‘Am I in France?’: King Lear and Source

Hirschfeld contends that in Am I in France?, William Shakespeare does not transform his source as much as he offers it up, intact, as a reference to or citation of the chronicle alternative. But the reference is still, decisive and devastating. It challenges the status of the protagonist's distraction: Lear may be mad but he knows the details of his chronicle, and, however dazed, he knows its details have been violated. But this 'reason in madness' only emphasizes Lear's losses over the course of the play: not just his trip across the Channel but the prerogative over place so integral to his sovereignty. In the bewilderment of the reunion scene, he attempts to assert his authority over his chronicle plot, but the assertion comes out as a question, and he is impotent to change the facts as Shakespeare has rendered.