Oldal 108 [108]
SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
order that the play constructs.” So when the country is seen as a body, the
various counties and shires are members of that body, and the aristocrats
governing them are explicitly associated with these members.
Gloster’s name also recalls both a territory and the status of a governor.
Moreover, his figure is also characterized by the deprivation of a corporeal
function. Like Kent, he shows his loyalty to Lear, whom he still regards as the
head of the kingdom. He manifestly reveals his attitude to Lear for the first
time when he warns Cornwall that his order to put Kent into the stocks would
insult the King. Later, his loyalty becomes the reason why Cornwall and Regan
treat him as a traitor and Cornwall gouges out his eyes.
According to Fabiny, Gloster’s physical blindness is expressive in the
figurative sense of his moral misjudgment of his two sons, but it is necessary
in order to make him “see and understand reality.”“°° Only after he becomes
blind can he learn that Edmund betrayed him, and only then does he realize
Edgar’s true nature by relying on hearing only. Nevertheless, blindness, both
in the physical and metaphorical sense, does not change his relationship with
Lear, whom he recognizes easily even without eyes: “The tricke of that voyce
I doe well remember, ist not the King?”*” From Lear’s point of view, Gloster
contributes to his fall from power by supporting Edmund as a credible and
reliable “subject” of the kingdom. Although Edmund’s deception affected
Gloster’s ability to make clear moral judgment, the text associates the sense
of hearing with his fault. In order to prove Edgar’s allegedly bad intentions,
Edmund makes the following suggestion: “If your honour iudge it meete, I
will place you where you shall heare vs conferre of this, and by an aurigular
assurance have your satisfaction.”** He then saves Lear’s life by overhearing
Cornwall’s plot against him. The image of hearing and proper judgment is also
directly connected with Gloster’s figure in Lear’s instructions to him: “a man
may see how this world goes with no eyes, looke with thy eares, see how yon
Justice railes vpon yon simple theefe, harke in thy eare handy, dandy, which is
the theefe, which is the Iustice.”* The emphatic presence of various references
to the senses of hearing and seeing in Gloster’s case seem in line with the
description of the function of governors as the eyes and ears of the body
politic in Salisbury’s system. As in the case of Kent, Gloster’s behavior and
diction also resemble the behavior and diction of a physician who intends to
protect the King’s health, for instance in the following passage: “these iniuries
/ the King now beares, will be reuenged home / Ther’s part of a power already
405 Dan Brayton: Angling in the Lake of Darkness: Possession, Dispossession, and the Politics of
Discovery in King Lear, EHL 70 (2003), 402.
406 Fabiny: The Eye, 468.
407 Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. I3v.
Italics are mine. Ibid., sig. C2r.
40° Ibid., sig. 14r.
408
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