Page 32 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

I N T R O D U C T I O N xxvii
'strained pride'. Both are 'plain'; Lear thinks of both
as exhibiting 'pride'. Moreover, when Lear says
Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her,
the attentive reader pr spectator realizes that Cordelia
has never actually used the word 'plainness', whereas
Kent has! Shakespeare associates Cordelia and Kent so
closely in his mind that he can write as if he were con-
fusing them. I have spoken of Cordelia as a Christ-like
figure. Inasmuch as Kent, wrongly cast out by Lear, is
irresistibly impelled by his love to humble himself,
adopting a lowly disguise, in order to protect and help
the man who had rejected him, we may think of him too
as having a Christ-like quality.
Like Cordelia, Kent may perhaps be accused by
some of a fault in not having humoured the weakness of
age in his master. Admittedly, he speaks very directly to
Lear. Should he not have pruned his terms a little, in.
deference to the human frailty of a beloved sovereign?
I cannot believe that Shakespeare means us to think in
this way. Not only are the things that Kent says true and
wise: it is also quite clear that everything he says in this
first scene is prompted by devotion to Lear's physical, as
Well as moral and spiritual, welfare. And by the end of
the play Lear has learned that Kent was quite right in
what he said.
Just as Lear's reconciliation at the end with the
Cordelia whom he had rejected at the start is imagina-
tively emphasized by the repetition of the word 'low'
(
with reference to her voice i. 1.147; 5. 3. 273), so we
find emphasized by other verbal echoes that, through his
suffering, Lear learns the wisdom that Kent had at the
beginning. At 1. 1. 145 Kent cries out—
What -wouldst thou do, old man?
Lear is king, and Kent has always honoured him as such
(1.1.139). But, readily and properly admitting Lear's