unity of action. But whatever contributes to the intrigue or the dénouement must always possess unity. And with what ingenuity and skill are the two main parts of the composition dovetailed into one another! The pity felt by Gloucester for the fate of Lear becomes the means which enables his son Edmund to effect his complete destruction, and affords the outcast Edgar an opportunity of being the saviour of his father. On the other hand, Edmund is active in the cause of Regan and Goneril, and the criminal passion which they both entertain for him induces them to execute justice on each other and on themselves. The laws of the drama have therefore been sufficiently complied with; but that is the least. It is the very combination which constitutes the sublime beauty of the work. The two cases resemble each other in the main: an infatuated father is blind towards his well-disposed child, and the unnatural children, whom he prefers, requite him by the ruin of all his happiness. But all the circumstances are so different that these stories, while they each make a correspondent impression on the heart, form a complete contrast for the imagination. Were Lear alone to suffer from his daughters, the impression would be limited to the powerful compassion felt by us for his private misfortune. But two such unheard-of examples taking place at the same time have the appearance of a great commotion in the moral world." The story of the victim of his own misdeeds is so skilfully interwoven with the story of the victim of his indiscretions, and is brought into so suggestive opposition, that the effect of each is more impressive. The Gloucester story in itself does not offer any striking chance of successful dramatic treatment, and in respect of the feigned madness of Edgar rather lends itself to comedy, but it attains a tragic power by its association with the story of Lear. On the other hand, the main theme is raised by this conjunction above a purely per

1 A. W. Schlegel, Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (English translation, 1879, p. 412).

sonal matter, and we are the more readily brought to think of Lear, not as the man, but as the victim of filial ingratitude.

We

Despite these apparently discordant elements, King Lear has complete unity of spirit. But in achieving this unity the art of Shakespeare has nowhere triumphed more completely than in the case of the Fool. The Fool. In less skilful hands his presence would have been inimical to the pity and terror of the tragedy. have seen how actors, for a period of over a hundred and fifty years, from the days of Tate to Macready, banished him from the stage from a faulty recognition of the import of his part. Even in restoring him Macready did not do him justice, for he regarded him as a mere youth, and accordingly entrusted the part to an actress. The Fool's remarks are only those of a man of full and rich experience of life. He is not a clown like Othello's servant, introduced merely for the sake of variety. He bears a much closer resemblance to the Fools of the later comedies, to Touchstone in As You Like It and Feste in Twelfth Night. As Touchstone, "he uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit". At first there is a sharpness in his taunts, for he hopes thereby, with the frankness that is the privilege of his position, to awaken the king to a knowledge of what he has done. Afterwards, when the worst has come to the worst, his wit has the gentler aim of relieving Lear's anguish. He no longer "teaches" Lear, but "labours to outjest his heart-struck injuries". He seems to give expression to the thought lurking deep in Lear's mind, as is shown by the readiness with which Lear catches at everything he says, or to voice the counsels of discretion. And he finally disappears from the play when Lear is mad. The Fool is, in fact, Lear's familiar spirit. He is Lear's only companion in the fateful step of going out into the night and braving the storm. Even then, as if in astonishment that his sorrows had not destroyed all his regard for others, Lear says, "I have one part in my heart that's

sorry yet for thee". How then, may it be asked, can the Fool possibly be omitted from King Lear? Apart from this consideration, the Fool has an important function in the drama. The eighteenth century actors unconsciously testified to this, for when they banished the Fool as “a character not to be endured on the modern stage", they, with one exception-and success did not attend this effort— made good the want by mawkish love scenes. These they preferred to a rôle which was regarded only as burlesque. But the artful prattle of the Fool does more than give variety and relax the strain on one's feelings. It makes Lear's lot endurable to us, but at the same time it gives us a keener sense of its sadness. The persistent reminders of Lear's folly, the recurring presentment of ideas in a new and stronger light, the caustic wit hidden in a seemingly casual remark, all bring home more forcibly the pity of Lear's plight. In a word, the Fool intensifies the pathos by relieving it.1

Lear.

The character of Lear is distinct from those of most of Shakespeare's heroes in that it is not revealed gradually. He is described fully in the very first scene. He has had a successful reign, but he is not a strong man. He is headstrong and rash, and old age has brought "unruly waywardness" and vanity. The play as a whole deals with the effects produced upon this passionate character by a foolish act for which he is alone responsible. The story is strictly that of a British king who began to rule "in the year of the world 3105, at what time Joas reigned in Juda". But Shakespeare has converted it into a tale of universal interest. He makes it but a basis for what Keats has called "the fierce dispute betwixt Hell

1 In this connection it is well to record the opinion of Shelley, expressed in his Defence of Poetry: "The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be, as in King Lear, universal, ideal, sublime. It is perhaps the intervention of this principle which determines the balance in favour of King Lear against Edipus Tyrannus or the AgamemKing Lear, if it can sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world, in spite of the narrow conditions to which the poet was subjected by the ignorance of the philosophy of the drama which has prevailed in modern Europe."

non....

torment and impassioned clay". All the details of the story are of little importance in themselves, and the art of Shakespeare makes us forget them in thinking of the total effect to which they contribute. The real subject of the play is not so much Lear as the outraged passion of filial affection. "Nobody from reading Shakespeare", says Hazlitt, "would know (except from the Dramatis Persona) that Lear was an English king. He is merely a king and a father. The ground is common: but what a well of tears has he dug out of it! There are no data. in history to go upon; no advantage is taken of costume, no acquaintance with geography or architecture or dialect is necessary; but there is an old tradition, human nature —an old temple, the human mind—and Shakespeare walks into it and looks about him with a lordly eye, and seizes on the sacred spoils as his own. The story is a thousand or two years old, and yet the tragedy has no smack of antiquarianism in it."2 It is this universal quality which allows such anachronisms as that one character should personate a madman of the seventeenth century and speak a south-western dialect, or that another should refer to the rules of chivalry. The very greatness of King Lear, the subordination and even abrogation of all detail, abundant though it is, made Charles Lamb declare the play essentially impossible to be represented on a stage. "The greatness of Lear", he says, "is not in corporal dimension, but in intellectual: the explosions of his passion are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on; even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage; while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear."3 His sufferings

Sonnet written before re-reading ‘King Lear'.

2 Hazlitt, Scott, Racine, and Shakespeare' in the Plain-Speaker. 8 Lamb, On the Tragedies of Shakespeare.

bring out good qualities which have been stunted in fortune. When we first know him he is so self-centred as to be absolutely regardless of others. But he comes to suspect his own "jealous curiosity" (i. 4. 67), tries to find an excuse for his enemies (ii. 4. 101-108), and is finally moved to contrition for his former indifference to the lot of even his meanest subjects (ili. 4. 28-36). He knows he must be patient. "You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need" (ii. 4. 268). He asserts that he will be the "pattern of all patience” (iii. 2. 33). But the blow has come too late. His fond old heart cannot endure the outrage of "the offices of nature, bond of childhood, effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude". He is too old to learn resignation. His remarks only increase in intensity. When he meets Regan after his rebuff by Goneril, he can greet her only by saying that if she is not glad to see him, her mother must have been an adultress (ii. 4. 126-128). At last he becomes almost inarticulate with passion (ii. 4. 275-283). The strain is too great, and the bonds of reason snap. Of this the premonitions have been so skilfully given that his madness seems inevitable.1 Yet he could never more truly say that he was "every inch a king" than when he threw aside the lendings of royalty and stood against the deep dread-bolted thunder, and defied the villainy of his unnatural daughters. If he baffles our sympathy or regard in the height of his fortune, he wins our reverence now; and the imagination fondly lingers over his recognition of Cordelia and his contentment with prison if only she is with him, and finds his early folly nobly expiated in his conduct at her death and his inability to live without her.2

1 Several accounts of the course of Lear's madness have been given by medical men. See, for example, Bucknill's Mad Folk of Shakespeare, pp. 160-235.

2 The Edipus Coloneus of Sophocles offers a remarkable comparison with King Lear. Edipus, too, is a man more sinned against than sinning (see note, iii. 2. 55), but he has learned patience and self-control and has a strength of character wanting in the aged Lear. His curse on Polynices is even more terrible than Lear's on Goneril, because it is deliberate, and does not spring from a passionate desire of revenge. And Antigone is his Cordelia.