The wisdom of low-class characters in “King Lear” can be seen as a significant aspect of th play, serving as a foil to the foolishness and piousness of the upper-class characters. Through their words and actions, these lower-class characters offer a unique perspective into the events and themes of the play, displaying a level of wisdom that contrasts with the arrogance and pride of the higg-class characters. Through this point of making the least powerful of characters the wisest and intelligent, the story of King Lear makes an uncommon-at-the-time effort to disprove the idea of class supremacy.

One of the most prominent low-class characters in “King Lear” is the fool, who serves as a court jester and provides witty commentary on the actions of the characters throughout the play. In his role, he is seen as an outcast and is treated with disdain by many of the other characters. Despite this and his low social status, the fool is often the only character who speaks truth to power, daring to call out Lear and other nobel characters on their foolishness and offering sage advice. Through this role, it becomes clear that not only could Lear have avoided being betrayed by his daughters if he had listened to the fool but the fool would make a better, more intelligent ruler than Lear, consistently telling Lear to make the correct decision throughout the play.

This is also shown in King Lear’s descent into madness. As this descent begins to quicken, Lear’s madness is exemplified by him becoming delusional and confused, experiencing hallucinations and speaking in cryptic riddles. Throughout these changes, it is clear that he is beginning to mirror Poor Tom, Edgark’s disguise of a crazy beggar. Both speak and act oddly, like speaking in gibberish or singing at inappropriate times. At the same time, while Poor Tom is portrayed as already being mad, his madness is seen as a form of wisdom by the play. He is able to see the truth about society and the world, and his madness is a manifestation of his rejection of the false ideals that society upholds, unlike Lear who goes mad as a rejection of his loss of power over Britain and those around him. As the play progresses, King Lear begins to adopt some of Poor Tom’s attitudes and becomes more like him in his ability to see through society’s illusion. Cordelia best describes this change in Lear in her line “As mad as the vexed sea; singing aloud; / Crowned with rank furniture and furrow-weeds.”(IV. Iv. 2-3) Cordelia describes Lear to have replaced his crown with a crown of flowers. This symbolizes almost an ego death within Lear. He no longer sees himself as an all-powerful figure who would make his daughters fight over who loves him the most for land, he has become closer to nature and as a result, understands how small he is compared to it. While it could be argued that because Poor Tom is not an actual crazy beggar but rather Edgar in disguise, this wisdom would be coming from Edgar rather than his impoverished costume, this would not be entirely true. As is made clear at the end of King Lear as Edgar decides to help Albany continue the monarchy, an institution in opposition to the ideas Poor Tom preaches, he is his own character who not only symbolizes the poorest of Lear’s subjects but is vital in Lear’s transformation from a pious, power-hungry king into a good man weakened by madness.

Throughout “King Lear” the characters that hold the most power in the kingdom are consistently shown to be the ones who make the wrong decisions because of their hunger for more power and fear of losing it. On the other hand, the poor characters who interact with the nobility of the story are consistently shown to hold great wisdom and intelligence as a result of their ability to look past societal roles and norms. For a play set at a time of monarchs with absolute power, this idea is rather revolutionary and surprising in a Shakespearean play.

So one line that stood out to me reading “King Lear” is from Act I, Scene IV when the Fool is consulting Lear at Goneril’s castle:

“For you know, nuncle,/The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,/That it’s had it head bit off by it young”.

(Act 1, Scene 4, line 220-22)

I think most readers probably understand this as the Fool telling Lear that he has basically spoiled his kids too much, which is true in this situation. However, as a bit of a bird/nature nerd, I instantly recognized this quote as something more. I think diving a little more deeply and literally into this metaphor reveals some very cool science and perhaps some interesting insight about the characters of Lear themselves.

The Fool is referencing a very real naturally occurring phenomena called brood parasitism. Brood parasitism is a behavior in birds where a parasitic species lays its own eggs in a different species’ nest. The bird who has been parasitized raises the foreign chick like it is one of its own while the foreign chick usually outcompetes the victim’s chicks. In ecology, this is an obvious parasitic relationship because one species is benefited while the other is harmed; the victimized mother has wasted an entire nesting season raising a chick that is not her own while the parasitic mother hardly did any work and still passed on her genes. 

From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense, as raising babies takes weeks or months during the summer and takes an enormous energy cost from the parent. Of course, that energy is well spent if a bird can pass its own genes down to the next generation, but for birds who have been parasitized, this often won’t happen. Meanwhile, the parasitical mother has saved a tremendous amount of time and energy which she can use to parasitize more nests, ultimately increasing the number of babies she can have in one nesting season while never raising any of her young herself: a smashing success from an evolutionary perspective. There are dozens of unrelated species around the world that do this, (one of them is a native species around here, the Brown-headed Cowbird) and you could go on for hours analyzing the ins and outs of brood parasitism.

For the purpose of King Lear though, it’s just important to know that the Common Cuckoo is a parasitical species native to Europe. The Common Cuckoo parasitizes the nests of dozens of smaller songbird species across its range (such as the “hedge-sparrow”) and has even evolved adaptations such as superficial resemblances to birds of prey (to scare away the victim species’ mother in order to lay eggs in the nest) and the ability to lay eggs the same color as the host species’ eggs to better disguise them. (Like I said above, there is way more you could dive into within brood parasitism or even within just cuckoos). 

If the cuckoo is successful and lays its eggs inside a nest, its young will hatch before the host species’ young and will naturally grow faster than the host species’ chicks, outcompeting them for food. It’s important to realize that when a mother feeds her chicks in a nest, she is programmed to give food to the biggest, healthiest chick, who will also be the chick that is the loudest and most effectively begs for food. The identity of the biggest chick is usually just a matter of who hatches first, and so the first hatched egg has a huge advantage over their siblings, as they are able to start growing first, even if the difference is only by a few hours or days.

Parasitical chicks take advantage of this, and as soon as they are born they will instinctually push other eggs out of the nest, attack their siblings, and outcompete them for food, doing whatever it takes to survive. The result of a successful parasitism can often look very strange; the parasite’s offspring become much larger than their “mother”, and the mother works tirelessly to continue feeding the enormous appetite of her “chick”. The parasitical chicks have completely “won” the exchange, as the host mother has raised no true offspring, raised her own species’ parasite, and has probably exhausted herself feeding huge parasite babies. (This does not happen in every case of brood parasitism, as many species have evolved defenses against parasitical parents and chicks, sparking an evolutionary “arms race” between the parasites and the parasitized.)

So how does all this scientific exposition tie into King Lear? As I went through this process in my head, a lot of interesting parallels made themselves apparent to me. The comparison between the older, bigger, begging, attention-seeking chicks and Goneril and Regan almost seems too clear. Regan and Goneril were firstborn to Lear, and their pleas for attention and practical begging in front of Lear ensured their survival, at least in the context of receiving wealth and power. Cordelia is not loud and (metaphorically) large, and she doesn’t beg in front of Lear. Like an instinctual mother, Lear instantly rewards Goneril and Regan while carelessly tossing Cordelia away. In other words, Lear raised two cuckoos and he and Cordelia lost out because of it. Considering the lack of references to maternity in Lear, you could speculate if Cordelia even has the same mother as Regan and Goneril, a revelation which would make the cuckoo metaphor even more telling.

I think the theme of bad, wicked, or cunning people getting power by being manipulative and telling people what they want to hear is evident in real life whether we look at something as seemingly benign as spoiling children or destructive, like brutal dictators only promoting those who praise them. This is supported by who we see accumulate power in “King Lear” versus who is banished and stripped of it. However, it is very intriguing to see how this is a theme that occurs in nature as well; clearly, the begging, prostrating, “yes-man” trope is an (oftentimes effective) strategy employed beyond just the world of humans.