‘We two alone’: King Lear

Abstract

King Lear is, from the first scene, a play of solitaries. Cordelia’s stubbornness earns her rejection and exile; Kent is banished; Edgar is forced to flee in the most lonely of all disguises, as a Bedlam beggar. But solitude goes against their natures; they are unwillingly solitary, and throughout the play they attempt to heal the broken bonds by which they have been cut off. Edmund, the self-willed, ‘natural’ solitary, reverts to the role of villain, as in Richard III. Lear himself initiates his own isolation by retiring from his public role and responsibility as king, and after this voluntary act becomes increasingly cut off from society by the chain of events which it sets in motion. E. A. J. Honigmann has described Lear’s progressive withdrawal with poignant emphasis: … he rushes away from Goneril (‘Away, away!’ i. iv. 289), retreats into the storm, escapes Cordelia (iv. iv. i), runs away from the Gentleman (iv. vi. 205), and finally looks forward to prison, where he and Cordelia can withdraw for good … And when things go badly for him he retires into the inner self, where no one can follow … Torn open by grief and rage, pitifully exposed by madness, the quintessential Lear shrinks into a secret place and wards off the prying world with his characteristic verbal gesture, negation.1