Comments on Location in Lear

While one can pull many quotes out of Lear to discuss and, by use of synecdoche, claim that each exemplifies the whole play, it is not as simple to do nor as defensible as in many of Shakespeare’s other plays. As in the others, the first thing to be taken into account must be the statement; second the speaker; and finally the context (an inversion of this order might be suggested, but it would not be as simple to explain, nor would it make sense until the conclusion).

However, in Lear, the latter consideration must be almost the greatest focus. For the complex situations in which the characters find themselves often lends to a confusion of context. For example, any of the statements of the Fool could be taken as such and regarded as reversals of tradition merely because of his role as the fool. However, when the situation has already been reversed (as when Lear bears “thine ass upon thy back” or makes “thy daughters thy mothers”), the role of the fool is not only to point out the situation at hand, but to create a reversal of the inverted situation.

In other words, when the fool speaks in the context of Lear’s madness, he is not merely speaking the truth in riddles, but speaking it from the midst of a riddle. Thus the role of place, context, and plot act in this play as figures of greater import than in Macbeth or Othello. In fact, location itself must be the key determinate in interpreting the statements of any character in this play.

For example, the short scene V.ii takes place in a “field between the two camps.” The exchange between Gloucester and Edgar here becomes not only representative of the “ill thoughts” (V.ii.9) in the play, but also the lack of established relationship; Edgar says, “Give me thy hand”, but Gloucester says that “a man may rot even here.” Thus, the location takes an integral role in showing the lack of safety in conventionally accepted places of truth.

By the way, my favorite Shakespeare quote of all time is in this play. I just love the last line of Edmund's soliloquy, read loudly and viciously:

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!