Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
have to set more. Apparently during this period of years he never ceased
to write busily, or to exhibit in his writings the greatest mental
activity. He wrote also either nothing or very little (_Troilus and
Cressida_ and his part of _Timon_ are the possible exceptions) in which
there is any appearance of personal feeling overcoming or seriously
endangering the self-control or 'objectivity' of the artist. And finally
it is not possible to make out any continuously deepening _personal_
note: for although _Othello_ is darker than _Hamlet_ it surely strikes
one as about as impersonal as a play can be; and, on grounds of style
and versification, it appears (to me, at least) impossible to bring
_Troilus and Cressida_ chronologically close to _King Lear_ and _Timon_;
even if parts of it are later than others, the late parts must be
decidedly earlier than those plays.
The conclusion we may very tentatively draw from these sets of facts
would seem to be as follows. Shakespeare during these years was probably
not a happy man, and it is quite likely that he felt at times even an
intense melancholy, bitterness, contempt, anger, possibly even loathing
and despair. It is quite likely too that he used these experiences of
his in writing such plays as _Hamlet_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _King
Lear_, _Timon_. But it is evident that he cannot have been for any
considerable time, if, ever, overwhelmed by such feelings, and there is
no appearance of their having issued in any settled 'pessimistic'
conviction which coloured his whole imagination and expressed itself in
his works. The choice of the subject of ingratitude, for instance, in
_King Lear_ and _Timon_, and the method of handling it, may have been
due in part to personal feeling; but it does not follow that this
feeling was particularly acute at this particular time, and, even if it
was, it certainly was not so absorbing as to hinder Shakespeare from
representing in the most sympathetic manner aspects of life the very
reverse of pessimistic. Whether the total impression of _King Lear_ can
be called pessimistic is a further question, which is considered in the
text.]
[Footnote 154: _A Study of Shakespeare_, pp. 171, 172.]
[Footnote 155: A flaw, I mean, in a work of art considered not as a
moral or theological document but as a work of art,--an aesthetic flaw.
I add the word 'considerable' because we do not regard the effect in
question as a flaw in a work like a lyric or a short piece of music,
which may naturally be taken as expressions merely of a mood or a
subordinate aspect of things.]
[Footnote 156: Caution is very necessary in making comparisons between
Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists. A tragedy like the _Antigone_
stands, in spite of differences, on the same ground as a Shakespearean
tragedy; it is a self-contained whole with a catastrophe. A drama like
the _Philoctetes_ is a self-contained whole, but, ending with a
solution, it corresponds not with a Shakespearean tragedy but with a
play like _Cymbeline_. A drama like the _Agamemnon_ or the _Prometheus
Vinctus_ answers to no Shakespearean form of play. It is not a
self-contained whole, but a part of a trilogy. If the trilogy is
considered as a unit, it answers not to _Hamlet_ but to _Cymbeline_. If
the part is considered as a whole, it answers to _Hamlet_, but may then
be open to serious criticism. Shakespeare never made a tragedy end with
the complete triumph of the worse side: the _Agamemnon_ and
_Prometheus_, if wrongly taken as wholes, would do this, and would so
far, I must think, be bad tragedies. [It can scarcely be necessary to
remind the reader that, in point of 'self-containedness,' there is a
difference of degree between the pure tragedies of Shakespeare and some
of the historical.]]
[Footnote 157: I leave it to better authorities to say how far these
remarks apply also to Greek Tragedy, however much the language of
'justice' may be used there.]
LECTURE VIII
KING LEAR
We have now to look at the characters in _King Lear_; and I propose to
consider them to some extent from the point of view indicated at the
close of the last lecture, partly because we have so far been regarding
the tragedy mainly from an opposite point of view, and partly because
these characters are so numerous that it would not be possible within
our limits to examine them fully.
1
The position of the hero in this tragedy is in one important respect
peculiar. The reader of _Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _Macbeth_, is in no
danger of forgetting, when the catastrophe is reached, the part played
by the hero in bringing it on. His fatal weakness, error, wrong-doing,
continues almost to the end. It is otherwise with _King Lear_. When the
conclusion arrives, the old King has for a long while been passive. We
have long regarded him not only as 'a man more sinned against than
sinning,' but almost wholly as a sufferer, hardly at all as an agent.
His sufferings too have been so cruel, and our indignation against those
who inflicted them has been so intense, that recollection of the wrong
he did to Cordelia, to Kent, and to his realm, has been well-nigh
effaced. Lastly, for nearly four Acts he has inspired in us, together
with this pity, much admiration and affection. The force of his passion
has made us feel that his nature was great; and his frankness and
generosity, his heroic efforts to be patient, the depth of his shame and
repentance, and the ecstasy of his re-union with Cordelia, have melted
our very hearts. Naturally, therefore, at the close we are in some
danger of forgetting that the storm which has overwhelmed him was
liberated by his own deed.
Yet it is essential that Lear's contribution to the action of the drama
should be remembered; not at all in order that we may feel that he
'deserved' what he suffered, but because otherwise his fate would appear
to us at best pathetic, at worst shocking, but certainly not tragic. And
when we were reading the earlier scenes of the play we recognised this
contribution clearly enough. At the very beginning, it is true, we are
inclined to feel merely pity and misgivings. The first lines tell us
that Lear's mind is beginning to fail with age.[158] Formerly he had
perceived how different were the characters of Albany and Cornwall, but
now he seems either to have lost this perception or to be unwisely
ignoring it. The rashness of his division of the kingdom troubles us,
and we cannot but see with concern that its motive is mainly selfish.
The absurdity of the pretence of making the division depend on
protestations of love from his daughters, his complete blindness to the
hypocrisy which is patent to us at a glance, his piteous delight in
these protestations, the openness of his expressions of preference for
his youngest daughter--all make us smile, but all pain us. But pity
begins to give way to another feeling when we witness the precipitance,
the despotism, the uncontrolled anger of his injustice to Cordelia and
Kent, and the 'hideous rashness' of his persistence in dividing the
kingdom after the rejection of his one dutiful child. We feel now the
presence of force, as well as weakness, but we feel also the presence of
the tragic [Greek: hubris]. Lear, we see, is generous and unsuspicious,
of an open and free nature, like Hamlet and Othello and indeed most of
Shakespeare's heroes, who in this, according to Ben Jonson, resemble the
poet who made them. Lear, we see, is also choleric by temperament--the
first of Shakespeare's heroes who is so. And a long life of absolute
power, in which he has been flattered to the top of his bent, has
produced in him that blindness to human limitations, and that
presumptuous self-will, which in Greek tragedy we have so often seen
stumbling against the altar of Nemesis. Our consciousness that the decay
of old age contributes to this condition deepens our pity and our sense
of human infirmity, but certainly does not lead us to regard the old
King as irresponsible, and so to sever the tragic _nexus_ which binds
together his error and his calamities.
The magnitude of this first error is generally fully recognised by the
reader owing to his sympathy with Cordelia, though, as we have seen, he
often loses the memory of it as the play advances. But this is not so, I
think, with the repetition of this error, in the quarrel with Goneril.
Here the daughter excites so much detestation, and the father so much
sympathy, that we often fail to receive the due impression of his
violence. There is not here, of course, the _injustice_ of his rejection
of Cordelia, but there is precisely the same [Greek: hubris]. This had
been shown most strikingly in the first scene when, _immediately_ upon
the apparently cold words of Cordelia, 'So young, my lord, and true,'
there comes this dreadful answer:
Let it be so; thy truth then be thy dower.
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night;
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.
Now the dramatic effect of this passage is exactly, and doubtless
intentionally, repeated in the curse pronounced against Goneril. This
does not come after the daughters have openly and wholly turned against
their father. Up to the moment of its utterance Goneril has done no more
than to require him 'a little to disquantity' and reform his train of
knights. Certainly her manner and spirit in making this demand are
hateful, and probably her accusations against the knights are false; and
we should expect from any father in Lear's position passionate distress
and indignation. But surely the famous words which form Lear's immediate
reply were meant to be nothing short of frightful:
Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
The question is not whether Goneril deserves these appalling
imprecations, but what they tell us about Lear. They show that, although
he has already recognised his injustice towards Cordelia, is secretly
blaming himself, and is endeavouring to do better, the disposition from
which his first error sprang is still unchanged. And it is precisely the
disposition to give rise, in evil surroundings, to calamities dreadful
but at the same time tragic, because due in some measure to the person
who endures them.
The perception of this connection, if it is not lost as the play
advances, does not at all diminish our pity for Lear, but it makes it
impossible for us permanently to regard the world displayed in this
tragedy as subject to a mere arbitrary or malicious power. It makes us
feel that this world is so far at least a rational and a moral order,
that there holds in it the law, not of proportionate requital, but of
strict connection between act and consequence. It is, so far, the world
of all Shakespeare's tragedies.