Where Is Edgar When You Need Him?
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Of all the characters in Shakespeare's King Lear, it is hardest to sympathize with the Duke of Gloucester. Neither plainspoken like his banished peer Kent nor levelheaded like Lear's disowned daughter Cordelia, Gloucester wavers between the old authority of Lear and the fresh powers of the new rulers, trying to placate both. Accommodation is the nature of his character and politics. How ironic then, when he finally throws in his lot with the old king, he should be blinded by his young bosses and cast out of his own house.
And yet Shakespeare found in him a man, more, an emblem, of the playwright's own era. Driven by despair, Gloucester asks the mad beggar Poor Tom to lead him to the cliffs of Dover, where he intends to kill himself. Why the cliffs of Dover? Why not the simpler solution of swallowing poison or welcoming a sword? Perhaps it's because Gloucester wishes to dramatize, to himself, the situation of a man pushed to the very verge. As the pair walk across and off the stage, the former duke laments piercingly, "Tis the time's plague when madmen lead the blind." How the words resonate in our own times.
Unknown to Gloucester, however, Poor Tom is none other than his legitimate son Edgar. This kindly offspring will conduct his blind father through an imaginative charade that will eventually save his father not just from death but also from despair. The father's suicidal self-dramatization is met by the son's theater of hope. You may ask, in our apparently desperate times, where is our Edgar. Why, he is here, hosted in all of us, as are Lear, Kent, Cordelia, and, yes, Gloucester.
Jee Leong Koh
March 5, 2020
Of all the characters in Shakespeare's King Lear, it is hardest to sympathize with the Duke of Gloucester. Neither plainspoken like his banished peer Kent nor levelheaded like Lear's disowned daughter Cordelia, Gloucester wavers between the old authority of Lear and the fresh powers of the new rulers, trying to placate both. Accommodation is the nature of his character and politics. How ironic then, when he finally throws in his lot with the old king, he should be blinded by his young bosses and cast out of his own house.
And yet Shakespeare found in him a man, more, an emblem, of the playwright's own era. Driven by despair, Gloucester asks the mad beggar Poor Tom to lead him to the cliffs of Dover, where he intends to kill himself. Why the cliffs of Dover? Why not the simpler solution of swallowing poison or welcoming a sword? Perhaps it's because Gloucester wishes to dramatize, to himself, the situation of a man pushed to the very verge. As the pair walk across and off the stage, the former duke laments piercingly, "Tis the time's plague when madmen lead the blind." How the words resonate in our own times.
Unknown to Gloucester, however, Poor Tom is none other than his legitimate son Edgar. This kindly offspring will conduct his blind father through an imaginative charade that will eventually save his father not just from death but also from despair. The father's suicidal self-dramatization is met by the son's theater of hope. You may ask, in our apparently desperate times, where is our Edgar. Why, he is here, hosted in all of us, as are Lear, Kent, Cordelia, and, yes, Gloucester.
Jee Leong Koh
March 5, 2020
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