Folie dans King Lear de Shakespeare (Anglais niveau Licence)

                                                                                                                                             30/04/2014

Shakespeare for overseas students

Module code: 0919598

Consider Shakespeare's use of madness and folly in King Lear.

Ship of Fools, Hieronymus Bosch (1490-1500)

        It is possible to find numerous sources for the idea of King Lear from history, legend or tales; 'Love like salt' for example is an old folk tale well known by people from the 16th century where it is possible to recognise the story of the three sisters telling how much they love their father.^[1] But it is clear that Shakespeare modified different stories in order to create an original play with themes that he wanted to develop, to illustrate this point “Lear's madness is one of Shakespeare's addition to the story”.^[2] Therefore it would be interesting to consider Shakespeare's use of madness and folly in King Lear. The terms madness and folly include numerous mental illnesses like hysteria, obsession, senselessness or inability to recognise reality, therefore even innocence can be consider as part of the madness so every character of this play bears its own foolishness. A folly can also convey the idea of a mistake that cost. But those two terms mainly emphasize the difference between a madman and a fool -as a theatrical figure- : the insane character and the wise fool facing a deranged world, a nonsense person and a “truth-teller whose real insight [is] thinly disguised as a form of insanity”.^[3]According to Erasmus in The Praise of Folly “folly and madness are two sides of the same coin, each a kind of the other”, in other words, a fool has a professional feigned madness, and a madman unwittingly behaves foolishly.^[4] The madness and folly can be analysed in a deeper way toward the Quarto version of 1608 because it includes the song about “The sweet and bitter fool”(1.4.130-45) or because the trial(3.6) is more developed for example.^[5] To consider Shakespeare's use of madness and folly in King Lear it is important to understand how Shakespeare is exploring those themes, in a first time by analysing Lear and the Fool, then a manichean conception of folly to finish with the impacts of this folly and madness on the audience.

        First of all, Shakespeare toward King Lear is exposing a kind of carte de la folie, a map of folly.^[6] The most obvious incarnation of madness in this play is the eponymous character: Lear. Toward this character, the audience is experimenting a journey toward madness, following his decadence. The exposition scene already depicts a King with numerous mental disorders, although the first occurrence of the word “mad”(1.1.136) is intended to him. The plot starts with one of Lear's folly, he wants to be flattered, which shows how much he is self-obsessed and he can not go beyond appearances considering the limits of words as the “limits of love”.^[7] So he banishes the ones who truly love him: Cordelia and Kent. This over-reaction expresses how much Lear is at odds with the real. He loses his temper, to illustrate this point, after he cursed and insulted his daughter and Kent, he is using short sentences without verbal structure, expressing his angriness close to hysteria “Kent, on thy life, no more./[...]/ Out of my sight!/[...]/ Now by Apollo-/[...]/ Vassal, recreant!”(1.1.144-51). This old man is turning back into a child, he wants Cordelia's “kind nursery”(1.1.114), he wants to make “[his]/ daughters [his] mother”(1.4.160-1).^[8] As he is loosing his mind, Lear suffers a physical deterioration in parallel, “he becomes physically naked, needy, left out in the cold”.^[9] His decrepitude is emphasized toward language when Lear says that his hand “smells of mortality”(4.6.128). His deterioration is also obvious act 4 scene 6 with the stage directions Enter King Lear mad, [crowned with weeds and flower], it is difficult to be sure that Shakespeare wrote it but it shows visually and metaphorically Lear turning into a mad King.^[10] “The climatic expression of mental suffering comes” during the storm (3.2) when he is challenging “the universe around him”.^[11] Lear escapes from reality, as an example, he does not notice the others around him when he says “Ah! Give the word”(4.6.91) after being near Gloucester and Edgar for a while and he takes a “joint-stool” for his daughter during the trial(3.6.46-8). At the end, Lear pretends that Cordelia is still alive “This feather stirs. She lives.”(5.3.258) it conveys the idea that Lear is mad but also that folly can be a  way to deny reality in order to avoid pain.^[12]

        Shakespeare relates Lear's madness with the Fool. It is indeed almost impossible to understand one without the other. The Fool's folly appears toward his clownish mirth with his numerous songs for example; toward his extreme loyalty for Lear that makes him follow the King even in the cold and danger of exclusion; then toward his direct speeches, without any formal language supposed to be used to speak to a King. Otherwise, the Fool is depicted as a wise character and his relationship with Lear is absolutely fundamental. The Fool helps the King to understand and accept his situation, as an illustration, the song of the sweet and bitter fool makes Lear reacts: “Dost thou call me a fool, boy?”(1.4.130-8), Shakespeare is using the topos of the clairvoyant fool teaching the blind crowd. Moreover, the Fool permits Lear's redemption even if it is through pain, for example after the riddle of the nose in the middle of the face, Lear assumes his mistake about Cordelia by saying “I did her wrong”(1.5.17-23).^[13] It is an anachronism but the Fool is almost like Lear's subconsciousness, bearing wisdom, when Lear asks: “Who is it that can tell me who I am?/ Lear's shadow?”(1.4.218-9), it is clear that the Fool is the one telling the King who he is, therefore it is possible to draw a parallel between Lear's shadow and the Fool. Also the fact that the Fool has “much pined away”(1.4.66-7) since Corelia have left creates the idea that Lear and the Fool feel the same. The relationship between those two characters is intense, when Lear is enjoining “Dinner, oh,/ dinner! Where's my knave, my fool? Go you and call my/ fool hither.”(1.4.38-40), the occurrence of the words fool or knave compared to dinner shows that the fool is as vital as food for the King.^[14] Therefore it seems that Shakespeare wants to blur the frontier between madness and wisdom, . With this binomial, the author already explores numerous characteristics of the madness. Toward language and staging the audience might have the impression to be faced with an asylum. But Lear goes “from reprehensible fool[...] to wise fool[...]”

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