Stretch him out longer.
The passions of the underplot gather to a common Climax in the madness of Edgar.
But who is this madman with whom Lear meets at the turning-point of the play? It is Edgar, the victim of the underplot, whose life has been sought by his brother and father until he can find no way of saving himself but the disguise of feigned madness. This feigned madness of Edgar, as it appears in the central scenes, serves as emotional climax to the underplot, just as the madness of Lear is the emotional climax of the main plot. Edgar's madness is obviously the climax to the tragedy of his own sufferings, but it is also a central point to the movement of the other two tragedies which with that of Edgar make up the underplot. One of these is the nemesis upon Gloucester, and this, we have seen, is double, that he receives good from the son he has wronged and evil from the son he has favoured. iii. iv. 170.The turning-point of such a nemesis is reached in the Hovel Scene, where Gloucester says:
I'll tell thee, friend,
I am almost mad myself: I had a son,
Now outlaw'd from my blood; he sought my life,
But lately, very late: I loved him, friend:
No father his son dearer: truth to tell thee,
This grief hath crazed my wits!
He says this in the presence of the very Edgar, disguised under the form of the wretched idiot he hardly marks. Edgar now learns how his father has been deceived; compare iii. iii. 15.in his heart he is re-united to him, and from this point of re-union springs the devotion he lavishes upon his father in the affliction that presently falls upon him. iii. iii. 22; iii. vii.On the other hand, that which brings Gloucester to this Hovel Scene, the attempt to save the King, is betrayed by Edmund, who becomes thereby the cause of the vengeance which puts out his father's eyes. Thus from this meeting of the mad Edgar with the mad Lear there springs at once the final stroke in the misery Gloucester suffers from the son he has favoured, and the beginning of the forgiving love he is to experience from the son he has wronged: that meeting then is certainly the central climax to the double nemesis which makes up the Gloucester action. The remaining tragedy of the underplot embraces the series of incidents by the combination of which the success of Edmund's intrigue becomes gradually converted into the nemesis which punishes it. Now the squalid wretchedness of a Bedlamite, together with the painful strain of supporting the assumed character amidst the conflicting emotions which the unexpected meeting of the Hovel Scene has aroused, represent the highest point to which the misery resulting from the intrigue can rise. iv. i, &c.At the same time the use Edgar makes of this madness after hearing Gloucester's confession is to fasten himself in attendance upon his afflicted father, and proves in the sequel the means by which he is brought to be the instrument of the vengeance that overtakes Edmund. The central climax of a tragedy like this of intrigue and nemesis cannot be more clearly marked than in the incident in which are combined the summit of the injury and the foundation of the retribution. Thus all three tragedies which together make up the resultant of the intrigue constituting the underplot reach their climax of agitation in the scene in which Lear and Edgar meet.