X.

Last stage. Development of an inevitable fate: passion-strain ceases.The final stage of the action works out the development of an inevitable fate. The emotional strain now ceases, and, as in the first stage, the passion is of the calmer order, the calmness in this case of pity balanced by a sense of justice. From the opening of the fourth Act the decline in the justification of the conspirators is intimated by the logic of events. The first scene exhibits to us the triumvirate that now governs Rome, and shows that in this triumvirate Antony is supreme:Actsiv, v.iv.i.with the man who is the embodiment of the Reaction thus appearing at the head of the world, the fall of the conspirators is seen to be inevitable.iv.ii. 3.The decline of our sympathy with them continues in the following scenes. The Quarrel Scene shows how low the tone ofCassius has fallen since he has dealt with assassination as a political weapon; and even Brutus's moderation has hardened into unpleasing harshness.iv.iii. 148, &c.There is at this point plenty of relief to such unpleasing effects:iv.iii. from 239.there is the exhibition of the tender side of Brutus's character as shown in his relations with his page,iv.iii.and the display of friendship maintained between Brutus and Cassius amid falling fortunes. But such incidents as these have a different effect upon us from that which they would have had at an earlier period; the justification of the conspirators has so far declined that now attractive touches in them serve only to increase the pathos of a fate which, however, our sympathy no longer seeks to resist.iv.iii. 275.We get a supernatural foreshadowing of the end in the appearance to Brutus of Cæsar's Ghost,v.i. 80.and the omen Cassius sees of the eagles that had consorted his army to Philippi giving place to ravens, crows, and kites on the morning of battle: this lends the authority of the invisible world to our sense that the conspirators' cause is doomed.iv.iii. 196-230.And judicial blindness overtakes them as Brutus's authority in council overweighs in point after point the shrewder advice of Cassius. Through the scenes of the fifth Act we see the republican leaders fighting on without hope.Justification entirely vanishes as the conspirators recognise Cæsar's victory.The last remnant of justification for their cause ceases as the conspirators themselves seem to acknowledge their error and fate. Cassius as he feels his death-blow recognises the very weapon with which he had committed the crime:v.iii. 45.Cæsar, thou art revenged,Even with the sword that kill'd thee.And at last even the firm spirit of Brutus yields:v.v. 94.O Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet!Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swordsIn our own proper entrails.X.How Climax meets Climax in the centre of Lear.A Study in more complex Passion and Movement.The plot of Lear highly complex.INJulius Cæsarwe have seen how, in the case of a very simple play, a few simple devices are sufficient to produce a regular rise and fall in the passion. We now turn to a highly elaborate plot and trace how, notwithstanding the elaborateness, a similar concentration of the passion in the centre of the play can be secured.King Learis one of the most complex of Shakespeare's tragedies; its plot is made up of a number of separate actions, with their combinations accurately carried out, the whole impressing us with a sense of artistic involution similar to that of an elaborate musical fugue. Here, however, we are concerned only indirectly with the plot of the play: we need review it no further than may suffice to show what distinct interests enter into it, and enable us to observe how the separate trains of passion work toward a common climax at the centre.Starting from the notion of pattern as a fundamental idea we have seen how Plot presents trains of events in human life taking form and shape as a crime and its nemesis, an oracle and its fulfilment, the rise and fall of an individual, or even as simply a story.The main plot exhibits the Problem form of dramatic action.The particular form of action underlying the main plot ofKing Learis different from any we have yet noticed. It may be described as aProblem Action. A mathematician in his problem assumes some unusual combinationof forces to have come about, and then proceeds to trace its consequences: so the Drama often deals with problems in history and life, setting up, before the commencement of the play or early in the action, some peculiar arrangement of moral relations, and then throughout the rest of the action developing the consequences of these to the personages involved. Thus the opening scene ofKing Learis occupied in bringing before us a pregnant and suggestive state of affairs: imperiousness is represented as overthrowing conscience and setting up an unnatural distribution of power.The problem stated.A human problem has thus been enunciated which the remainder of the play has to work out to its natural solution.Imperiousness seems to be the term appropriate to Lear's conduct in the first scene. This is no case of dotage dividing an inheritance according to public declarations of affection. The division had already been made according to the best advice:i.i. 3, &c.in the case of two of the daughters 'equalities had been so weighed that curiosity in neither could make choice of either's moiety'; and if the portion of the youngest and best loved of the three was the richest, this is a partiality natural enough to absolute power. The opening scene of the play is simply the court ceremony in which the formal transfer is to be made.38.Lear is already handing to his daughters the carefully drawn maps which mark the boundaries of the provinces,49.when he suddenly pauses, and, with the yearning of age and authority for testimonies of devotion, calls upon his daughters for declarations of affection, the easiest of returns for the substantial gifts he is giving them, and which Goneril and Regan pour forth with glib eloquence.84.Then Lear turns to Cordelia, and, thinking delightedly of the special prize he has marked out for the pet of his old age, asks her:What can you say to drawA third more opulent than your sisters?But Cordelia has been revolted by the fulsome flattery of thesisters whose hypocrisy she knows so well, and she bluntly refuses to be drawn into any declaration of affection at all. Cordelia might well have found some other method of separating herself from her false sisters, without thus flouting her father before his whole court in a moment of tenderness to herself; or, if carried away by the indignation of the moment, a sign of submission would have won her a ready pardon.comparei.i. 131.But Cordelia, sweet and strong as her character is in great things, has yet inherited a touch of her father's temper, and the moment's sullenness is protracted into obstinacy. Cordelia then has committed an offence of manner; Lear's passion vents itself in a sentence proper only to a moral crime: now the punishment of a minute offence with wholly disproportionate severity simply because it is an offence against personal will is an exact description of imperiousness.As Lear stands for imperiousness, so conscience is represented by Kent, who, with the voice of authority derived from lifelong intimacy and service, interposes to check the King's passion in its headlong course.141-190.Kent.Royal Lear,Whom I have ever honour'd as my king,Loved as my father, as my master follow'd,As my great patron thought on in my prayers,—Lear.The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft.Kent.Let it fall rather, though the fork invadeThe region of my heart: be Kent unmannerlyWhen Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man?Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak,When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound,When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom....Lear.Kent, on thy life, no more.Kent.My life I never held but as a pawnTo wage against thy enemies, nor fear to lose it,Thy safety being the motive....Lear.O, vassal! miscreant![Laying his hand on his sword.Albany.}Cornwall.Dear sir, forbear.Kent.Do:Kill thy physician, and the fee bestowUpon thy foul disease. Revoke thy doom;Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,I'll tell thee thou dost evil.In the banishment of this Kent, then, the resistance of Lear's conscience is overcome, and his imperious passion has full swing in transferring Cordelia's kingdom to her treacherous sisters.The opening scene has put before us, not in words but figured in action, a problem in human affairs: the violation of moral equity has set up an unnatural arrangement of power—power taken from the good and lodged in the hands of the bad. Here is, so to speak, a piece of moral unstable equilibrium, and the rebound from it is to furnish the remainder of the action. The very structure of the plot corresponds with the simple structure of a scientific proposition. The latter consists of two unequal parts: a few lines are sufficient to enunciate the problem, while a whole treatise may be required for its solution. So inKing Leara single scene brings about the unnatural state of affairs, the consequences of which it takes the rest of the play to trace. The 'catastrophe,' or turning-point of the play at which the ultimate issues are decided, appears in the present case, not close to the end of the play, nor (as inJulius Cæsar) in the centre, but close to the commencement: at the end of the opening scene Lear's act of folly has in reality determined the issue of the whole action; the scenes which follow are only working out a determined issue to its full realisation.The solution of the problem in a triple tragedy.We have seen the problem itself, the overthrow of conscience by imperiousness and the transfer of power from the good to the bad: what is the solution of it as presented by the incidents of the play? The consequences flowing from what Lear has done make up three distinct tragedies, which go on working side by side, and all of which are essential to the full solution of the problem. First, there is the nemesisupon Lear himself—the double retribution of receiving nothing but evil from those he has unrighteously rewarded,(1)Tragedy of Lear.and nothing but good from her whom, he bitterly feels, he has cruelly wronged.(2)Tragedy of Cordelia and Kent.But the punishment of the wrong-doer is only one element in the consequences of wrong; the innocent also are involved, and we get a second tragedy in the sufferings of the faithful Kent and the loving Cordelia, who, through Kent as her representative, watches over her father's safety, until at the end she appears in person to follow up her devotion to the death. When, however, the incidents making up the sufferings of Lear, of Kent, and of Cordelia are taken out of the main plot, there is still a considerable section left—(3)Tragedy of Goneril and Regan.that which is occupied with the mutual intrigues of Goneril and Regan, intrigues ending in their common ruin. This constitutes a third tragedy which, it will be seen, is as necessary to the solution of our problem as the other two. To place power in the hands of the bad is an injury not only to others, but also to the bad themselves, as giving fuel to the fire of their wickedness: so in the tragedy of Goneril and Regan we see evil passions placed in improper authority using this authority to work out their own destruction.An underplot on the same basis as the main plot.To this main plot is added an underplot equally elaborate. As inThe Merchant of Venice, the stories borrowed from two distinct sources are worked into a common design: and the interweaving in the case of the present play is perhaps Shakespeare's greatest triumph of constructive skill. The two stories are made to rest upon the same fundamental idea—comparei.i, fin.that of undutifulness to old age: what Lear's daughters actually do is that which is insinuated by Edmund as his false charge against his brother.i.ii. 76, &c.I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.So obvious is this fundamental connection between the main and the underplot, that our attention is called to it by apersonage in the play itself:iii.vi. 117.'he childed as I father'd,' is Edgar's pithy summary of it when he is brought into contact with Lear.The main and underplot parallel and contrasted throughout.But in this double tragedy, drawn from the two families of Lear and of Gloucester, the chief bond between its two sides consists in the sharp contrast which extends to every detail of the two stories. In the main plot we have a daughter, who has received nothing but harm from her father, who has unjustly had her position torn from her and given to undeserving sisters: nevertheless she sacrifices herself to save the father who did the injury from the sisters who profited by it. In the underplot we have a son, who has received nothing but good from his father, who has, contrary to justice, been advanced by him to the position of an elder brother whom he has slandered: nevertheless, he is seeking the destruction of the father who did him the unjust kindness, when he falls by the hand of the brother who was wronged by it. Thus as the main and underplot go on working side by side, they are at every turn by their antithesis throwing up one another's effect; the contrast is like the reversing of the original subject in a musical fugue.The underplot an Intrigue Action:Again, as the main plot consisted in the initiation of a problem and its solution, so the underplot consists in the development of an intrigue and its consequences. The tragedy of the Gloucester family will, if stated from the point of view of the father, correspond in its parts with the tragedy in the family of Lear. It must be remembered, however, that the position of the father is different in the two cases; Gloucester is not, as Lear, the agent of the crime, but only a deceived instrument in the hands of the villain Edmund, who is the real agent; if the proper allowance be made for this difference,involving a triple tragedy parallel with that of the main plot.it will be seen that the three tragedies which make up the consequences of Lear's error have their analogies in the three tragedies which flow from the intrigue of Edmund.(1)Tragedy of Gloucester.First, we have the nemesis on Gloucester, and this, in analogy with the nemesis on Lear, consists in receiving nothing but evil from the sonhe has so hastily advanced, and nothing but good from the other son whom, he comes gradually to feel, he has unintentionally wronged.(2)Tragedy of Edgar.In the next place we have the sufferings of the innocent Edgar.(3)Tragedy of Edmund.Then, as we before saw a third tragedy in the way in which the power conferred upon Goneril and Regan is used to work out their destruction, so in the underplot we find that the position which Edmund has gained involves him in intrigues, which by the development of the play are made to result in a nemesis upon his original intrigue. And it is a nemesis of exquisite exactness: for he meets his death in the very moment of his success, at the hands of the brother he has maligned and robbed, while the father he has deceived and sought to destroy is the means by which the avenger has been brought to the scene.Complexity of plot not inconsistent with simplicity of movement.We have gone far enough into the construction of the plot to perceive its complexity and the principal elements into which that complexity can be analysed. Two separate systems, each consisting of an initial action and three resulting tragedies, eight actions in all, are woven together by common personages and incidents, by parallelism of spirit, and by movement to a common climax; not to speak of lesser Link Actions which assist in drawing the different stories closer together. As with plot generally, these separate elements are fully manifest only to the eye of analysis; in following the course of the drama itself, they make themselves felt only in a continued sense of involution and harmonious symmetry. It is with passion, not with plot, that the present study is concerned; and the train of passion which the common movement of these various actions calls out in the sympathy of the reader is as simple as the plot itself is intricate. In the case both of the main plot and the underplot the emotional effect rises in intensity; moreover at this central height of intensity the two merge in a common Climax. The construction of the play resembles, if such a comparison may be allowed, the patent gas-apparatus,which secures a high illuminating power by the simple device of several ordinary burners inclined to one another at such an angle that the apexes of their flames meet in a point.fromii.iv. 290 toiii.vi. with the interruption ofiii.iii,iii.v.So the present play contains a Centrepiece of some three scenes, marked off (at least at the commencement) decisively, in which the main and underplot unite in a common Climax, with special devices to increase its effect;The different trains of passion focussed in a central Climax.the diverse interests to which our sympathy was called out at the commencement, and which analysis can keep distinct to the end, arefocussed, so far as passion is concerned, in this Centrepiece, in which human emotion is carried to the highest pitch of tragic agitation that the world of art has yet exhibited.The passions of the main plot gather to a common Climax in the madness of Lear.The emotional effect of the main plot rises to a climax in the madness of Lear. This, as the highest form of human agitation, is obviously a climax to the story of Lear himself. It is equally a climax to the story of Kent and Cordelia, who suffer solely through their devoted watching over Lear, and to whom the bitterest point in their sufferings is that they feel over again all that their fallen master has to endure. Finally, in the madness of Lear the third of the three tragedies, the Goneril and Regan action, appears throughout in the background as the cause of all that is happening. If we keep our eye upon this madness of Lear the movement of the play assumes the form we have so often had to notice—the regular arch. The first half of the arch, or rise in emotional strain, we get in symptoms of mental disturbance preparing us for actual madness which is to come. It is important to note the difference between passion and madness: passion is a disease of the mind, madness is a disease extending to the mysterious linking of mind and body. At the commencement Lear is dominated by the passion of imperiousness, an imperiousness born of his absolute power as king and father; he has never learned from discipline restraint of his passion, but has been accustomed to fling himself upon obstacles and see them give way before him. Now the tragical situation isprepared for him of meeting with obstacles which will not give way, but from which his passion rebounds upon himself with a physical shock. As thus opposition follows opposition, we seewavesof physical, that is of hysterical, passion, sweeping over Lear, until, as it were, a tenth wave lands him in the full disease of madness.i.iv.The first case occurs in his interview with Goneril after that which is the first check he has received in his new life, the insolence shown to his retinue. Goneril enters his presence with a frown. The wont had been that Lear frowned and all cowered before him: and now he waits for his daughter to remember herself with a rising passion ill concealed under the forced calmness with which he enquires, 'Are you our daughter?' 'Doth any here know me?' But Goneril, on the contrary, calmly assumes the position of reprover, and details her unfounded charges of insolence against her father's sober followers, until at last he hears himself desiredBy her, that else will take the thing she begs,to disquantity his train. Then Lear breaks out:Darkness and devils!Saddle my horses; call my train together.Degenerate bastard! I'll not trouble thee:Yet have I left a daughter.In a moment the thought of Cordelia's 'most small fault' and how it had been visited upon her occurs to condense into a single pang the whole sense of his folly; and here it is that the first of these waves of physical passion comes over Lear, its physical character marked by the physical action which accompanies it:i.iv. 292.O Lear, Lear, Lear!Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, [Striking his head.And thy dear judgement out.It lasts but for a moment: but it is a wave, and it will return.i.v.Accordingly in the next scene we see Lear on his journey from one daughter to the other. He is broodingover the scene he is leaving behind, and he cannot disguise a shade of anxiety, in his awakened judgment, that some such scene may be reserved for him in the goal to which he is journeying. He is half listening, moreover, to the Fool, who harps on the same thought, that the King is suffering what he might have expected, that the other daughter will be like the first:—until there comes another of these sudden outbursts of passion, in which Lear for a moment half foresees the end to which he is being carried.i.v. 49.O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!Imperiousness is especially attached to outward signs of reverence:ii.iv. 4.it is reserved for Lear when he arrives at Regan's palace to find the messenger he has sent on to announce him suffering the indignity of the stocks. At first he will not believe that this has been done by order of his daughter and son.13.Kent.It is both he and she;Your son and daughter.Lear.No.Kent.Yes.Lear.No, I say.Kent.I say, yea.Lear.No, no, they would not.Kent.Yes, they have.Lear.By Jupiter, I swear, no.Kent.By Juno, I swear, ay.Lear.They durst not do't;They could not, would not do't; 'tis worse than murder,To do upon respect such violent outrage.But he has to listen to a circumstantial account of the insult, and, further, reminded by the Fool thatFathers that wear ragsDo make their children blind,he comes at last to realise it all,—and then there sweeps over him a third and more violent wave of hysterical agitation.56.O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow,Thy element's below!ii.iv. 89.He has mastered the passion by a strong effort: but it is a wave, and it will return. He has mastered himself in order to confront the culprits face to face: his altered position is brought home to him when they refuse to receive him. And the refusal is made the worse by the well-meant attempt of Gloucester to palliate it, in which he unfortunately speaks of the 'fiery quality' of the duke.Lear.Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!Fiery? what quality?Nothing is harder than to endure what one is in the habit of inflicting on others; it was Lear's own 'fiery quality' by which he had been accustomed to scorch all opposition out of his way; now he has to hear another man's 'fiery quality' quoted to him. But this outburst is only momentary; the very extremity of the case seems to calm Lear, and he begins himself to frame excuses for the duke, how sickness and infirmity neglect the 'office' to which health is bound—until his eye lights again upon his messenger sitting in the stocks, and the recollection of this deliberate affront brings back again the wave of passion.122.O me, my heart, my rising heart! but, down!Lear had a strange confidence in his daughter Regan. As we see the two women in the play, Regan appears the more cold-blooded; nothing in Goneril is more cruel than Regan's204.I pray you, father, being weak, seem so;or her meeting Lear's 'I gave you all' with the rejoinder,253.And in good time you gave it.But there was something in Regan's personal appearance that belied her real character; her father says to her in this scene:173.Her eyes are fierce, but thineDo comfort and not burn.Judas betrayed with a kiss, and Regan persecutes her father in tears. But Regan has scarcely entered her father's presence when the trumpet announces the arrival of Goneril, and185.Lear has to see the Regan197.in whom he is trusting take Goneril's hand before his eyes in token that she is making common cause with her. When following this the words 'indiscretion,' 'dotage,' reach his ear there is a momentary swelling of the physical passion within:200.O sides, you are too tough;Will you yet hold?He has mastered it for the last time: for now his whole world seems to be closing in around him; he has committed his all to the two daughters standing before him,from 233.and they unite to beat him down, from fifty knights to twenty-five, from twenty-five to ten, to five, until the soft-eyed Regan asks, 'What need one?' A sense of crushing oppression stifles his anger, and Lear begins to answer with the same calmness with which the question had been asked:O, reason not the need: our basest beggarsAre in the poorest thing superfluous:Allow not nature more than nature needs,Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;If only to go warm were gorgeous,Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,—He breaks off at finding himself actually pleading: and the blinding tears come as he recognises that the kingly passion in which he had found support at every cross has now deserted him in his extremity. He appeals to heaven against the injustice.You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,As full of grief as age; wretched in both!If it be you that stir these daughters' heartsAgainst their father, fool me not so muchTo bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,And let not women's weapons, water-drops,Stain my man's cheeks!The prayer is answered; the passion returns in full flood, and at last brings Lear face to face with the madness which has threatened from a distance.No, you unnatural hags,I will have such revenges on you both,That all the world shall—I will do such things,—What they are, yet I know not; but they shall beThe terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep;No, I'll not weep:I have full cause of weeping; but this heartShall break into a hundred thousand flaws,Or ere I'll weep. O fool, Ishallgo mad!ii.iv. 290.The storm marks off the Centrepiece of the play.As Lear with these words rushes out into the night, we hear the first sound of the storm—the storm which here, as inJulius Cæsar, will be recognised as the dramatic background to the tempest of human emotions; it is the signal that we have now entered upon the mysterious Centrepiece of the play, in which the gathering passions of the whole drama are to be allowed to vent themselves without check or bound. And it is no ordinary storm: it is a night of bleak winds sorely ruffling, of cataracts and hurricanoes, of curled waters swelling above the main, of thought-executing fires and oak-cleaving thunderbolts; a nightiii.i. 12, &c.wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,The lion and the belly-pinched wolfKeep their fur dry.And all of it is needed to harmonise with the whirlwind of human passions which finds relief only in outscorning its fury. The purpose of the storm is not confined to this of marking the emotional climax: it is one of the agencies which assist in carrying it to its height. Experts in mental disease have noted amongst the causes which convert mere mental excitement into actual madness two leading ones, external physical shocks and imitation. Shakespeare has made use of both inthe central scenes of this play.iii.i. 3:iii.ii. &c.For the first, Lear is exposed without shelter to the pelting of the pitiless storm, and he waxes wilder with its wildness.iii.iv, from 39.Again when all this is at its height he is suddenly brought into contact with a half-naked Tom o'Bedlam. This gives the final shock. So far he had not gone beyond ungovernable rage; he had not lost self-consciousness, and could say, 'My wits begin to turn';iii.iv. 66.but the sight of Edgar completely unhinges his mind, and hallucinations set in; a moment after he has seen him the spirit of imitation begins to work, and Lear commences to strip off his clothes. Thus perfect is the regular arch of effect which is connected with Lear's madness. We have its gradual rise in the waves of hysterical passion which ebbed after they had flowed, until, at the point separating the Centrepiece from the rest of the play, Lear's 'O fool Ishallgo mad' seems to mark a change from which he never goes back. Through these central scenes exposure to the storm is fanning his passion more and more irretrievably into madness;iii.iii. 39.at the exact centre of all, imitation of Edgar comes to make the insanity acute.Decline after the Centrepiece from violent madness to shattered intellect.After the Centrepiece Lear disappears for a time, and when we next see him agitation has declined into what is more pathetic: the acute mania has given place to the pitiful spectacle of a shattered intellect; there is no longer sharp suffering,iv.vi. 81.but the whole mind is wrecked, gleams of coherence coming at intervals to mark what a fall there has been;compareiv.vi. 178;v.iii. 314.the strain upon our emotions sinks into the calm of hopelessness.He hates him muchThat would upon the rack of this tough worldStretch him out longer.The passions of the underplot gather to a common Climax in the madness of Edgar.But who is this madman with whom Lear meets at the turning-point of the play? It is Edgar, the victim of the underplot, whose life has been sought by his brother and father until he can find no way of saving himself but the disguise of feigned madness. This feigned madness ofEdgar, as it appears in the central scenes, serves as emotional climax to the underplot, just as the madness of Lear is the emotional climax of the main plot. Edgar's madness is obviously the climax to the tragedy of his own sufferings, but it is also a central point to the movement of the other two tragedies which with that of Edgar make up the underplot. One of these is the nemesis upon Gloucester, and this, we have seen, is double, that he receives good from the son he has wronged and evil from the son he has favoured.iii.iv. 170.The turning-point of such a nemesis is reached in the Hovel Scene, where Gloucester says:I'll tell thee, friend,I am almost mad myself: I had a son,Now outlaw'd from my blood; he sought my life,But lately, very late: I loved him, friend:No father his son dearer: truth to tell thee,This grief hath crazed my wits!He says this in the presence of the very Edgar, disguised under the form of the wretched idiot he hardly marks. Edgar now learns how his father has been deceived;compareiii.iii. 15.in his heart he is re-united to him, and from this point of re-union springs the devotion he lavishes upon his father in the affliction that presently falls upon him.iii.iii. 22;iii.vii.On the other hand, that which brings Gloucester to this Hovel Scene, the attempt to save the King, is betrayed by Edmund, who becomes thereby the cause of the vengeance which puts out his father's eyes. Thus from this meeting of the mad Edgar with the mad Lear there springs at once the final stroke in the misery Gloucester suffers from the son he has favoured, and the beginning of the forgiving love he is to experience from the son he has wronged: that meeting then is certainly the central climax to the double nemesis which makes up the Gloucester action. The remaining tragedy of the underplot embraces the series of incidents by the combination of which the success of Edmund's intrigue becomes gradually converted into the nemesis which punishes it. Now thesqualid wretchedness of a Bedlamite, together with the painful strain of supporting the assumed character amidst the conflicting emotions which the unexpected meeting of the Hovel Scene has aroused, represent the highest point to which the misery resulting from the intrigue can rise.iv.i, &c.At the same time the use Edgar makes of this madness after hearing Gloucester's confession is to fasten himself in attendance upon his afflicted father, and proves in the sequel the means by which he is brought to be the instrument of the vengeance that overtakes Edmund. The central climax of a tragedy like this of intrigue and nemesis cannot be more clearly marked than in the incident in which are combined the summit of the injury and the foundation of the retribution. Thus all three tragedies which together make up the resultant of the intrigue constituting the underplot reach their climax of agitation in the scene in which Lear and Edgar meet.The Centrepiece a duet, or by the addition of the Fool, a trio of madness.It appears, then, that the Centrepiece of the play is occupied with the contact of two madnesses, the madness of Lear and the madness of Edgar; that of Lear gathering up into a climax trains of passion from all the three tragedies of the main plot, and that of Edgar holding a similar position to the three tragedies of the underplot. Further, these madnesses do not merely go on side by side; as they meet they mutually affect one another, and throw up each other's intensity. By the mere sight of the Bedlamite, Lear, already tottering upon the verge of insanity, is driven really and incurably mad; while in the case of Edgar, the meeting with Lear, and through Lear with Gloucester, converts the burden of feigning idiocy from a cruel stroke of unjust fate into a hardship voluntarily undergone for the sake of ministering to a father now forgiven and pitied. And so far as the general effect of the play is concerned this central Climax presents a terribleduet of madness, the wild ravings and mutual interworkings of two distinct strains of insanity, each answeringand outbidding the other. The distinctness is the greater as the two are different in kind. In Lear we have the madness of passion, exaggeration of ordinary emotions; Edgar's is the madness of idiocy, as idiocy was in early ages when the cruel neglect of society added physical hardship to mental affliction. In Edgar's frenzy we trace rapid irrelevance with gleams of unexpected relevance, just sufficient to partly answer a question and go off again into wandering; a sense of ill-treatment and of being an outcast; remorse and thoughts as to close connection of sin and retribution; visions of fiends as in bodily presence; cold, hunger: these alternating with mere gibberish, and all perhaps within the compass of a few lines.iii.iv. 51.Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlipool, o'er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five wits! Tom's a-cold,—O, do de, do de, do de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes: there could I have him now,—and there,—and there again, and there.But this is not all. When examined more closely this Centrepiece exhibits not a duet but atrio of madness; with the other two there mingles a third form of what may be called madness, the professional madness of the court fool.Institution of the court fool.This court fool or jester is an institution of considerable interest. It seems to rest upon three mediæval and ancient notions. The first is the barbarism of enjoying personal defects, illustrated in the large number of Roman names derived from bodily infirmities, Varus the bandy-legged, Balbus the stammerer, and the like; this led our ancestors to find fun in the incoherence of natural idiocy, and finally made the imitation of it a profession. A second notion underlying the institution of a jester is the connection to the ancient mind between madness and inspiration; the sameGreek wordentheosstands for both, and to this day the idiot of a Scotch village is believed in some way to see further than sane folk. A third idea to be kept in mind is the mediæval conception of wit. With us wit is weighed by its intrinsic worth; the old idea, appearing repeatedly in Shakespeare's scenes, was that wit was a mental game, a sort of battledore and shuttlecock, in which the jokes themselves might be indifferent since the point of the game lay in keeping it up as smartly and as long as possible. The fool, whose title and motley dress suggested the absence of ordinary sense or propriety, combines in his office all three notions: from the last he was bound to keep up the fire of badinage, even though it were with witless nonsense; from the second he was expected at times to give utterance to deep truths; and in virtue of the first he had license to make hard hits under protection of the 'folly' which all were supposed to enjoy.He that hath a fool doth very wisely hit,Doth very foolishly, although he smart,Not to seem senseless of the bob.The institution adapted to modern times in Punch.The institution, if it has died out as a personal office attached to kings or nobles, has perhaps been preserved by the nation as a whole in a form analogous to other modern institutions: the all-embracing newspaper has absorbed this element of life, and Mr. Punch is the national jester. His figure and face are an improvement on the old motley habit; his fixed number of pages have to be filled, if not always with wit, yet with passable padding: no one dare other than enjoy the compliment of his notice, under penalty of showing that 'the cap has fitted'; and certainly Mr. Punch finds ways of conveying to statesmen criticisms to which the proprieties of parliament would be impervious. The institution of the court fool is eagerly utilised by Shakespeare, and is the source of some of his finest effects: he treats it as a sort of chronic Comedy, the function of which may be described as that of translatingdeep truths of human nature into the language of laughter.In applying, then, this general view of the court fool to the present case we must avoid two opposite errors. We must not pass over all his utterances as unmeaning folly, nor, on the other hand, must we insist upon seeing a meaning in everything that he says: what truth he speaks must be expected to make its appearance amidst a cloud of nonsense.The function of the Fool in Lear is to keep before us the original problem:Making this proviso we may lay down that the function of the Fool inKing Learis to keep vividly before the minds of the audience (as well as of his master) the idea at the root of the main plot—that unstable moral equilibrium, that unnatural distribution of power which Lear has set up, and of which the whole tragedy is the rebound.i.iv.In the first scene in which he appears before us he is, amid all his nonsense, harping upon the idea that Lear has committed the folly of trusting to the gratitude of the ungrateful, and is reaping the inevitable consequences. As he enters he hands his coxcomb, the symbol of folly, to the King, and to Kent for taking the King's part. His first jingling song,

Last stage. Development of an inevitable fate: passion-strain ceases.

The final stage of the action works out the development of an inevitable fate. The emotional strain now ceases, and, as in the first stage, the passion is of the calmer order, the calmness in this case of pity balanced by a sense of justice. From the opening of the fourth Act the decline in the justification of the conspirators is intimated by the logic of events. The first scene exhibits to us the triumvirate that now governs Rome, and shows that in this triumvirate Antony is supreme:Actsiv, v.iv.i.with the man who is the embodiment of the Reaction thus appearing at the head of the world, the fall of the conspirators is seen to be inevitable.iv.ii. 3.The decline of our sympathy with them continues in the following scenes. The Quarrel Scene shows how low the tone ofCassius has fallen since he has dealt with assassination as a political weapon; and even Brutus's moderation has hardened into unpleasing harshness.iv.iii. 148, &c.There is at this point plenty of relief to such unpleasing effects:iv.iii. from 239.there is the exhibition of the tender side of Brutus's character as shown in his relations with his page,iv.iii.and the display of friendship maintained between Brutus and Cassius amid falling fortunes. But such incidents as these have a different effect upon us from that which they would have had at an earlier period; the justification of the conspirators has so far declined that now attractive touches in them serve only to increase the pathos of a fate which, however, our sympathy no longer seeks to resist.iv.iii. 275.We get a supernatural foreshadowing of the end in the appearance to Brutus of Cæsar's Ghost,v.i. 80.and the omen Cassius sees of the eagles that had consorted his army to Philippi giving place to ravens, crows, and kites on the morning of battle: this lends the authority of the invisible world to our sense that the conspirators' cause is doomed.iv.iii. 196-230.And judicial blindness overtakes them as Brutus's authority in council overweighs in point after point the shrewder advice of Cassius. Through the scenes of the fifth Act we see the republican leaders fighting on without hope.Justification entirely vanishes as the conspirators recognise Cæsar's victory.The last remnant of justification for their cause ceases as the conspirators themselves seem to acknowledge their error and fate. Cassius as he feels his death-blow recognises the very weapon with which he had committed the crime:

v.iii. 45.

Cæsar, thou art revenged,Even with the sword that kill'd thee.

Cæsar, thou art revenged,

Even with the sword that kill'd thee.

And at last even the firm spirit of Brutus yields:

v.v. 94.

O Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet!Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swordsIn our own proper entrails.

O Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet!

Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords

In our own proper entrails.

How Climax meets Climax in the centre of Lear.

A Study in more complex Passion and Movement.

The plot of Lear highly complex.

INJulius Cæsarwe have seen how, in the case of a very simple play, a few simple devices are sufficient to produce a regular rise and fall in the passion. We now turn to a highly elaborate plot and trace how, notwithstanding the elaborateness, a similar concentration of the passion in the centre of the play can be secured.King Learis one of the most complex of Shakespeare's tragedies; its plot is made up of a number of separate actions, with their combinations accurately carried out, the whole impressing us with a sense of artistic involution similar to that of an elaborate musical fugue. Here, however, we are concerned only indirectly with the plot of the play: we need review it no further than may suffice to show what distinct interests enter into it, and enable us to observe how the separate trains of passion work toward a common climax at the centre.

Starting from the notion of pattern as a fundamental idea we have seen how Plot presents trains of events in human life taking form and shape as a crime and its nemesis, an oracle and its fulfilment, the rise and fall of an individual, or even as simply a story.The main plot exhibits the Problem form of dramatic action.The particular form of action underlying the main plot ofKing Learis different from any we have yet noticed. It may be described as aProblem Action. A mathematician in his problem assumes some unusual combinationof forces to have come about, and then proceeds to trace its consequences: so the Drama often deals with problems in history and life, setting up, before the commencement of the play or early in the action, some peculiar arrangement of moral relations, and then throughout the rest of the action developing the consequences of these to the personages involved. Thus the opening scene ofKing Learis occupied in bringing before us a pregnant and suggestive state of affairs: imperiousness is represented as overthrowing conscience and setting up an unnatural distribution of power.The problem stated.A human problem has thus been enunciated which the remainder of the play has to work out to its natural solution.

Imperiousness seems to be the term appropriate to Lear's conduct in the first scene. This is no case of dotage dividing an inheritance according to public declarations of affection. The division had already been made according to the best advice:i.i. 3, &c.in the case of two of the daughters 'equalities had been so weighed that curiosity in neither could make choice of either's moiety'; and if the portion of the youngest and best loved of the three was the richest, this is a partiality natural enough to absolute power. The opening scene of the play is simply the court ceremony in which the formal transfer is to be made.38.Lear is already handing to his daughters the carefully drawn maps which mark the boundaries of the provinces,49.when he suddenly pauses, and, with the yearning of age and authority for testimonies of devotion, calls upon his daughters for declarations of affection, the easiest of returns for the substantial gifts he is giving them, and which Goneril and Regan pour forth with glib eloquence.84.Then Lear turns to Cordelia, and, thinking delightedly of the special prize he has marked out for the pet of his old age, asks her:

What can you say to drawA third more opulent than your sisters?

What can you say to draw

A third more opulent than your sisters?

But Cordelia has been revolted by the fulsome flattery of thesisters whose hypocrisy she knows so well, and she bluntly refuses to be drawn into any declaration of affection at all. Cordelia might well have found some other method of separating herself from her false sisters, without thus flouting her father before his whole court in a moment of tenderness to herself; or, if carried away by the indignation of the moment, a sign of submission would have won her a ready pardon.comparei.i. 131.But Cordelia, sweet and strong as her character is in great things, has yet inherited a touch of her father's temper, and the moment's sullenness is protracted into obstinacy. Cordelia then has committed an offence of manner; Lear's passion vents itself in a sentence proper only to a moral crime: now the punishment of a minute offence with wholly disproportionate severity simply because it is an offence against personal will is an exact description of imperiousness.

As Lear stands for imperiousness, so conscience is represented by Kent, who, with the voice of authority derived from lifelong intimacy and service, interposes to check the King's passion in its headlong course.

141-190.

Kent.Royal Lear,Whom I have ever honour'd as my king,Loved as my father, as my master follow'd,As my great patron thought on in my prayers,—Lear.The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft.Kent.Let it fall rather, though the fork invadeThe region of my heart: be Kent unmannerlyWhen Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man?Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak,When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound,When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom....Lear.Kent, on thy life, no more.Kent.My life I never held but as a pawnTo wage against thy enemies, nor fear to lose it,Thy safety being the motive....Lear.O, vassal! miscreant![Laying his hand on his sword.Albany.}Cornwall.Dear sir, forbear.Kent.Do:Kill thy physician, and the fee bestowUpon thy foul disease. Revoke thy doom;Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,I'll tell thee thou dost evil.

Kent.Royal Lear,

Whom I have ever honour'd as my king,

Loved as my father, as my master follow'd,

As my great patron thought on in my prayers,—

Lear.The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft.

Kent.Let it fall rather, though the fork invade

The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly

When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man?

Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak,

When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound,

When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom....

Lear.Kent, on thy life, no more.

Kent.My life I never held but as a pawn

To wage against thy enemies, nor fear to lose it,

Thy safety being the motive....

Lear.O, vassal! miscreant!

[Laying his hand on his sword.

Albany.}Cornwall.Dear sir, forbear.

Kent.Do:Kill thy physician, and the fee bestowUpon thy foul disease. Revoke thy doom;Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,I'll tell thee thou dost evil.

Kent.Do:

Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow

Upon thy foul disease. Revoke thy doom;

Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,

I'll tell thee thou dost evil.

In the banishment of this Kent, then, the resistance of Lear's conscience is overcome, and his imperious passion has full swing in transferring Cordelia's kingdom to her treacherous sisters.

The opening scene has put before us, not in words but figured in action, a problem in human affairs: the violation of moral equity has set up an unnatural arrangement of power—power taken from the good and lodged in the hands of the bad. Here is, so to speak, a piece of moral unstable equilibrium, and the rebound from it is to furnish the remainder of the action. The very structure of the plot corresponds with the simple structure of a scientific proposition. The latter consists of two unequal parts: a few lines are sufficient to enunciate the problem, while a whole treatise may be required for its solution. So inKing Leara single scene brings about the unnatural state of affairs, the consequences of which it takes the rest of the play to trace. The 'catastrophe,' or turning-point of the play at which the ultimate issues are decided, appears in the present case, not close to the end of the play, nor (as inJulius Cæsar) in the centre, but close to the commencement: at the end of the opening scene Lear's act of folly has in reality determined the issue of the whole action; the scenes which follow are only working out a determined issue to its full realisation.

The solution of the problem in a triple tragedy.

We have seen the problem itself, the overthrow of conscience by imperiousness and the transfer of power from the good to the bad: what is the solution of it as presented by the incidents of the play? The consequences flowing from what Lear has done make up three distinct tragedies, which go on working side by side, and all of which are essential to the full solution of the problem. First, there is the nemesisupon Lear himself—the double retribution of receiving nothing but evil from those he has unrighteously rewarded,(1)Tragedy of Lear.and nothing but good from her whom, he bitterly feels, he has cruelly wronged.(2)Tragedy of Cordelia and Kent.But the punishment of the wrong-doer is only one element in the consequences of wrong; the innocent also are involved, and we get a second tragedy in the sufferings of the faithful Kent and the loving Cordelia, who, through Kent as her representative, watches over her father's safety, until at the end she appears in person to follow up her devotion to the death. When, however, the incidents making up the sufferings of Lear, of Kent, and of Cordelia are taken out of the main plot, there is still a considerable section left—(3)Tragedy of Goneril and Regan.that which is occupied with the mutual intrigues of Goneril and Regan, intrigues ending in their common ruin. This constitutes a third tragedy which, it will be seen, is as necessary to the solution of our problem as the other two. To place power in the hands of the bad is an injury not only to others, but also to the bad themselves, as giving fuel to the fire of their wickedness: so in the tragedy of Goneril and Regan we see evil passions placed in improper authority using this authority to work out their own destruction.

An underplot on the same basis as the main plot.

To this main plot is added an underplot equally elaborate. As inThe Merchant of Venice, the stories borrowed from two distinct sources are worked into a common design: and the interweaving in the case of the present play is perhaps Shakespeare's greatest triumph of constructive skill. The two stories are made to rest upon the same fundamental idea—comparei.i, fin.that of undutifulness to old age: what Lear's daughters actually do is that which is insinuated by Edmund as his false charge against his brother.

i.ii. 76, &c.

I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.

So obvious is this fundamental connection between the main and the underplot, that our attention is called to it by apersonage in the play itself:iii.vi. 117.'he childed as I father'd,' is Edgar's pithy summary of it when he is brought into contact with Lear.The main and underplot parallel and contrasted throughout.But in this double tragedy, drawn from the two families of Lear and of Gloucester, the chief bond between its two sides consists in the sharp contrast which extends to every detail of the two stories. In the main plot we have a daughter, who has received nothing but harm from her father, who has unjustly had her position torn from her and given to undeserving sisters: nevertheless she sacrifices herself to save the father who did the injury from the sisters who profited by it. In the underplot we have a son, who has received nothing but good from his father, who has, contrary to justice, been advanced by him to the position of an elder brother whom he has slandered: nevertheless, he is seeking the destruction of the father who did him the unjust kindness, when he falls by the hand of the brother who was wronged by it. Thus as the main and underplot go on working side by side, they are at every turn by their antithesis throwing up one another's effect; the contrast is like the reversing of the original subject in a musical fugue.The underplot an Intrigue Action:Again, as the main plot consisted in the initiation of a problem and its solution, so the underplot consists in the development of an intrigue and its consequences. The tragedy of the Gloucester family will, if stated from the point of view of the father, correspond in its parts with the tragedy in the family of Lear. It must be remembered, however, that the position of the father is different in the two cases; Gloucester is not, as Lear, the agent of the crime, but only a deceived instrument in the hands of the villain Edmund, who is the real agent; if the proper allowance be made for this difference,involving a triple tragedy parallel with that of the main plot.it will be seen that the three tragedies which make up the consequences of Lear's error have their analogies in the three tragedies which flow from the intrigue of Edmund.(1)Tragedy of Gloucester.First, we have the nemesis on Gloucester, and this, in analogy with the nemesis on Lear, consists in receiving nothing but evil from the sonhe has so hastily advanced, and nothing but good from the other son whom, he comes gradually to feel, he has unintentionally wronged.(2)Tragedy of Edgar.In the next place we have the sufferings of the innocent Edgar.(3)Tragedy of Edmund.Then, as we before saw a third tragedy in the way in which the power conferred upon Goneril and Regan is used to work out their destruction, so in the underplot we find that the position which Edmund has gained involves him in intrigues, which by the development of the play are made to result in a nemesis upon his original intrigue. And it is a nemesis of exquisite exactness: for he meets his death in the very moment of his success, at the hands of the brother he has maligned and robbed, while the father he has deceived and sought to destroy is the means by which the avenger has been brought to the scene.

Complexity of plot not inconsistent with simplicity of movement.

We have gone far enough into the construction of the plot to perceive its complexity and the principal elements into which that complexity can be analysed. Two separate systems, each consisting of an initial action and three resulting tragedies, eight actions in all, are woven together by common personages and incidents, by parallelism of spirit, and by movement to a common climax; not to speak of lesser Link Actions which assist in drawing the different stories closer together. As with plot generally, these separate elements are fully manifest only to the eye of analysis; in following the course of the drama itself, they make themselves felt only in a continued sense of involution and harmonious symmetry. It is with passion, not with plot, that the present study is concerned; and the train of passion which the common movement of these various actions calls out in the sympathy of the reader is as simple as the plot itself is intricate. In the case both of the main plot and the underplot the emotional effect rises in intensity; moreover at this central height of intensity the two merge in a common Climax. The construction of the play resembles, if such a comparison may be allowed, the patent gas-apparatus,which secures a high illuminating power by the simple device of several ordinary burners inclined to one another at such an angle that the apexes of their flames meet in a point.fromii.iv. 290 toiii.vi. with the interruption ofiii.iii,iii.v.So the present play contains a Centrepiece of some three scenes, marked off (at least at the commencement) decisively, in which the main and underplot unite in a common Climax, with special devices to increase its effect;The different trains of passion focussed in a central Climax.the diverse interests to which our sympathy was called out at the commencement, and which analysis can keep distinct to the end, arefocussed, so far as passion is concerned, in this Centrepiece, in which human emotion is carried to the highest pitch of tragic agitation that the world of art has yet exhibited.

The passions of the main plot gather to a common Climax in the madness of Lear.

The emotional effect of the main plot rises to a climax in the madness of Lear. This, as the highest form of human agitation, is obviously a climax to the story of Lear himself. It is equally a climax to the story of Kent and Cordelia, who suffer solely through their devoted watching over Lear, and to whom the bitterest point in their sufferings is that they feel over again all that their fallen master has to endure. Finally, in the madness of Lear the third of the three tragedies, the Goneril and Regan action, appears throughout in the background as the cause of all that is happening. If we keep our eye upon this madness of Lear the movement of the play assumes the form we have so often had to notice—the regular arch. The first half of the arch, or rise in emotional strain, we get in symptoms of mental disturbance preparing us for actual madness which is to come. It is important to note the difference between passion and madness: passion is a disease of the mind, madness is a disease extending to the mysterious linking of mind and body. At the commencement Lear is dominated by the passion of imperiousness, an imperiousness born of his absolute power as king and father; he has never learned from discipline restraint of his passion, but has been accustomed to fling himself upon obstacles and see them give way before him. Now the tragical situation isprepared for him of meeting with obstacles which will not give way, but from which his passion rebounds upon himself with a physical shock. As thus opposition follows opposition, we seewavesof physical, that is of hysterical, passion, sweeping over Lear, until, as it were, a tenth wave lands him in the full disease of madness.

i.iv.

The first case occurs in his interview with Goneril after that which is the first check he has received in his new life, the insolence shown to his retinue. Goneril enters his presence with a frown. The wont had been that Lear frowned and all cowered before him: and now he waits for his daughter to remember herself with a rising passion ill concealed under the forced calmness with which he enquires, 'Are you our daughter?' 'Doth any here know me?' But Goneril, on the contrary, calmly assumes the position of reprover, and details her unfounded charges of insolence against her father's sober followers, until at last he hears himself desired

By her, that else will take the thing she begs,

to disquantity his train. Then Lear breaks out:

Darkness and devils!Saddle my horses; call my train together.Degenerate bastard! I'll not trouble thee:Yet have I left a daughter.

Darkness and devils!

Saddle my horses; call my train together.

Degenerate bastard! I'll not trouble thee:

Yet have I left a daughter.

In a moment the thought of Cordelia's 'most small fault' and how it had been visited upon her occurs to condense into a single pang the whole sense of his folly; and here it is that the first of these waves of physical passion comes over Lear, its physical character marked by the physical action which accompanies it:

i.iv. 292.

O Lear, Lear, Lear!Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, [Striking his head.And thy dear judgement out.

O Lear, Lear, Lear!

Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, [Striking his head.

And thy dear judgement out.

It lasts but for a moment: but it is a wave, and it will return.i.v.Accordingly in the next scene we see Lear on his journey from one daughter to the other. He is broodingover the scene he is leaving behind, and he cannot disguise a shade of anxiety, in his awakened judgment, that some such scene may be reserved for him in the goal to which he is journeying. He is half listening, moreover, to the Fool, who harps on the same thought, that the King is suffering what he might have expected, that the other daughter will be like the first:—until there comes another of these sudden outbursts of passion, in which Lear for a moment half foresees the end to which he is being carried.

i.v. 49.

O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!

O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!

Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!

Imperiousness is especially attached to outward signs of reverence:ii.iv. 4.it is reserved for Lear when he arrives at Regan's palace to find the messenger he has sent on to announce him suffering the indignity of the stocks. At first he will not believe that this has been done by order of his daughter and son.

13.

Kent.It is both he and she;Your son and daughter.Lear.No.Kent.Yes.Lear.No, I say.Kent.I say, yea.Lear.No, no, they would not.Kent.Yes, they have.Lear.By Jupiter, I swear, no.Kent.By Juno, I swear, ay.Lear.They durst not do't;They could not, would not do't; 'tis worse than murder,To do upon respect such violent outrage.

Kent.It is both he and she;

Your son and daughter.

Lear.No.

Kent.Yes.

Lear.No, I say.

Kent.I say, yea.

Lear.No, no, they would not.

Kent.Yes, they have.

Lear.By Jupiter, I swear, no.

Kent.By Juno, I swear, ay.

Lear.They durst not do't;

They could not, would not do't; 'tis worse than murder,

To do upon respect such violent outrage.

But he has to listen to a circumstantial account of the insult, and, further, reminded by the Fool that

Fathers that wear ragsDo make their children blind,

Fathers that wear rags

Do make their children blind,

he comes at last to realise it all,—and then there sweeps over him a third and more violent wave of hysterical agitation.

56.

O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow,Thy element's below!

O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!

Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow,

Thy element's below!

ii.iv. 89.

He has mastered the passion by a strong effort: but it is a wave, and it will return. He has mastered himself in order to confront the culprits face to face: his altered position is brought home to him when they refuse to receive him. And the refusal is made the worse by the well-meant attempt of Gloucester to palliate it, in which he unfortunately speaks of the 'fiery quality' of the duke.

Lear.Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!Fiery? what quality?

Lear.Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!

Fiery? what quality?

Nothing is harder than to endure what one is in the habit of inflicting on others; it was Lear's own 'fiery quality' by which he had been accustomed to scorch all opposition out of his way; now he has to hear another man's 'fiery quality' quoted to him. But this outburst is only momentary; the very extremity of the case seems to calm Lear, and he begins himself to frame excuses for the duke, how sickness and infirmity neglect the 'office' to which health is bound—until his eye lights again upon his messenger sitting in the stocks, and the recollection of this deliberate affront brings back again the wave of passion.

122.

O me, my heart, my rising heart! but, down!

Lear had a strange confidence in his daughter Regan. As we see the two women in the play, Regan appears the more cold-blooded; nothing in Goneril is more cruel than Regan's

204.

I pray you, father, being weak, seem so;

or her meeting Lear's 'I gave you all' with the rejoinder,

253.

And in good time you gave it.

But there was something in Regan's personal appearance that belied her real character; her father says to her in this scene:

173.

Her eyes are fierce, but thineDo comfort and not burn.

Her eyes are fierce, but thine

Do comfort and not burn.

Judas betrayed with a kiss, and Regan persecutes her father in tears. But Regan has scarcely entered her father's presence when the trumpet announces the arrival of Goneril, and185.Lear has to see the Regan197.in whom he is trusting take Goneril's hand before his eyes in token that she is making common cause with her. When following this the words 'indiscretion,' 'dotage,' reach his ear there is a momentary swelling of the physical passion within:

200.

O sides, you are too tough;Will you yet hold?

O sides, you are too tough;

Will you yet hold?

He has mastered it for the last time: for now his whole world seems to be closing in around him; he has committed his all to the two daughters standing before him,from 233.and they unite to beat him down, from fifty knights to twenty-five, from twenty-five to ten, to five, until the soft-eyed Regan asks, 'What need one?' A sense of crushing oppression stifles his anger, and Lear begins to answer with the same calmness with which the question had been asked:

O, reason not the need: our basest beggarsAre in the poorest thing superfluous:Allow not nature more than nature needs,Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;If only to go warm were gorgeous,Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,—

O, reason not the need: our basest beggars

Are in the poorest thing superfluous:

Allow not nature more than nature needs,

Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;

If only to go warm were gorgeous,

Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,

Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,—

He breaks off at finding himself actually pleading: and the blinding tears come as he recognises that the kingly passion in which he had found support at every cross has now deserted him in his extremity. He appeals to heaven against the injustice.

You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,As full of grief as age; wretched in both!If it be you that stir these daughters' heartsAgainst their father, fool me not so muchTo bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,And let not women's weapons, water-drops,Stain my man's cheeks!

You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,

As full of grief as age; wretched in both!

If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts

Against their father, fool me not so much

To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,

And let not women's weapons, water-drops,

Stain my man's cheeks!

The prayer is answered; the passion returns in full flood, and at last brings Lear face to face with the madness which has threatened from a distance.

No, you unnatural hags,I will have such revenges on you both,That all the world shall—I will do such things,—What they are, yet I know not; but they shall beThe terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep;No, I'll not weep:I have full cause of weeping; but this heartShall break into a hundred thousand flaws,Or ere I'll weep. O fool, Ishallgo mad!

No, you unnatural hags,

I will have such revenges on you both,

That all the world shall—I will do such things,—

What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be

The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep;

No, I'll not weep:

I have full cause of weeping; but this heart

Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,

Or ere I'll weep. O fool, Ishallgo mad!

ii.iv. 290.

The storm marks off the Centrepiece of the play.

As Lear with these words rushes out into the night, we hear the first sound of the storm—the storm which here, as inJulius Cæsar, will be recognised as the dramatic background to the tempest of human emotions; it is the signal that we have now entered upon the mysterious Centrepiece of the play, in which the gathering passions of the whole drama are to be allowed to vent themselves without check or bound. And it is no ordinary storm: it is a night of bleak winds sorely ruffling, of cataracts and hurricanoes, of curled waters swelling above the main, of thought-executing fires and oak-cleaving thunderbolts; a night

iii.i. 12, &c.

wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,The lion and the belly-pinched wolfKeep their fur dry.

wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,

The lion and the belly-pinched wolf

Keep their fur dry.

And all of it is needed to harmonise with the whirlwind of human passions which finds relief only in outscorning its fury. The purpose of the storm is not confined to this of marking the emotional climax: it is one of the agencies which assist in carrying it to its height. Experts in mental disease have noted amongst the causes which convert mere mental excitement into actual madness two leading ones, external physical shocks and imitation. Shakespeare has made use of both inthe central scenes of this play.iii.i. 3:iii.ii. &c.For the first, Lear is exposed without shelter to the pelting of the pitiless storm, and he waxes wilder with its wildness.iii.iv, from 39.Again when all this is at its height he is suddenly brought into contact with a half-naked Tom o'Bedlam. This gives the final shock. So far he had not gone beyond ungovernable rage; he had not lost self-consciousness, and could say, 'My wits begin to turn';iii.iv. 66.but the sight of Edgar completely unhinges his mind, and hallucinations set in; a moment after he has seen him the spirit of imitation begins to work, and Lear commences to strip off his clothes. Thus perfect is the regular arch of effect which is connected with Lear's madness. We have its gradual rise in the waves of hysterical passion which ebbed after they had flowed, until, at the point separating the Centrepiece from the rest of the play, Lear's 'O fool Ishallgo mad' seems to mark a change from which he never goes back. Through these central scenes exposure to the storm is fanning his passion more and more irretrievably into madness;iii.iii. 39.at the exact centre of all, imitation of Edgar comes to make the insanity acute.Decline after the Centrepiece from violent madness to shattered intellect.After the Centrepiece Lear disappears for a time, and when we next see him agitation has declined into what is more pathetic: the acute mania has given place to the pitiful spectacle of a shattered intellect; there is no longer sharp suffering,iv.vi. 81.but the whole mind is wrecked, gleams of coherence coming at intervals to mark what a fall there has been;compareiv.vi. 178;v.iii. 314.the strain upon our emotions sinks into the calm of hopelessness.

He hates him muchThat would upon the rack of this tough worldStretch him out longer.

He hates him much

That would upon the rack of this tough world

Stretch him out longer.

The passions of the underplot gather to a common Climax in the madness of Edgar.

But who is this madman with whom Lear meets at the turning-point of the play? It is Edgar, the victim of the underplot, whose life has been sought by his brother and father until he can find no way of saving himself but the disguise of feigned madness. This feigned madness ofEdgar, as it appears in the central scenes, serves as emotional climax to the underplot, just as the madness of Lear is the emotional climax of the main plot. Edgar's madness is obviously the climax to the tragedy of his own sufferings, but it is also a central point to the movement of the other two tragedies which with that of Edgar make up the underplot. One of these is the nemesis upon Gloucester, and this, we have seen, is double, that he receives good from the son he has wronged and evil from the son he has favoured.iii.iv. 170.The turning-point of such a nemesis is reached in the Hovel Scene, where Gloucester says:

I'll tell thee, friend,I am almost mad myself: I had a son,Now outlaw'd from my blood; he sought my life,But lately, very late: I loved him, friend:No father his son dearer: truth to tell thee,This grief hath crazed my wits!

I'll tell thee, friend,

I am almost mad myself: I had a son,

Now outlaw'd from my blood; he sought my life,

But lately, very late: I loved him, friend:

No father his son dearer: truth to tell thee,

This grief hath crazed my wits!

He says this in the presence of the very Edgar, disguised under the form of the wretched idiot he hardly marks. Edgar now learns how his father has been deceived;compareiii.iii. 15.in his heart he is re-united to him, and from this point of re-union springs the devotion he lavishes upon his father in the affliction that presently falls upon him.iii.iii. 22;iii.vii.On the other hand, that which brings Gloucester to this Hovel Scene, the attempt to save the King, is betrayed by Edmund, who becomes thereby the cause of the vengeance which puts out his father's eyes. Thus from this meeting of the mad Edgar with the mad Lear there springs at once the final stroke in the misery Gloucester suffers from the son he has favoured, and the beginning of the forgiving love he is to experience from the son he has wronged: that meeting then is certainly the central climax to the double nemesis which makes up the Gloucester action. The remaining tragedy of the underplot embraces the series of incidents by the combination of which the success of Edmund's intrigue becomes gradually converted into the nemesis which punishes it. Now thesqualid wretchedness of a Bedlamite, together with the painful strain of supporting the assumed character amidst the conflicting emotions which the unexpected meeting of the Hovel Scene has aroused, represent the highest point to which the misery resulting from the intrigue can rise.iv.i, &c.At the same time the use Edgar makes of this madness after hearing Gloucester's confession is to fasten himself in attendance upon his afflicted father, and proves in the sequel the means by which he is brought to be the instrument of the vengeance that overtakes Edmund. The central climax of a tragedy like this of intrigue and nemesis cannot be more clearly marked than in the incident in which are combined the summit of the injury and the foundation of the retribution. Thus all three tragedies which together make up the resultant of the intrigue constituting the underplot reach their climax of agitation in the scene in which Lear and Edgar meet.

The Centrepiece a duet, or by the addition of the Fool, a trio of madness.

It appears, then, that the Centrepiece of the play is occupied with the contact of two madnesses, the madness of Lear and the madness of Edgar; that of Lear gathering up into a climax trains of passion from all the three tragedies of the main plot, and that of Edgar holding a similar position to the three tragedies of the underplot. Further, these madnesses do not merely go on side by side; as they meet they mutually affect one another, and throw up each other's intensity. By the mere sight of the Bedlamite, Lear, already tottering upon the verge of insanity, is driven really and incurably mad; while in the case of Edgar, the meeting with Lear, and through Lear with Gloucester, converts the burden of feigning idiocy from a cruel stroke of unjust fate into a hardship voluntarily undergone for the sake of ministering to a father now forgiven and pitied. And so far as the general effect of the play is concerned this central Climax presents a terribleduet of madness, the wild ravings and mutual interworkings of two distinct strains of insanity, each answeringand outbidding the other. The distinctness is the greater as the two are different in kind. In Lear we have the madness of passion, exaggeration of ordinary emotions; Edgar's is the madness of idiocy, as idiocy was in early ages when the cruel neglect of society added physical hardship to mental affliction. In Edgar's frenzy we trace rapid irrelevance with gleams of unexpected relevance, just sufficient to partly answer a question and go off again into wandering; a sense of ill-treatment and of being an outcast; remorse and thoughts as to close connection of sin and retribution; visions of fiends as in bodily presence; cold, hunger: these alternating with mere gibberish, and all perhaps within the compass of a few lines.

iii.iv. 51.

Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlipool, o'er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five wits! Tom's a-cold,—O, do de, do de, do de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes: there could I have him now,—and there,—and there again, and there.

But this is not all. When examined more closely this Centrepiece exhibits not a duet but atrio of madness; with the other two there mingles a third form of what may be called madness, the professional madness of the court fool.Institution of the court fool.This court fool or jester is an institution of considerable interest. It seems to rest upon three mediæval and ancient notions. The first is the barbarism of enjoying personal defects, illustrated in the large number of Roman names derived from bodily infirmities, Varus the bandy-legged, Balbus the stammerer, and the like; this led our ancestors to find fun in the incoherence of natural idiocy, and finally made the imitation of it a profession. A second notion underlying the institution of a jester is the connection to the ancient mind between madness and inspiration; the sameGreek wordentheosstands for both, and to this day the idiot of a Scotch village is believed in some way to see further than sane folk. A third idea to be kept in mind is the mediæval conception of wit. With us wit is weighed by its intrinsic worth; the old idea, appearing repeatedly in Shakespeare's scenes, was that wit was a mental game, a sort of battledore and shuttlecock, in which the jokes themselves might be indifferent since the point of the game lay in keeping it up as smartly and as long as possible. The fool, whose title and motley dress suggested the absence of ordinary sense or propriety, combines in his office all three notions: from the last he was bound to keep up the fire of badinage, even though it were with witless nonsense; from the second he was expected at times to give utterance to deep truths; and in virtue of the first he had license to make hard hits under protection of the 'folly' which all were supposed to enjoy.

He that hath a fool doth very wisely hit,Doth very foolishly, although he smart,Not to seem senseless of the bob.

He that hath a fool doth very wisely hit,

Doth very foolishly, although he smart,

Not to seem senseless of the bob.

The institution adapted to modern times in Punch.

The institution, if it has died out as a personal office attached to kings or nobles, has perhaps been preserved by the nation as a whole in a form analogous to other modern institutions: the all-embracing newspaper has absorbed this element of life, and Mr. Punch is the national jester. His figure and face are an improvement on the old motley habit; his fixed number of pages have to be filled, if not always with wit, yet with passable padding: no one dare other than enjoy the compliment of his notice, under penalty of showing that 'the cap has fitted'; and certainly Mr. Punch finds ways of conveying to statesmen criticisms to which the proprieties of parliament would be impervious. The institution of the court fool is eagerly utilised by Shakespeare, and is the source of some of his finest effects: he treats it as a sort of chronic Comedy, the function of which may be described as that of translatingdeep truths of human nature into the language of laughter.

In applying, then, this general view of the court fool to the present case we must avoid two opposite errors. We must not pass over all his utterances as unmeaning folly, nor, on the other hand, must we insist upon seeing a meaning in everything that he says: what truth he speaks must be expected to make its appearance amidst a cloud of nonsense.The function of the Fool in Lear is to keep before us the original problem:Making this proviso we may lay down that the function of the Fool inKing Learis to keep vividly before the minds of the audience (as well as of his master) the idea at the root of the main plot—that unstable moral equilibrium, that unnatural distribution of power which Lear has set up, and of which the whole tragedy is the rebound.i.iv.In the first scene in which he appears before us he is, amid all his nonsense, harping upon the idea that Lear has committed the folly of trusting to the gratitude of the ungrateful, and is reaping the inevitable consequences. As he enters he hands his coxcomb, the symbol of folly, to the King, and to Kent for taking the King's part. His first jingling song,

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