A brief scene, but one with weight. Lear dispatches Kent ahead to Gloucester with letters for Regan, then prepares to follow. He is still moving toward the hope that his other daughter will receive him better.
The Fool spends the scene dismantling that hope, joke by joke. Regan, he says, will be "as like this as a crab's like an apple", and then corrects himself: she will taste exactly like the other crab. Both sisters are the same. The snail carries a shell, he adds, "to put's head in, not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case." Lear gave away the thing that protected him and now has nothing to shelter behind.
In the middle of the Fool's riddles, Lear says quietly: "I did her wrong." He means Cordelia. It is unprompted, the Fool has not mentioned her, and he does not elaborate. The admission surfaces and disappears almost immediately, swallowed by the noise of departure. But it is there.
The Fool lands his sharpest line without softening it: "Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise." Lear does not argue.
Then, just before the horses are announced ready, Lear speaks to no one in particular: "O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven. Keep me in temper; I would not be mad." It is the first time he names the fear. He can feel something slipping, and he knows it.
Coming Up in Chapter 6
Act II opens with new schemes and betrayals as Edmund continues his manipulation while Lear arrives at Regan's castle, expecting the warmth and respect he was denied by Goneril. The stage is set for even deeper family conflicts.
