THE CLIMAX of the subplot of King Lear comes in the fifth Act of that play, when the Duke of Albany accuses Edmund, bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester, of ‘capital treason’. This claim he proposes to uphold, not through any due process of questioning of witnesses or examination of proof –which would be perfectly possible, since Albany is in possession of a letter from his wife, Goneril, to the same Edmund which insinuates ‘a plot upon her virtuous husband's life’ –but rather through an altogether more archaic legal form, the trial by combat. Albany declares that ‘if none appear to prove upon thy person/ Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons’, he will undertake the combat himself. In the event, Edmund is challenged by his disguised half-brother, Edgar, the Earl of Gloucester's natural son. Having refused to reveal his identity, Edgar turns to his brother and accuses him of being a traitor. Should he deny the accusation, ‘This sword, this arm, and my best spirits are bent/ To prove upon thy heart … Thou liest’. His brother responds: