by Maureen Cutajar

Created on: July 17, 2010

"King Lear" is concerned with perception: with seeing better and on the premise that our ability to see depends on our ability to feel. King Lear in the beginning of the play does not know about the poverty of his kingdom. He does not want to see the truth. For telling the truth Cordelia is cast away and Kent is banished from court.

In Act 1 Lear cannot separate pretence from reality; a rehearsed speech from a spontaneous reply. Unable to distinguish truth from flattery, he rejects both his loyal daughter and his loyal courtier, Kent. Lear’s blindness to the truth initiates important themes of the play: appearance versus reality and both physical and moral blindness that will be expressed in recurring motifs and metaphors throughout the play.

The theme of blindness is also a major theme in the secondary plot of "King Lear". The similarities between Lear and Gloucester are evident. Both mistake what they hear for the truth, and they are both swift to believe ill of a beloved child, blind to the reality before them. Just as Lear banishes Cordelia so Gloucester mistakes the true nature of his honest son Edgar and favours the wicked and deceiving Edmund.

Lear has relinquished his power; he has shown rash hideous attitudes but he soon starts to understand the falseness of his two daughters. Now he starts to doubt whether he did the right thing. However at this stage he still lacks the ability to perceive: the ability to see depends upon the ability to feel. Because Lear was not wise enough he is now reduced to the shadow of what he was once before.

The king must face two storms on the heath: the physical storm and his mental storm. The storm is a display of his emotional state. When he was powerful he did not care for the needs of his subjects. He was interested in pageantry. Paradoxically when Lear is reduced to nothing he can see because he can now start to feel. The king finally begins to see the corruption beneath appearances.

Similarly, in his last moments, Gloucester sees the truth that was hidden from him whilst he still had his eyes. Gloucester’s journey leads him through moral darkness into a physical blackness so “dark and comfortless” that there seems to be no distraction other than despair. In him the motifs of physical and metaphorical blindness combine.

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