IS KING LEAR REALLY MAD?MADNESS IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES AND MADNESS OF KING LEAR WITH QUOTATIONS

This is an interesting
question.

First, ask the question how old is King Lear?  He
tells us that he that he is in his 80s.  When we see him at the beginning of the play,
he could be thought child like in the fact that he needs to hear how much his daughters
love him.  This would appear to be an insecurity on his part or perhaps a true lack of
understanding what love is.  He seems to think that we are born with so much love and
must divide it.  To Lear it is reductive not expansive which is the true and mature
nature of love.

Senility is often thought of as second
childhood.  He behaves like a petulant child when he does not get the answer he craves
from his youngest and dearest, Cordelia.  He throws a
tantrum.

Perhaps what we have with Lear is Shakespeare's
observation of what we today call Alzheimer's.

He fears
going mad.  In Act I, scene 4, he tells the Fool, " O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet
heaven!/Keep me in temper.  I would not be mad."  It is as if he can feel the loss of
his senses coming on and is at a loss at how to prevent
it.

Lear begins to rely more and more on the "wisdom" of
the Fool until he meets the "madman" Poor Tom whose madness is his disguise and
survival.

Of course the best example of what is happening
to the king mentally is Act III, scene 2 when he challenges the storm.  One needs only
look into the speeches themselves to see the king's mental state.  His speeches are full
of punctuation.  His mind is in turmoil.  The words and sounds of the words also reflect
his mental state.  The physical storm is reflecting this turmoil, this
madness.

He discovers his humanity while mad when he
realizes that man stripped of the trappings of status are all just poor naked beings who
are the playthings of the gods.

He seems to go in and out
of madness after the storm.  He has moments of clarity with Gloucester and
Cordelia.

So, in the play, you have an old man who might be
a victim of Alzheimer's, or mad, or both.  You have Edger who feigns madness to stay
alive .  You have the Fool who may be mad or just crazy like a
fox.

As for other examples of madness used to achieve an
objective, you could also check out Hamlet and Titus
Andronicus.