ABSTRACT
According to Richard Davies, Shakespeare had been “oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned” for poaching Sir Thomas Lucy’s deer. The theme of whipping and banishment is found in a number of the plays, but is most fully explored in King Lear. Poor Tom “is whipt from Tything to Tything, and stockt, punish’d, and imprison’d”1 - a fate which cannot be escaped; as the Fool observes: “they’l have me whipt for speaking true: thou’lt haue me whipt for lying, and sometimes I am whipt for holding my peace.”2 Cornwall punishes Kent by placing him in the stocks, a method of punishment Gloucester considers socially demeaning: “your purpos’d low correction/ Is such as basest and contemned’st wretches/ For pilf’rings and most common trespasses/ Are punish’d with.”3
