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SYNOPSIS

By J. ELLIS BURDICK

ACT I

King Lear of Britain, feeling the cares of state too heavy for his years, decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. Telling them that their share depends on the greatness of their affections for him, he asks. each in turn how much she loves him. The two elder ones, Goneril and Regan, protest that their love is beyond their power to express and that they have no joy in life outside his love. On each of them, in conjunction with their husbands, Lear bestows a third of his kingdom. The youngest daughter, Cordelia, sickened by her sisters' hypocrisy, replies, "I cannot heave my heart into my mouth: I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less." The angry Lear divides the third he had

reserved for her between her two sisters. The Earl of Kent, for interposing on Cordelia's behalf, is banished. The Duke of Burgundy and the King of France have long been ardently courting Cordelia; now that she is dowerless, Burgundy withdraws his suit, but the love of the King of France is kindled to inflamed respect and he takes her to be "queen of us, of ours, and our fair France." King Lear has reserved to himself only the name of king and a following of one hundred knights, and he is to spend alternately a month at the courts of Goneril and Regan. Before long these two daughters tire of their father and begin to be discourteous to him. The Earl of Kent returns in disguise and enters Lear's service.

ACT II

The daughters reduce the number of his attendants, refuse to be respectful to him, put the Earl of Kent in the stocks, and finally so irritate the old man that he goes forth on the open heath in a heavy storm.

АСТ III

Only two of his retainers accompany him-his courtfool and Kent. They take refuge from the storm in a hovel, and there find Edgar, the son of the Earl of Gloucester. The latter has been supplanted in his father's affections by Edmund, his natural half-brother. The king's sorrows unbalance his mind. The Earl of Gloucester pities the old king and follows him that he may aid him. Edmund reports his deeds to Regan and Goneril, and the Duke of Cornwall, the former's husband, tears out Gloucester's eyes and thrusts him out of the gates to shift for himself.

ACT IV

Gloucester, wandering over the heath, is met and cared for by his son Edgar, who does not reveal his identity to his father. In the meantime Kent has sent word to Cordelia of her father's present condition and the cause of it, and she comes to his relief with a French army. By means of the doctors she has brought with her, Lear is restored to his right mind.

ACT V

In the battle between the French and British troops, Edmund commands for Goneril and Regan. Cordelia is defeated and she and her father taken prisoners. Goneril, for love of Edmund, poisons Regan, but afterward, when her dishonorable conduct is discovered by her husband, kills herself. Edgar charges Edmund with being a traitor and mortally wounds him in combat. Cordelia is hanged in the prison and Lear dies of a broken heart.

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THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR

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ACT FIRST

SCENE I

King Lear's palace.

Enter Kent, Gloucester, and Edmund. Kent. I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall. Glou. 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 equalities are so weighed that curiosity in neither can make choice of either's moiety.

5. The folio has qualities instead of equalities.-Johnson thinks "there is something of obscurity or inaccuracy" in the opening of the play. Coleridge remarks upon it as follows: "It was not without forethought, nor is it without its due significance, that the division of Lear's kingdom is in the first six lines of the play stated as a thing already determined in all its particulars, previously to the trial of professions, as the relative rewards of which the daughters were to be made to consider their several portions. The strange, yet by no means unnatural, mixture of selfishness, sensibility, and habit of feeling derived from, and fostered by, the particular rank and rd usages of the individual; the intense desire of being intensely beand loved, selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature alone; the self-supportless leaning for all pleasure on another's breast; the craving after sympathy with a prodigal disinterestedness, frustrated by its own ostentation, and the mode and nature of its claims; the anxiety, the distrust, the jealousy,

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Kent. Is not this your son, my lord?

Glou. His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: I have so often blushed to acknowl- 10, edge him that now I am brazed to it.

Kent. I cannot conceive you.

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Glou. Sir, this young fellow's mother could: whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?

Kent. I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper. Glou. But I have, sir, a son by order of law, 20 some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account: though this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged. Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund?

which more or less accompany all selfish affections, and are amongst the surest contradistinctions of mere fondness from true love, and which originate Lear's eager wish to enjoy his daughters' violent professions, whilst the inveterate habits of sovereignty convert the wish into claim and positive right, and an incompliance with it into crime and treason;-these facts, these passions, these moral verities, on which the whole tragedy is founded, are all prepared for, and will to the retrospect be found implied, in these first four or five lines of the play. They let us know that the trial is but a trick; and that the grossness of the old king's rage is in part the natural result of a silly trick suddenly and most unexpectedly baffled and disappointed."-H. N. H.

"equalities are so weighed," etc.; i. e. their shares are so nicely balanced that the closest scrutiny detects no superiority in either.C. H. H.

21, "some year"; a year or so.-C. H. H.

23. The folio has to instead of into.-H. N. H.

Edm. No, my lord. Bastard son

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Glou. My lord of Kent: remember him here-
after as my honorable friend.
Edm. My services to your lordship.

Kent. I must love you, and sue to know you
better.

Edm. Sir, I shall study deserving.

Glou. He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again. The king is coming.

30

Sennet. Enter one bearing a coronet, King Lear, Cornwall, Albany, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, and Attendants.

Lear. Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.

Glou. I shall, my liege.

Lord

[Exeunt Gloucester and Edmund. Lear. Meantime we shall express our darker pur

39

pose.
Give me the map there. Know we have divided
In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our

age,

Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthen'd crawl toward death. Our son of

Cornwall,

38. For "liege" the folio has lord.-H. N. H.

39. That is, "we have already made known our desire of parting the kingdom; we will now discover what has not been told before, the reasons by which we shall regulate the partition." This interpretation will justify or palliate the exordial dialogue (Johnson).— H. N. H.

42. "from our age"; so Ff.; Qq., "of our state.”—I. G. 43-48. ("while we

I. G.

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now"); 52-53, omitted in Quartos.

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