Explication of a Passage from Shakepeare's King Lear - Essay Example

These lines make the appearance of the characters, Oswald, the trusted servant of Goneril, the Earl of Kent, the trusted friend, Fool, an attendant of Lear and Lear himself. The lines under consideration mark the wisdom of the Fool who remarks about the king’s injustice in dividing the assets through his jest ways. The present paper analyses the given lines in detail and tries to make out how these lines have contributed to the success of the play. Line 82 shows Lear’s outrageous actions towards Oswald at striking him.

He calls him rascal and then hits him irrespective of Oswald’s resistance. The Earl of Kent also gets this occasion as a chance against Oswald, the cunning servant of Goneril and so, he falls him and then calls him by saying, “Nor tripped neither, you base / football player” (Shakespeare et al.638, Lines 84-85). Lear at this time gives thanks to Kent for assisting him and then Kent further turns against Oswald and tells him to go out of there. He further says to Oswald that he will teach how to respect the higher persons of him and this scene witnesses the departure of Oswald.

Lear once again thanks Kent and gives some money as a token of his gratitude. At this juncture the Fool appears on the stage and hands over Kent his coxcomb as a token of his gratitude in a derogatory way. . Here he accuses the king in giving all he had between the two daughters. Fool says that the king became a fool by this action and so he asks Lear to get his fool’s cap from his daughters. Here in the play Fool appears to enact the role of chorus as in most of the plays of Shakespeare. The infuriated king admonishes Fool for his rash criticism.

Fool realizes that he may be punished by the king as a dog for telling the truth in front of the king. The words, “Truth’s a dog that must to kennel” (Shakespeare Line 109) details the feelings of the Fool. Here the Fool is ready to soothe Lear and so he says some lines of wise as if from a sage. The lines from 115 to 125 are the wise words from the wise Fool in the play. These lines tell the global truth to the king that the king should have more than he shows, speak less than he knows, lend less than he owes, ride more than he goes, don’t believe more than he hears, set less than he has in the play of dice, leave behind his drinking habit and whore and stay inside the door.

If one does so he will have more than two tens to a twenty. The words of Fool are responded by Kent as these worth nothing and meaningless. Fool responds to Kent that he uses these words as an unpaid lawyer and he asks the king whether these are nothing. The king responds by the words, “Why no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing” (Shakespeare 130). The Fool says to Kent that the income of the king is nothing and further retorts that he won’t believe a fool. The use of the word, ‘base football player’ is used in the play to denote a lowly game played in the streets by idle boys.

Here the word base football player is archaic by nature. Shakespeare has skillfully used it as a method to evolve the attention of the