The gutenberg galaxy 105 Outshon the wealth of Ormus and Ind, Or where the gorgeous Èast with richest hand Showrs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold, Satan exalted sat,… The arbitrary selection of a single static position creates a pictorial space with vanishing point. This space can be filled in bit by bit, and is quite different from non-pictorial space in which each thing simply resonates or modulates its own space in visually two-dimensional form. Now the unique piece of three-dimensional verbal art which appears in King Lear is in Act IV, scene vi. Edgar is at pains to persuade the blinded Gloucester to believe the illusion that they are at the edge of a steep cliff: Edgar: …Hark, do you hear the sea? Gloucester: No, truly. Edgar: Why then, your other senses grow imperfect By your eyes’ anguish… Come on, sir; here’s the place. Stand still How fearful And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low! The illusion of the third dimension is discussed at length in E.H Gombrich’s Art and Illusion. Far from being a normal mode of human vision, three-dimensional perspective is a conventionally acquired model of seeing, as much acquired as is the means of recognizing the letters of the alphabet, or of following chronological narrative. That it was an acquired illusion Shakespeare helps us to see by his comments on the other senses in relation to sight. Gloucester is ripe for illusion because he has suddenly lost his sight. His power of visualization is not quite separate from his other senses. And it is the sense of sight in deliberate isolation from the other senses that confers on man the illusion of the third dimension, as Shakespeare makes explicit here. There is also the need to fix the gaze: Come on, sir; here’s the place. Stand still. How fearful And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down Hangs one that gathers sampire—dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen that walk upon the beach, Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminish’d to her cock; her cock, a buoy