Whilst I was big in clamour, came there a man, Alb. guise But who was this? To lay the blame upon her own despair, Alb. The gods defend her! Bear him hence a while. [Edmund is borne off. Enter Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms; Edgar, Officer, and others. Lear. Howl, howl, howl, howl!-0, you are men of stones : Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so Edg. Kent, sir, the banish'd Kent; who in dis-I know when one is dead, and when one lives; Follow'd his enemy king, and did him service Edg. What means that bloody knife? It came even from the heart of- Edm. I was contracted to them both; all three Alb. Produce their bodies, be they alive or dead! This judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble, Touches us not with pity. Enter Kent. [Exit Gentleman. Is this the promis'd end?' I Kent. O my good master! might have sav'd her; now she's gone for ever!— Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little. Ha! What is't thou say'st ?-Her voice was ever soft, Here comes Kent, sir. And these same crosses spoil me.-Who are you? The time will not allow the compliment, Kent. I am come Lear. This is a dull sight: Are you not Kent? Your servant Kent: Where is your servant Caius ? Speak, Edmund, where's the king? and where's He'll strike, and quickly too:-He's dead and Great thing of us forgot! Offi. Edmund is dead, my lord. That's but a trifle here.- (4) i. e. Die; Albany speaks to Lear. With boot,' and such addition as your honours Lear. And my poor fool' is hang'd! No, no, no Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, nicely discriminates, and so minutely describes the characters of men, he commonly neglects and confounds the characters of ages, by mingling customs ancient and modern, English and foreign. My learned friend Mr. Warton, who has in The Adventurer very minutely criticised this play, remarks, that the instances of cruelty are too savage And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no and shocking, and that the intervention of Edmund more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button: Thank you, sir.- Edg. [He dies. destroys the simplicity of the story. These objections may, I think, be answered by repeating, that the cruelty of the daughters is an historical fact, to which the poet has added little, having only drawn it into a series by dialogue and action. But I am He faints!-My lord, my lord,-not able to apologize with equal plausibility for the Kent. Break, heart; I pr'ythee, break! extrusion of Gloster's eyes, which seems an act too Edg. Look up, my lord. horrid to be endured in dramatic exhibition, and Kent. Vex not his ghost:-0, let him pass! he such as must always compel the mind to relieve its hates him, distress by incredulity. Yet let it be remembered that our author well knew what would please the audience for which he wrote. That would upon the rack of this tough world Edg. O, he is gone, indeed. Kent. The wonder is, he hath endur'd so long: He but usurp'd his life. Alb. Bear them from hence.-Our present busi ness Is general wo. Friends of my soul, you twain Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The injury done by Edmund to the simplicity of the action is abundantly recompensed by the addition of variety, by the art with which he is made to co-operate with the chief design, and the opportunity which he gives the poet of combining perfidy with perfidy, and connecting the wicked son with the wicked daughters, to impress this important moral, that villany is never at a stop, that crimes lead to crimes, and at last terminate in ruin. But though this moral be incidentally enforced, Shakspeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and what is yet more strange, to the faith of chronicles. Yet this conduct is justified by The Spectator, who blames Tate for giving Cordelia success and happiness in his alteration, and declares, that in his opinion, the tragedy has lost half its beauty. Dennis has remarked, whether justly or not, that, to secure the favourable reception of Cato, the town was poisoned with much false and abominable The tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated criticism, and that endeavours had been used to among the dramas of Shakspeare. There is perhaps discredit and decry poetical justice. A play in no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed; which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miswhich so much agitates our passions, and interests carry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just our curiosity. The artful involutions of distinct in- representation of the common events of human life: terests, the striking oppositions of contrary charac-but since all reasonable beings naturally love justers, the sudden changes of fortune, and the quick tice, I cannot easily be persuaded, that the obsersuccession of events, fill the mind with a perpetual vation of justice makes a play worse; or that, if tumult of indignation, pity, and hope. There is no other excellencies are equal, the audience will not scene which does not contribute to the aggravation always rise better pleased from the final triumph of of the distress or conduct to the action, and scarce persecuted virtue. a line which does not conduce to the progress of the In the present case the public has decided. CorSo powerful is the current of the poet's delia, from the time of Tate, has always retired imagination, that the mind, which once ventures with victory and felicity. And, if my sensations within it, is hurried irresistibly along. could add any thing to the general suffrage, I might On the seeming improbability of Lear's conduct, relate, I was many years ago so shocked by Corit may be observed, that he is represented accord-delia's death, that I know not whether I ever ening to histories at that time vulgarly received as dured to read again the last scenes of the play, till true. And, perhaps, if we turn our thoughts upon I undertook to revise them as an editor. the barbarity and ignorance of the age to which There another controversy among the critics this story is referred, it will appear not so unlikely concerning this play. It is disputed whether the as while we estimate Lear's manners by our own. prominent image in Lear's disordered mind be the Such preference of one daughter to another, or re- loss of his kingdom or the cruelty of his daughters. signation of dominion on such conditions, would Mr. Murphy, a very judicious critic, has evinced be yet credible, if told of a petty prince of Guinea by induction of particular passages, that the cruelor Madagascar. Shakspeare, indeed, by the men- ty of his daughters is the primary source of his distion of his earls and dukes, has given us the idea tress, and that the loss of royalty affects him only of times more civilized, and of life regulated by as a secondary and subordinate evil. He observes, softer manners; and the truth is, that though he so scene. with great justness, that Lear would move our compassion but little, did we not rather consider the injured father than the degraded king. The story of this play, except the episode of Ed-that it follows the chronicle; it has the rudiments mund, which is derived, I think, from Sidney, is of the play, but none of its amplifications: it first taken originally from Geoffry of Monmouth, whom hinted Lear's madness, but did not array it in cirHolinshed generally copied; but perhaps immedi- cumstances. The writer of the ballad added ately from an old historical ballad. My reason for something to the history, which is a proof that he believing that the play was posterior to the ballad, would have added more, if more had occurred to rather than the ballad to the play, is, that the bal- his mind; and more must have occurred if he had lad has nothing of Shakspeare's nocturnal tempest, seen Shakspeare. which is too striking to have been omitted, and JOHNSON. |