The dialogue between Edgar and Gloucester is interrupted by the arrival of Lear. The old king is running madly through the countryside. His clothes are disheveled and messy and he is wearing wild flowers in his hair and elsewhere on his body. Edgar is shocked at seeing Lear in such a pitiful state.
Just as the fool in the previous acts had spoken bits of truth and reason in his foolish quips and rhymes, Lear speaks bits of truth and reason during his mad and wild discourse. He realizes that Goneril and Regan had lied to him before they received their shares of the kingdom, and he has come to realize his own weaknesses: “I am not agueproof” (102-03). Lear also speaks a line that marks the intricate connection between plot and subplot:
Gloucester’s bastard son
Was kinder to his father than my daughters
Got ‘tween the lawful sheets. (112-14)
Lear of course does not know about Edmund’s betrayal to his father, but this line does suggest that legitimate children can be cruel and vicious and that illegitimate children (bastards) can be kind and generous. For Lear, though, the point is that he wished he had never had these legitimate daughters. He compares his daughters to centaurs (line 121). The centaur was a creature, half-man and half-horse, that was usually noted for his violent nature. Goneril and Regan are half-women and half fiends, as Lear suggests. They may look like women, but they are fiends underneath.
Lear also speaks about justice. He notes that what passes for justice is often a sham or fraud:
See how yond justice rails upon yon simple thief.
(147-48)
The usurer hangs the cozener. (157)
In the first of these lines, Lear comments that simple thieves who steal a small object like a loaf of bread will often receive severe and extreme punishments. In the second quote, a cozener is a cheater or minor thief. He is like the simple thief in the first quote. A usurer or moneylender is someone who loans out money at extravagant and excessive rates of interest (usury). Despite his often illegal banking methods, a usurer made great sums of money and could use that money to buy himself a position as a judge. A usurer as a judge might then sentence a simple thief to death even though the usurer/judge himself is guilty of far worse crimes. Through these lines, Shakespeare once again provides social criticism and speaks against the injustice of the legal system in England. But Lear is also metaphorically implying that life itself is unfair and does not make sense. Life is not just. During the Renaissance fate was often personified as Dame Fortune, a cruel and malicious deity who parceled out good fortune and bad fortune on a whim, with no reason to her methods. Lear is a victim of fate, which is neither fair nor just.
A gentleman and other servants arrive to bring Lear to Cordelia. Lear misunderstands the noble intentions of these men, and he runs off into the distance with the servants chasing after him.