Act 4 Sc 6 Flashcards
‘Methinks the ground is even’ ‘no, truly’
Gloucester lines 2 and 4 (4,6)
What Gloucester is saying is true clearly to the audience as they are on the stage, not on a hill by the sea, bringing a sense/feeling of humour in the middle of tragedy. Shakespeare plays with the theatrical conventions that audience members suspend their disbelief and enter into the world that’s on stage. However by intertwining these funny aspects of reality Shakespeare creates a mismatch between the two characters, Gloucester who is debunking the fantasy vs Edgar who is immersed in the ‘scene’. Humour is uncomfortable in tragedy - humour as we see a son, walking his recently blinded father to the edge of a cliff to kill himself.
Methinks thy voice is altered” Gloucester (4,6)
This also shows a sense of clarity as he has been blinded - he can metaphorically see things that he was blind to, such as the flat stage and the fact that they are not by the sea. To add to this idea he has noticed that Edgars voice seems to have changed. He is becoming more clear-sighted now that he is blind - irony.
“Ill bear affliction” Gloucester (4,6)
Saying that he will put up with the suffering (wont try and kill himself again) Edgars plan has worked!
“Let copulation thrive, for Gloucester’s bastard son was kinder to his father than were my daughters got ‘tween the lawful sheets” Lear (4,6)
Copulation = sex
He’s basically saying, affairs don’t matter, let everyone have sex (married or not) it doesn’t matter about legitimate children because his legitimate daughters have treated him worse than Gloucester’s bastard son has treated him - pain and irony.
“Thou, rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand, why dost thou lash that whore?” Lear (4,6)
Beadle= member of judicial office. Talking about judicial hypocrisy - the beadle is lustful towards the whore but punishes her for being lustful/having others lustful for her too. Overall unpicking the idea of justice and criticising the fact that those inflicting punishment are just as bad/worse than those that they are punishing
“Through tattered clothes great vices do appear; Robes and gowns hide all” lear (4,6)
if you’re dressed poorly you will be punished more but if dressed affluently you can get away with almost anything. If you have power in society you can get away with things.
“Now let thy friendly hand put strength enough to it” Gloucester (4,6)
tragedy , gloucester is calling the hand that wants to kill him ‘friendly”, he wants to die? So much for “bearing affliction” and being cured from edgars plan. Oswald is insulting him and saying hes going to kill him.
“The king is mad: how stiff is my vile sense, that I stand up and have indigenous feeling of my huge sorrows? Better i were distract so should my thoughts be severed from my sorrows” Gloucester (4,6)
Gloucester asks why he is not mad. H=the fantasies created in madness would mean he would lose sight of his own suffering, he’d rather be as mad as Lear than have to endure his own suffering and despair.
[Enter Lear mad (crowned with wild flowers)] line 80. (3,4)
With flowers being a symbol of madness in jacobean and victorian drama, we see Lear as mad before he even speaks, links to cordelia’s foreshadowing in 4.4. Also a sense of heartbreak, as we as the audience are just given a feeling of hope as Gloucester says he will ‘bear affliction’ and then lear enters crowned in flowers which shatters that hope -TRAGIC.
[aside]‘Why i do trifle thus with his despair is done to cure it” edgar (4,6)
Edgar did not take the opportunity to tell gloucester that he is his son and that is there even when gloucester has said that all he wants is to be with his son again; this is where we finally get an explanation as to why edgar is doing this and why he is not revealing himself to gloucester. Edgars aim is that by pretending to lead Gloucester to the edge of a cliff, and letting him think he’s falling, he will cure his father of his despair.
[he falls] - gloucester falls. (4,6)
moment of bathos, not very dramatic -he just falls onto the stage after thinking that he was about to fall off a cliff.
Oswald dies line 245 (4,6)
Death of another villain - still early on (act 4). Significantly relatively early death of a villain - builds up hope of a happy ending only for the play to end so tragically.
