Forgot to mention yesterday that patience and its various meanings are a dominating idea in King Lear. I think a reasonable case can be made that being patient in adversity is the only positive answer suggested in the play to how we might deal with the suffering inevitable in our existence. Off hand I can think of how Lear movingly recommends it to the blind Gloucester, as does Edgar: Bear free and patient thoughts (when his dad is understandably suicidal.) The need for patience is surely intimately entwined with the strange and haunting line: Ripeness is all.
The problem is, of course, that Edgar's powerful advice is immediately undercut by the arrival of the mad king, taking the weight of adversity to yet a new level. And Lear's sage advice is undercut by the fact that he's off his tree as he gives it. Shakespeare shows an awareness of Blake's insights into the abuse of preaching of the virtue before Blake got to so memorably articulate them.
(The play's been on my mind since I get to teach it again soon (Yay!) and my drama guys got to perform a line or two from it today. Lucky them, say I.)
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