ii. iv. 290.
The storm marks off the Centrepiece of the play.
As Lear with these words rushes out into the night, we hear the first sound of the storm—the storm which here, as in Julius Cæsar, will be recognised as the dramatic background to the tempest of human emotions; it is the signal that we have now entered upon the mysterious Centrepiece of the play, in which the gathering passions of the whole drama are to be allowed to vent themselves without check or bound. And it is no ordinary storm: it is a night of bleak winds sorely ruffling, of cataracts and hurricanoes, of curled waters swelling above the main, of thought-executing fires and oak-cleaving thunderbolts; a night
iii. i. 12, &c.
wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,
The lion and the belly-pinched wolf
Keep their fur dry.
And all of it is needed to harmonise with the whirlwind of human passions which finds relief only in outscorning its fury. The purpose of the storm is not confined to this of marking the emotional climax: it is one of the agencies which assist in carrying it to its height. Experts in mental disease have noted amongst the causes which convert mere mental excitement into actual madness two leading ones, external physical shocks and imitation. Shakespeare has made use of both in the central scenes of this play. iii. i. 3: iii. ii. &c.For the first, Lear is exposed without shelter to the pelting of the pitiless storm, and he waxes wilder with its wildness. iii. iv, from 39.Again when all this is at its height he is suddenly brought into contact with a half-naked Tom o'Bedlam. This gives the final shock. So far he had not gone beyond ungovernable rage; he had not lost self-consciousness, and could say, 'My wits begin to turn'; iii. iv. 66.but the sight of Edgar completely unhinges his mind, and hallucinations set in; a moment after he has seen him the spirit of imitation begins to work, and Lear commences to strip off his clothes. Thus perfect is the regular arch of effect which is connected with Lear's madness. We have its gradual rise in the waves of hysterical passion which ebbed after they had flowed, until, at the point separating the Centrepiece from the rest of the play, Lear's 'O fool I shall go mad' seems to mark a change from which he never goes back. Through these central scenes exposure to the storm is fanning his passion more and more irretrievably into madness; iii. iii. 39.at the exact centre of all, imitation of Edgar comes to make the insanity acute. Decline after the Centrepiece from violent madness to shattered intellect.After the Centrepiece Lear disappears for a time, and when we next see him agitation has declined into what is more pathetic: the acute mania has given place to the pitiful spectacle of a shattered intellect; there is no longer sharp suffering, iv. vi. 81.but the whole mind is wrecked, gleams of coherence coming at intervals to mark what a fall there has been; compare iv. vi. 178; v. iii. 314.the strain upon our emotions sinks into the calm of hopelessness.
He hates him much
That would upon the rack of this tough world