Lear's speech of reconciliation with Cordelia (‘Come let's away to prison:/We two alone will sing like birds i’ th' cage') pictures an existential freedom that court life bars. Like Hamlet, Lear can look upon the world of power and place-getting (‘who's in, who's out’) with detachment – even disgust. The speech suggests there are ways of aggrandizing the self (pursuing power and influence, for example) which are actually the most frightful modes of self-forgetfulness. Lear will be freer – more himself – in a prison cell than when king. Shakespeare is often interested in such moments, when characters free themselves from conventional, specious and ultimately empty forms of self-augmentation. He casts a cold eye on the glittering appearance that distracts us from the natural, real man beneath. Richard II's puncturing remarks on ceremony (‘throw away respect,/Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,/For you have but mistook me all this while’ (III.ii.172–4)) or Henry VI's contrast of the simple, contented life of a ‘homely’ shepherd with that of a king, ‘couched in a curious bed’ with ‘care, mistrust, and treason’ as attendants (3 Henry VI, II.v.22, 53–4), are examples of such Shakespearean unmasking.