King Lear and the Irony of Blindness

This essay considers the irony in Shakespeare’s portrayal of blindness in King Lear. With attention to the play’s “Dover cliff” scene, I show how Shakespeare puts a particular device—dramatic irony—to strange use. Such irony often serves ableist purposes with regard to blindness, such that the latter becomes dramatic irony embodied; being unable to see what others see means being unable to know what others know. Lear’s “Dover cliff” scene can seem an almost parodic instance of this, with a sighted character convincing an unsighted one that he falls from a cliff when he merely falls onto his face. I, though, argue that in this scene Shakespeare enacts a breakdown of dramatic irony, making it impossible to know who knows more than whom. This breakdown, I conclude, opens the question of what blindness can mean and be and in so doing creates another, more salutary irony.