".
Van Doren sums up, "Each music serves the other - Gloucester's to measure the height of Lear's, and Lear's to pour meaning into the lowly goodness and modesty of Gloucester's." Harold Bloom referred to this point as the "poetic centre" the play. In Edgar's words, the scene is "matter and impertinency mixed - Reason in madness!" and Lear blends the crazed babbling of a madman with words that show an increased perception of his reality. .
The following observations are points worthy of further examination. First, in the perception of vulnerability, Lear has finally recognized the falseness of his previous illusion of love by his two elder daughters: "They told me I was everything, "tis a lie, I am not ague-proof." His knowledge of self-identity of himself is confronted, but not solved; and he remains powerless against his fallibility. Next are Lear's reactions towards women. Lear has generalized the wickedness of his two daughters as the wickedness of women. "But to the girdle do the gods inherit;/Beneath is all the fiend's" is part of an expressive and poetical tirade against women. The roles of women in King Lear are a source of heated discussion. Following is his loss of authority. Lear has lost the faith in a system of justice and retribution. "Plate sin with gold, /And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks." The loss of the himself, as the king and head of a state is paralleled with the absence of a greater sense of divine order, or nihilism, within the play. And finally, we observe anger. Lear has expressed disappointment and anger vividly in previous scenes. However by now, his anger has overcome his language, a mere spondee where he repeats the word kill: "And when I have stol'n upon these son-in-laws,/Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!".
How emotions are conveyed through language is important when looking at suffering in King Lear. At this point in time, Lear might have come to new realizations, but he is still tortured and wracked in suffering.
