For Tuesday: King Lear, Acts 2-3

NOTE: A LOT goes on in these acts, so just get as far as you can into Act 3 for Tuesday. We won't have time to talk about all of this, but we'll do as much as we can, including talking about the craziness of Act 3, scene 7, which is definitely not in A Thousand Acres (except very distantly). 

Answer TWO of the following:  

Q1: Act 2.2 is a strange scene, where Kent goes after Oswald like a man out for revenge. He not only viciously berates him (pp.83-85), but attacks him and seems on the verge of killing him. Since this scene almost comes out of nowhere, is this scene supposed to be played for laughs (like the Porter scene in Macbeth)? Is Kent just acting mad here for the audiences’ entertainment? And if so, why does Regan punish him so severely?

Q2: In Act 2, Scene 4, when Regan and Goneril decide to openly defy their father’s demands, Lear exclaims “I gave you all” (52).  This echoes his later line in the storm when he proclaims, “I am a man/More sinned against than sinning” (58). Are our sympathies starting to shift here? Is he simply a confused and abandoned old man left with "nothing"? Or is he merely acting to punish his daughers for not abasing themselves before him and fulfilling his every need? 

Q3: Act 3, Scene 6, the so-called “trial scene” only appears in the early quarto version of the play (Q1).  The authentic version of Lear was published in the complete version of Shakespeare’s works, the Folio version, in 1623, and this entire scene is missing.  Either Shakespeare thought the better of it and cut it or it simply got lost in translation.  The editors of this version, though following the Folio, decided to reinstate it.  What do we gain from having this scene in the play?  Does it underline or foreshadow important themes or events in the play?  Or is it too much of the same, including a lot of “nothing”?  

Q4: How do you account for the extreme cruelty of Act 3, Scene 7, where both sisters and Regan’s husband, Cornwall, gang up on Gloucester?  Though the sisters may have seemed cruel earlier in the play, here they are truly sadistic, taking glee in plucking Gloucester’s beard and removing his eyes.  Why do they do this, and how might earlier scenes have prepared us for this (or explained their motivation)? 

Q5: What do you think Edgar’s role in the play is as “Poor Tom”?  Though he has some of the craziest lines in the play, he is clearly acting, as he pops out of character at the End of 3.6 to talk to the audience.  Is he a foil to Lear?  A rival to the Fool?  Or a mirror to Cordelia (especially if she is the Fool)?