always "the consummation of life."-LUCE, Handbook to Shakespeare's Works. What are we to make of it all? Was Gloucester right when he spoke of humanity as the quarry of malignant, irresponsible deities? "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." Is the dead march with which the play closes not only the dirge over the bodies of those that are no more, but over the futility of human ideals, over fruitless loyalties, and martyrdoms in vain? Is it all one to be a Cordelia or a Goneril, since in death they are not divided? Is that Shakspere's "message" to the world, and was the eighteenth century right after all when it rejected such a cheerless conclusion, and showed us Cordelia victorious and happily wedded to Edgar? No! this most representative of Shaksperean tragedies is not born of the pessimism that despairs of all things human, nor of the facile optimism that thinks everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. It is, as Kreyssig has called it, "the tragedy of the categorical imperative." It boldly recognizes that in the sphere of outward circumstances virtue is not always triumphant nor vice cast down. Amidst the clash of the iron forces of the universe, love and purity are often crushed. "Streams will not curb their pride The just man not to entomb, Nor lightnings go aside To give his virtues room; Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's barge." But there is an inner sanctuary inviolable by these shocks from without. In the kingdom of the spirit nothing matters except "the good will," and there Cordelia's ardor of love is justified of itself. It exists, and in its existence lies its triumph. But, even on the sternest interpretation of Shaksperean ethics, such glorious self-abandonment wins a benediction from above: "Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, The gods themselves throw incense." And may we not even venture to interpret Lear's own words as a prophetic salutation, and to think of her as "a soul in bliss," one of "the just spirits that wear victorious palms"?—Boas, Shakspere and his Predecessors. |