Literature 1/1

M ad n e s s in K in g Le ar

Source: notes de cours CAPES/Agreg Nancy 2

Different kinds of madness with different interpretations: ! Lear’s madness: real --> a kind of organization in his mind/imagination. ! The Fool: professional madness --> he speaks the truth under disguise, he’s aware of speaking the truth. ! Edgar’s madness: he speaks total nonsense ---> he only speaks truth in his asides. ! Lear and Edgar’s madness is not recorded in any source. !The fool does not exist in any source/ ! emphasis of Shakespeare on madness. ! This union of 3 kinds of madness is new in Elizabethan theatre. ! The only person who can say to Lear that he’s mad is the fool. He teases Lear for his folly = stupidity. ! At first, Lear will not believe a fool: 1.4.131. • idea of a sweet fool = the fool • and a bitter fool: Lear ! A kind of brotherly foolishness btw the two. ! Gradually, Lear listen to the fool (first he wants to whip him p 202). • 1.4.263: Lear says himself he’s mad. • 1.5.39:: Lear feels he’s becoming mad. ! Madness with physiological symptoms: hysterica passio --> 2.2 page 246: Lear suffocates. ! Role of the Fool: distract Lear from his anger and from going mad. Erasmus, The Praise of Folly: ! The Fool functions according to the principles of Erasmus (Sh s’est inspiré de ça pr le fool) ! Erasmus: • compares all children to fools • says all men become fools again at the end of their life • says that there is no social peace without folly • says that folly makes women beautiful

• praises good madness of poets and prophets, and folly of lovers. --> idea that: the more you know, the unhappiest you are. The personality of the Fool: ! Various interpretations: • a professional fool • a simpleton (at the time, half-witted children abandoned by their parents, attached to king or noble). ! An old man, or a boy? • A wise fool, maturity • But easily frightened. Under the threat of the tempest, he disappears. ! Close to the Court Jester: a professional • He can speak the truth with impunity: he is insolent, but Lear even tolerates mockery. o 1.4.183: Thou art an O without a figure, I am a fool, thou art nothing. ! The Fool is the mirror of Lear’s broken consciousness. ! The principle of inversion: as Lear falls to folly, the F rises to wisdom. The F is the spokesman of common sense/wisdom, but he always speaks obliquely. ! Since he has no name, no ID, he will not undergo an ID crisis (cf le motley = habits du fou: fait de pls morceaux de vêtements, // pls personnalités). ! The meanings of words are upside down, speaks with chiasms etc. • • • •

4.1.49: the fools lead the blind --> inverted social positions. 1.4.217 (204): Lear has now become the shadow of himself: he loses substance to gain understanding of himself. 1.4.100 (197): prophetic: he says the opposite of truth, but it will turn out to be true 1.4.162: inversion of the natural order, but again a truth: the F wants to emphasize the instability of human experience: weep out of joy, sing out of sorrow. We live in extremes, both can be joined: coexistence of the contraries.

! His popular ballads are always carefully chosen, but he repeats them with variations --> he repeats the same ideas all the time, but always in a different way --> importance of linguistic forms. ! He has a linguistic role: language, just like humans, is flexible. For Lear at the beginning, one word = one thing. Nothing = nothing. For him, there is only the regal way to say something. • The F will teach him relativity. His role is to educate L into madness, and to enable L’s imagination to recover in madness. • When L is mad, he understands poetry and equivocality (= svl meanings for one word) ! The Fool’s language is curative and productive. •

! The F disappears in 3.6.82. (292): the F answers Lear’s nonsense by his own nonsense. ! The Fool is not needed anymore, because L is now able to make his own inversions. ! The dramatic function of the F is to bring L to madness so that his madness can illuminate him, so that he can use it to his own ends.

Shakespeare and madness:

! The way Shak understands madness as idée fixe, obsession: daughter 3.4.47 (276). ! Hamlet (2.2.204) “Method in madness.” KL: “Reason in madness.” ! Lear’s discourse is coherent when he denounces injustice and expresses compassion. ! His madness gives him license to speak the truth: to talk about social reforms --> avoiding censure for Shak. --> Is the social criticism in KL the echo of the Anabaptists ? (they were communist Christians in Shak’s period. They migrated in England in 1525; they wanted to reproduce the kingdom of Christ on earth. They were burnt: last burning in 1577 --> Shak born in 1564).