Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
agony which at once breaks his heart. And, finally, though he is killed
by an agony of pain, the agony in which he actually dies is one not of
pain but of ecstasy. Suddenly, with a cry represented in the oldest text
by a four-times repeated 'O,' he exclaims:
Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,
Look there, look there!
These are the last words of Lear. He is sure, at last, that she _lives_:
and what had he said when he was still in doubt?
She lives! if it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt!
To us, perhaps, the knowledge that he is deceived may bring a
culmination of pain: but, if it brings _only_ that, I believe we are
false to Shakespeare, and it seems almost beyond question that any actor
is false to the text who does not attempt to express, in Lear's last
accents and gestures and look, an unbearable _joy_.[162]
To dwell on the pathos of Lear's last speech would be an impertinence,
but I may add a remark on the speech from the literary point of view. In
the simplicity of its language, which consists almost wholly of
monosyllables of native origin, composed in very brief sentences of the
plainest structure, it presents an extraordinary contrast to the dying
speech of Hamlet and the last words of Othello to the by-standers. The
fact that Lear speaks in passion is one cause of the difference, but not
the sole cause. The language is more than simple, it is familiar. And
this familiarity is characteristic of Lear (except at certain moments,
already referred to) from the time of his madness onwards, and is the
source of the peculiarly poignant effect of some of his sentences (such
as 'The little dogs and all....'). We feel in them the loss of power to
sustain his royal dignity; we feel also that everything external has
become nothingness to him, and that what remains is 'the thing itself,'
the soul in its bare greatness. Hence also it is that two lines in this
last speech show, better perhaps than any other passage of poetry, one
of the qualities we have in mind when we distinguish poetry as
'romantic.' Nothing like Hamlet's mysterious sigh 'The rest is silence,'
nothing like Othello's memories of his life of marvel and achievement,
was possible to Lear. Those last thoughts are romantic in their
strangeness: Lear's five-times repeated 'Never,' in which the simplest
and most unanswerable cry of anguish rises note by note till the heart
breaks, is romantic in its naturalism; and to make a verse out of this
one word required the boldness as well as the inspiration which came
infallibly to Shakespeare at the greatest moments. But the familiarity,
boldness and inspiration are surpassed (if that can be) by the next
line, which shows the bodily oppression asking for bodily relief. The
imagination that produced Lear's curse or his defiance of the storm may
be paralleled in its kind, but where else are we to seek the imagination
that could venture to follow that cry of 'Never' with such a phrase as
'undo this button,' and yet could leave us on the topmost peaks of
poetry?[163]
2
Gloster and Albany are the two neutral characters of the tragedy. The
parallel between Lear and Gloster, already noticed, is, up to a certain
point, so marked that it cannot possibly be accidental. Both are old
white-haired men (III. vii. 37); both, it would seem, widowers, with
children comparatively young. Like Lear, Gloster is tormented, and his
life is sought, by the child whom he favours; he is tended and healed by
the child whom he has wronged. His sufferings, like Lear's, are partly
traceable to his own extreme folly and injustice, and, it may be added,
to a selfish pursuit of his own pleasure.[164] His sufferings, again,
like Lear's, purify and enlighten him: he dies a better and wiser man
than he showed himself at first. They even learn the same lesson, and
Gloster's repetition (noticed and blamed by Johnson) of the thought in a
famous speech of Lear's is surely intentional.[165] And, finally,
Gloster dies almost as Lear dies. Edgar reveals himself to him and asks
his blessing (as Cordelia asks Lear's):
but his flaw'd heart--
Alack, too weak the conflict to support--
'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,
Burst smilingly.
So far, the resemblance of the two stories, and also of the ways in
which their painful effect is modified, is curiously close. And in
character too Gloster is, like his master, affectionate,[166] credulous
and hasty. But otherwise he is sharply contrasted with the tragic Lear,
who is a towering figure, every inch a king,[167] while Gloster is built
on a much smaller scale, and has infinitely less force and fire. He is,
indeed, a decidedly weak though good-hearted man; and, failing wholly to
support Kent in resisting Lear's original folly and injustice,[168] he
only gradually takes the better part. Nor is his character either very
interesting or very distinct. He often gives one the impression of being
wanted mainly to fill a place in the scheme of the play; and, though it
would be easy to give a long list of his characteristics, they scarcely,
it seems to me, compose an individual, a person whom we are sure we
should recognise at once. If this is so, the fact is curious,
considering how much we see and hear of him.
I will add a single note. Gloster is the superstitious character of the
drama,--the only one. He thinks much of 'these late eclipses in the sun
and moon.' His two sons, from opposite points of view, make nothing of
them. His easy acceptance of the calumny against Edgar is partly due to
this weakness, and Edmund builds upon it, for an evil purpose, when he
describes Edgar thus:
Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out,
Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon,
To prove's auspicious mistress.
Edgar in turn builds upon it, for a good purpose, when he persuades his
blind father that he was led to jump down Dover cliff by the temptation
of a fiend in the form of a beggar, and was saved by a miracle:
As I stood here below, methought his eyes
Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses,
Horns whelk'd and waved like the enridged sea:
It was some fiend; therefore, thou happy father,
Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours
Of men's impossibilities, have preserved thee.
This passage is odd in its collocation of the thousand noses and the
clearest gods, of grotesque absurdity and extreme seriousness. Edgar
knew that the 'fiend' was really Gloster's 'worser spirit,' and that
'the gods' were himself. Doubtless, however--for he is the most
religious person in the play--he thought that it _was_ the gods who,
through him, had preserved his father; but he knew that the truth could
only enter this superstitious mind in a superstitious form.
The combination of parallelism and contrast that we observe in Lear and
Gloster, and again in the attitude of the two brothers to their father's
superstition, is one of many indications that in _King Lear_ Shakespeare
was working more than usual on a basis of conscious and reflective
ideas. Perhaps it is not by accident, then, that he makes Edgar and Lear
preach to Gloster in precisely the same strain. Lear says to him:
If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.
I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloster:
Thou must be patient; we came crying hither:
Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air,
We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee: mark.
Edgar's last words to him are:
What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither:
Ripeness is all.
Albany is merely sketched, and he is so generally neglected that a few
words about him may be in place. He too ends a better and wiser man than
he began. When the play opens he is, of course, only just married to
Goneril; and the idea is, I think, that he has been bewitched by her
fiery beauty not less than by her dowry. He is an inoffensive
peace-loving man, and is overborne at first by his 'great love' for his
wife and by her imperious will. He is not free from responsibility for
the treatment which the King receives in his house; the Knight says to
Lear, 'there's a great abatement of kindness appears as well in the
general dependants as in _the duke himself also_ and your daughter.' But
he takes no part in the quarrel, and doubtless speaks truly when he
protests that he is as guiltless as ignorant of the cause of Lear's
violent passion. When the King departs, he begins to remonstrate with
Goneril, but shrinks in a cowardly manner, which is a trifle comical,
from contest with her. She leaves him behind when she goes to join
Regan, and he is not further responsible for what follows. When he hears
of it, he is struck with horror: the scales drop from his eyes, Goneril
becomes hateful to him, he determines to revenge Gloster's eyes. His
position is however very difficult, as he is willing to fight against
Cordelia in so far as her army is French, and unwilling in so far as she
represents her father. This difficulty, and his natural inferiority to
Edmund in force and ability, pushes him into the background; the battle
is not won by him but by Edmund; and but for Edgar he would certainly
have fallen a victim to the murderous plot against him. When it is
discovered, however, he is fearless and resolute enough, beside being
full of kind feeling towards Kent and Edgar, and of sympathetic distress
at Gloster's death. And one would be sure that he is meant to retain
this strength till the end, but for his last words. He has announced his
intention of resigning, during Lear's life, the 'absolute power' which
has come to him; and that may be right. But after Lear's death he says
to Kent and Edgar:
Friends of my soul, you twain
Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain.
If this means that he wishes to hand over his absolute power to them,
Shakespeare's intention is certainly to mark the feebleness of a
well-meaning but weak man. But possibly he means by 'this realm' only
that half of Britain which had belonged to Cornwall and Regan.
3
I turn now to those two strongly contrasted groups of good and evil
beings; and to the evil first. The members of this group are by no means
on a level. Far the most contemptible of them is Oswald, and Kent has
fortunately expressed our feelings towards him. Yet twice we are able to
feel sympathy with him. Regan cannot tempt him to let her open Goneril's
letter to Edmund; and his last thought as he dies is given to the
fulfilment of his trust. It is to a monster that he is faithful, and he
is faithful to her in a monstrous design. Still faithfulness is
faithfulness, and he is not wholly worthless. Dr. Johnson says: 'I know
not well why Shakespeare gives to Oswald, who is a mere factor of
wickedness, so much fidelity'; but in any other tragedy this touch, so
true to human nature, is only what we should expect. If it surprises us
in _King Lear_, the reason is that Shakespeare, in dealing with the
other members of the group, seems to have been less concerned than usual
with such mingling of light with darkness, and intent rather on making
the shadows as utterly black as a regard for truth would permit.
Cornwall seems to have been a fit mate for Regan; and what worse can be
said of him? It is a great satisfaction to think that he endured what to
him must have seemed the dreadful disgrace of being killed by a servant.
He shows, I believe, no redeeming trait, and he is a coward, as may be
seen from the sudden rise in his courage when Goneril arrives at the
castle and supports him and Regan against Lear (II. iv. 202). But as his