Poor Naked Wretches

Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,

And show the heavens more just

I went to a daylong symposium on King Lear yesterday at the University where I work. Four presentations on various aspects of Lear in the morning; lunch; a prologue presentation of the play, and then an afternoon performance of the play itself.

I’ve never read King Lear all the way through. I’ve tried more than a few times, being drawn his time on the heath. How his lamentation and internal turmoil manifests itself in language and meteorology. By madness unfettered and abetted by such Elizabethan archetypes as fools and Toms of Bedlam. My familiarity with contemporary madness on the streets, more formally known as community mental health, draws me to look at how Shakespeare handles this, and to look for parallels between Lear and what I see on the streets of Philadelphia and the drop in centers and missions of Wilmington. Ultimately I hope to find this milieu, so much of which I experience on a decidedly quotidian level, displayed using an epic palette.

This time around, I found what I was looking for… the lines in the above epigraph. Lear utters these “poor naked wretch” (PNW) verses as the storm kicks up and as he, newly destitute and estranged, finds compassion for the plight of those who, like the Poor Tom persona taken on by Edgar, are defenseless against the brunt of both society and nature. Shakespeare captures this beautifully, and these verses are timeless. Lear’s newfound insights challenges the reader. How, Lear asks, can someone with nothing to his name beyond his impoverishment, defend himself “from seasons such as these?” That phrase is perfect for the foreboding nature that currently hangs over us. It fits with how I think about people in tents (modern day hovels) withstanding rainstorms and cold snaps, as well as the ebbs of housing and the flows of law enforcement.

As one does these days, I took a break from these thoughts to ask ChatGPT “what passages of Shakespeare's plays correspond to issues relevant to homelessness?” The response was: “Shakespeare’s works don’t directly address homelessness as we understand it today, but they’re deeply engaged with themes of displacement, poverty, exclusion, and the fragility of human dignity.” That’s a good response in that by all indications it understood my question, and it offered five passages from Shakespeare plays that reflect these themes.

The first of the five passages was, not surprisingly, the PNW verses. (Ask ChatGPT yourself to find out the other four, but none of the others fit what I’m looking for.) “Lear, stripped of his power and exposed to a storm, begins to empathize with the poor and homeless… This is one of Shakespeare’s clearest acknowledgments of homelessness and social neglect. Lear realizes his own past indifference to poverty and begins to see the humanity of those he once ignored.” This is true but unsatisfying. By this description Lear’s insight seems trite, like something he’d say to a journalist as he gives his rationale for launching a foundation. What ChatGPT omits is how this is uttered in the context of nihilism and chaos (both internally and externally), and how Lear is on an accelerating slide down the slope of losing his shit. There is no safety net here, and this passage is bookended by the scene where Lear and Gloucester, one who has become mad and the other who has been blinded, huddle together when they have nothing else, and nobody else in the world.

[spoiler alert] There is no happy ending here. Lear doesn’t get placed into supportive housing, doesn’t get a job, and never finds consolation from all he had lost by getting a deeper understanding of himself. Lear dies, overwhelmed by the grief of holding the one dead daughter who loved him, who was executed by the forces headed by his other daughters, who, incidentally, are also dead.

As for me, I have broken through the lifelong block I had toward King Lear. My breakthrough came because this time it was not just me alone with a text in olde English. This time, I was part of a group led on by some smart and engaged presenters, participants and repertory company players. I now have enough of a foundation to King Lear to where I can move ahead and focus on the language, the themes and the details of the play. This little meditation is an example of that, and madness now has become a gateway into exploring the play itself.

And to bring things full circle back to the opening epigraph, I have pasted the first couple of lines (up to “from seasons such as these”) onto my email signature. I do this with mixed thoughts and feelings, but it lets me reflect on the passage during odd minutes in my days, and invites others to do likewise.