The groundlings of the Elizabethan theatre loved to see mad characters on the stage. It was part of the mob’s love of sensationalism. Shakespeare never disdained to exploit the tastes of the audience if he could raise it to high dramatic purpose. He had always watched the phenomenon of insanity in some of its forms and possessed a deeper understanding of them than any of his contemporaries.
In King Lear, Shakespeare shows both † the outer shadow and the inner darkness dotted with spots and sometimes with pools of light. As a study of dramatic method, Lear becomes a medium for revealing the abysses and recesses of the human mind. When the controls of the reason are absent, things lovely and things dark in the world of personality become, through speech and action and incoherent words and apparently illogical heaps of mind, significant. The insanity of Lear makes the workings of his subconscious and unconscious self-luminous in diverse ways. It thus enables us to see: first, the thoughts and impulses of Lear in the years gone by; secondly, his obsessions during the days of mental strain that brought on the collapse; thirdly, the expansion of his human sympathies and the awakening of the moral greatness that had lain dormant within him; fourthly, his remorse and lastly, the growth and change in the inner man, Lear. Insanity itself is shown as a changing process with phrases.
The whole tragedy of King Lear inevitably rises from the tragic flaws in his character, from his state of helplessness after giving away his all, and from the spite and complete ingratitude of his daughters. Madness ensues and overtakes Lear, and partly saves him from conscious agony. Lear’s madness develops in stages and through these stages, his character grows. First we see fit of ungovernable rage in his denunciation of Cordelia, the outlawry of Kent and the denunciation of Goneril and Regan. Next becomes evident his flightiness and infirmity of purpose in his behavior with Goneril and...