Sample: Gloucester as Foil (Plotting 1)

Meghan Hicks, student in English L315, Spring 1995

Gloucester is a foil for King Lear: throughout the play. Although Gloucester's misery is a physical representation of Lear's emotional torment, each finds his end very similarly: they both die upon being reunited with their estranged, good child. However, their reasons for dying are very different.

Gloucester realizes he has trusted the wrong son when Cornwall gouges out his eyes in Act 3, Scene 7. He calls upon Edmund when he is blinded, and Regan says:

Thou callst on him that hates thee. It was he That made the overture of thy treason to us, Who is too good to pity thee. (3.7.108-110)

In this scene of brutal cruelty to a trusting old man, we can't help but pity the loyal Gloucester whose only crime was foolishly believing his illegitimate son. We root for him now, hoping he can be reunited with the son he rejected so that he can beg for forgiveness.

After he is turned out to smell his way to Dover, Gloucester encounters Poor Tom, really his son Edgar in disguise, and expresses to Tom his regrets for his treatment of his son. Although his father had condemned him to death and booted him out of the kingdom, the good child Edgar still loves him and prevents the old man from killing himself in despair. Edgar protects him and supports him without ever revealing his identity.

In Act 5, Scene 3, when Edgar goes to confront his bad brother and the evil sisters, he explains Gloucester's death:

Never--O fault!--revealed myself unto him Until some half hour past, when I was armed. Not sure, though hoping of this good success, I asked his blessing, and from first to last Told him our pilgrimage. But his flawed heart (Alack, too weak the conflict to support) Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, Burst smilingly. (5.3.228-235)

Gloucester suffers such painful abuse at the hands of his bad son that we commiserate with him. When he is finally reunited with his good son, he dies in the throes of joy. We know that Gloucester is an old man, wounded and blinded, and must die soon. It is almost a relief for the audience when he dies with such happiness, the torture of his physical condition and his mental pain at betraying his good son finally gone.

We have none of the relief or feeling of closure when Lear dies. We witness the weeping joy when Lear and Cordelia, the banished good daughter, are reunited in Cordelia's camp in Act 4, Scene 7. Lear's torment has been mental and emotional; although his daughters are plotting against his life, he is physically unharmed. This is why we experience much more dissatisfaction with Lear's death from grief that his beloved Cordelia is dead. He says, right before he dies,

No, no, no life? Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? Thoult come no more, Never, never, never, never, never.-- (5.3.369-372)

Lear's last lines indicate that he is driven nearly mad by losing his daughter after having been reunited with her only a short time. He insists, over and over, that she cannot be dead, but I think he knows the truth, realizes he can't make it true by simply saying it, and dies from utter grief.