... “He replied,
Thou unpossessing bastard!” &c.
Thus the secret poison in Edmund’s own heart steals forth; and then
observe poor Gloster’s—
“Loyal and _natural_ boy!”—
as if praising the crime of Edmund’s birth!
_Ib._ Compare Regan’s—
“What, did _my father’s_ godson seek your life?
He whom _my father_ named?”—
with the unfeminine violence of her—
“All vengeance comes too short,” &c.—
and yet no reference to the guilt, but only to the accident, which she
uses as an occasion for sneering at her father. Regan is not, in fact, a
greater monster than Goneril, but she has the power of casting more venom.
_Ib._ sc. 2. Cornwall’s speech:—-
... “This is some fellow,
Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness,” &c.
In thus placing these profound general truths in the mouths of such men as
Cornwall, Edmund, Iago, &c., Shakespeare at once gives them utterance, and
yet shows how indefinite their application is.
_Ib._ sc. 3. Edgar’s assumed madness serves the great purpose of taking
off part of the shock which would otherwise be caused by the true madness
of Lear, and further displays the profound difference between the two. In
every attempt at representing madness throughout the whole range of
dramatic literature, with the single exception of Lear, it is mere
lightheadedness, as especially in Otway. In Edgar’s ravings Shakespeare
all the while lets you see a fixed purpose, a practical end in view;—in
Lear’s, there is only the brooding of the one anguish, an eddy without
progression.
_Ib._ sc. 4. Lear’s speech:—
“The king would speak with Cornwall; the dear father
Would with his daughter speak, &c.
No, but not yet: may be he is not well,” &c.
The strong interest now felt by Lear to try to find excuses for his
daughter is most pathetic.
_Ib._ Lear’s speech:—
... “Beloved Regan,
Thy sister’s naught;—O Regan, she hath tied
Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture, here.
I can scarce speak to thee;—thou’lt not believe
Of how deprav’d a quality—O Regan!
_Reg._ I pray you, Sir, take patience; I have hope,
You less know how to value her desert,
Than she to scant her duty.
_Lear._ Say, how is that?”
Nothing is so heart-cutting as a cold unexpected defence or palliation of
a cruelty passionately complained of, or so expressive of thorough
hard-heartedness. And feel the excessive horror of Regan’s “O, Sir, you
are old!”—and then her drawing from that universal object of reverence and
indulgence the very reason for her frightful conclusion—
“Say, you have wrong’d her!”
All Lear’s faults increase our pity for him. We refuse to know them
otherwise than as means of his sufferings, and aggravations of his
daughters’ ingratitude.
_Ib._ Lear’s speech:—
“O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous,” &c.
Observe that the tranquillity which follows the first stunning of the blow
permits Lear to reason.
Act iii. sc. 4. O, what a world’s convention of agonies is here! All
external nature in a storm, all moral nature convulsed,—the real madness
of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool, the
desperate fidelity of Kent—surely such a scene was never conceived before
or since! Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more terrific
than any which a Michael Angelo, inspired by a Dante, could have
conceived, and which none but a Michael Angelo could have executed. Or let
it have been uttered to the blind, the howlings of nature would seem
converted into the voice of conscious humanity. This scene ends with the
first symptoms of positive derangement; and the intervention of the fifth
scene is particularly judicious,—the interruption allowing an interval for
Lear to appear in full madness in the sixth scene.
_Ib._ sc. 7. Gloster’s blinding.
What can I say of this scene?—There is my reluctance to think Shakespeare
wrong, and yet—