SOURCE: Kendall, Gillian Murray. “Ritual and Identity: The Edgar-Edmund Combat in King Lear.” In True Rites and Maimed Rites: Ritual and Anti-Ritual in Shakespeare and His Age, edited by Linda Woodbridge and Edward Berry, pp. 240-55. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Kendall argues that the elaborate ceremony surrounding the trial by combat between Edgar and Edmund in Act V, scene iii of King Lear betrays the hollowness of the ritual and highlights the ineffectuality of all human constructs designed to establish legitimacy or affirm a natural order.

GON.

An enterlude! 

Broken rituals complicate the action of many of Shakespeare's plays: Ophelia's already “maimed rites” are further marred by an impromptu performance on the part of Hamlet; in Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio turns on Hero and puts an end to the marriage ceremony; in the scene of ritual combat in Richard II, King Richard...