Page 39 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

xxxiv K I N G LEAR
And in a second or two he is raving furiously—and
impotently. At 3. 2. 35 he says, 'No, I will be the
pattern of all patience.' The lesson is not yet fully
learned. He is still going to behave extravagantly. And
at 3. 6. 57 Kent has to reprove him, affectionately—
Sir, where is the patience now
That you so oft have boasted to retain?
The play has reached a late stage when the mad Lear
says to the blinded Gloucester, 'Thou must be patient'
(4.6.177). By now the lesson has been sufficiently well
learned for him to be able to preach it to a fellow-
sufferer. His feet are on the right road.
The idea of the attainment of spiritual health through
the patient endurance of suffering is both Stoic and
Christian. It has been suggested that there are Stoic
elements in this play. Thus Professor Oscar James
Campbell 1 speaks of Lear as 'a completely unstoical
man' who 'is converted to a state of mind which is a
mixture of Stoic insight and Christian humility'.
'Furthermore,' he adds, 'the methods by which his
conversion and redemption are accomplished are similar
to those advocated by the great Stoic philosophers.' But
in the end Professor Campbell concludes that 'Lear's
purgatorial experiences result in a form of salvation more
Christian than Stoical'. Lear's real redemption comes
about 'when he awakens from the delusions of his
frenzied mind to discover Cordelia and her unselfish
enduring love'. The critic goes on:.

The mere sight of her kills 'the great rage' in him, the
unstoical emotional turmoil from which all his sins and
suffering have sprung. Now he is calmly receptive to the
healing power of Christian love. For he has not arrived at
utter indifference to external events, at that complete
1
See his article 'The Salvation of Lear' in The Journal
of English Literary History, XV (June 1948), 93-109.