Abstract
In King Lear, the English law of madness, especially the aspects of testamentary devises, royal accession, waste, and plunder, is thematized in such a way that the conflict between civil order and savage nature is brought to the foreground. This dynamic overshadows, and to some extent disguises what truly lies at the heart of ancient Britain's woes: a deficit of ontological self-inquiry on the part of the sovereign and his royal retainer, Gloucester, from which all of the other complications ensue.
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