The problem with King Lear as a play is that, well... I don't understand it.

I suppose one comforting thing is that Dr Gier and a group of a dozen others (including another PhD and a prof who is working on a PhD in Shakespeare studies) spent the weekend together discussing the text and could not come to any understanding.

But this consolation prise does not, however, relieve the fact that I am now in the need of some inspiration on the subject of Lear's apparent vision of breath playing on the lips of his dead daughter Cordelia. Is this vision a redemptive analogy? Does it indicate the hereafter? I'd like to think so.

And I pray tell: What does the request "Pray you undo this button." mean? It seems most important of a line, for it is thereafter that he excitedly urges those about him to "Look, her lips!" and asks them if they see "this". What is "this"? We know not... But tis reasonable to assume that the button is either one on his garb, or hers. And "this", certainly breath is quite plausible. And sertainly it is among the few things that could excite a father so after the death of his beloved daughter and at the point of his own death.

But is this redemptive? or is it simply indicative of his own insanity. An insanity that could either be the residual affects of his early state of madness, or the onset of a new delirium paralleled with the soon passage of his own personage into death.

When he first enters stage in the seen in question, he is carrying Cordelia's body, and searching for signs of breath. For, if breath, he reasons, then life (V.3.259ff). He gives up hope for her(ln268), admits to his failing sight(ln277), gets distracted by the return of an exiled Lord and the death of a servant(ln265-303), and then finally returns to his daughter just in time to die(ln304-309 and stage direction).

At first glance I thought this to be sure signs that he was simply sinking back into insanity due to the pressures of his entire family dying within four pages of each other. But on closer examination it seems that it is not insanity, but rather the affect of his--albeit rapid--sanctification. In the beginning of the play he does something ill-advised and goes about dividing his kingdom betwixt his three daughters. He thus sinks into insanity and there ensues quite some familial feud that endangers the entire state. He regains his sanity, sees his three daughters dead just as he recognises Cordelia's love and virtue toward him, and then he starts taking care of business. He welcomes home a wrongfully exiled lord, morns the death of the son of another lord, and then recognises the tragedy of the death manifested in his arms.

Though this is but a slight twinkle of light after such a dark play, I think it warrant the conclusion that indeed the image of breath upon the lips of his daughter is indeed valid and indicative of a greater movement of his soul towards a blessed afterlife.