Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
[Footnote 124: See Note R.]
[Footnote 125: On some of the points mentioned in this paragraph see
Note S.]
[Footnote 126:
'_Kent._ I thought the king had more affected the Duke of
Albany than Cornwall.
_Glos._ 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 (Gloster goes on to say) their shares are exactly equal in value.
And if the shares of the two elder daughters are fixed, obviously that
of the third is so too.]
[Footnote 127:
I loved her most, and thought to set my rest
On her kind nursery.]
[Footnote 128: It is to Lear's altered plan that Kent applies these
words.]
[Footnote 129: There is talk of a war between Goneril and Regan within a
fortnight of the division of the kingdom (II. i. 11 f.).]
[Footnote 130: I mean that no sufficiently clear reason is supplied for
Edmund's delay in attempting to save Cordelia and Lear. The matter
stands thus. Edmund, after the defeat of the opposing army, sends Lear
and Cordelia to prison. Then, in accordance with a plan agreed on
between himself and Goneril, he despatches a captain with secret orders
to put them both to death _instantly_ (V. iii. 26-37, 244, 252). He then
has to fight with the disguised Edgar. He is mortally wounded, and, as
he lies dying, he says to Edgar (at line 162, _more than a hundred
lines_ after he gave that commission to the captain):
What you have charged me with, that have I done;
And more, much more; the time will bring it out;
'Tis past, and so am I.
In 'more, much more' he seems to be thinking of the order for the deaths
of Lear and Cordelia (what else remained undisclosed?); yet he says
nothing about it. A few lines later he recognises the justice of his
fate, yet still says nothing. Then he hears the story of his father's
death, says it has moved him and 'shall perchance do good' (What good
except saving his victims?); yet he still says nothing. Even when he
hears that Goneril is dead and Regan poisoned, he _still_ says nothing.
It is only when directly questioned about Lear and Cordelia that he
tries to save the victims who were to be killed 'instantly' (242). How
can we explain his delay? Perhaps, thinking the deaths of Lear and
Cordelia would be of use to Goneril and Regan, he will not speak till he
is sure that both the sisters are dead. Or perhaps, though he can
recognise the justice of his fate and can be touched by the account of
his father's death, he is still too self-absorbed to rise to the active
effort to 'do some good, despite of his own nature.' But, while either
of these conjectures is possible, it is surely far from satisfactory
that we should be left to mere conjecture as to the cause of the delay
which permits the catastrophe to take place. The _real_ cause lies
outside the dramatic _nexus_. It is Shakespeare's wish to deliver a
sudden and crushing blow to the hopes which he has excited.]
[Footnote 131: Everything in these paragraphs must, of course, be taken
in connection with later remarks.]
[Footnote 132: I say 'the reader's,' because on the stage, whenever I
have seen _King Lear_, the 'cuts' necessitated by modern scenery would
have made this part of the play absolutely unintelligible to me if I had
not been familiar with it. It is significant that Lamb in his _Tale of
King Lear_ almost omits the sub-plot.]
[Footnote 133: Even if Cordelia had won the battle, Shakespeare would
probably have hesitated to concentrate interest on it, for her victory
would have been a British defeat. On Spedding's view, that he did mean
to make the battle more interesting, and that his purpose has been
defeated by our wrong division of Acts IV. and V., see Note X.]
[Footnote 134: It is vain to suggest that Edmund has only just come
home, and that the letter is supposed to have been sent to him when he
was 'out' See I. ii. 38-40, 65 f.]
[Footnote 135: The idea in scene i., perhaps, is that Cordelia's
marriage, like the division of the kingdom, has really been
pre-arranged, and that the ceremony of choosing between France and
Burgundy (I. i. 46 f.) is a mere fiction. Burgundy is to be her husband,
and that is why, when Lear has cast her off, he offers her to Burgundy
first (l. 192 ff.). It might seem from 211 ff. that Lear's reason for
doing so is that he prefers France, or thinks him the greater man, and
therefore will not offer him first what is worthless: but the language
of France (240 ff.) seems to show that he recognises a prior right in
Burgundy.]
[Footnote 136: See Note T. and p. 315.]
[Footnote 137: See Note U.]
[Footnote 138: The word 'heath' in the stage-directions of the
storm-scenes is, I may remark, Rowe's, not Shakespeare's, who never used
the word till he wrote _Macbeth_.]
[Footnote 139: It is pointed out in Note V. that what modern editors
call Scenes ii., iii., iv. of Act II. are really one scene, for Kent is
on the stage through them all.]
[Footnote 140: [On the locality of Act I., Sc. ii., see _Modern Language
Review_ for Oct., 1908, and Jan., 1909.]]
[Footnote 141: This effect of the double action seems to have been
pointed out first by Schlegel.]
[Footnote 142: How prevalent these are is not recognised by readers
familiar only with English poetry. See Simpson's _Introduction to the
Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets_ (1868) and Mr. Wyndham's edition of
Shakespeare's Poems. Perhaps both writers overstate, and Simpson's
interpretations are often forced or arbitrary, but his book is valuable
and ought not to remain out of print.]
[Footnote 143: The monstrosity here is a being with a woman's body and a
fiend's soul. For the interpretation of the lines see Note Y.]
[Footnote 144: Since this paragraph was written I have found that the
abundance of these references has been pointed out and commented on by
J. Kirkman, _New Shaks. Soc. Trans._, 1877.]
[Footnote 145: _E.g._ in _As You Like It_, III. ii. 187, 'I was never so
berhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can
hardly remember'; _Twelfth Night_, IV. ii. 55, '_Clown._ What is the
opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl? _Mal._ That the soul of our
grandam might haply inhabit a bird. _Clown._ What thinkest thou of his
opinion? _Mal._ I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his
opinion,' etc. But earlier comes a passage which reminds us of _King
Lear_, _Merchant of Venice_, IV. i. 128:
O be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog!
And for thy life let justice be accused.
Thou almost makest me waver in my faith
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous.]
[Footnote 146: I fear it is not possible, however, to refute, on the
whole, one charge,--that the dog is a snob, in the sense that he
respects power and prosperity, and objects to the poor and despised. It
is curious that Shakespeare refers to this trait three times in _King
Lear_, as if he were feeling a peculiar disgust at it. See III. vi. 65,
'The little dogs and all,' etc.: IV. vi. 159, 'Thou hast seen a farmer's
dog bark at a beggar ... and the creature run from the cur? There thou
mightst behold the great image of authority': V. iii. 186, 'taught me to
shift Into a madman's rags; to assume a semblance That very dogs
disdain'd.' Cf. _Oxford Lectures_, p. 341.]
[Footnote 147: With this compare the following lines in the great speech
on 'degree' in _Troilus and Cressida_, I. iii.:
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.]
[Footnote 148: Nor is it believable that Shakespeare, whose means of
imitating a storm were so greatly inferior even to ours, had the
stage-performance only or chiefly in view in composing these scenes. He
may not have thought of readers (or he may), but he must in any case
have written to satisfy his own imagination. I have taken no notice of
the part played in these scenes by anyone except Lear. The matter is too
huge, and too strictly poetic, for analysis. I may observe that in our
present theatres, owing to the use of elaborate scenery, the three
Storm-scenes are usually combined, with disastrous effect. Shakespeare,
as we saw (p. 49), interposed between them short scenes of much lower
tone.]
[Footnote 149: 'justice,' Qq.]
[Footnote 150: =approve.]
[Footnote 151: The direction 'Storm and tempest' at the end of this
speech is not modern, it is in the Folio.]
[Footnote 152: The gods are mentioned many times in _King Lear_, but
'God' only here (V. ii. 16).]
[Footnote 153: The whole question how far Shakespeare's works represent
his personal feelings and attitude, and the changes in them, would carry
us so far beyond the bounds of the four tragedies, is so needless for
the understanding of them, and is so little capable of decision, that I
have excluded it from these lectures; and I will add here a note on it
only as it concerns the 'tragic period.'
There are here two distinct sets of facts, equally important, (1) On the
one side there is the fact that, so far as we can make out, after
_Twelfth Night_ Shakespeare wrote, for seven or eight years, no play
which, like many of his earlier works, can be called happy, much less
merry or sunny. He wrote tragedies; and if the chronological order
_Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Timon_, _Macbeth_, is correct, these
tragedies show for some time a deepening darkness, and _King Lear_ and
_Timon_ lie at the nadir. He wrote also in these years (probably in the
earlier of them) certain 'comedies,' _Measure for Measure_ and _Troilus
and Cressida_, and perhaps _All's Well_. But about these comedies there
is a peculiar air of coldness; there is humour, of course, but little
mirth; in _Measure for Measure_ perhaps, certainly in _Troilus and
Cressida_, a spirit of bitterness and contempt seems to pervade an
intellectual atmosphere of an intense but hard clearness. With _Macbeth_
perhaps, and more decidedly in the two Roman tragedies which followed,
the gloom seems to lift; and the final romances show a mellow serenity
which sometimes warms into radiant sympathy, and even into a mirth
almost as light-hearted as that of younger days. When we consider these
facts, not as barely stated thus but as they affect us in reading the
plays, it is, to my mind, very hard to believe that their origin was
simply and solely a change in dramatic methods or choice of subjects, or
even merely such inward changes as may be expected to accompany the
arrival and progress of middle age.
(2) On the other side, and over against these facts, we have to set the
multitudinousness of Shakespeare's genius, and his almost unlimited
power of conceiving and expressing human experience of all kinds. And we