King Lear III.iv.315-344
I know his heart
[FOOL So the Fool follows after. Exit] GONERIL This man hath had good counsel -- a hundred knights? ’Tis politic, and safe, to let him keep At point a hundred knights! Yes, that on every dream, Each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike, He may enguard his dotage with their powers And hold our lives in mercy. Oswald, I say! ALBANY Well, you may fear too far. GONERIL Safer than trust too far. Let me still take away the harms I fear, Not fear still to be taken. I know his heart. What he hath uttered I have writ my sister. If she sustain him and his hundred knights When I have showed th’unfitness— Enter Oswald OSWALD Here, Madam GONERIL How now, Oswald? What, have you writ that letter to my sister? OSWALD Ay, madam. GONERIL Take you some company and away to horse. Inform her full of my particular fear, And thereto add such reasons of your own As may compact it more. Get you gone, And hasten your return. [Exit Oswald] No, no, my lord, This milky gentleness and course of yours, Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon, You are much more at task for want of wisdom Than praised for harmful mildness. ALBANY How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell. Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well. GONERIL Nay, then— ALBANY Well, well, th’event. Exeunt *****
Lear had reentered, angry and aghast that he’d lost fifty of his followers at a clap, within a fortnight, a little earlier on in this accelerating scene. Now that he and his friends have exited Shakespeare uses the remainder of the scene to do two things: in the mode of character we are shown more about Albany and his relationship to Goneral; in the mode of plot Shakespeare tightens the connection and conspiracy of the two sisters against their father.
Goneril’s already told Oswald that she would write to her sister, at the end of the previous scene. Now she has written her sister — but when; and about what? About what he’s just said to her, only moments ago. How does Shakespeare makes us accept the logically impossible rapidity of these events?1 That’s one reason he puts in the other aspect of the scene, why his exposition of Albany’s deliberative character is paired with the fast-paced plot against Lear. Each of these elements frames the other. Albany is not like Goneril (they are not the same kind of couple that Cornwall and Regan will soon prove to be). And that means that his thoughtfulness makes her impossible rapidity believable by contrast, even as her rapidity brings out our sense of his thoughfulness.
She has writ her sister; then Oswald comes in and she asks him whether he’s writ her sister. This doesn’t play as inconsistency2 but as acceleration: Oswald has already dispatched the letter while Albany is diplomatically expressing his doubts. To repeat the point: this is how we experience Albany’s thoughtfulness as giving us a fixed mark by which to measure Goneril’s speed; while her speed makes Albany’s scruples and scrupulousness all the deeper.
Oswald is now the anti-Albany, the servant or steward whom she can rely on to want what she wants and do immediately what she wants done. Obviously he doesn’t have Albany’s rank — but that’s part of the point, part of the contrast. Albany unlike Goneril, is also unlike the servant whom she can rely on to see things as she does. All of this confirms Goneril’s description of Albany, which clinches our sense of him.
But it’s interesting to marvel at what kin Lear and this daughter are.3 That amazing sentence — “I know his heart” — well, the whole scene is proof of how well they do know each other, how well they can know each other. Lear can barely spare a line for him when Albany enters; he’s too busy with his rage at Goneril. Now Goneril has no time for Albany either as she instructs Oswald on what to do, in the heat, to counteract Lear’s equally speedy purpose in going to Regan.
So Albany, as the odd man out, frames not only the conflict between Goneril and Lear but the speed and immediacy with which they make their moves. Albany’s presence serves Shakespeare to show with great efficiency the kind of character he is — a different kind of character from the extremely quick Goneril, and now it’s the fact that they’re so different that makes her speed believable.
And she is speedy: she is about to join the general stream of characters to Gloucester’s house. Oswald will be there before her but not by much.
But Albany won’t, and we won’t see him again for another three acts.
He does this elsewhere — in Richard II, for example, where Richard’s seizure of Bolingbroke’s inheritance shocks some of the lords he declares it to, who remain on stage to say that Bolingbroke is coming back to oppose this usurpation. He couldn’t have heard about it — we’re still in the scene where Richard declared it! This is another illustration of Shakespeare’s understanding of the phenomenology of theatrical time: he never needs to justify treating something that happened more than five minutes ago on stage as being months or years earlier. As I remarked before, two hours of continuous plot on stage can easily be described as twice two months. How long are Othello and Desdemona together happily? An hour or two, but in their world’s time, well, for a while, like the amount of time your parents were together before you were born. How many nights in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? If you’re counting, not the four that Theseus declares. But no one is counting — except harmless drudges like me.
In Q we only get her asking Oswald if he’s written the letter, but in F we get both lines:
What he hath vtter'd I haue writ my Sister: If she sustaine him, and his hundred Knights When I haue shew'd th'vnfitnesse. Enter Steward. How now Oswald? What haue you writ that Letter to my Sister?
She and her father both have a taste for chiasmus. Hers is just as tendentious as Lear’s: “Let me still take away the harms I fear, / Not fear still to be taken. They both have a taste for rhetorical moves in general: I particularly like her remark: “You are much more at task for want of wisdom / Than praised for harmful mildness.” The antithesis isn’t one. We might think she’s saying that the alternatives you have to bet on are either fearing, even at the risk of fearing too far or trusting, even if at the risk of trusting too far, but here the alternative is want of wisdom or harmful mildness; both are obviously bad policies. It’s no wonder he’s not getting praised for his mildness if that mildness is by its nature harmful,