'King Lear' scene by scene 6

In the King Lear scene by scene podcast, we move into Act 3, with three scenes, the second of which is particularly significant as the first one set properly in the storm.

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You can listen to all 12 episodes here, and also download a free 52-page document with all the transcripts.

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Transcript: Act 3 scenes 1, 2 and 3.

Act 3 scene 1

This first scene of Act III is short, but introduces the key note of the central part of the play. The Gentleman who Kent encounters refers to the King as

Contending with the fretful elements:

Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,

Or swell the curlèd waters ‘bove the main,

an image of the disruption of the natural order in this storm-dominated Act. Having in the first scene of the play prompted the disorder which is about to take over its universe, Lear now calls on nature to breach its natural limits and controls. There is a similar image near the end of the play Hamlet, when Laertes breaches the King’s security hunting for revenge and a messenger says that

The ocean, overpeering of his list, 

Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste 

Than young Laertes, in a riotous head, 

O’erbears your officers.

Lear is alone apart from the Fool, whose attempts to ‘outjest his heart-struck injuries’ are completely futile. The chaos being created in nature is seen also in an increasingly disturbed Lear, and, moreover, that possibility of chaos is also seen in the rapidly developing conflict between Cornwall and Albany (first seen as a possibility in the very first line of the play). French spies have already infiltrated the kingdom.

Act 3 scene 2

That prepares us for the first of the storm scenes, Scene 2, where we see Lear’s demented railing against the elements, something which has developed with shocking rapidity since the start of the play:

Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow,

You cataracts and hurricanoes.

He wishes nature’s moulds to crack, and shouts at the elements, seeing himself as 

A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man.

There is of course an element of self-pity here, but also there is a realisation about his status, and his aloneness in a world of which he had so recently thought himself the master. This realisation comes to its conclusion in his famous statement

I am a man more sinned against than sinning.

This does demonstrate a level of self-awareness (he admits he was sinning)

But most important in this scene is what follows: the first signs of an understanding of the lives of others permanently less fortunate than him:

My wits begin to turn.—

Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?

I am cold myself.—Where is this straw, my fellow?

The art of our necessities is strange

And can make vile things precious. Come, your  hovel.—

Poor Fool and knave, I have one part in my heart

That’s sorry yet for thee.

Here, he thinks first of the Fool (a ‘boy’ who is probably not much younger than him - he has been with him for many years), whose needs he has hardly noticed up to now. This sensitivity comes at the same time as his ‘wits are turning’, the early signs of the madness that break him open and yet opens him to empathy. He responds ‘True, boy’ to the Fool’s gloomy line in his ditty ‘the rain it raineth every day’.

Act 3 scene 3

needs virtually no commentary: The sub-plot continues, with Gloucester falling for Edmund’s trickery. We hear of continued division between the dukes, and that the French army has landed. The next scene in Episode 7, has, however plenty to consider.