art and in tragic power _King Lear_ is infinitely nearer to _Othello_
than to _Timon_, in its spirit and substance its affinity with _Timon_
is a good deal the stronger. And, returning to the point from which
these comparisons began, I would now add that there is in _King Lear_ a
reflection or anticipation, however faint, of the structural weakness of
_Timon_. This weakness in _King Lear_ is not due, however, to anything
intrinsically undramatic in the story, but to characteristics which were
necessary to an effect not wholly dramatic. The stage is the test of
strictly dramatic quality, and _King Lear_ is too huge for the stage. Of
course, I am not denying that it is a great stage-play. It has scenes
immensely effective in the theatre; three of them--the two between Lear
and Goneril and between Lear, Goneril and Regan, and the ineffably
beautiful scene in the Fourth Act between Lear and Cordelia--lose in the
theatre very little of the spell they have for imagination; and the
gradual interweaving of the two plots is almost as masterly as in _Much
Ado_. But (not to speak of defects due to mere carelessness) that which
makes the _peculiar_ greatness of King Lear,--the immense scope of the
work; the mass and variety of intense experience which it contains; the
interpenetration of sublime imagination, piercing pathos, and humour
almost as moving as the pathos; the vastness of the convulsion both of
nature and of human passion; the vagueness of the scene where the action
takes place, and of the movements of the figures which cross this scene;
the strange atmosphere, cold and dark, which strikes on us as we enter
this scene, enfolding these figures and magnifying their dim outlines
like a winter mist; the half-realised suggestions of vast universal
powers working in the world of individual fates and passions,--all this
interferes with dramatic clearness even when the play is read, and in
the theatre not only refuses to reveal itself fully through the senses
but seems to be almost in contradiction with their reports. This is not
so with the other great tragedies. No doubt, as Lamb declared,
theatrical representation gives only a part of what we imagine when we
read them; but there is no _conflict_ between the representation and the
imagination, because these tragedies are, in essentials, perfectly
dramatic. But _King Lear_, as a whole, is imperfectly dramatic, and
there is something in its very essence which is at war with the senses,
and demands a purely imaginative realisation. It is therefore
Shakespeare's greatest work, but it is not what Hazlitt called it, the
best of his plays; and its comparative unpopularity is due, not merely
to the extreme painfulness of the catastrophe, but in part to its
dramatic defects, and in part to a failure in many readers to catch the
peculiar effects to which I have referred,--a failure which is natural
because the appeal is made not so much to dramatic perception as to a
rarer and more strictly poetic kind of imagination. For this reason,
too, even the best attempts at exposition of _King Lear_ are
disappointing; they remind us of attempts to reduce to prose the
impalpable spirit of the _Tempest_.
I propose to develop some of these ideas by considering, first, the
dramatic defects of the play, and then some of the causes of its
extraordinary imaginative effect.
1
We may begin, however, by referring to two passages which have often
been criticised with injustice. The first is that where the blinded
Gloster, believing that he is going to leap down Dover cliff, does in
fact fall flat on the ground at his feet, and then is persuaded that he
_has_ leaped down Dover cliff but has been miraculously preserved.
Imagine this incident transferred to _Othello_, and you realise how
completely the two tragedies differ in dramatic atmosphere. In _Othello_
it would be a shocking or a ludicrous dissonance, but it is in harmony
with the spirit of _King Lear_. And not only is this so, but, contrary
to expectation, it is not, if properly acted, in the least absurd on the
stage. The imagination and the feelings have been worked upon with such
effect by the description of the cliff, and by the portrayal of the old
man's despair and his son's courageous and loving wisdom, that we are
unconscious of the grotesqueness of the incident for common sense.
The second passage is more important, for it deals with the origin of
the whole conflict. The oft-repeated judgment that the first scene of
_King Lear_ is absurdly improbable, and that no sane man would think of
dividing his kingdom among his daughters in proportion to the strength
of their several protestations of love, is much too harsh and is based
upon a strange misunderstanding. This scene acts effectively, and to
imagination the story is not at all incredible. It is merely strange,
like so many of the stories on which our romantic dramas are based.
Shakespeare, besides, has done a good deal to soften the improbability
of the legend, and he has done much more than the casual reader
perceives. The very first words of the drama, as Coleridge pointed out,
tell us that the division of the kingdom is already settled in all its
details, so that only the public announcement of it remains.[126] Later
we find that the lines of division have already been drawn on the map of
Britain (l. 38), and again that Cordelia's share, which is her dowry, is
perfectly well known to Burgundy, if not to France (ll. 197, 245). That
then which is censured as absurd, the dependence of the division on the
speeches of the daughters, was in Lear's intention a mere form, devised
as a childish scheme to gratify his love of absolute power and his
hunger for assurances of devotion. And this scheme is perfectly in
character. We may even say that the main cause of its failure was not
that Goneril and Regan were exceptionally hypocritical, but that
Cordelia was exceptionally sincere and unbending. And it is essential to
observe that its failure, and the consequent necessity of publicly
reversing his whole well-known intention, is one source of Lear's
extreme anger. He loved Cordelia most and knew that she loved him best,
and the supreme moment to which he looked forward was that in which she
should outdo her sisters in expressions of affection, and should be
rewarded by that 'third' of the kingdom which was the most 'opulent.'
And then--so it naturally seemed to him--she put him to open shame.
There is a further point, which seems to have escaped the attention of
Coleridge and others. Part of the absurdity of Lear's plan is taken to
be his idea of living with his three daughters in turn. But he never
meant to do this. He meant to live with Cordelia, and with her
alone.[127] The scheme of his alternate monthly stay with Goneril and
Regan is forced on him at the moment by what he thinks the undutifulness
of his favourite child. In fact his whole original plan, though foolish
and rash, was not a 'hideous rashness'[128] or incredible folly. If
carried out it would have had no such consequences as followed its
alteration. It would probably have led quickly to war,[129] but not to
the agony which culminated in the storm upon the heath. The first scene,
therefore, is not absurd, though it must be pronounced dramatically
faulty in so far as it discloses the true position of affairs only to an
attention more alert than can be expected in a theatrical audience or
has been found in many critics of the play.
Let us turn next to two passages of another kind, the two which are
mainly responsible for the accusation of excessive painfulness, and so
for the distaste of many readers and the long theatrical eclipse of
_King Lear_. The first of these is much the less important; it is the
scene of the blinding of Gloster. The blinding of Gloster on the stage
has been condemned almost universally; and surely with justice, because
the mere physical horror of such a spectacle would in the theatre be a
sensation so violent as to overpower the purely tragic emotions, and
therefore the spectacle would seem revolting or shocking. But it is
otherwise in reading. For mere imagination the physical horror, though
not lost, is so far deadened that it can do its duty as a stimulus to
pity, and to that appalled dismay at the extremity of human cruelty
which it is of the essence of the tragedy to excite. Thus the blinding
of Gloster belongs rightly to _King Lear_ in its proper world of
imagination; it is a blot upon _King Lear_ as a stage-play.
But what are we to say of the second and far more important passage, the
conclusion of the tragedy, the 'unhappy ending,' as it is called, though
the word 'unhappy' sounds almost ironical in its weakness? Is this too a
blot upon _King Lear_ as a stage-play? The question is not so easily
answered as might appear. Doubtless we are right when we turn with
disgust from Tate's sentimental alterations, from his marriage of Edgar
and Cordelia, and from that cheap moral which every one of Shakespeare's
tragedies contradicts, 'that Truth and Virtue shall at last succeed.'
But are we so sure that we are right when we unreservedly condemn the
feeling which prompted these alterations, or at all events the feeling
which beyond question comes naturally to many readers of _King Lear_ who
would like Tate as little as we? What they wish, though they have not
always the courage to confess it even to themselves, is that the deaths
of Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Gloster should be followed by the escape
of Lear and Cordelia from death, and that we should be allowed to
imagine the poor old King passing quietly in the home of his beloved
child to the end which cannot be far off. Now, I do not dream of saying
that we ought to wish this, so long as we regard _King Lear_ simply as a
work of poetic imagination. But if _King Lear_ is to be considered
strictly as a drama, or simply as we consider _Othello_, it is not so
clear that the wish is unjustified. In fact I will take my courage in
both hands and say boldly that I share it, and also that I believe
Shakespeare would have ended his play thus had he taken the subject in
hand a few years later, in the days of _Cymbeline_ and the _Winter's
Tale_. If I read _King Lear_ simply as a drama, I find that my feelings
call for this 'happy ending.' I do not mean the human, the
philanthropic, feelings, but the dramatic sense. The former wish Hamlet
and Othello to escape their doom; the latter does not; but it does wish
Lear and Cordelia to be saved. Surely, it says, the tragic emotions have
been sufficiently stirred already. Surely the tragic outcome of Lear's
error and his daughters' ingratitude has been made clear enough and
moving enough. And, still more surely, such a tragic catastrophe as this
should seem _inevitable_. But this catastrophe, unlike those of all the
other mature tragedies, does not seem at all inevitable. It is not even
satisfactorily motived.[130] In fact it seems expressly designed to fall
suddenly like a bolt from a sky cleared by the vanished storm. And
although from a wider point of view one may fully recognise the value of
this effect, and may even reject with horror the wish for a 'happy
ending,' this wider point of view, I must maintain, is not strictly
dramatic or tragic.
Of course this is a heresy and all the best authority is against it. But
then the best authority, it seems to me, is either influenced
unconsciously by disgust at Tate's sentimentalism or unconsciously takes
that wider point of view. When Lamb--there is no higher
authority--writes, 'A happy ending!--as if the living martyrdom that
Lear had gone through, the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a
fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him,'
I answer, first, that it is precisely this _fair_ dismissal which we
desire for him instead of renewed anguish; and, secondly, that what we
desire for him during the brief remainder of his days is not 'the
childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again,' not what
Tate gives him, but what Shakespeare himself might have given him--peace
and happiness by Cordelia's fireside. And if I am told that he has
suffered too much for this, how can I possibly believe it with these
words ringing in my ears:
Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies?
And again when Schlegel declares that, if Lear were saved, 'the whole'
would 'lose its significance,' because it would no longer show us that
the belief in Providence 'requires a wider range than the dark
pilgrimage on earth to be established in its whole extent,' I answer
that, if the drama does show us that, it takes us beyond the strictly
tragic point of view.[131]
A dramatic mistake in regard to the catastrophe, however, even supposing
it to exist, would not seriously affect the whole play. The principal
structural weakness of _King Lear_ lies elsewhere. It is felt to some
extent in the earlier Acts, but still more (as from our study of
Shakespeare's technique we have learnt to expect) in the Fourth and the
first part of the Fifth. And it arises chiefly from the double action,
which is a peculiarity of _King Lear_ among the tragedies. By the side
of Lear, his daughters, Kent, and the Fool, who are the principal
figures in the main plot, stand Gloster and his two sons, the chief
persons of the secondary plot. Now by means of this double action
Shakespeare secured certain results highly advantageous even from the
strictly dramatic point of view, and easy to perceive. But the
disadvantages were dramatically greater. The number of essential
characters is so large, their actions and movements are so complicated,
and events towards the close crowd on one another so thickly, that the
reader's attention,[132] rapidly transferred from one centre of interest
to another, is overstrained. He becomes, if not intellectually confused,
at least emotionally fatigued. The battle, on which everything turns,
scarcely affects him. The deaths of Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Gloster
seem 'but trifles here'; and anything short of the incomparable pathos
of the close would leave him cold. There is something almost ludicrous
in the insignificance of this battle, when it is compared with the
corresponding battles in _Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_; and though there
may have been further reasons for its insignificance, the main one is
simply that there was no room to give it its due effect among such a
host of competing interests.[133]
A comparison of the last two Acts of _Othello_ with the last two Acts of
_King Lear_ would show how unfavourable to dramatic clearness is a
multiplicity of figures. But that this multiplicity is not in itself a
fatal obstacle is evident from the last two Acts of _Hamlet_, and
especially from the final scene. This is in all respects one of
Shakespeare's triumphs, yet the stage is crowded with characters. Only
they are not _leading_ characters. The plot is single; Hamlet and the
King are the 'mighty opposites'; and Ophelia, the only other person in
whom we are obliged to take a vivid interest, has already disappeared.
It is therefore natural and right that the deaths of Laertes and the
Queen should affect us comparatively little. But in _King Lear_, because
the plot is double, we have present in the last scene no less than five
persons who are technically of the first importance--Lear, his three
daughters and Edmund; not to speak of Kent and Edgar, of whom the latter
at any rate is technically quite as important as Laertes. And again,
owing to the pressure of persons and events, and owing to the
concentration of our anxiety on Lear and Cordelia, the combat of Edgar
and Edmund, which occupies so considerable a space, fails to excite a
tithe of the interest of the fencing-match in _Hamlet_. The truth is
that all through these Acts Shakespeare has too vast a material to use
with complete dramatic effectiveness, however essential this very
vastness was for effects of another kind.
Added to these defects there are others, which suggest that in _King
Lear_ Shakespeare was less concerned than usual with dramatic fitness:
improbabilities, inconsistencies, sayings and doings which suggest
questions only to be answered by conjecture. The improbabilities in
_King Lear_ surely far surpass those of the other great tragedies in
number and in grossness. And they are particularly noticeable in the
secondary plot. For example, no sort of reason is given why Edgar, who
lives in the same house with Edmund, should write a letter to him
instead of speaking; and this is a letter absolutely damning to his
character. Gloster was very foolish, but surely not so foolish as to
pass unnoticed this improbability; or, if so foolish, what need for
Edmund to forge a letter rather than a conversation, especially as
Gloster appears to be unacquainted with his son's handwriting?[134] Is
it in character that Edgar should be persuaded without the slightest
demur to avoid his father instead of confronting him and asking him the
cause of his anger? Why in the world should Gloster, when expelled from
his castle, wander painfully all the way to Dover simply in order to
destroy himself (IV. i. 80)? And is it not extraordinary that, after
Gloster's attempted suicide, Edgar should first talk to him in the
language of a gentleman, then to Oswald in his presence in broad peasant
dialect, then again to Gloster in gentle language, and yet that Gloster
should not manifest the least surprise?
Again, to take three instances of another kind; (_a_) only a fortnight
seems to have elapsed between the first scene and the breach with
Goneril; yet already there are rumours not only of war between Goneril
and Regan but of the coming of a French army; and this, Kent says, is
perhaps connected with the harshness of _both_ the sisters to their
father, although Regan has apparently had no opportunity of showing any
harshness till the day before. (_b_) In the quarrel with Goneril Lear
speaks of his having to dismiss fifty of his followers at a clap, yet
she has neither mentioned any number nor had any opportunity of
mentioning it off the stage. (_c_) Lear and Goneril, intending to hurry
to Regan, both send off messengers to her, and both tell the messengers
to bring back an answer. But it does not appear either how the
messengers _could_ return or what answer could be required, as their
superiors are following them with the greatest speed.
Once more, (_a_) why does Edgar not reveal himself to his blind father,
as he truly says he ought to have done? The answer is left to mere
conjecture. (_b_) Why does Kent so carefully preserve his incognito till
the last scene? He says he does it for an important purpose, but what
the purpose is we have to guess. (_c_) Why Burgundy rather than France
should have first choice of Cordelia's hand is a question we cannot help
asking, but there is no hint of any answer.[135] (_d_) I have referred
already to the strange obscurity regarding Edmund's delay in trying to
save his victims, and I will not extend this list of examples. No one of
such defects is surprising when considered by itself, but their number
is surely significant. Taken in conjunction with other symptoms it means
that Shakespeare, set upon the dramatic effect of the great scenes and
upon certain effects not wholly dramatic, was exceptionally careless of
probability, clearness and consistency in smaller matters, introducing
what was convenient or striking for a momentary purpose without
troubling himself about anything more than the moment. In presence of
these signs it seems doubtful whether his failure to give information
about the fate of the Fool was due to anything more than carelessness or
an impatient desire to reduce his overloaded material.[136]
Before I turn to the other side of the subject I will refer to one more
characteristic of this play which is dramatically disadvantageous. In
Shakespeare's dramas, owing to the absence of scenery from the
Elizabethan stage, the question, so vexatious to editors, of the exact
locality of a particular scene is usually unimportant and often
unanswerable; but, as a rule, we know, broadly speaking, where the
persons live and what their journeys are. The text makes this plain, for
example, almost throughout _Hamlet_, _Othello_ and _Macbeth_; and the
imagination is therefore untroubled. But in _King Lear_ the indications
are so scanty that the reader's mind is left not seldom both vague and
bewildered. Nothing enables us to imagine whereabouts in Britain Lear's
palace lies, or where the Duke of Albany lives. In referring to the
dividing-lines on the map, Lear tells us of shadowy forests and
plenteous rivers, but, unlike Hotspur and his companions, he studiously
avoids proper names. The Duke of Cornwall, we presume in the absence of
information, is likely to live in Cornwall; but we suddenly find, from
the introduction of a place-name which all readers take at first for a
surname, that he lives at Gloster (I. v. 1).[137] This seems likely to
be also the home of the Earl of Gloster, to whom Cornwall is patron. But
no: it is a night's journey from Cornwall's 'house' to Gloster's, and
Gloster's is in the middle of an uninhabited heath.[138] Here, for the
purpose of the crisis, nearly all the persons assemble, but they do so
in a manner which no casual spectator or reader could follow. Afterwards
they all drift towards Dover for the purpose of the catastrophe; but
again the localities and movements are unusually indefinite. And this
indefiniteness is found in smaller matters. One cannot help asking, for
example, and yet one feels one had better not ask, where that 'lodging'
of Edmund's can be, in which he hides Edgar from his father, and whether
Edgar is mad that he should return from his hollow tree (in a district
where 'for many miles about there's scarce a bush') to his father's
castle in order to soliloquise (II. iii.):--for the favourite
stage-direction, 'a wood' (which is more than 'a bush'), however
convenient to imagination, is scarcely compatible with the presence of
Kent asleep in the stocks.[139] Something of the confusion which
bewilders the reader's mind in _King Lear_ recurs in _Antony and
Cleopatra_, the most faultily constructed of all the tragedies; but
there it is due not so much to the absence or vagueness of the
indications as to the necessity of taking frequent and fatiguing
journeys over thousands of miles. Shakespeare could not help himself in
the Roman play: in _King Lear_ he did not choose to help himself,
perhaps deliberately chose to be vague.
From these defects, or from some of them, follows one result which must
be familiar to many readers of _King Lear_. It is far more difficult to
retrace in memory the steps of the action in this tragedy than in
_Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _Macbeth_. The outline is of course quite clear;
anyone could write an 'argument' of the play. But when an attempt is
made to fill in the detail, it issues sooner or later in confusion even
with readers whose dramatic memory is unusually strong.[140]
2