Page 45 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

xl KIN G LEAR
spiritual salvation. The wisdom that each learns is
essentially the same. Like Lear, Gloucester comes to
sympathize with the downtrodden, who are as much
human as the rich and powerful are. Gloucester in his
misery cries out to the heavens—
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly;
So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough. (4. i. 66 ff.)
This reminds us of Lear's words in the storm—
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
.That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
.How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just. (3. 4. 28 ff.)
We note the parallel between Gloucester's 'superfluous'
and Lear's 'superflux'. Again: like Lear, Gloucester in
his torment learns the value of patience. He resolves on
suicide, and asks 'Tom o' Bedlam' to conduct him to a
cliff-top. For Gloucester's own good, Edgar deceives
him. Then Edgar describes to Gloucester, fictitiously,
how he—Edgar—had from below watched Gloucester
with a fiend beside him on the cliff. The suggestion in
this invention is that Gloucester was being tempted to
suicide by a devil of hell (as indeed, figuratively, we may
say he was—it working within his mind). The gods have
preserved Gloucester. So Edgar tells him; and Glou-
cester accepts this, and resolves henceforth to 'bear
affliction'. Through Edgar's benign deception Glou-
cester's soul is rescued. And Shakespeare would seem to
be asking us to think in terms of Christianity: for we can