SOURCE: Bennett, Josephine Waters. “The Storm Within: The Madness of Lear.” Shakespeare Quarterly 13, no. 2 (spring 1962): 137-55.

In the following essay, Bennett interprets Lear's internal struggle with insanity as it shapes and defines his character in King Lear.

An understanding of Lear's madness is essential to any serious interpretation of the play and to any understanding of its structure. Yet critics have not agreed about when Lear goes mad, and almost no attention at all has been given to the dramatic function of his madness. Some put the onset of madness at the entrance of Edgar as Poor Tom of Bedlam in III. iv.¹ Others would have it at the end of that scene.² Coleridge thought that this scene ended “with the first symptoms of positive derangement”, but that Lear does not appear in “full madness” until III. vi.³ Granville-Barker agrees with Coleridge that III. vi, “the lunatic trial...