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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
himself down into the deep, but Edgar makes him believe that he survived
the fall." In this particular context, Glosters falling on his face on stage yet
believing that he was dead and has come back to life has an ironically comic
overtone. Nevertheless, the failure of the suicide attempt is completely missing
from The True Chronicle Historie, which establishes a stronger dramaturgical
connection between Skelton’s interlude and Shakespeare’s King Lear. It is also
worth pointing out that the protagonist’s encounter with beggars is another
element that only Magnyfycence and King Lear have in common. In both plays,
this encounter has the dramaturgical function of helping the protagonist
realize the mistakes he has made.'** After meeting Adversity, Magnyfycence
faces the allegorical figure of Poverty, and he begins lamenting his folly and
“wanton will” (2082-2097), whereas Lear encounters Edgar in the guise of
a “Bedlam beggar,” and he immediately expresses his regret for not taking
care of the poor.'** A scene in which a monarch meets a beggar on the Early
Modern stage epitomizes the complexity of a societal phenomenon that Kinga
Foldvary convincingly describes in her recent study.’*° The helpful attitude of
the rich towards the poor was motivated not only by the Christian principle
of charity, but also by the discomfort they felt at the sight of poverty. In a
time of rebellion, poor people could easily increase public disturbance, so it
is no wonder that by the beginning of the seventeenth century, the treatment
of the poor was legally controlled by the 1601 “Elizabethan Poor Law.”!®” In
King Lear, this meeting gains further significance, as it also presents some
self-reflective theatrical elements, because the word “Bedlam beggar” does
not simply denote an outcast vagabond, but rather specifically refers to an
inhabitant of the Bethlem Hospital in London, an institution that provided
shelter for the mentally disturbed. In order to raise money to cover the patients’
cost of living, the directors of the hospital put the madmen on display in a
theatrical setting, providing entertainment for visitors. As Kenneth S. Jackson
explains in a recent book, the scene in which Lear meets Edgar on the heath
183
Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. 12r—I3v.
In contrast to the other plays, in The True Chronicle Historie, Leir does not meet a beggar but
becomes one. However, his main concern in this situation seems to be the hunger he feels:
“Oh, I do faint for want of sustenance: / And thou, I know, in little better case. / No gentle
tree affords one taste of fruit, / To comfort us, untill we meet with men.” Anonymous: The
True Chronicle, sig. H1v.
Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. Glv.
Kinga Féldvary: Humanist-Human—Humane? Poverty and Humanitartian Aid in Elizabethan
England, in Zsolt Almási - Mike Pincombe (eds.): Writing the Other: Humanism versus
Barbarism in Tudor England, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars, 2008, 216-230.
187 Ibid., 222.
184
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