This chapter covers two scenes that move quickly and end badly for two honest men.
Kent arrives at Gloucester's castle ahead of Lear and immediately runs into Oswald. The confrontation is not accidental, Kent recognises Oswald as the man who carries Goneril's letters and treats Lear with contempt, and he has no interest in civility. The insult he delivers is one of the most extravagant in the play: Oswald is "a knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave", and the list goes on. Then he beats him.
When Cornwall, Regan, Edmund, and Gloucester arrive to break it up, Kent refuses to adjust his tone. Cornwall accuses him of performing bluntness; using plain speech as a pose rather than a genuine character. Kent's answer is a small masterpiece: he immediately adopts extravagant courtly language until Cornwall asks what he means, then explains he was simply trying to speak in a style Cornwall would prefer. The point lands. He is not performing. He is plain because that is what he is.
It does not help him. Cornwall orders him stocked. Regan extends the punishment: "till noon" becomes "till night, my lord, and all night too." When Kent says that even a dog belonging to her father should not be treated this way, Regan replies: "Sir, being his knave, I will." Gloucester protests that stocking a king's messenger is an insult to the king. Cornwall dismisses this. Kent is locked in the stocks.
Left alone, Kent reads a letter from Cordelia: she has learned of his situation and is watching from France. He sleeps where he sits. His last words before closing his eyes: "Fortune, good night: smile once more, turn thy wheel."
The scene shifts briefly to the open country, where Edgar has been hiding in a hollow tree after hearing himself proclaimed a fugitive. Every road is watched. He has only one option: disappear entirely. He will become Poor Tom: a Bedlam beggar, grimy, half-naked, crying out in apparent madness. The disguise is total erasure.
"Edgar I nothing am," he says. And exits.
