“Culture is elusive…in the narratives we construct about ourselves and others or to which we turn for understanding” (Cantwell 80).   

In the case of the Shakespearean work, King Lear, it is elusive only to the other—he or she who stands on the outside looking in.  King Lear must look in and at himself as must most of the players in this story for a couple of primary reasons.  They are not of the common people and hence must journey into the unknown of the common man/woman; also, because the process of discovery of the “true” self is in part a function of ethnomimesis since it is a process that is spawned from human development in social ways (Cantwell 6).  Cantwell immediately establishes the essence of Shakespeare’s work as a borrowing from multiple folk sources.  The construction of this powerful tale might demonstrate that the work was originally designed for the common people and later appropriated by the elite, or more likely, is the act of humankind searching to reclaim his/her essence.  The true individual, in order to be restored, must, as King Lear had to do, become the essence of baseness in order to rediscover humanness.  Nevertheless, the character of Edgar is equally compelling for as Cantwell points out, he is in fact, “authentic” (Cantwell 12).  In the role of beggar (Edgar who is actually a nobleman) mirrors, speaks and performs as he impersonates his antithesis, Tom O’Bedlam.  Tom is also the reflection of a lost self for King Lear.  It goes beyond that…the creation of the story of Lear is a compilation of borrowings from folk life: legends, songs, language, etc.   

Culture, as a tool of action in this story, is what must be rediscovered as men are dismissed by their very own children who have not been raised with the values of common men with cultural mores that celebrate parents as significant elders.  Mary Hufford describes folklore as more than just the “building of knowledge”, something that is beyond the scope of Lear as King, “but about illuminating what Foucault terms the ‘insurrection of subjugated knowledges’".  Lear must die as King in order to become reborn as a man.  As a destitute, he finds meaning in himself and the universe because of this acquisition of “subjugated knowledges”.  Cantwell explains, “Lear’s madness has the power of new knowledge…”  (28).  This isn’t to say the story has a happy ending, by any means, rather it signifies the excruciating task cultural reclamation might become when humankind is under the illusion it is greater than the true institutions of “filial relations”(29).