Blooms Literary Themes - THE GROTESQUE.pdf - ymerleksi - home

122William ShakespeareBut there is no relief. Outside, in the wild country, the storm growsmore terrible:Kent. . . . Since I was manSuch sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I neverRemember to have heard . . . (III. ii. 45)Lear’s mind keeps returning to the unreality, the impossibility of whathas happened:Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all—O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;No more of that. (III. iv. 20)He is still self-centered; cannot understand that he has been anythingbut a perfect father; cannot understand his daughters’ behaviour. It isas this mouth should tear this handFor lifting food to’t . . . (III. iv. 15)It is incongruous, impossible. There is no longer any ‘rule in unityitself ’. 1 Just as Lear’s mind begins to fail, the Fool finds Edgardisguised as ‘poor Tom’. Edgar now succeeds the Fool as the counterpartto the breaking sanity of Lear; and where the humour of theFool made no contact with Lear’s mind, the fantastic appearance andincoherent words of Edgar are immediately assimilated, as glassescorrectly focused to the sight of oncoming madness. Edgar turns thebalance of Lear’s wavering mentality. His fantastic appearance andlunatic irrelevancies, with the storm outside, and the Fool still foroccasional chorus, create a scene of wraithlike unreason, a vision of aworld gone mad:. . . Bless thy five wits! Tom’s a-cold—O, do de, do de, do de.Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Dopoor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes: therecould I have him now—and there—and there again, and there.(III. iv. 57)