LECTURE VIII

Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,More hideous when thou show'st thee in a childThan the sea-monster!

or in the exclamation,

Filial ingratitude!Is it not as this mouth should tear this handFor lifting food to't?

It appears in another shape in that most vivid passage where Albany, as he looks at the face which had bewitched him, now distorted with dreadful passions, suddenly sees it in a new light and exclaims in horror:

Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame.Be-monster not thy feature. Were't my fitnessTo let these hands obey my blood,They are apt enough to dislocate and tearThy flesh and bones: howe'er thou art a fiend,A woman's shape doth shield thee.[143]

It appears once more in that exclamation of Kent's, as he listens to the description of Cordelia's grief:

It is the stars,The stars above us, govern our conditions;Else one self mate and mate could not begetSuch different issues.

(This is not the only sign that Shakespeare had been musing over heredity, and wondering how it comes about that the composition of two strains of blood or two parent souls can produce such astonishingly different products.)

This mode of thought is responsible, lastly, for a very striking characteristic ofKing Lear—one in which it has no parallel exceptTimon—the incessant references to the lower animals[144]and man's likeness to them. These references are scattered broadcast through the whole play, as though Shakespeare's mind were so busy with the subject that he could hardly write a page without some allusion to it. The dog, the horse, the cow, the sheep, the hog, the lion, the bear, the wolf, the fox, the monkey, the pole-cat, the civet-cat, the pelican, the owl, the crow, the chough, the wren, the fly, the butterfly, the rat, the mouse, the frog, the tadpole, the wall-newt, the water-newt, the worm—I am sure I cannot have completed the list, and some of them are mentioned again and again. Often, of course, and especially in the talk of Edgar as the Bedlam, they have no symbolical meaning; but not seldom, even in his talk, they are expressly referred to for their typical qualities—'hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey,' 'The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't With a more riotous appetite.' Sometimes a person in the drama is compared, openly or implicitly, with one of them.Goneril is a kite: her ingratitude has a serpent's tooth: she has struck her father most serpent-like upon the very heart: her visage is wolvish: she has tied sharp-toothed unkindness like a vulture on her father's breast: for her husband she is a gilded serpent: to Gloster her cruelty seems to have the fangs of a boar. She and Regan are dog-hearted: they are tigers, not daughters: each is an adder to the other: the flesh of each is covered with the fell of a beast. Oswald is a mongrel, and the son and heir of a mongrel: ducking to everyone in power, he is a wag-tail: white with fear, he is a goose. Gloster, for Regan, is an ingrateful fox: Albany, for his wife, has a cowish spirit and is milk-liver'd: when Edgar as the Bedlam first appeared to Lear he made him think a man a worm. As we read, the souls of all the beasts in turn seem to us to have entered the bodies of these mortals; horrible in their venom, savagery, lust, deceitfulness, sloth, cruelty, filthiness; miserable in their feebleness, nakedness, defencelessness, blindness; and man, 'consider him well,' is even what they are. Shakespeare, to whom the idea of the transmigration of souls was familiar and had once been material for jest,[145]seems to have been brooding on humanity in the light of it. Itis remarkable, and somewhat sad, that he seems to find none of man's better qualities in the world of the brutes (though he might well have found the prototype of the self-less love of Kent and Cordelia in the dog whom he so habitually maligns);[146]but he seems to have been asking himself whether that which he loathes in man may not be due to some strange wrenching of this frame of things, through which the lower animal souls have found a lodgment in human forms, and there found—to the horror and confusion of the thinking mind—brains to forge, tongues to speak, and hands to act, enormities which no mere brute can conceive or execute. He shows us inKing Learthese terrible forces bursting into monstrous life and flinging themselves upon those human beings who are weak and defenceless, partly from old age, but partly because theyarehuman and lack the dreadful undivided energy of the beast. And the only comfort he might seem to hold out to us is the prospect that at least this bestial race, strong only where it is vile, cannot endure: though stars and gods are powerless, or careless, or empty dreams, yet there must be an end of this horrible world:

It will come;Humanity must perforce prey on itselfLike monsters of the deep.[147]

The influence of all this on imagination as we readKing Learis very great; and it combines with other influences to convey to us, not in the form of distinct ideas but in the manner proper to poetry, the wider or universal significance of the spectacle presented to the inward eye. But the effect of theatrical exhibition is precisely the reverse. There the poetic atmosphere is dissipated; the meaning of the very words which create it passes half-realised; in obedience to the tyranny of the eye we conceive the characters as mere particular men and women; and all that mass of vague suggestion, if it enters the mind at all, appears in the shape of an allegory which we immediately reject. A similar conflict between imagination and sense will be found if we consider the dramatic centre of the whole tragedy, the Storm-scenes. The temptation of Othello and the scene of Duncan's murder may lose upon the stage, but they do not lose their essence, and they gain as well as lose. The Storm-scenes inKing Leargain nothing and their very essence is destroyed. It is comparatively a small thing that the theatrical storm, not to drown the dialogue, must be silent whenever a human being wishes to speak, and is wretchedly inferior to many a storm we have witnessed. Nor is it simply that, as Lamb observed, the corporal presence of Lear, 'an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick,' disturbs and depresses that sense of the greatness of his mind which fills the imagination. There is a further reason, which is not expressed, but still emerges, in these words of Lamb's: 'the explosions of hispassion are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches.' Yes, 'they arestorms.' For imagination, that is to say, the explosions of Lear's passion, and the bursts of rain and thunder, are not, what for the senses they must be, two things, but manifestations of one thing. It is the powers of the tormented soul that we hear and see in the 'groans of roaring wind and rain' and the 'sheets of fire'; and they that, at intervals almost more overwhelming, sink back into darkness and silence. Nor yet is even this all; but, as those incessant references to wolf and tiger made us see humanity 'reeling back into the beast' and ravening against itself, so in the storm we seem to see Nature herself convulsed by the same horrible passions; the 'common mother,'

Whose womb immeasurable and infinite breastTeems and feeds all,

turning on her children, to complete the ruin they have wrought upon themselves. Surely something not less, but much more, than these helpless words convey, is what comes to us in these astounding scenes; and if, translated thus into the language of prose, it becomes confused and inconsistent, the reason is simply that it itself is poetry, and such poetry as cannot be transferred to the space behind the foot-lights, but has its being only in imagination. Here then is Shakespeare at his very greatest, but not the mere dramatist Shakespeare.[148]

And now we may say this also of the catastrophe, which we found questionable from the strictly dramatic point of view. Its purpose is not merely dramatic. This sudden blow out of the darkness, which seems so far from inevitable, and which strikes down our reviving hopes for the victims of so much cruelty, seems now only what we might have expected in a world so wild and monstrous. It is as if Shakespeare said to us: 'Did you think weakness and innocence have any chance here? Were you beginning to dream that? I will show you it is not so.'

I come to a last point. As we contemplate this world, the question presses on us, What can be the ultimate power that moves it, that excites this gigantic war and waste, or, perhaps, that suffers them and overrules them? And inKing Learthis question is not left to us to ask, it is raised by the characters themselves. References to religious or irreligious beliefs and feelings are more frequent than is usual in Shakespeare's tragedies, as frequent perhaps as in his final plays. He introduces characteristic differences in the language of the different persons about fortune or the stars or the gods, and shows how the question What rules the world? is forced upon their minds. They answer it in their turn: Kent, for instance:

It is the stars,The stars above us, govern our condition:

Edmund:

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy lawMy services are bound:

and again,

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, ... and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on:

Gloster:

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;They kill us for their sport;

Edgar:

Think that the clearest gods, who make them honoursOf men's impossibilities, have preserved thee.

Here we have four distinct theories of the nature of the ruling power. And besides this, in such of the characters as have any belief in gods who love good and hate evil, the spectacle of triumphant injustice or cruelty provokes questionings like those of Job, or else the thought, often repeated, of divine retribution. To Lear at one moment the storm seems the messenger of heaven:

Let the great gods,That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,That hast within thee undivulged crimes....

At another moment those habitual miseries of the poor, of which he has taken too little account, seem to him to accuse the gods of injustice:

Take physic, pomp;Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,That thou mayst shake the superflux to themAnd show the heavens more just;

and Gloster has almost the same thought (iv.i. 67 ff.). Gloster again, thinking of the cruelty of Lear's daughters, breaks out,

but I shall seeThe winged vengeance overtake such children.

The servants who have witnessed the blinding of Gloster by Cornwall and Regan, cannot believe that cruelty so atrocious will pass unpunished. One cries,

I'll never care what wickedness I do,If this man come to good;

and another,

if she live long,And in the end meet the old course of death,Women will all turn monsters.

Albany greets the news of Cornwall's death with the exclamation,

This shows you are above,You justicers, that these our nether crimesSo speedily can venge;

and the news of the deaths of the sisters with the words,

This judgment[149]of the heavens, that makes us tremble,Touches us not with pity.

Edgar, speaking to Edmund of their father, declares

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vicesMake instruments to plague us,

and Edmund himself assents. Almost throughout the latter half of the drama we note in most of the better characters a pre-occupation with the question of the ultimate power, and a passionate need to explain by reference to it what otherwise would drive them to despair. And the influence of this pre-occupation and need joins with other influences in affecting the imagination, and in causing it to receive fromKing Learan impression which is at least as near of kin to theDivine Comedyas toOthello.

For Dante that which is recorded in theDivine Comedywas the justice and love of God. What didKing Learrecord for Shakespeare? Something, it would seem, very different. This is certainly the most terrible picture that Shakespeare painted of the world. In no other of his tragedies does humanity appear more pitiably infirm or more hopelessly bad. What is Iago's malignity against an envied stranger compared with the cruelty of the son of Gloster and the daughters of Lear? Whatare the sufferings of a strong man like Othello to those of helpless age? Much too that we have already observed—the repetition of the main theme in that of the under-plot, the comparisons of man with the most wretched and the most horrible of the beasts, the impression of Nature's hostility to him, the irony of the unexpected catastrophe—these, with much else, seem even to indicate an intention to show things at their worst, and to return the sternest of replies to that question of the ultimate power and those appeals for retribution. Is it an accident, for example, that Lear's first appeal to something beyond the earth,

O heavens,If you do love old men, if your sweet swayAllow[150]obedience, if yourselves are old,Make it your cause:

is immediately answered by the iron voices of his daughters, raising by turns the conditions on which they will give him a humiliating harbourage; or that his second appeal, heart-rending in its piteousness,

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,As full of grief as age; wretched in both:

is immediately answered from the heavens by the sounds of the breaking storm?[151]Albany and Edgar may moralise on the divine justice as they will, but how, in face of all that we see, shall we believe that they speak Shakespeare's mind? Is not his mind rather expressed in the bitter contrast between their faith and the events we witness, or in the scornful rebuke of those who take upon them the mystery of things as if they were God's spies?[152]Is it not Shakespeare's judgment on his kind that we hear in Lear's appeal,

And thou, all-shaking thunder,Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,That make ingrateful man!

and Shakespeare's judgment on the worth of existence that we hear in Lear's agonised cry, 'No, no, no life!'?

Beyond doubt, I think, some such feelings as these possess us, and, if we follow Shakespeare, ought to possess us, from time to time as we readKing Lear. And some readers will go further and maintain that this is also the ultimate and total impression left by the tragedy.King Learhas been held to be profoundly 'pessimistic' in the full meaning of that word,—the record of a time when contempt and loathing for his kind had overmastered the poet's soul, and in despair he pronounced man's life to be simply hateful and hideous. And if we exclude the biographical part of this view,[153]the rest may claim some support evenfrom the greatest of Shakespearean critics since the days of Coleridge, Hazlitt and Lamb. Mr. Swinburne, after observing thatKing Learis 'by far the most Aeschylean' of Shakespeare's works, proceeds thus:

'But in one main point it differs radically from the work and the spirit of Aeschylus. Its fatalism is of a darker and harder nature. To Prometheus the fetters of the lord and enemy of mankindwere bitter; upon Orestes the hand of heaven was laid too heavily to bear; yet in the not utterly infinite or everlasting distance we see beyond them the promise of the morning on which mystery and justice shall be made one; when righteousness and omnipotence at last shall kiss each other. But on the horizon of Shakespeare's tragic fatalism we see no such twilight of atonement, such pledge of reconciliation as this. Requital, redemption, amends, equity, explanation, pity and mercy, are words without a meaning here.

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;They kill us for their sport.

Here is no need of the Eumenides, children of Night everlasting; for here is very Night herself.

'The words just cited are not casual or episodical; they strike the keynote of the whole poem, lay the keystone of the whole arch of thought. There is no contest of conflicting forces, no judgment so much as by casting of lots: far less is there any light of heavenly harmony or of heavenly wisdom, of Apollo or Athene from above. We have heard much and often from theologians of the light of revelation: and some such thing indeed we find in Aeschylus; but the darkness of revelation is here.'[154]

It is hard to refuse assent to these eloquent words, for they express in the language of a poet what we feel at times in readingKing Learbut cannot express. But do they represent the total and final impression produced by the play? If they do, this impression, so far as the substance of the drama is concerned (and nothing else is in question here), must, it would seem, be one composed almost wholly of painful feelings,—utter depression, or indignant rebellion, or appalled despair. And that would surely be strange. ForKing Learis admittedly one of the world's greatest poems, andyet there is surely no other of these poems which produces on the whole this effect, and we regard it as a very serious flaw in any considerable work of art that this should be its ultimate effect.[155]So that Mr. Swinburne's description, if taken as final, and any description of King Lear as 'pessimistic' in the proper sense of that word, would imply a criticism which is not intended, and which would make it difficult to leave the work in the position almost universally assigned to it.

But in fact these descriptions, like most of the remarks made onKing Learin 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 theDivine Comedyor theOresteia: how should it, when the first of these can be called by its author a 'Comedy,' and when the second, ending (as doubtless thePrometheustrilogy also ended) with a solution, is not in the Shakespearean sense a tragedy at all?[156]Nor do I mean thatKing Learcontains 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 respectsKing 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:[123]I leave undiscussed the position ofKing Learin relation to the 'comedies' ofMeasure for Measure,Troilus and CressidaandAll's Well.[124]SeeNote R.[125]On some of the points mentioned in this paragraph seeNote S.[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.[127]I loved her most, and thought to set my restOn her kind nursery.[128]It is to Lear's altered plan that Kent applies these words.[129]There is talk of a war between Goneril and Regan within a fortnight of the division of the kingdom (ii.i. 11 f.).[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 deathinstantly(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 linesafter 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, hestillsays 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. Therealcause lies outside the dramaticnexus. It is Shakespeare's wish to deliver a sudden and crushing blow to the hopes which he has excited.[131]Everything in these paragraphs must, of course, be taken in connection with later remarks.[132]I say 'the reader's,' because on the stage, whenever I have seenKing 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 hisTale of King Learalmost omits the sub-plot.[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 Actsiv.andv., seeNote X.[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' Seei.ii. 38-40, 65 f.[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.[136]SeeNote T. and p.315.[137]SeeNote U.[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 wroteMacbeth.[139]It is pointed out inNote V. that what modern editors call Scenes ii., iii., iv. of Actii.are really one scene, for Kent is on the stage through them all.[140][On the locality of Acti., Sc. ii., seeModern Language Reviewfor Oct., 1908, and Jan., 1909.][141]This effect of the double action seems to have been pointed out first by Schlegel.[142]How prevalent these are is not recognised by readers familiar only with English poetry. See Simpson'sIntroduction 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.[143]The monstrosity here is a being with a woman's body and a fiend's soul. For the interpretation of the lines seeNote Y.[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.[145]E.g.inAs 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 ofKing 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 faithTo hold opinion with Pythagoras,That souls of animals infuse themselvesInto the trunks of men: thy currish spiritGovern'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 desiresAre wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous.[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 inKing Lear, as if he were feeling a peculiar disgust at it. Seeiii.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.[147]With this compare the following lines in the great speech on 'degree' inTroilus and Cressida,i.iii.:Take but degree away, untune that string,And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy: the bounded watersShould lift their bosoms higher than the shoresAnd 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.[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.[149]'justice,' Qq.[150]=approve.[151]The direction 'Storm and tempest' at the end of this speech is not modern, it is in the Folio.[152]The gods are mentioned many times inKing Lear, but 'God' only here (v.ii. 16).[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, afterTwelfth NightShakespeare 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 orderHamlet,Othello,King Lear,Timon,Macbeth, is correct, these tragedies show for some time a deepening darkness, andKing LearandTimonlie at the nadir. He wrote also in these years (probably in the earlier of them) certain 'comedies,'Measure for MeasureandTroilus and Cressida, and perhapsAll's Well. But about these comedies there is a peculiar air of coldness; there is humour, of course, but little mirth; inMeasure for Measureperhaps, certainly inTroilus and Cressida, a spirit of bitterness and contempt seems to pervade an intellectual atmosphere of an intense but hard clearness. WithMacbethperhaps, 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 Cressidaand his part ofTimonare 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 deepeningpersonalnote: for althoughOthellois darker thanHamletit 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 bringTroilus and Cressidachronologically close toKing LearandTimon; 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 asHamlet,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, inKing LearandTimon, 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 ofKing Learcan be called pessimistic is a further question, which is considered in the text.[154]A Study of Shakespeare, pp. 171, 172.[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.[156]Caution is very necessary in making comparisons between Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists. A tragedy like theAntigonestands, in spite of differences, on the same ground as a Shakespearean tragedy; it is a self-contained whole with a catastrophe. A drama like thePhiloctetesis a self-contained whole, but, ending with a solution, it corresponds not with a Shakespearean tragedy but with a play likeCymbeline. A drama like theAgamemnonor thePrometheus Vinctusanswers 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 toHamletbut toCymbeline. If the part is considered as a whole, it answers toHamlet, but may then be open to serious criticism. Shakespeare never made a tragedy end with the complete triumph of the worse side: theAgamemnonandPrometheus, 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.][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.

FOOTNOTES:

[123]I leave undiscussed the position ofKing Learin relation to the 'comedies' ofMeasure for Measure,Troilus and CressidaandAll's Well.

[124]SeeNote R.

[125]On some of the points mentioned in this paragraph seeNote S.

[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.

[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.'

'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.

[127]I loved her most, and thought to set my restOn her kind nursery.

[127]

I loved her most, and thought to set my restOn her kind nursery.

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

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

[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 deathinstantly(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 linesafter 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, hestillsays 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. Therealcause lies outside the dramaticnexus. It is Shakespeare's wish to deliver a sudden and crushing blow to the hopes which he has excited.

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, hestillsays 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. Therealcause lies outside the dramaticnexus. It is Shakespeare's wish to deliver a sudden and crushing blow to the hopes which he has excited.

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

[132]I say 'the reader's,' because on the stage, whenever I have seenKing 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 hisTale of King Learalmost omits the sub-plot.

[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 Actsiv.andv., seeNote X.

[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' Seei.ii. 38-40, 65 f.

[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.

[136]SeeNote T. and p.315.

[137]SeeNote U.

[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 wroteMacbeth.

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

[140][On the locality of Acti., Sc. ii., seeModern Language Reviewfor Oct., 1908, and Jan., 1909.]

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

[142]How prevalent these are is not recognised by readers familiar only with English poetry. See Simpson'sIntroduction 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.

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

[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.

[145]E.g.inAs 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 ofKing 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 faithTo hold opinion with Pythagoras,That souls of animals infuse themselvesInto the trunks of men: thy currish spiritGovern'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 desiresAre wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous.

O be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog!And for thy life let justice be accused.Thou almost makest me waver in my faithTo hold opinion with Pythagoras,That souls of animals infuse themselvesInto the trunks of men: thy currish spiritGovern'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 desiresAre wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous.

[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 inKing Lear, as if he were feeling a peculiar disgust at it. Seeiii.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.

[147]With this compare the following lines in the great speech on 'degree' inTroilus and Cressida,i.iii.:Take but degree away, untune that string,And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy: the bounded watersShould lift their bosoms higher than the shoresAnd 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.

[147]With this compare the following lines in the great speech on 'degree' inTroilus and Cressida,i.iii.:

Take but degree away, untune that string,And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy: the bounded watersShould lift their bosoms higher than the shoresAnd 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.

[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.

[149]'justice,' Qq.

[150]=approve.

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

[152]The gods are mentioned many times inKing Lear, but 'God' only here (v.ii. 16).

[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, afterTwelfth NightShakespeare 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 orderHamlet,Othello,King Lear,Timon,Macbeth, is correct, these tragedies show for some time a deepening darkness, andKing LearandTimonlie at the nadir. He wrote also in these years (probably in the earlier of them) certain 'comedies,'Measure for MeasureandTroilus and Cressida, and perhapsAll's Well. But about these comedies there is a peculiar air of coldness; there is humour, of course, but little mirth; inMeasure for Measureperhaps, certainly inTroilus and Cressida, a spirit of bitterness and contempt seems to pervade an intellectual atmosphere of an intense but hard clearness. WithMacbethperhaps, 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 Cressidaand his part ofTimonare 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 deepeningpersonalnote: for althoughOthellois darker thanHamletit 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 bringTroilus and Cressidachronologically close toKing LearandTimon; 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 asHamlet,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, inKing LearandTimon, 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 ofKing Learcan be called pessimistic is a further question, which is considered in the text.

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, afterTwelfth NightShakespeare 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 orderHamlet,Othello,King Lear,Timon,Macbeth, is correct, these tragedies show for some time a deepening darkness, andKing LearandTimonlie at the nadir. He wrote also in these years (probably in the earlier of them) certain 'comedies,'Measure for MeasureandTroilus and Cressida, and perhapsAll's Well. But about these comedies there is a peculiar air of coldness; there is humour, of course, but little mirth; inMeasure for Measureperhaps, certainly inTroilus and Cressida, a spirit of bitterness and contempt seems to pervade an intellectual atmosphere of an intense but hard clearness. WithMacbethperhaps, 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 Cressidaand his part ofTimonare 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 deepeningpersonalnote: for althoughOthellois darker thanHamletit 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 bringTroilus and Cressidachronologically close toKing LearandTimon; 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 asHamlet,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, inKing LearandTimon, 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 ofKing Learcan be called pessimistic is a further question, which is considered in the text.

[154]A Study of Shakespeare, pp. 171, 172.

[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.

[156]Caution is very necessary in making comparisons between Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists. A tragedy like theAntigonestands, in spite of differences, on the same ground as a Shakespearean tragedy; it is a self-contained whole with a catastrophe. A drama like thePhiloctetesis a self-contained whole, but, ending with a solution, it corresponds not with a Shakespearean tragedy but with a play likeCymbeline. A drama like theAgamemnonor thePrometheus Vinctusanswers 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 toHamletbut toCymbeline. If the part is considered as a whole, it answers toHamlet, but may then be open to serious criticism. Shakespeare never made a tragedy end with the complete triumph of the worse side: theAgamemnonandPrometheus, 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.]

[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.

We have now to look at the characters inKing 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.

The position of the hero in this tragedy is in one important respect peculiar. The reader ofHamlet,Othello, orMacbeth, 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 withKing 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 hehas 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 tragicὓβρις. 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 tragicnexuswhich 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, theinjusticeof his rejection of Cordelia, but there is precisely the sameὓβρις. This had been shown most strikingly in the first scene when,immediatelyupon the apparently cold words of Cordelia, 'So young, my lord, and true,' there comes this dreadful answer:

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