Chapter XI: Part 11

But in fact these descriptions, like most of the remarks made on _King Lear_ in the present lecture, emphasise only certain aspects of the play and certain elements in the total impression; and in that impression the effect of these aspects, though far from being lost, is modified by that of others. I do not mean that the final effect resembles that of the _Divine Comedy_ or the _Oresteia_: how should it, when the first of these can be called by its author a 'Comedy,' and when the second, ending (as doubtless the _Prometheus_ trilogy also ended) with a solution, is not in the Shakespearean sense a tragedy at all?[156] Nor do I mean that _King Lear_ contains a revelation of righteous omnipotence or heavenly harmony, or even a promise of the reconciliation of mystery and justice. But then, as we saw, neither do Shakespeare's other tragedies contain these things. Any theological interpretation of the world on the author's part is excluded from them, and their effect would be disordered or destroyed equally by the ideas of righteous or of unrighteous omnipotence. Nor, in reading them, do we think of 'justice' or 'equity' in the sense of a strict requital or such an adjustment of merit and prosperity as our moral sense is said to demand; and there never was vainer labour than that of critics who try to make out that the persons in these dramas meet with 'justice' or their 'deserts.'[157] But, on the other hand, man is not represented in these tragedies as the mere plaything of a blind or capricious power, suffering woes which have no relation to his character and actions; nor is the world represented as given over to darkness. And in these respects _King Lear_, though the most terrible of these works, does not differ in essence from the rest. Its keynote is surely to be heard neither in the words wrung from Gloster in his anguish, nor in Edgar's words 'the gods are just.' Its final and total result is one in which pity and terror, carried perhaps to the extreme limits of art, are so blended with a sense of law and beauty that we feel at last, not depression and much less despair, but a consciousness of greatness in pain, and of solemnity in the mystery we cannot fathom.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 123: I leave undiscussed the position of _King Lear_ in relation to the 'comedies' of _Measure for Measure_, _Troilus and Cressida_ and _All's Well_.]

[Footnote 124: See Note R.]

[Footnote 125: On some of the points mentioned in this paragraph see Note S.]

[Footnote 126:

'_Kent._ I thought the king had more affected the Duke of
Albany than Cornwall.

_Glos._ It did always seem so to us: but now, in the division
of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes
he values most.'

For (Gloster goes on to say) their shares are exactly equal in value. And if the shares of the two elder daughters are fixed, obviously that of the third is so too.]

[Footnote 127:

I loved her most, and thought to set my rest
On her kind nursery.]

[Footnote 128: It is to Lear's altered plan that Kent applies these words.]

[Footnote 129: There is talk of a war between Goneril and Regan within a fortnight of the division of the kingdom (II. i. 11 f.).]

[Footnote 130: I mean that no sufficiently clear reason is supplied for Edmund's delay in attempting to save Cordelia and Lear. The matter stands thus. Edmund, after the defeat of the opposing army, sends Lear and Cordelia to prison. Then, in accordance with a plan agreed on between himself and Goneril, he despatches a captain with secret orders to put them both to death _instantly_ (V. iii. 26-37, 244, 252). He then has to fight with the disguised Edgar. He is mortally wounded, and, as he lies dying, he says to Edgar (at line 162, _more than a hundred lines_ after he gave that commission to the captain):

What you have charged me with, that have I done;
And more, much more; the time will bring it out;
'Tis past, and so am I.

In 'more, much more' he seems to be thinking of the order for the deaths of Lear and Cordelia (what else remained undisclosed?); yet he says nothing about it. A few lines later he recognises the justice of his fate, yet still says nothing. Then he hears the story of his father's death, says it has moved him and 'shall perchance do good' (What good except saving his victims?); yet he still says nothing. Even when he hears that Goneril is dead and Regan poisoned, he _still_ says nothing. It is only when directly questioned about Lear and Cordelia that he tries to save the victims who were to be killed 'instantly' (242). How can we explain his delay? Perhaps, thinking the deaths of Lear and Cordelia would be of use to Goneril and Regan, he will not speak till he is sure that both the sisters are dead. Or perhaps, though he can recognise the justice of his fate and can be touched by the account of his father's death, he is still too self-absorbed to rise to the active effort to 'do some good, despite of his own nature.' But, while either of these conjectures is possible, it is surely far from satisfactory that we should be left to mere conjecture as to the cause of the delay which permits the catastrophe to take place. The _real_ cause lies outside the dramatic _nexus_. It is Shakespeare's wish to deliver a sudden and crushing blow to the hopes which he has excited.]

[Footnote 131: Everything in these paragraphs must, of course, be taken in connection with later remarks.]

[Footnote 132: I say 'the reader's,' because on the stage, whenever I have seen _King Lear_, the 'cuts' necessitated by modern scenery would have made this part of the play absolutely unintelligible to me if I had not been familiar with it. It is significant that Lamb in his _Tale of King Lear_ almost omits the sub-plot.]

[Footnote 133: Even if Cordelia had won the battle, Shakespeare would probably have hesitated to concentrate interest on it, for her victory would have been a British defeat. On Spedding's view, that he did mean to make the battle more interesting, and that his purpose has been defeated by our wrong division of Acts IV. and V., see Note X.]

[Footnote 134: It is vain to suggest that Edmund has only just come home, and that the letter is supposed to have been sent to him when he was 'out' See I. ii. 38-40, 65 f.]

[Footnote 135: The idea in scene i., perhaps, is that Cordelia's marriage, like the division of the kingdom, has really been pre-arranged, and that the ceremony of choosing between France and Burgundy (I. i. 46 f.) is a mere fiction. Burgundy is to be her husband, and that is why, when Lear has cast her off, he offers her to Burgundy first (l. 192 ff.). It might seem from 211 ff. that Lear's reason for doing so is that he prefers France, or thinks him the greater man, and therefore will not offer him first what is worthless: but the language of France (240 ff.) seems to show that he recognises a prior right in Burgundy.]

[Footnote 136: See Note T. and p. 315.]

[Footnote 137: See Note U.]

[Footnote 138: The word 'heath' in the stage-directions of the storm-scenes is, I may remark, Rowe's, not Shakespeare's, who never used the word till he wrote _Macbeth_.]

[Footnote 139: It is pointed out in Note V. that what modern editors call Scenes ii., iii., iv. of Act II. are really one scene, for Kent is on the stage through them all.]

[Footnote 140: [On the locality of Act I., Sc. ii., see _Modern Language Review_ for Oct., 1908, and Jan., 1909.]]

[Footnote 141: This effect of the double action seems to have been pointed out first by Schlegel.]

[Footnote 142: How prevalent these are is not recognised by readers familiar only with English poetry. See Simpson's _Introduction to the Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets_ (1868) and Mr. Wyndham's edition of Shakespeare's Poems. Perhaps both writers overstate, and Simpson's interpretations are often forced or arbitrary, but his book is valuable and ought not to remain out of print.]

[Footnote 143: The monstrosity here is a being with a woman's body and a fiend's soul. For the interpretation of the lines see Note Y.]

[Footnote 144: Since this paragraph was written I have found that the abundance of these references has been pointed out and commented on by J. Kirkman, _New Shaks. Soc. Trans._, 1877.]

[Footnote 145: _E.g._ in _As You Like It_, III. ii. 187, 'I was never so berhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember'; _Twelfth Night_, IV. ii. 55, '_Clown._ What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl? _Mal._ That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. _Clown._ What thinkest thou of his opinion? _Mal._ I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion,' etc. But earlier comes a passage which reminds us of _King Lear_, _Merchant of Venice_, IV. i. 128:

O be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog!
And for thy life let justice be accused.
Thou almost makest me waver in my faith
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous.]

[Footnote 146: I fear it is not possible, however, to refute, on the whole, one charge,--that the dog is a snob, in the sense that he respects power and prosperity, and objects to the poor and despised. It is curious that Shakespeare refers to this trait three times in _King Lear_, as if he were feeling a peculiar disgust at it. See III. vi. 65, 'The little dogs and all,' etc.: IV. vi. 159, 'Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar ... and the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority': V. iii. 186, 'taught me to shift Into a madman's rags; to assume a semblance That very dogs disdain'd.' Cf. _Oxford Lectures_, p. 341.]

[Footnote 147: With this compare the following lines in the great speech on 'degree' in _Troilus and Cressida_, I. iii.:

Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.]

[Footnote 148: Nor is it believable that Shakespeare, whose means of imitating a storm were so greatly inferior even to ours, had the stage-performance only or chiefly in view in composing these scenes. He may not have thought of readers (or he may), but he must in any case have written to satisfy his own imagination. I have taken no notice of the part played in these scenes by anyone except Lear. The matter is too huge, and too strictly poetic, for analysis. I may observe that in our present theatres, owing to the use of elaborate scenery, the three Storm-scenes are usually combined, with disastrous effect. Shakespeare, as we saw (p. 49), interposed between them short scenes of much lower tone.]

[Footnote 149: 'justice,' Qq.]

[Footnote 150: =approve.]

[Footnote 151: The direction 'Storm and tempest' at the end of this speech is not modern, it is in the Folio.]

[Footnote 152: The gods are mentioned many times in _King Lear_, but 'God' only here (V. ii. 16).]

[Footnote 153: The whole question how far Shakespeare's works represent his personal feelings and attitude, and the changes in them, would carry us so far beyond the bounds of the four tragedies, is so needless for the understanding of them, and is so little capable of decision, that I have excluded it from these lectures; and I will add here a note on it only as it concerns the 'tragic period.'

There are here two distinct sets of facts, equally important, (1) On the one side there is the fact that, so far as we can make out, after _Twelfth Night_ Shakespeare wrote, for seven or eight years, no play which, like many of his earlier works, can be called happy, much less merry or sunny. He wrote tragedies; and if the chronological order _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Timon_, _Macbeth_, is correct, these tragedies show for some time a deepening darkness, and _King Lear_ and _Timon_ lie at the nadir. He wrote also in these years (probably in the earlier of them) certain 'comedies,' _Measure for Measure_ and _Troilus and Cressida_, and perhaps _All's Well_. But about these comedies there is a peculiar air of coldness; there is humour, of course, but little mirth; in _Measure for Measure_ perhaps, certainly in _Troilus and Cressida_, a spirit of bitterness and contempt seems to pervade an intellectual atmosphere of an intense but hard clearness. With _Macbeth_ perhaps, and more decidedly in the two Roman tragedies which followed, the gloom seems to lift; and the final romances show a mellow serenity which sometimes warms into radiant sympathy, and even into a mirth almost as light-hearted as that of younger days. When we consider these facts, not as barely stated thus but as they affect us in reading the plays, it is, to my mind, very hard to believe that their origin was simply and solely a change in dramatic methods or choice of subjects, or even merely such inward changes as may be expected to accompany the arrival and progress of middle age.

(2) On the other side, and over against these facts, we have to set the multitudinousness of Shakespeare's genius, and his almost unlimited power of conceiving and expressing human experience of all kinds. And we have to set more. Apparently during this period of years he never ceased to write busily, or to exhibit in his writings the greatest mental activity. He wrote also either nothing or very little (_Troilus and Cressida_ and his part of _Timon_ are the possible exceptions) in which there is any appearance of personal feeling overcoming or seriously endangering the self-control or 'objectivity' of the artist. And finally it is not possible to make out any continuously deepening _personal_ note: for although _Othello_ is darker than _Hamlet_ it surely strikes one as about as impersonal as a play can be; and, on grounds of style and versification, it appears (to me, at least) impossible to bring _Troilus and Cressida_ chronologically close to _King Lear_ and _Timon_; even if parts of it are later than others, the late parts must be decidedly earlier than those plays.

The conclusion we may very tentatively draw from these sets of facts would seem to be as follows. Shakespeare during these years was probably not a happy man, and it is quite likely that he felt at times even an intense melancholy, bitterness, contempt, anger, possibly even loathing and despair. It is quite likely too that he used these experiences of his in writing such plays as _Hamlet_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _King Lear_, _Timon_. But it is evident that he cannot have been for any considerable time, if, ever, overwhelmed by such feelings, and there is no appearance of their having issued in any settled 'pessimistic' conviction which coloured his whole imagination and expressed itself in his works. The choice of the subject of ingratitude, for instance, in _King Lear_ and _Timon_, and the method of handling it, may have been due in part to personal feeling; but it does not follow that this feeling was particularly acute at this particular time, and, even if it was, it certainly was not so absorbing as to hinder Shakespeare from representing in the most sympathetic manner aspects of life the very reverse of pessimistic. Whether the total impression of _King Lear_ can be called pessimistic is a further question, which is considered in the text.]

[Footnote 154: _A Study of Shakespeare_, pp. 171, 172.]

[Footnote 155: A flaw, I mean, in a work of art considered not as a moral or theological document but as a work of art,--an aesthetic flaw. I add the word 'considerable' because we do not regard the effect in question as a flaw in a work like a lyric or a short piece of music, which may naturally be taken as expressions merely of a mood or a subordinate aspect of things.]

[Footnote 156: Caution is very necessary in making comparisons between Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists. A tragedy like the _Antigone_ stands, in spite of differences, on the same ground as a Shakespearean tragedy; it is a self-contained whole with a catastrophe. A drama like the _Philoctetes_ is a self-contained whole, but, ending with a solution, it corresponds not with a Shakespearean tragedy but with a play like _Cymbeline_. A drama like the _Agamemnon_ or the _Prometheus Vinctus_ answers to no Shakespearean form of play. It is not a self-contained whole, but a part of a trilogy. If the trilogy is considered as a unit, it answers not to _Hamlet_ but to _Cymbeline_. If the part is considered as a whole, it answers to _Hamlet_, but may then be open to serious criticism. Shakespeare never made a tragedy end with the complete triumph of the worse side: the _Agamemnon_ and _Prometheus_, if wrongly taken as wholes, would do this, and would so far, I must think, be bad tragedies. [It can scarcely be necessary to remind the reader that, in point of 'self-containedness,' there is a difference of degree between the pure tragedies of Shakespeare and some of the historical.]]

[Footnote 157: I leave it to better authorities to say how far these remarks apply also to Greek Tragedy, however much the language of 'justice' may be used there.]

LECTURE VIII

KING LEAR

We have now to look at the characters in _King Lear_; and I propose to consider them to some extent from the point of view indicated at the close of the last lecture, partly because we have so far been regarding the tragedy mainly from an opposite point of view, and partly because these characters are so numerous that it would not be possible within our limits to examine them fully.

1

The position of the hero in this tragedy is in one important respect peculiar. The reader of _Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _Macbeth_, is in no danger of forgetting, when the catastrophe is reached, the part played by the hero in bringing it on. His fatal weakness, error, wrong-doing, continues almost to the end. It is otherwise with _King Lear_. When the conclusion arrives, the old King has for a long while been passive. We have long regarded him not only as 'a man more sinned against than sinning,' but almost wholly as a sufferer, hardly at all as an agent. His sufferings too have been so cruel, and our indignation against those who inflicted them has been so intense, that recollection of the wrong he did to Cordelia, to Kent, and to his realm, has been well-nigh effaced. Lastly, for nearly four Acts he has inspired in us, together with this pity, much admiration and affection. The force of his passion has made us feel that his nature was great; and his frankness and generosity, his heroic efforts to be patient, the depth of his shame and repentance, and the ecstasy of his re-union with Cordelia, have melted our very hearts. Naturally, therefore, at the close we are in some danger of forgetting that the storm which has overwhelmed him was liberated by his own deed.

Yet it is essential that Lear's contribution to the action of the drama should be remembered; not at all in order that we may feel that he 'deserved' what he suffered, but because otherwise his fate would appear to us at best pathetic, at worst shocking, but certainly not tragic. And when we were reading the earlier scenes of the play we recognised this contribution clearly enough. At the very beginning, it is true, we are inclined to feel merely pity and misgivings. The first lines tell us that Lear's mind is beginning to fail with age.[158] Formerly he had perceived how different were the characters of Albany and Cornwall, but now he seems either to have lost this perception or to be unwisely ignoring it. The rashness of his division of the kingdom troubles us, and we cannot but see with concern that its motive is mainly selfish. The absurdity of the pretence of making the division depend on protestations of love from his daughters, his complete blindness to the hypocrisy which is patent to us at a glance, his piteous delight in these protestations, the openness of his expressions of preference for his youngest daughter--all make us smile, but all pain us. But pity begins to give way to another feeling when we witness the precipitance, the despotism, the uncontrolled anger of his injustice to Cordelia and Kent, and the 'hideous rashness' of his persistence in dividing the kingdom after the rejection of his one dutiful child. We feel now the presence of force, as well as weakness, but we feel also the presence of the tragic [Greek: hubris]. Lear, we see, is generous and unsuspicious, of an open and free nature, like Hamlet and Othello and indeed most of Shakespeare's heroes, who in this, according to Ben Jonson, resemble the poet who made them. Lear, we see, is also choleric by temperament--the first of Shakespeare's heroes who is so. And a long life of absolute power, in which he has been flattered to the top of his bent, has produced in him that blindness to human limitations, and that presumptuous self-will, which in Greek tragedy we have so often seen stumbling against the altar of Nemesis. Our consciousness that the decay of old age contributes to this condition deepens our pity and our sense of human infirmity, but certainly does not lead us to regard the old King as irresponsible, and so to sever the tragic _nexus_ which binds together his error and his calamities.

The magnitude of this first error is generally fully recognised by the reader owing to his sympathy with Cordelia, though, as we have seen, he often loses the memory of it as the play advances. But this is not so, I think, with the repetition of this error, in the quarrel with Goneril. Here the daughter excites so much detestation, and the father so much sympathy, that we often fail to receive the due impression of his violence. There is not here, of course, the _injustice_ of his rejection of Cordelia, but there is precisely the same [Greek: hubris]. This had been shown most strikingly in the first scene when, _immediately_ upon the apparently cold words of Cordelia, 'So young, my lord, and true,' there comes this dreadful answer:

Let it be so; thy truth then be thy dower.
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night;
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.

Now the dramatic effect of this passage is exactly, and doubtless intentionally, repeated in the curse pronounced against Goneril. This does not come after the daughters have openly and wholly turned against their father. Up to the moment of its utterance Goneril has done no more than to require him 'a little to disquantity' and reform his train of knights. Certainly her manner and spirit in making this demand are hateful, and probably her accusations against the knights are false; and we should expect from any father in Lear's position passionate distress and indignation. But surely the famous words which form Lear's immediate reply were meant to be nothing short of frightful:

Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!

The question is not whether Goneril deserves these appalling imprecations, but what they tell us about Lear. They show that, although he has already recognised his injustice towards Cordelia, is secretly blaming himself, and is endeavouring to do better, the disposition from which his first error sprang is still unchanged. And it is precisely the disposition to give rise, in evil surroundings, to calamities dreadful but at the same time tragic, because due in some measure to the person who endures them.

The perception of this connection, if it is not lost as the play advances, does not at all diminish our pity for Lear, but it makes it impossible for us permanently to regard the world displayed in this tragedy as subject to a mere arbitrary or malicious power. It makes us feel that this world is so far at least a rational and a moral order, that there holds in it the law, not of proportionate requital, but of strict connection between act and consequence. It is, so far, the world of all Shakespeare's tragedies.

But there is another aspect of Lear's story, the influence of which modifies, in a way quite different and more peculiar to this tragedy, the impressions called pessimistic and even this impression of law. There is nothing more noble and beautiful in literature than Shakespeare's exposition of the effect of suffering in reviving the greatness and eliciting the sweetness of Lear's nature. The occasional recurrence, during his madness, of autocratic impatience or of desire for revenge serves only to heighten this effect, and the moments when his insanity becomes merely infinitely piteous do not weaken it. The old King who in pleading with his daughters feels so intensely his own humiliation and their horrible ingratitude, and who yet, at fourscore and upward, constrains himself to practise a self-control and patience so many years disused; who out of old affection for his Fool, and in repentance for his injustice to the Fool's beloved mistress, tolerates incessant and cutting reminders of his own folly and wrong; in whom the rage of the storm awakes a power and a poetic grandeur surpassing even that of Othello's anguish; who comes in his affliction to think of others first, and to seek, in tender solicitude for his poor boy, the shelter he scorns for his own bare head; who learns to feel and to pray for the miserable and houseless poor, to discern the falseness of flattery and the brutality of authority, and to pierce below the differences of rank and raiment to the common humanity beneath; whose sight is so purged by scalding tears that it sees at last how power and place and all things in the world are vanity except love; who tastes in his last hours the extremes both of love's rapture and of its agony, but could never, if he lived on or lived again, care a jot for aught beside--there is no figure, surely, in the world of poetry at once so grand, so pathetic, and so beautiful as his. Well, but Lear owes the whole of this to those sufferings which made us doubt whether life were not simply evil, and men like the flies which wanton boys torture for their sport. Should we not be at least as near the truth if we called this poem _The Redemption of King Lear_, and declared that the business of 'the gods' with him was neither to torment him, nor to teach him a 'noble anger,' but to lead him to attain through apparently hopeless failure the very end and aim of life? One can believe that Shakespeare had been tempted at times to feel misanthropy and despair, but it is quite impossible that he can have been mastered by such feelings at the time when he produced this conception.

To dwell on the stages of this process of purification (the word is Professor Dowden's) is impossible here; and there are scenes, such as that of the meeting of Lear and Cordelia, which it seems almost a profanity to touch.[159] But I will refer to two scenes which may remind us more in detail of some of the points just mentioned. The third and fourth scenes of Act III. present one of those contrasts which speak as eloquently even as Shakespeare's words, and which were made possible in his theatre by the absence of scenery and the consequent absence of intervals between the scenes. First, in a scene of twenty-three lines, mostly in prose, Gloster is shown, telling his son Edmund how Goneril and Regan have forbidden him on pain of death to succour the houseless King; how a secret letter has reached him, announcing the arrival of a French force; and how, whatever the consequences may be, he is determined to relieve his old master. Edmund, left alone, soliloquises in words which seem to freeze one's blood:

This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke
Instantly know; and of that letter too:
This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me
That which my father loses; no less than all:
The younger rises when the old doth fall.

He goes out; and the next moment, as the fourth scene opens, we find ourselves in the icy storm with Lear, Kent and the Fool, and yet in the inmost shrine of love. I am not speaking of the devotion of the others to Lear, but of Lear himself. He had consented, merely for the Fool's sake, to seek shelter in the hovel:

Come, your hovel.
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry yet for thee.

But on the way he has broken down and has been weeping (III. iv. 17), and now he resists Kent's efforts to persuade him to enter. He does not feel the storm:

when the mind's free
The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there:

and the thoughts that will drive him mad are burning in his brain:

Filial ingratitude!
Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to't? But I will punish home.
No, I will weep no more. In such a night
To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure.
In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,--
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.

And then suddenly, as he controls himself, the blessed spirit of kindness breathes on him 'like a meadow gale of spring,' and he turns gently to Kent:

Prithee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease:
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in.
In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty--
Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

But his prayer is not for himself.

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,

it begins, and I need not quote more. This is one of those passages which make one worship Shakespeare.[160]

Much has been written on the representation of insanity in _King Lear_, and I will confine myself to one or two points which may have escaped notice. The most obvious symptom of Lear's insanity, especially in its first stages, is of course the domination of a fixed idea. Whatever presents itself to his senses, is seized on by this idea and compelled to express it; as for example in those words, already quoted, which first show that his mind has actually given way:

Hast thou given all
To thy two daughters? And art thou come to this?[161]

But it is remarkable that what we have here is only, in an exaggerated and perverted form, the very same action of imagination that, just before the breakdown of reason, produced those sublime appeals:

O heavens,
If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
Allow obedience, if yourselves are old,
Make it your cause;

and:

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!

Shakespeare, long before this, in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, had noticed the resemblance between the lunatic, the lover, and the poet; and the partial truth that genius is allied to insanity was quite familiar to him. But he presents here the supplementary half-truth that insanity is allied to genius.

He does not, however, put into the mouth of the insane Lear any such sublime passages as those just quoted. Lear's insanity, which destroys the coherence, also reduces the poetry of his imagination. What it stimulates is that power of moral perception and reflection which had already been quickened by his sufferings. This, however partial and however disconnectedly used, first appears, quite soon after the insanity has declared itself, in the idea that the naked beggar represents truth and reality, in contrast with those conventions, flatteries, and corruptions of the great world, by which Lear has so long been deceived and will never be deceived again:

Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the
worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no
perfume. Ha! here's three on's are sophisticated: thou art the
thing itself.

Lear regards the beggar therefore with reverence and delight, as a person who is in the secret of things, and he longs to question him about their causes. It is this same strain of thought which much later (IV. vi.), gaining far greater force, though the insanity has otherwise advanced, issues in those famous Timon-like speeches which make us realise the original strength of the old King's mind. And when this strain, on his recovery, unites with the streams of repentance and love, it produces that serene renunciation of the world, with its power and glory and resentments and revenges, which is expressed in the speech (V. iii.):

No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sets of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.

This is that renunciation which is at the same time a sacrifice offered to the gods, and on which the gods themselves throw incense; and, it may be, it would never have been offered but for the knowledge that came to Lear in his madness.

I spoke of Lear's 'recovery,' but the word is too strong. The Lear of the Fifth Act is not indeed insane, but his mind is greatly enfeebled. The speech just quoted is followed by a sudden flash of the old passionate nature, reminding us most pathetically of Lear's efforts, just before his madness, to restrain his tears:

Wipe thine eyes:
The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell,
Ere they shall make us weep: we'll see 'em starve first.

And this weakness is still more pathetically shown in the blindness of the old King to his position now that he and Cordelia are made prisoners. It is evident that Cordelia knows well what mercy her father is likely to receive from her sisters; that is the reason of her weeping. But he does not understand her tears; it never crosses his mind that they have anything more than imprisonment to fear. And what is that to them? They have made that sacrifice, and all is well:

Have I caught thee?
He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,
And fire us hence like foxes.

This blindness is most affecting to us, who know in what manner they will be parted; but it is also comforting. And we find the same mingling of effects in the overwhelming conclusion of the story. If to the reader, as to the bystanders, that scene brings one unbroken pain, it is not so with Lear himself. His shattered mind passes from the first transports of hope and despair, as he bends over Cordelia's body and holds the feather to her lips, into an absolute forgetfulness of the cause of these transports. This continues so long as he can converse with Kent; becomes an almost complete vacancy; and is disturbed only to yield, as his eyes suddenly fall again on his child's corpse, to an agony which at once breaks his heart. And, finally, though he is killed by an agony of pain, the agony in which he actually dies is one not of pain but of ecstasy. Suddenly, with a cry represented in the oldest text by a four-times repeated 'O,' he exclaims:

Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
Look there, look there!

These are the last words of Lear. He is sure, at last, that she _lives_: and what had he said when he was still in doubt?

She lives! if it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt!

To us, perhaps, the knowledge that he is deceived may bring a culmination of pain: but, if it brings _only_ that, I believe we are false to Shakespeare, and it seems almost beyond question that any actor is false to the text who does not attempt to express, in Lear's last accents and gestures and look, an unbearable _joy_.[162]

To dwell on the pathos of Lear's last speech would be an impertinence, but I may add a remark on the speech from the literary point of view. In the simplicity of its language, which consists almost wholly of monosyllables of native origin, composed in very brief sentences of the plainest structure, it presents an extraordinary contrast to the dying speech of Hamlet and the last words of Othello to the by-standers. The fact that Lear speaks in passion is one cause of the difference, but not the sole cause. The language is more than simple, it is familiar. And this familiarity is characteristic of Lear (except at certain moments, already referred to) from the time of his madness onwards, and is the source of the peculiarly poignant effect of some of his sentences (such as 'The little dogs and all....'). We feel in them the loss of power to sustain his royal dignity; we feel also that everything external has become nothingness to him, and that what remains is 'the thing itself,' the soul in its bare greatness. Hence also it is that two lines in this last speech show, better perhaps than any other passage of poetry, one of the qualities we have in mind when we distinguish poetry as 'romantic.' Nothing like Hamlet's mysterious sigh 'The rest is silence,' nothing like Othello's memories of his life of marvel and achievement, was possible to Lear. Those last thoughts are romantic in their strangeness: Lear's five-times repeated 'Never,' in which the simplest and most unanswerable cry of anguish rises note by note till the heart breaks, is romantic in its naturalism; and to make a verse out of this one word required the boldness as well as the inspiration which came infallibly to Shakespeare at the greatest moments. But the familiarity, boldness and inspiration are surpassed (if that can be) by the next line, which shows the bodily oppression asking for bodily relief. The imagination that produced Lear's curse or his defiance of the storm may be paralleled in its kind, but where else are we to seek the imagination that could venture to follow that cry of 'Never' with such a phrase as 'undo this button,' and yet could leave us on the topmost peaks of poetry?[163]

2

Gloster and Albany are the two neutral characters of the tragedy. The parallel between Lear and Gloster, already noticed, is, up to a certain point, so marked that it cannot possibly be accidental. Both are old white-haired men (III. vii. 37); both, it would seem, widowers, with children comparatively young. Like Lear, Gloster is tormented, and his life is sought, by the child whom he favours; he is tended and healed by the child whom he has wronged. His sufferings, like Lear's, are partly traceable to his own extreme folly and injustice, and, it may be added, to a selfish pursuit of his own pleasure.[164] His sufferings, again, like Lear's, purify and enlighten him: he dies a better and wiser man than he showed himself at first. They even learn the same lesson, and Gloster's repetition (noticed and blamed by Johnson) of the thought in a famous speech of Lear's is surely intentional.[165] And, finally, Gloster dies almost as Lear dies. Edgar reveals himself to him and asks his blessing (as Cordelia asks Lear's):

but his flaw'd heart--
Alack, too weak the conflict to support--
'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,
Burst smilingly.

So far, the resemblance of the two stories, and also of the ways in which their painful effect is modified, is curiously close. And in character too Gloster is, like his master, affectionate,[166] credulous and hasty. But otherwise he is sharply contrasted with the tragic Lear, who is a towering figure, every inch a king,[167] while Gloster is built on a much smaller scale, and has infinitely less force and fire. He is, indeed, a decidedly weak though good-hearted man; and, failing wholly to support Kent in resisting Lear's original folly and injustice,[168] he only gradually takes the better part. Nor is his character either very interesting or very distinct. He often gives one the impression of being wanted mainly to fill a place in the scheme of the play; and, though it would be easy to give a long list of his characteristics, they scarcely, it seems to me, compose an individual, a person whom we are sure we should recognise at once. If this is so, the fact is curious, considering how much we see and hear of him.

I will add a single note. Gloster is the superstitious character of the drama,--the only one. He thinks much of 'these late eclipses in the sun and moon.' His two sons, from opposite points of view, make nothing of them. His easy acceptance of the calumny against Edgar is partly due to this weakness, and Edmund builds upon it, for an evil purpose, when he describes Edgar thus:

Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out,
Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon,
To prove's auspicious mistress.

Edgar in turn builds upon it, for a good purpose, when he persuades his blind father that he was led to jump down Dover cliff by the temptation of a fiend in the form of a beggar, and was saved by a miracle:

As I stood here below, methought his eyes
Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses,
Horns whelk'd and waved like the enridged sea:
It was some fiend; therefore, thou happy father,
Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours
Of men's impossibilities, have preserved thee.

This passage is odd in its collocation of the thousand noses and the clearest gods, of grotesque absurdity and extreme seriousness. Edgar knew that the 'fiend' was really Gloster's 'worser spirit,' and that 'the gods' were himself. Doubtless, however--for he is the most religious person in the play--he thought that it _was_ the gods who, through him, had preserved his father; but he knew that the truth could only enter this superstitious mind in a superstitious form.

The combination of parallelism and contrast that we observe in Lear and Gloster, and again in the attitude of the two brothers to their father's superstition, is one of many indications that in _King Lear_ Shakespeare was working more than usual on a basis of conscious and reflective ideas. Perhaps it is not by accident, then, that he makes Edgar and Lear preach to Gloster in precisely the same strain. Lear says to him:

If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.
I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloster:
Thou must be patient; we came crying hither:
Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air,
We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee: mark.

Edgar's last words to him are:

What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither:
Ripeness is all.

Albany is merely sketched, and he is so generally neglected that a few words about him may be in place. He too ends a better and wiser man than he began. When the play opens he is, of course, only just married to Goneril; and the idea is, I think, that he has been bewitched by her fiery beauty not less than by her dowry. He is an inoffensive peace-loving man, and is overborne at first by his 'great love' for his wife and by her imperious will. He is not free from responsibility for the treatment which the King receives in his house; the Knight says to Lear, 'there's a great abatement of kindness appears as well in the general dependants as in _the duke himself also_ and your daughter.' But he takes no part in the quarrel, and doubtless speaks truly when he protests that he is as guiltless as ignorant of the cause of Lear's violent passion. When the King departs, he begins to remonstrate with Goneril, but shrinks in a cowardly manner, which is a trifle comical, from contest with her. She leaves him behind when she goes to join Regan, and he is not further responsible for what follows. When he hears of it, he is struck with horror: the scales drop from his eyes, Goneril becomes hateful to him, he determines to revenge Gloster's eyes. His position is however very difficult, as he is willing to fight against Cordelia in so far as her army is French, and unwilling in so far as she represents her father. This difficulty, and his natural inferiority to Edmund in force and ability, pushes him into the background; the battle is not won by him but by Edmund; and but for Edgar he would certainly have fallen a victim to the murderous plot against him. When it is discovered, however, he is fearless and resolute enough, beside being full of kind feeling towards Kent and Edgar, and of sympathetic distress at Gloster's death. And one would be sure that he is meant to retain this strength till the end, but for his last words. He has announced his intention of resigning, during Lear's life, the 'absolute power' which has come to him; and that may be right. But after Lear's death he says to Kent and Edgar:

Friends of my soul, you twain
Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain.

If this means that he wishes to hand over his absolute power to them, Shakespeare's intention is certainly to mark the feebleness of a well-meaning but weak man. But possibly he means by 'this realm' only that half of Britain which had belonged to Cornwall and Regan.

3

I turn now to those two strongly contrasted groups of good and evil beings; and to the evil first. The members of this group are by no means on a level. Far the most contemptible of them is Oswald, and Kent has fortunately expressed our feelings towards him. Yet twice we are able to feel sympathy with him. Regan cannot tempt him to let her open Goneril's letter to Edmund; and his last thought as he dies is given to the fulfilment of his trust. It is to a monster that he is faithful, and he is faithful to her in a monstrous design. Still faithfulness is faithfulness, and he is not wholly worthless. Dr. Johnson says: 'I know not well why Shakespeare gives to Oswald, who is a mere factor of wickedness, so much fidelity'; but in any other tragedy this touch, so true to human nature, is only what we should expect. If it surprises us in _King Lear_, the reason is that Shakespeare, in dealing with the other members of the group, seems to have been less concerned than usual with such mingling of light with darkness, and intent rather on making the shadows as utterly black as a regard for truth would permit.

Cornwall seems to have been a fit mate for Regan; and what worse can be said of him? It is a great satisfaction to think that he endured what to him must have seemed the dreadful disgrace of being killed by a servant. He shows, I believe, no redeeming trait, and he is a coward, as may be seen from the sudden rise in his courage when Goneril arrives at the castle and supports him and Regan against Lear (II. iv. 202). But as his cruelties are not aimed at a blood-relation, he is not, in this sense, a 'monster,' like the remaining three.

Which of these three is the least and which the most detestable there can surely be no question. For Edmund, not to mention other alleviations, is at any rate not a woman. And the differences between the sisters, which are distinctly marked and need not be exhibited once more in full, are all in favour of 'the elder and more terrible.' That Regan did not commit adultery, did not murder her sister or plot to murder her husband, did not join her name with Edmund's on the order for the deaths of Cordelia and Lear, and in other respects failed to take quite so active a part as Goneril in atrocious wickedness, is quite true but not in the least to her credit. It only means that she had much less force, courage and initiative than her sister, and for that reason is less formidable and more loathsome. Edmund judged right when, caring for neither sister but aiming at the crown, he preferred Goneril, for he could trust her to remove the living impediments to her desires. The scornful and fearless exclamation, 'An interlude!' with which she greets the exposure of her design, was quite beyond Regan. Her unhesitating suicide was perhaps no less so. She would not have condescended to the lie which Regan so needlessly tells to Oswald:

It was great ignorance, Gloster's eyes being out,
To let him live: where he arrives he moves
All hearts against us: Edmund, I think, is gone,
_In pity of his misery_, to dispatch
His nighted life.

Her father's curse is nothing to her. She scorns even to mention the gods.[169] Horrible as she is, she is almost awful. But, to set against Regan's inferiority in power, there is nothing: she is superior only in a venomous meanness which is almost as hateful as her cruelty. She is the most hideous human being (if she is one) that Shakespeare ever drew.

I have already noticed the resemblance between Edmund and Iago in one point; and Edmund recalls his greater forerunner also in courage, strength of will, address, egoism, an abnormal want of feeling, and the possession of a sense of humour. But here the likeness ends. Indeed a decided difference is observable even in the humour. Edmund is apparently a good deal younger than Iago. He has a lighter and more superficial nature, and there is a certain genuine gaiety in him which makes one smile not unsympathetically as one listens to his first soliloquy, with its cheery conclusion, so unlike Iago's references to the powers of darkness,

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Even after we have witnessed his dreadful deeds, a touch of this sympathy is felt again when we hear his nonchalant reflections before the battle: