et oui les amies! je vous ai tiré ma révérence ! Bonne chance Bref, voilà mon exposé qui pourrait éventuellement servir à quelque chose, je l'espère du moins.
Bisous à toutes


KING LEAR
SHAKESPEARE

SCENE 4

King Lear is widely regarded as Shakespeare's crowning artistic achievement. It is one of his most beautiful plays, one of the darkest, the most poetical and philosophical. Shakespeare took his main plot line of an aged monarch abused by his children from a folk tale that appeared first in written form in the 12th century and was based on spoken stories that originated much further into the Middle Ages. In several written versions of “Lear," the king does not go mad, his "good" daughter does not die, and the tale has a happy ending. But here, in a world where there is no age, the innocent will suffer and Lear becomes mad. King Lear dated approximately 1605-1606, falls midway between Othello and Macbeth among the great tragedies. Through the play of King Lear, Shakespeare explores main themes which are universal: the Human being, father’s love for his daughters, the villainess, what a word is. Indeed, Shakespeare explores the relationship between reason and madness, sense and nonsense, in great depth. Various kinds of madness are contrasted with each other and all of them with commonly accepted modes of sanity. Edgar’s assumed madness as he impersonates Tom o’ Bedlam in act 3 in comparison with the genuine and extreme madness of King Lear in act 4.
This scene takes place after Lear’s poor treatment at Gonoril’s and Kent has managed to enter his service. Here is the first time that we can see the Fool. The victim of appearance, King Lear, meets for the first time of the play the one who possesses reason in his madness.
Is this scene mere comic relief or does it mean something?

First, we’ll note the comic relief of this scene, then, we’ll see how the fool impersonates Lear’s conscience and we’ll see the distance between this scene and the previous.
1. This scene breaks the anguish of the audience as it is the first scene really comic and the Fool appears here for the first time.
- Clowning and theatricality are two main themes in this scene:
There is the use of objects, many props in this scene, for instance the coxcomb: the word is repeated 5 times in the first two Fool’s speeches. We can notice that “coxcomb” is 4 times associated with “my”: the Fool insists on his appropriation of the coxcomb. From the XIVth century to the XVIIth century, the Fool is represented by the coxcomb. His status is important, and the clowning is linked with this sort of props.
The character of the Fool deals with an important idea of comic theatricality; that’s why, we can perceive with him a lot of gesturing. We can suppose that he jumps, he turns around Lear, he must dance while he sings, and as he talks to Lear or to Kent, or at the end of this passage to Gonoril, he must run all over the stage. In the film Ran by Kurosawa for example, the Fool never moves in another way but by running. It’s an element of the character. He is a clown even if he sees the truth, he is larger than life.
There is the use of music: we can count three real songs and some sentences in this passage. And we can notice that the third one, from line 166 down to line 169, was a well-known song. In all of these songs, the Fool says that fools are wise and kings are blind. It’s the theme of reason in madness that we will talk a few more later.
A sort of a play within the play is settled in this scene: from line 134 down to line 140, the Fool sings. But the meaning of this song is not fortuitous: he talks about Lear’s story and finally he links fiction and reality by calling Lear a fool.
- Contrasts and reversals are skipped in this passage:
Lear was the king but the Fool is familiar with him: he uses “thou”, “thy”, and so on, ascent in the first scene when he tries to support Cordelia. It seems to deal with the goal to tell the truth. There is a gap. We could explain this attitude by the fact that the ones who know the truth are in low conditions as Kent who is banished in the first scene, the Fool, or Edgar when he flees the kingdom because of Edmund’s plot. These characters know the truth of the world, they are not blind, and that may be why they don’t pay attention to these futilities: the truth is cruel, there is no use to say it with respectful formulae.
There are also applies to people in general: at line 154: “thou borest thy ass o’th’ back o’er the dirt”, or at line 163: “I have used it, nuncle, ever since thou madest thy daughters thy mothers”: it is topsyturvidom. In the whole play, the theme of topsyturvidom is one of the main themes. In the Elizabethan England, during feasts which last for 12 nights during the midsummer holidays, the servants would play their master’s role. We can make a simile between this tradition and the fact that the role of the Fool and the role of the wise King are inverted bit by bit.
- Many lines have as a background a linguistic humour, based on puns, wit and humour.
From line 112 down to line 120, we can notice riddles: it sounds like an instructive lullaby as it is composed with rhyming couplets and there is the alliteration of “more than thou”.
Moreover, there are some obscure statements from line 90 to “what does it mean?” and some funny statements from line 183 to line 185.
2. In a second part, we’ll see how the Fool impersonates Lear’s conscience.
This scene echoes with the first one. This scene is a pause to force and to repent and see his errors. We can just notice the line: “Nothing can be made out of nothing” l.126, which echoes obviously with “Nothing can come of nothing”. The Fool is one of the most famous characters in the play; his comic asides often reveal the very foolishness of Lear's actions. His words are often ironically the only source of wisdom, coherence and insight in Lear's pathetic entourage.
Let’s just point out that later, in act 3, Edgar who became mad in appearance, says explicitly what is essential about sense and nonsense, which can be referring to the Fool:
“O matter and impertinency mixed,
Reason in madness!”.
Or in the film Ran, the Fool says:
« Monde fou!
Soyez fous pour être senses! »
That’s why the different phases of analysis of Lear behaviour in the whole play come from the Fool.
- First Lear appears as a father
Banishing Cordelia (l.95)
l.97-98: Lear’s treatment to his 3 daughters is cleverly dealt with inversion of what happened. The Fool enters and in his first statement, he criticizes Lear's foolishness with his daughters.
- Then Lear appears as a king:
Simile with an egg for the division of the kingdom
- Finally Lear appears as a man:
The Fool insists on important qualities: truth, prudence.
Not a direct political accusation but one of Lear’s lack of common sense by calling him a fool. At one point Lear angrily asks, "Dost thou call me fool, boy?" to which the Fool, always wiser than he appears, replies, "All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with".
Money: criticism of earlier Lear who wanted to measure everything by his cost.
The Fool continues to tell truth in riddle until Goneril arrives. Goneril scolds Lear for the riotous behavior of his knights, "Men so disorder'd, so debosh'd, and bold, / That this our court, infected with their manners, / Shows like a riotous inn:" (men so disordered and bold, that this court, infected by their presence looks like a riotous inn). Gonoril is such a villain that she forbids the Fool to say his riddles and his puns because he could put Lear on the way of the truth. The Fool knows what Gonoril plots that’s why he says at l.190…
The fact that the Fool tells the truth matches with the theme of reason in madness. In this scene, Kent, Lear’s servant who is expulsed of the kingdom in the first scene because he has supported Cordelia, is disguised. He can’t be natural, in his own clothes if he wants to guide Lear and to tell him the truth. Whatever the way, in this play, the truth is said by disguised characters, as Edgar who tells the truth disguised in Poor Tom, as to say naked. We can consider the fact that he is naked as a disguise but also, on the contrary, he is the more natural than a man could ever be. He disguises himself also when he is on the Hill with Gloucester, he lies to him but in a positive goal: in order to prevent his suicide, and to let him see how the world goes and works.
Moreover, in act 3, what the Fool says, despite its apparent irrationality evinces reality and truth where what the Court says (in the persons of Goneril, Regan and later Edmund) leads to appearance and untruth. Typically, the Fool’s words are couched in non-rational forms. They shape themselves in witty paradoxes which give in part the key to his role. He enacts a paradox on the stage for, when the King shows himself to be a fool, then the Fool has good claim to be King. One of the necessary paradoxes of the intuitive faculty is thus acted out. Non-rational, intuition proves itself a better guide to reality than the reason. And that is what happens in the character of King Lear in the Dover Beach scene. King Lear becomes a fool who uses the same type of paradoxes, sometimes a bit silly, for expressing the injustice of the world and the truth.

- Reason in madness can be noticed in different ways and gradually.

First prose: he is a fool; so he can’t speak in verse: he doesn’t have the status for it. But even if he is just the Fool, what he says makes sense. It’s reason in madness. He is the one who is not blind, he sees how this world goes, and, as it is his function, he is allowed to tell the truth to Lear in a comic way. He says to the King that he is a fool; first Lear’s authority makes him say “Do you treat me a fool?” but he accepts the idea. Moreover, the Fool has Kent’s support. The Fool makes Lear open his eyes; but Lear doesn’t want to face the reality and puts the Fool’s words on his folly.

Secondly, speech = rhyming couplets, generally in iambic trimetres: the rhythm flows but ironically with the repetition of “than thou”

Third, songs: the more he is ironical and he clowns, the more his speeches are in rhyming couplets and generally in iambic trimesters.

3. Lear can understand bigger things than in the critic of act 1 scene 1.

- Close intimacy works:
“pretty knave”, “boy”, “sirrah”: kindness of Lear who comes closer to his progress.

- Generalisation and distance:
Function of clothes: man is flesh and blood: it is one step to the shipping of Lear. This is the definition of man as nakedness.

He understands how much Gonoril is a villain which he didn’t get in the first scene. Topsyturvydom.
He realises that he has been abused by his own daughter, that’s why he asks if she is his daughter. He has a new image of Gonoril, not the first one, superficial and where she acts by flattery for her own interest. When Gonoril enters on the stage in this scene, it is a turning point: King Lear will understand one part of the Fool speeches and here, as the villain is on stage and, as in the whole play, he is powerful, the Fool can’t tell the truth anymore. He can’t guide Lear explicitly. Indeed, in act 4, Lear reveals that balanced way of thinking, that combination of ratio superior and ratio inferior which Shakespeare seems to have been advocating throughout his play. In his madness, he exhibits the right amount of reason. His “lower” reasoning is balanced by that of a “higher” order, intuition. The combination of “reason in madness” leads him to those enormous truths which we have heard him utter. In his stage “madness”, he arrives at tremendous sanity; by means of the artificial dramatic art he has become “natural”. He has finally, in the play’s metaphor, “believed in” a Fool, and has accepted the “foolishness” of Cordelia for what it is, a road to reality. With the Fool vanished from the stage, and Cordelia not yet reached at Dover, Lear becomes literally a “fool” himself, line 191: “I am even the natural fool of fortune”

+ fin “who I am” => what is the Human Being? Theme: identity of the Human Being.
+ Gonoril’s speech => Ran: “seuls les animaux n’ont pas besoin de suite”. Gonoril veut le rendre à l’état animal, non plus en être humain et encore moins en père.


- Echoes:
Echoes of Lear’s words to Cordelia “Nothing can be made out of nothing”. The idea of nothingness contains two main ideas: absurdity and man being little of himself.

Conclusion:
By his superficial balanced way of thinking, the Fool tells the truth to Lear who will realise who is the villain, the evil, Gonoril in this case, and later who is the good one, Cordelia. By his voice, the Fool speaks truth, justice and reason even if, at first, his witty speeches could surprise. Madness seems to be a refuge for the Fool as he is confronted to the evil and he knows the truth of the world. Later, in act 3, King Lear will seem to be just like the Fool in this scene, that’s why we can say that the Fool is Lear’s conscience; moreover he makes an analysis of all the different levels of the character of Lear: as an abused father, an arrogant and powerless king and finally as a Human Being on the way of truth.