¶ … Obscurity of Real Feeling and Intentions in King Lear and Hamlet
"Nay madam, I know not seems," says Hamlet to his mother Gertrude. (Act 1.2) By this he means he is not pretending to mourn his beloved father. Hamlet's mourning suit of inky black fabric truthfully expresses his feelings. However, Hamlet does deploy language later in the play to both obscure and reveal his true feelings. After he learns the truth about Claudius, he pretends to be mad to apparently divert suspicion from himself. However, although his madness is a simulation, he often uses the cover of madness to tell the truth, such as when he calls Polonius a fishmonger, or a pimp, as Polonius 'pimps' his daughter Ophelia for his own political gain.
In contrast, Claudius' display as a king is always a lie -- he pretends to love Hamlet in Act 5, even while he has arranged the entire play to kill his stepson. Much like Lear, when he was king, Claudius never reveals his true self in public. Lear only learns the value of truth telling after he spends a night on the heath during a storm. After being stripped of his power, he begins to understand the naked truth of the human condition. He also understands the value of his daughter Cordelia's brutal honesty and the honesty of his loyal fool.
Edgar's final statement in the play "King Lear" affirms the idea that one should speak as one feels, not what one feels one ought to say, because he has seen Edmund trick his father through lies, and through flattery, much like Lear's older daughters flattered him. Leadership, says the king-to-be, is about being honest and not simply rewarding shows of loyalty. Both Edgar and Hamlet assume personas to protect themselves, but with the aim of preserving their fathers and protecting the real truth. Their personas of madmen are humble, like the loyal Kent's assumption of the persona of a commoner as he follows Lear. But this shows again how ostentation of verbiage, which Lear values at the beginning of his tragedy, means little. Actions mean all, and language can be too easily deployed to obscure the truth of actions, so one must always be wary.
