King Lear Part 2: ‘Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise’

**Philip Rowe** (0:09)
Welcome to the History Of European Theatre podcast, and thanks for joining me on this journey through millennia of theatrical history. Episode 218, King Lear Part 2 Thou should not have been old till thou hast been wise.
Last time, I looked at the first part of King Lear, from the opening scene where Lear makes his disastrous decision to split his kingdom between his children, through to the renowned scene where the ex-king and his fool are caught in a raging storm on the moor, and saved only by the loyalty of Kent. On the way, I looked at the deliciously evil Edmund, the poor judgement of his father Gloucester, and the scheming of Lear's oldest daughter Goneril. Now I will complete the look at the play, and discuss its place as a very Jacobean play, addressing the concerns of its time, when King James was working very hard in an attempt to unite his disparate kingdom.
When I left Lear and Kent on the moor at the end of the last episode, they were in the company of Edgar, disguised as Mad Tom and, of course, the King's Fool, a unique character in the Shakespeare canon. There is no other play where the Fool character has such an intimate relationship with a king. As part of portraying the depth of Lear's fall, Shakespeare forces these two characters together into a strange sort of relationship, where they seem to almost dance around each other, with the Fool taking the concept of telling truth to power to an extreme. At times, he is witty and quick to quote or sing a common ballad, while at other times he appears deeply profound and prophetic. None of this stops him being lonely and angry as well, and all of this is done before his exit from the play at roughly the halfway point.
His sharpest critique of Lear comes early in the play, when he tries to show his master the folly of dividing the kingdom using the metaphor of a divided egg. As he says, If I had a monopoly out, they would have part on't. And ladies too, they will not let me have all the fall to myself. They'll be scratching, nuncle, give me an egg, and I'll give thee two crowns. Why after I have cut the egg in the middle and et up the meat the two crowns of the egg, when thou cloverst thy crown in the middle and givest away both parts, thou borst thine ass on thy back or the dirt. Thou hast little wit in thy bald crown, when thou givest thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in this, let me be wit that first finds it so.
In a few lines there, he sums up the political and personal tragedy of the play, that by dividing his kingdom and giving half each to his daughters, Lear is left with nothing but the shell of an egg. The fool is a caring and loyal companion, but doesn't shy away from his master's failing judgement. His riddles and jests are there to point up Lear's failing intellect. In productions that emphasise Lear's madness as a descent into dementia, the fool can be played very sympathetically, even when his judgements are harsh for Lear to hear in their honesty.
The relatively early departure of the fool from the play has given scholars much food for thought, and three main reasons have generally been settled on. By the end of the storm scene, Lear's grip on reality has become very tenuous indeed, so much so that the fool's type of reasoning with him has no effect at all. Reasoning with Lear has become an even more pointless exercise than it ever was, so the fool has fulfilled his dramatic function in the play.
The introduction of Edgar as poor Tom takes over the role of providing Lear with a foil. Poor Tom's own near madness fits with Lear's state and the darkness of the second part of the play. And as the court jester, the fool is another trapping of Lear's former power that is now lost to him.
It's when considering the relationship between Lear and the fool that critics have highlighted just how much Shakespeare was writing to the strengths of his players. We don't know for sure, but it seems safe to assume that Richard Burbage played Lear and Robert Armin the Fool in the original production. The two had worked together since Henry V, when Armin joined the company to replace Will Kemp, and perhaps for longer than that. They, with Shakespeare, knew each other intimately, and it is regrettable that we can only guess at the chemistry that worked between them to create these roles. Another theory about the exit of the fool is that the actor playing the fool also played Cordelia, and the demands of doubling up of the parts meant that the fool had to disappear just before Cordelia returns to the stage. It is true that Cordelia and the fool never appear on stage together, so in that sense it is a sound theory. But it seems highly unlikely to me that Armin, who was recorded as being short and rugged looking, would have been playing Cordelia.