Oldal 49 [49]
THE DRAMATURGICAL AND THEATRICAL HERITAGE
“registers most profoundly the common relationship between the stage and
the theatrical practices of Bethlem, the hospital’s practice of showing the mad
to elicit charity — and the distance between the two.”!#®
Facing different adversities and encountering various forms of poverty, in
the end, all three monarchs admit their errors of judgment. Leir considers
wrath to be the cause of adversities, as the following passage implies: “I like
an envious thorne, have prickt the heart, / And turnd sweet Grapes, to sowre
unrelisht Sloes: / The causelesse ire of my respectlesse brest, / Hath sowrd the
sweet milk of dame Natures paps.”!®? However, in Skelton’s and Shakespeare’s
play, not only does the royal hero clearly recognize and publicly admit that
his fall is due to his own folly,’*° but this realization, brought about by his
experiences as a beggar, is also preceded by some sort of warning from another
character, an element that is missing from the anonymous play. For instance,
in the interlude, Circumspection advises Magnyfycence that “ye of foly in
tymes past you repent,”’*! and in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s play, Kent
excuses his verbal attack on the King by claiming: “To plainnes honours bound
when Maiesty stoops to folly.”?”
In addition to the beggar characters, another character completely missing
from the anonymous play but present in the other two is the doctor who
provides the monarch with a remedy once he recognizes his own error in
judgment. In Magnyfycence, Goodhope greets the prince by saying, “Good
hope your potecary assygned am,”’* and he brings the medicine of repentance
and devotion’ to remind the prince that God’s grace is his real physician.’”
Although the Folio lists him as a “Gentleman,” in the Quarto version of
Shakespeare’s play a character called “Doctor” appears to report on the King’s
physical condition to Cordelia.’*° Later, Lear asks Gloster to “Giue mee an
ounce of Ciuet, good Apothocarie, to sweeten my imagination.”!”? When she
returns from France, Cordelia appears as her father’s doctor and brings the
remedy to restore him to royal power. She claims, “O my deer father restoratio
18
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Kenneth S. Jackson: King Lear and the Search for Bethlem (Bedlam) Hospital, in Kenneth S.
Jackson: Separate Theaters: Bethlem ( Bedlam") Hospital and the Shakespearean Stage, Newark,
University of Delaware Press, 2005, 155.
Anonymous: The True Chronicle, sig. H1r.
At the end of his ubi sunt monologue Magnyfycence claims: “Alas, my folly! alas, my wanton
will! / I may no more speak, till I have wept my fill.” Skelton: Magnyfycence, lines 2060-2061;
whereas King Lear cries out the following words of recognition: “O Lear. Lear! Beat at this
gate that let thy folly in, and thy deere iudgement out, goe goe, my people?” Shak-speare: His
True Chronicle, sig. D2r.
Skelton: Magnyfycence, line 2472.
Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. B3r.
Skelton: Magnyfycence, line 2390.
1% Ibid., lines 2396-97.
15 Ibid., line 2388.
Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. I1v.
Ibid., sig. IAr.
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