Lear to enter the hovel, but Lear replies that he has no reason to shelter himself from the storm, that he does not feel it as the tempest in his mind, aroused by his daughter’s ingratitude, overpowers all else. This true feeling, if expressed in simple words, might evoke sympathy, but amid his inflated and incessant ravings it is hard to notice it and it loses its significance.
The hovel to which Lear is led turns out to be the same that Edgar has entered disguised as a madman, that is to say, without clothes. Edgar comes out of the hovel and, though they all know him, nobody recognises him any more than they recognise Kent, and Edgar, Lear, and the fool, begin to talk nonsense which continues with intervals for six pages. In the midst of this scene Gloucester enters (who also fails to recognise either Kent or his own son Edgar), and tells them how his son Edgar wished to kill him.
This scene is again interrupted by one in Gloucester’s castle, during which Edmund betrays his father and the Duke declares he will be revenged on Gloucester. The scene again shifts to Lear. Kent, Edgar, Gloucester, Lear, and the fool, are in a farm-house and are talking. Edgar says: “Frateretto calls me and tells me, Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness....” The fool says: “Nuncle, tell me, whether a madman be a gentleman, or a yeoman?” Lear, who is out of his mind, says that a madman is a king. The fool says: “No, he’s a yeoman, that has a gentleman to his son; for he’s a mad yeoman, that sees his son a gentleman before him.” Lear cries out: “To have a thousand with red burning spits come hissing in upon them.” And Edgar shrieks that the foul fiend bites his back. Then the fool utters an adage that one cannot trust “the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.” Then Lear imagines that he is trying his daughters. “Most learned justicer,” says he addressing the naked Edgar. “Thou, sapient sir, sit here. Now, you she foxes!” To this Edgar says:
Look, where he stands and glares! Wantonest thou eyes at trial, madam? Come o’er the bourn, Bessy, to me!
and the fool sings:
Her boat hath a leak, And she must not speak Why she dares not come over to thee.
Edgar again says something, and Kent begs Lear to lie down, but Lear continues his imaginary trial.
Bring in the evidence. Thou robed man of justice, take thy place; (_to Edgar_) And thou, his yoke-fellow of equity, (_to the fool_) Bench by his side. You are of the commission, (_to Kent_) Sit you too.
“Pur! the cat is grey,” cries Edgar.
“Arraign her first; ’t is Goneril,” says Lear. “I here take my oath before this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor King her father.”
_Fool_: Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril? (_addressing a joint-stool_)
_Lear_: And here’s another.... Stop her there! Arms, arms, sword, fire! Corruption in the place! False justicer, why hast thou let her ’scape?
and so on.
This raving ends by Lear falling asleep, and Gloucester persuading Kent, still without recognising him, to take the King to Dover. Kent and the fool carry Lear off.
The scene changes to Gloucester’s castle. Gloucester himself is accused of treason, and is brought in and bound. The Duke of Cornwall tears out one of his eyes and stamps on it. Regan says that one eye is still whole and that this healthy eye is laughing at the other eye, and urges the Duke to crush it too. The Duke wishes to do so, but for some reason one of the servants suddenly takes Gloucester’s part and wounds the Duke. Regan kills the servant. The servant dies and tells Gloucester that he has still one eye to see that the evil-doer is punished. The Duke says: “Lest it see more, prevent it: out, vile jelly!” and tears out Gloucester’s other eye and throws it on the floor. Here Regan mentions that Edmund has denounced his father, and Gloucester suddenly understands that he has been deceived and that Edgar did not wish to kill him.
This ends the third Act. Act IV is again in the open country. Edgar, still in the guise of a maniac, talks in artificial language about the perversities of fate and the advantages of a humble lot. Then, curiously enough, to the very spot on the open heath where he is comes his father, blind Gloucester, led by an old man, and he too talks about the perversities of fate in that curious Shakespearean language the chief peculiarity of which is that the thoughts arise either from the sound of the words, or by contrast. He tells the old man who leads him to leave him. The old man says that without eyes one cannot go alone, because one cannot _see_ the way. Gloucester says:
“I have no way, and therefore want no _eyes_.”
And he argues that he stumbled when he _saw_ and that our defects often save us.
“Ah! dear son Edgar,” adds he,
The food of thy abused father’s wrath. Might I but live to _see_ thee in my touch, I’d say I had eyes again!
Edgar, naked, in the character of a lunatic, hears this, but does not disclose himself; he takes the place of the old man who had acted as guide, and talks with his father, who does not recognise his voice and believes him to be a madman. Gloucester takes the opportunity to utter a witticism about “when madmen lead the blind,” and insists on driving away the old man, obviously not from motives which might be natural to him at that moment, but merely, when left alone with Edgar, to enact an imaginary leap over the cliff. Edgar, though he has only just seen his blinded father and learned that he repents of having driven him away, utters quite unnecessary sayings, which Shakespeare might know, having read them in Harsnet’s book,[138] but which Edgar had no means of becoming acquainted with, and which, above all, it is quite unnatural for him to utter in his then condition. He says:
“Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once: of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididence, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; and Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing, who since possesses chamber-maids and waiting-women.”
On hearing these words, Gloucester gives Edgar his purse saying:
That I am wretched Makes thee the happier. Heavens, deal so still! Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man That braves your ordinance, that will not see Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough.
Having uttered these strange words, the blind Gloucester demands that Edgar should lead him to a cliff that he does not himself know, but that hangs over the sea, and they depart.