ao4 Hygiene, t,zvaury, ana nomecessness ~: '(".moo ~ ~ ~ c` ~l C~ h ...For example,she will lie in some Scrivener's house.... The first man that she meek` ~/~~~~. ~'-• ~. `. ~G of her acquaintance shall, without much pulling, get her into a tavern. Out of him shp f~ ~-~, kisses a breakfast and then leaves him.The next she meets does,upon as easy pulleys,t~q- ~' ,~+-v~ im`]r ~ ~ ~ ~--~ tS ~~LcJ ~l her to a tavern again. Out of him she cogs a dinner,and then leaves him"(z47). Thebor ~i rowed clothing,sexual trickery earning no more than a good meal,lodging in a respect°' cv-- . able house,and even the conning of a scrivener bespeak the Edith story. ~~ 7. In the public jollity attending the spectacle of vagrants' being unprisoned atidit~ ~< Il:~~~s P whipped,one recalls that visits to Bedlam were a populaz public entertainment Catrd~ notes that "for many the spectacle ofthe lunatic poor was essenrially comic"(io7); he tee fi. sear, the Homeless King ~ ~ ~~ ~ the visit to "Bethlem Monastery" in L~ekker's The Honest Whore,Partl, where the confit~ ;; mad folic enact "such antic and such pretty lunacies,/That spite ofsorrow they willmai~" !~:; Adequate and permanent shelter is a basic need,and its absence has a you smile" (g.2.i6o-6i). deleterious effect upon physical and mental health, personal 8. In Queen Elizabeth's celebrated remark "I thank God I am endued with such qua~~ -' development, and the ability to exercise individual rights and ities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat I were able to live in arryplaot, obligations. in Christendom," Jones see an "extraordinary and unexpected casting ofherselfas Gtisc#=~" ` —"Resolution on Homelessness," American Psychological Association da"(chap. 4). But the allusion maybe wider, and it may involve an e~ctraordinaryaed~ unexpected identification with the realm's beggazs, witches, Widow Ediths,andallotl ers subject to humiliating strip searches. 'CHE LAST CHAPTER CLOSED Wltll 3 W1SI1 fOI WI71t Ktri~ LEGiY, 1 ti11ri1C, C1A Of 9. As I point out in appendix B, Widow Edith can be placed in a tradition ofjesflmt~ ftt;.a few maverick sympathetic voices. The play takes a hard look at home- raphies;these have many points of contact,as I have shown,with rogue biographias~k~ Irs~pess: Sometimes,as happens in the discourse of va~ran~,the play looks as that of Ned Brown in Robert Greene's The Black Book's Messenger. That ~doW Fdbh xhfough theeyes of a jester,this time an actual court jester. Th~olari~ be- was written by a member of More's household perhaps reflects the More circle s intcrtdf„ the siacteenth centu- in biographyMore's biography of Richard III and the biographies of More him.5~lf b~ x the exptoranon or the cen- Roper and Harpsfield. One might well read wr~ow Edith as parodic of this tradition,~1 ofthe homeless is at its most camivalization of straight biography. 'fir sense of home and t io. Michael Holmes argues that "of central importance to cony-catching literatuct ~ mtense.l The play's shatterm~quest~q~~1~2ut.~umanit~and mortal may the debasement of gentlemanliness by the cunning misappropriation and misuse af'~,;~;; ~. nrvite nniversal st read~s,but,I_willfor round amore speci~.~ context:the vility's material and performarive signifiers; ...sartorial and behavioral masquera~s- ~, pliinnge into homelessness of_so many characters is, imagined precisely in .. _~4 , , - - astaple topic of the genre" (n.p.). ~~ tetrasof`the discourse ofva ran and the la 's lan a e of violence and ii. Of beggars' supposed histrionic ability to feign poverty and disability on tlu dk '' .' a3~g~r draws on a familiar lexicon from vagrancy tents. Unlike many new on the "There seems little, these ~3~ ~. .. - ;~ hand or gentility other, Carroll writes, in accounts,$f~~' ;, ~ ~tOnc~st an, _ d cultural materialist critics, however,I will notread the play such beggars cannot do: they can forge official documents,feign disease and mutifa~, ~A~-: ~s 2~~mf des air or conclude that it finally collapses mto the politically ,:` ...even `play'the role ofmiddle-class citizen_ ... Rarelyhas any culture fashionedsua~ many texts I have explored in this '- and powerful an enemy out of such degraded and pathetic materials"(FatKngg7~ erva4~ve or reactionary_ Read against ~e ~ ia. Sly is situated in the discourse of vagrancy by being called "a tinker and a be~r',W •~ `~' bi~bk—andl~ I think they represent the mainstreamof English Renaissan' in the dramatis personae (one recalls that tinkers were regularly included in rogu~roN ~ thoughtKnALear is,I will argue, politically and socially radical. ~~--- ters by writers like Awdeley and Harman),by his frequenting of alehouses,and by.an r ~;:'~-Others have questioned the play's degree of social awareness: Liar's eyes ~..; house hostess's threatening him with "a pair ofstocks, you rogue!"(Indi.2). Carroll~9bdF~e - ~F °areopened to the inequities of his reign only when he lacks a eg ncy to change Sly in the discourse of poverty (Fat King i58-67). r, _`, s~~' t~tesystem.As JonathanDollimore says,"Insofar as Lear identifies with suf- i3. There may be a number of historical figures in widow Edith, prefiguringHattna~Y? ; ~- feting itis at the point when he-is_p_o~exless~o do anything about it. .. His naming of actual beggars like Nicholas Jennings. Giving these tales the trappingso`f'pe[~` `+- ; compassion_emerges_from grief only to be~obliterated by_grief" (i92-93)• similitude seems a hallmark of Tudor scam artist pieces. A. W. Wazd reports "Ofdf! experience. _ . precludes a return to characters actually nanned in Widow Eclith, I have traced all but the widow's father•Jdl -' W21ter Cohen notes that tear's "social interest in worldly power with a Hawkins,her husband Thomas Ellys,Master Guy and his sister of Stratford,1olrn Fr~It. Lrtiie throne; although he simply transcends brutally reveals the hopeless and his wife of Fulham, Goodman Rosse of Sevenoaks, the two servants of Roperasd ` ,,. ~:. r sublime . indifference,the final scene ofthe play Lington, and John Coates of Holborn"(i55)• the Homeless King ------ ---•-a Lear, the inadequacy of this attitude" (334)• But this is too narrow,too king-centered monarch so accustomed to command that he has come to believe that a view of the play's wide-ranging social and economic critique—Leaz was elements will obey him—a true the rea]m's social ills, and he alone could not~ _av ce d not- responsible for all __ __ _,_ -- them.The cure the playpoints tows rd is mo e radical than royalty-centered readings have imagined. For years, in my teaching and writing, I have combated the idea that the family a little commonwealth with the.father as king, this play collates with divided kingdom ~ W4iat Thomas M.Greene notes as a Shakespeare stood head__ and~shoulders_aboye_his culture or was centtuies divided family ahead ofhis time I have.argued that Shakespeare was not a feminist ahead central structural principle in Jonson's works—an analogy between gover- of his time,did not consistenfly demystify the magical thinking to which his nor,householder,"inner self," and "identity," radiating from circles within age was prone, and did not always resist the temptation to scapegoat maz- circles(326)—was an underpinning ideology ofthe period; and if home was ginal groups or individuals._I have argued that while we complain of those a series of concentric circles—body, family, state-one seesm KtngLear _ __ who. turn Shakespeare into a cultural icon transcending time, we literary mutilarion within every circle:. -_.. ----- _ - scholars do it ourselves whenwe `exempt lum_from the rigorous historiciz- "Home" means "the body" in Edmund's false report of Edgar:"With his --- , __ -_ ing to which wesubject his contemporaries: how many times have we read that_Shakespeaze demystified,exposed; treated with ironic detachment,par- the mid-sixteenth century,"home" was used adverbially to suggest the pen- ~ odied,inverted,. played gracefully with the conventions and beliefs which his etration of a human body by a thrusted weapon, as in "to strike home" ~f ~` ~ --"benighted contemporaries adopted blindly?"(Woodbridge, Scythe i9). It is, (OED -Edmund's conflation of body and household is even stronger in that J'~- r, , then, with some chagrin that Inow-argue that on the issue of poverty and ~'"provided"'was used of preparations for hospitality—for example, in the ~- ~`r ~,, ~~/ homelessness Shakespeare,.in King Lear at least, stood head and shoulders ---corift of Timon's excessive hospitality(Timon ofAthens i.a.i92-93) ar the J~4~above his culture and was centuries ahead of his time—and perhaps ahead i sinister double entendre of Lady Macbeth's preparations for the arrival of '~'~ ~ ~~ _ of ours. "~ King Duncan:"He that's coming /Must be provided for"(Macbeth i.5.66- ,_- -~- 67). Regan refuses hospitality to Lear with the words "I looked not for you ~- ~'~' yet,nor amp provided /For your fit welcome"(x.4.234-35) • Home~u_-i_King Lear Broken Homes t becomes a locus of revenge and punishment. Two speakersallude to home as a punished human~body just~afterlieing shut out of a house:"T'hese inju- The domestic interiors of KingLear cannot be called homey.There is a chair riesthe King now bears will be revenged home" (3.3.0-i2), vows Glouces- to which Gloucester is bound when he is blinded;and mad Lear takes a joint '.;: ter, after crying,"they took from me the use of mine own house" (3.3.3-4)~ curtains incredulously marveling,"in such a stool for Goneril. Lear in his madness maybe fantasizing the in the ~T~~::.