Abstract
Abstract: King Lear 's characters call upon spherical objects both big and small to make sense of and give order to their world. Yet the play insists repeatedly that this reflex is limited, and even catastrophic. King Lear dramatizes the vanishing of all forms of protective shells, delivering us in act IV, scene vi to a Dover Cliff that is neither Dover nor Cliff. But at Dover Cliff, King Lear posits a different relationship to the spheres. Thinking through Peter Sloterdijk's "Spherology," Isabelle Stengers's "Cosmopolitical Proposal," and Edgar's stage trick or "trif[ling]," we might see King Lear situating an alternative way of living in catastrophic times—not imposed from above but felt from below, where one might bear "free and patient thoughts" if only for a trifling amount of time.