Characters and their actions (action of disguise) bear a more profound aspects the mere plot; their function embodies symbolic and allegorical implications. Weinsheimer's argument about the nature of characters in relevant to that point: .
[characters] are textualized. As segmants of a closed text, Characters. are patterns of recurrence, motifs which are continually recontextualized in other motifs (Weinsheimer in Rimmon – Kenan, 32). .
Thus, it is possible to interpret the disguise motif in the two shakespearean plays, King Lear and As You Like It, in historical terms. The characters and their action function as an allegory "of cultural conflict which the playwright reflects in his drama. Hegel claims that dramatic literature in its original form is concerned not with characters in conflict but with historical and cultural systems "individualizes in living personalities and situations pregnant with conflict" (Hegel in Fisch, 27). The historic – cultural conflict in King Lear, Colie identifies as the "crisis of the aristocracy" (Colie, 185-217). According to him, a class tension characterized the Elizabethan period. This dissonance is given attention in As You Like It and especially in King Lear. It is impossible, Colie further asserts, not to find in Shakespeare's works a profound critique of aristocratic manners in particular the aspects of clothing. Contemporary preachers ".never ceased to bewail the ruinous frivolous preoccupation of the rich with their apparel" (Colie, 187). Lears' complaint against the luxurious attire of Goneril is connected to that notion: .
Thou art a lady;/ If only to go warm were gorgeous,/ why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,/ Which scarcely keeps thee warm (2.4.269-72).
Edgar in Tom's beggarly garb appears in the play as the opposite of the aristocratic fashion. The sole blanket that he reserves, "e"se we had been all ashamed" (3.
