suffering.
Lear is old and impassioned,
sometimes, even childish. The way he declares to divide & distribute his kingdom
among his three daughters on the basis of a sort of elocution contest, the way he
banishes his most loving daughter, Cordelia, without understanding that her 'nothing',
however obstinate it sounds like, is everything, we may agree with Kent that the
anger-driven octogenarian must be 'mad' from the outset. Irascible anger clouds Lear's
judgement. By banishing Cordelia and by submitting himself to the custody of Goneril
& Regan, the two 'pelican daughters', he foolishly banishes true love and
embraces the hypocritical appearances of it.
Now let us
trace Lear's passage from this utter folly to his attainment of final wisdom in the
recovery of Cordelia's filial love and mad Lear's regeneration, tragic reversal in her
murder, the closing moments of his further degeneration(?)
& death:
a) Lear's persecution by Goneril &
Regan--driven out onto the open heath, unsheltered & exposed to the cruelties of
natue and cosmos;
b) Lear runs about in tattered clothes,
accompanied by his Fool and Edgar diguised as a Bedlamite--feels close affinity with the
'poor naked wretches' of the world---the folly-fallen old king empathises with all the
sufferers of the world;
c) This process of learning through
sufferings is enhanced by the constant commentaries by the Fool, functioning as the old
king's alter-self and his conscience; the Fool tells Lear that the king is a greater
fool;
d) As Cordelia returns to rescue her wronged father,
Lear retrieves his lost love that has a healing effect upon his degenerate mind;
Cordelia is a sort of Christ figure offering Lear the road to
salvation;
e) The loyal Kent & the good and humane
Edgar also contribute to Lear's journey to wisdom; both of them illustrate sympathy and
support necessary for Lear's recovery from madness.
King
Lear thus progresses through 'filial ingratitude' to filial love, through enormous
physical as well as mental sufferings to the brink of sanity and realisation, though his
story ends on a final impression of disaster.