Competitive individualism had become the scandal of a society 
long invested with corporate and collective values. The role 
played by print in instituting new patterns of culture is not 
unfamiliar. But one natural consequence of the specializing 
action of the new forms of knowledge was that all kinds of 
power took on a strongly centralist character. Whereas the role 
of the feudal monarch had been inclusive, the king actually 
including in himself all his subjects, the Renaissance prince 
tended to become an exclusive power centre surrounded by his 
individual subjects. And the result of such centralism, itself 
dependent on many new developments in roads and commerce, 
was the habit of delegation of powers and the specializing of 
many functions in separate areas and individuals. In King Lear , 
as in other plays, Shakespeare shows an utter clairvoyance 
concerning the social and personal consequences of 
denudation and stripping of attributes and functions for the