King Lear Madness Quotes

The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash. Then must we look from his age to receive not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1. Goneril agrees with sister Regan that Lear has always been rash and quick-tempered, but with age and senility she warns that they could expect his unpredictable bad temper to worsen. This foreshadows Lear’s eventual descent into insanity.

LEAR: Doth any here know me? This is not Lear.
Doth Lear walk thus, speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied – Ha! Waking? ‘Tis not so.
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
FOOL: Lear’s shadow.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4. King Lear can’t believe the way he is being treated by some of those around him. Having been described as a fool by his court jester, and his daughter Goneril tearing into him with complaints about his rowdy knights. From being undisputed King and ruler of his kingdom, he now watches his power and dignity slipping away from him. He questions who he is, asks if anybody knows him, wonders where are his eyes, and who can tell him who he is. The Fool’s clever answer, "Lear’s shadow," has multiple meanings. The Fool is the King’s inner conscience, he shadows him wherever he goes, telling Lear who he is in his witty social commentary and wise criticism. But since abdicating his throne Lear has also become a shadow of the man he once was and is beginning to lose grip on reality (just before this passage he asks Goneril: "Are you my daughter?"). There is a sad of despair in the words of Lear and the Fool’s reply, as Lear searches for some meaning to his life in an existence that now appears increasingly meaningless to him. This passage reflects the play’s nihilism theme.

My face I’ll grime with filth,
Blanket my loins, elf all my hairs in knots,
And with presented nakedness outface
The winds and persecutions of the sky.
The country gives me proof and precedent
Of Bedlam beggars who with roaring voices
Strike in their numbed and mortifièd arms
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary,
And, with this horrible object, from low farms,
Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills,
Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,
Enforce their charity. "Poor Turlygod! Poor Tom!"
That’s something yet. "Edgar" I nothing am.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 3. In the woods Edgar plans to disguise himself as a deranged inmate of Bedlam hospital called Poor Tom. He will smear his face with mud, strip himself, wear only a blanket and brave the wind, bad weather and natural elements almost naked. He has seen beggars from insane asylums mutilate their arms with pins and nails, pray and shout insane curses, forcing poor villagers and farmers to give them alms. Poor Tom, they call themselves. He is no longer Edgar, he announces, renouncing his family identity.

No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall – I will do such things –
What they are yet I know not, but they shall be
The terrors of the Earth! You think I’ll weep.
No, I’ll not weep.
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I’ll weep. – O Fool, I shall go mad!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4. Lear expresses deep hatred of his two daughters Gonerel and Regan, denouncing them as "unnatural hags," thus adding them to Shakespeare’s list of evil women. He vows "The terrors of the Earth!" and revenge for their betrayal of him. But despite his pain he will not weep even though he has good reason to. His heart will break into a hundred thousand pieces before he will weep, he says. In his final line to the Fool he foreshadows his own descent into madness, which happens shortly after this. Lear vents his rage here as his daughters strip away his knights and attendants, his dignity amd power. But all he can do is vent, for when he tries to assert his authority he find that he is powerless.

KENT: Where’s the King?
GENTLEMAN: Contending with the fretful elements;
Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea
Or swell the curlèd waters ‘bove the main,
That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,
Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage
Catch in their fury and make nothing of;
Strives in his little world of man to outscorn
The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.
This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,
The lion and the belly-pinchèd wolf
Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs
And bids what will take all.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 1. A gentleman tells Kent that Lear is contending with a horrific storm that is coming on. Nature is disrupted and so is Lear’s nature. Instead of seeking shelter he runs bare-headed through the wind and rain crying out for the world to end, while all animals take cover. Trying to "outscorn" the hostile elements, he bids them to drown the earth so that things might change or stop for him. As he clearly descends into madness, the physical storm becomes a metaphor for Lear’s inner emotional turmoil.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2. Cast out by his daughters, a mad Lear is on the wild heath shouting at the storm and telling it to rage and blow for all it is worth. The once powerful King of Britain absurdly shouts orders to the raging wind, rain, thunder and lightning. He bids the storm to strike him with lightning and drown the whole world. Lear has lost all his power but does not appear to realize it. The tempestuous weather is a metaphor for the turmoil inside the mind of Lear, who is overflowing with anger and beginning to lose his sanity after clashing with his ungrateful daughters.

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, called you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engendered battles ‘gainst a head
So old and white as this. O, ho, ’tis foul!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2. In the middle of the storm on the heath, Lear rages against daughters Regan and Goneril who have turned him out of their homes. Seeing himself a victim of injustice, he accuses the storm of joining forces with his two wicked daughters to strike his old white head. The storm serves as a metaphor for Lear’s inner turmoil and mounting madness over his daughters’ unkindness. In this passage we also see him becoming aware of his powerlessness, as he first shouts orders to nature and then realizes that he has no power over the elements. He invites the storm to do its worst to him and "let fall Your horrible pleasure." Wallowing in self-pity but indicating that he has begun to acquire true self-knowledge, he describes himself as a "slave" and "poor" and a "despised old man."

O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. Lear is caught between self-pity and the thought that he will lose his sanity. He recalls the betrayal of Goneril and Regan, but reminds himself that dwelling on this will only drive him to madness and he must avoid that. He is demonstrating some self-knowledge, the lack of which is very evident in the early part of the play. This is also foreshadowing Lear’s fate late in the play when he goes competely crazy. The fuller quote: "O Regan, Goneril, Your old kind father whose frank heart gave all! O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that." But "kind father"? Lear is not a kind father, he was very cruel and unkind and showed no compassion to his youngest daughter Cordelia, who gave him nothing but her love and honesty and was rewarded with banishment and disinheritance.

Who gives anything to Poor Tom, whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlipool e’er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge; made film proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. Edgar as the mad Poor Tom babbles about being chased by the "foul fiend" trying to get him to commit suicide by laying knives under his pillow. The "foul fiend" is a reference to his evil half-brother Edmund who tricked and deceived the honest Edgar who was forced to flee after hearing himself declared an outlaw.

LEAR: Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air
Hang fated o’er men’s faults light on thy daughters!
KENT: He hath no daughters, sir.
LEAR: Death, traitor! Nothing could have subdued nature
To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. When Lear meets Edgar disguised as the near-naked and mad beggar Poor Tom, he believes that his dreadful state must have been caused by his daughters. When Kent points out that Poor Tom has no daughters, Lear is still convinced that nothing in the world could have reduced a man’s nature to such a low state except unkind daughters! All the problems of the world are caused by daughters, it appears to Lear – especially madness and poverty!

Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders’ books, and defy the foul fiend.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. Edgar as Poor Tom warns Lear not to let his heart be seduced by a woman, to stay out of brothels, keep his hands off skirts, stay out of debt and defy the devil. Why Poor Tom has a bit of an attitude towards women we don’t know, it may be just part of his insanity act.

Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here’s three on ‘s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. Astonished at the sight of Poor Tom (Edgar), who is practically naked and wearing just a blanket to cover his loins, Lear shows considerable sympathy for him. In one of the biggest and most profound questions of the play, Lear asks, is this all a man is? Looking at Edgar, the man without possessions, "a poor, bare, forked animal," Lear then proceeds to tear off his own clothes and be on the same level as a beggar, identifying with Poor Tom. This scene shows how far Lear has fallen from his high social status and powerful position as King. There is a nihilistic tone of hopelessness to Lear’s words and mood here, as he sees man (and himself) stripped of possessions and family and reduced to a poor naked animal. In the line before this quote he says you would be better off dead than face the violent storm with just your naked body – "Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies." The storm of course being a symbol of Lear’s inner turmoil.

Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water, that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, east cow-dung for sallets, swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog, drinks the green mantle of the standing pool; who is whipped from tithing to tithing and stock-punished, and imprisoned; who hath had three suits to his back, six shirts to his body,
Horse to ride and weapon to wear;
But mice and rats, and such small deer,
Have been Tom’s food for seven long year.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. Asked by Gloucester to identify himself, Poor Tom (Edgar) makes this speech listing his strange diet (frogs, cow dung, pond scum), punishments (whippings, put in stocks, imprisoned) and nomadic lifestyle, as befits a wandering lunatic. Tom’s mad speech is in answer to Gloucester’s question, "What are you there?" He is trying to conceal his true identity as Gloucester’s son.

Child Rowland to the dark tower came,
His word was still, "Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man."

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. Edgar plays to his role of the strange beggar Tom O’Bedlam with these rambling comments about the old English fairy tale Childe Rowland. But there is sanity and meaning in his seemingly insane and meaningless rhyme. What appears to be a harmless rhyme carries in it a serious threat. In speaking of Child Rowland smelling the blood of a British man, Edgar is making a social commentary on the way children in the play seek to violently wrest power from their fathers. As in the case of Lear’s Fool, there is wisdom and insight behind the words of this seeming madman.
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