In Act 4, Scene 6, Shakespeare gives a glimpse of how Lear's mind is working.
Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace; this piece of toasted cheese will do 't.
Lear has been living in the open fields and evidently has actually been reduced to eating mice and anything else he can find. He is like Poor Tom, who told him in Act 3, Scene 4:
But mice and rats, and such small deer, Have been Tom's food for seven long year.
What is ironic about Lear is that he doesn't know whether he is a derelict in a field or a king in a palace. He is hungry and wants to eat the mouse, but he plans to tempt it nearer with a piece of toasted cheese. Here he is planning to use a gourmet tidbit to attract a mouse so that he can eat it. This indicates that he is mentally in two places at once: his palace and the open field near Dover. He is so far gone that he doesn't know where he is, but he can't quite let go of the notion that he is still the king. This little snatch of dialogue would be funny if it were not so pathetic.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
What lines best indicate King Lear's insanity?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is the theme of the chapter Lead?
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
The statement "Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries," carries a lot of baggage. Let's dis...
-
"Mistaken Identity" is an amusing anecdote recounted by the famous author Mark Twain about an experience he once had while traveli...
-
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
De Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman was enormously influential. We can see its influences on early English feminist Mary Woll...
-
As if Hamlet were not obsessed enough with death, his uncovering of the skull of Yorick, the court jester from his youth, really sets him of...
-
In both "Volar" and "A Wall of Fire Rising," the characters are impacted by their environments, and this is indeed refle...
No comments:
Post a Comment