Page 43 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

xxxviii KING LEAR
conduct here indicates that he has learned an important
lesson, it is also, from another point of view, crazy. And
once again we must mention a significant verbal echo.
Attention has been drawn to it by Professor Kirsch-
1
baum. At the end of the play we have one of the most
poignant episodes ever written by Shakespeare or anyone
else. Lear has the dead Cordelia in his arms. 'Thou'lt
come no more,' he says,—
Never, never, never, never, never.
And then he turns to a bystander—
Pray you, undo this button. Thank you, sir.
He feels suffocated, and needs help—he cannot undo the
button at his throat and loosen his clothing. We are
touched by the gentle courtesy of his words. This is a
tone of which he was incapable at the start. Now 'undo
this button' echoes the 'Come, unbutton here!' which
he shouted out in the storm (3.4. 109). At the later
point Shakespeare deliberately reminds us of the earlier
point, and enables us to make a contrast. When he cries
'Come, unbutton here!' Lear has attained a knowledge
of truth, but he is frenzied and is, moreover, dramatizing
himself. When he says 'Pray you, undo this button.
Thank you, sir', he has the knowledge of the same truth,
but he is quiet and humble. Thus Shakespeare subtly
suggests to us that Lear learns full wisdom, comes to full
spiritual regeneration, not in madness but through mad-
ness. The lessons he learns in the storm have their full
effect only when he regains his sanity, towards the end.

VII. The Sub-Plot
This play, unlike Shakespeare's other tragedies, has a
fully-developed sub-plot; and the sub-plot furnishes, not
a contrast with the main plot, but a parallel to it. As if to
1
Review of English Studies, xxv (1949), 153-4.