Act 4: Abdication

• Another series of challenges.
• Censorship: the abdication omitted from the Quarto (4.1.155-319)
• Images of Fortune and the self.

  Here cousin;
  On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
  Now is this golden crown like a deep well
  That owes two buckets, filling one another,
  The emptier ever dancing in the air,
  The other down, unseen, and full of water.
  That bucket down and full of tears am I,
  Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.
  (181-188)

• Role (King) or character (tragedy/hubris)?
• The mirror: how can he recognize himself?

  Was this face the face
  That every day under his household roof
  Did keep ten thousand men?
  (381-283)