LEAR: This is a dull sight. Are you not Kent?
KENT: The same,
Your servant Kent. Where is your servant Caius?
LEAR: He’s a good fellow, I can tell you that.
He’ll strike, and quickly too. He’s dead and rotten.
KENT: No, my good lord, I am the very man –
LEAR: I’ll see that straight.
KENT: That, from your first of difference and decay
Have followed your sad steps.
LEAR: You are welcome hither.
KENT: Nor no man else. All’s cheerless, dark, and deadly.
Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves,
And desperately are dead.
LEAR: Ay, so I think.
ALBANY: He knows not what he says, and vain it is
That we present us to him.
EDGAR: Very bootless.
– William Shakespeare
King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. The ever loyal Kent who is disguised as the servant Caius finally reveals his true identity to Lear. But Lear who is slipping in and out of sanity hardly recognizes his most loyal subject. He doesn’t understand that Kent and Caius are the same person. Kent tells him that Regan and Goneril are dead, but Lear is not really taking it in. Albany’s comments sum up Lear’s deteriorating situation, that he doesn’t know what he is saying and it’s useless to try to explain it to him. Edgar confirms this. It’s a very poignant moment, because Kent has given so much in service and support to his master and in the end receives no appreciation or reward for it.