Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
Fool is a man or a boy. Here the evidence and the grounds for discussion
are more tangible. He is frequently addressed as 'boy.' This is not
decisive; but Lear's first words to him, 'How now, my pretty knave, how
dost thou?' are difficult to reconcile with the idea of his being a man,
and the use of this phrase on his first entrance may show Shakespeare's
desire to prevent any mistake on the point. As a boy, too, he would be
more strongly contrasted in the Storm-scenes with Edgar as well as with
Lear; his faithfulness and courage would be even more heroic and
touching; his devotion to Cordelia, and the consequent bitterness of
some of his speeches to Lear, would be even more natural. Nor does he
seem to show a knowledge of the world impossible to a quick-witted
though not whole-witted lad who had lived at Court. The only serious
obstacle to this view, I think, is the fact that he is not known to have
been represented as a boy or youth till Macready produced _King
Lear_.[177]
But even if this obstacle were serious and the Fool were imagined as a
grown man, we may still insist that he must also be imagined as a timid,
delicate and frail being, who on that account and from the expression of
his face has a boyish look.[178] He pines away when Cordelia goes to
France. Though he takes great liberties with his master he is frightened
by Goneril, and becomes quite silent when the quarrel rises high. In the
terrible scene between Lear and his two daughters and Cornwall
(II. iv. 129-289), he says not a word; we have almost forgotten
his presence when, at the topmost pitch of passion, Lear suddenly turns
to him from the hateful faces that encompass him:
You think I'll weep;
No, I'll not weep:
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad.
From the beginning of the Storm-scenes, though he thinks of his master
alone, we perceive from his words that the cold and rain are almost more
than he can bear. His childishness comes home to us when he runs out of
the hovel, terrified by the madman and crying out to the King 'Help me,
help me,' and the good Kent takes him by the hand and draws him to his
side. A little later he exclaims, 'This cold night will turn us all to
fools and madmen'; and almost from that point he leaves the King to
Edgar, speaking only once again in the remaining hundred lines of the
scene. In the shelter of the 'farm-house' (III. vi.) he revives, and
resumes his office of love; but I think that critic is right who
considers his last words significant. 'We'll go to supper i' the
morning,' says Lear; and the Fool answers 'And I'll go to bed at noon,'
as though he felt he had taken his death. When, a little later, the King
is being carried away on a litter, the Fool sits idle. He is so benumbed
and worn out that he scarcely notices what is going on. Kent has to
rouse him with the words,
Come, help to bear thy master,
Thou must not stay behind.
We know no more. For the famous exclamation 'And my poor fool is hanged'
unquestionably refers to Cordelia; and even if it is intended to show a
confused association in Lear's mind between his child and the Fool who
so loved her (as a very old man may confuse two of his children), still
it tells us nothing of the Fool's fate. It seems strange indeed that
Shakespeare should have left us thus in ignorance. But we have seen that
there are many marks of haste and carelessness in _King Lear_; and it
may also be observed that, if the poet imagined the Fool dying on the
way to Dover of the effects of that night upon the heath, he could
perhaps convey this idea to the audience by instructing the actor who
took the part to show, as he left the stage for the last time, the
recognised tokens of approaching death.[179]
Something has now been said of the four characters, Lear, Edgar, Kent
and the Fool, who are together in the storm upon the heath. I have made
no attempt to analyse the whole effect of these scenes, but one remark
may be added. These scenes, as we observed, suggest the idea of a
convulsion in which Nature herself joins with the forces of evil in man
to overpower the weak; and they are thus one of the main sources of the
more terrible impressions produced by _King Lear_. But they have at the
same time an effect of a totally different kind, because in them are
exhibited also the strength and the beauty of Lear's nature, and, in
Kent and the Fool and Edgar, the ideal of faithful devoted love. Hence
from the beginning to the end of these scenes we have, mingled with pain
and awe and a sense of man's infirmity, an equally strong feeling of his
greatness; and this becomes at times even an exulting sense of the
powerlessness of outward calamity or the malice of others against his
soul. And this is one reason why imagination and emotion are never here
pressed painfully inward, as in the scenes between Lear and his
daughters, but are liberated and dilated.
5
The character of Cordelia is not a masterpiece of invention or subtlety
like that of Cleopatra; yet in its own way it is a creation as
wonderful. Cordelia appears in only four of the twenty-six scenes of
_King Lear_; she speaks--it is hard to believe it--scarcely more than a
hundred lines; and yet no character in Shakespeare is more absolutely
individual or more ineffaceably stamped on the memory of his readers.
There is a harmony, strange but perhaps the result of intention, between
the character itself and this reserved or parsimonious method of
depicting it. An expressiveness almost inexhaustible gained through
paucity of expression; the suggestion of infinite wealth and beauty
conveyed by the very refusal to reveal this beauty in expansive
speech--this is at once the nature of Cordelia herself and the chief
characteristic of Shakespeare's art in representing it. Perhaps it is
not fanciful to find a parallel in his drawing of a person very
different, Hamlet. It was natural to Hamlet to examine himself minutely,
to discuss himself at large, and yet to remain a mystery to himself; and
Shakespeare's method of drawing the character answers to it; it is
extremely detailed and searching, and yet its effect is to enhance the
sense of mystery. The results in the two cases differ correspondingly.
No one hesitates to enlarge upon Hamlet, who speaks of himself so much;
but to use many words about Cordelia seems to be a kind of impiety.
I am obliged to speak of her chiefly because the devotion she inspires
almost inevitably obscures her part in the tragedy. This devotion is
composed, so to speak, of two contrary elements, reverence and pity. The
first, because Cordelia's is a higher nature than that of most even of
Shakespeare's heroines. With the tenderness of Viola or Desdemona she
unites something of the resolution, power, and dignity of Hermione, and
reminds us sometimes of Helena, sometimes of Isabella, though she has
none of the traits which prevent Isabella from winning our hearts. Her
assertion of truth and right, her allegiance to them, even the touch of
severity that accompanies it, instead of compelling mere respect or
admiration, become adorable in a nature so loving as Cordelia's. She is
a thing enskyed and sainted, and yet we feel no incongruity in the love
of the King of France for her, as we do in the love of the Duke for
Isabella.
But with this reverence or worship is combined in the reader's mind a
passion of championship, of pity, even of protecting pity. She is so
deeply wronged, and she appears, for all her strength, so defenceless.
We think of her as unable to speak for herself. We think of her as quite
young, and as slight and small.[180] 'Her voice was ever soft, gentle,
and low'; ever so, whether the tone was that of resolution, or rebuke,
or love.[181] Of all Shakespeare's heroines she knew least of joy. She
grew up with Goneril and Regan for sisters. Even her love for her father
must have been mingled with pain and anxiety. She must early have
learned to school and repress emotion. She never knew the bliss of young
love: there is no trace of such love for the King of France. She had
knowingly to wound most deeply the being dearest to her. He cast her
off; and, after suffering an agony for him, and before she could see him
safe in death, she was brutally murdered. We have to thank the poet for
passing lightly over the circumstances of her death. We do not think of
them. Her image comes before us calm and bright and still.
The memory of Cordelia thus becomes detached in a manner from the action
of the drama. The reader refuses to admit into it any idea of
imperfection, and is outraged when any share in her father's sufferings
is attributed to the part she plays in the opening scene. Because she
was deeply wronged he is ready to insist that she was wholly right. He
refuses, that is, to take the tragic point of view, and, when it is
taken, he imagines that Cordelia is being attacked, or is being declared
to have 'deserved' all that befell her. But Shakespeare's was the tragic
point of view. He exhibits in the opening scene a situation tragic for
Cordelia as well as for Lear. At a moment where terrible issues join,
Fate makes on her the one demand which she is unable to meet. As I have
already remarked in speaking of Desdemona, it was a demand which other
heroines of Shakespeare could have met. Without loss of self-respect,
and refusing even to appear to compete for a reward, they could have
made the unreasonable old King feel that he was fondly loved. Cordelia
cannot, because she is Cordelia. And so she is not merely rejected and
banished, but her father is left to the mercies of her sisters. And the
cause of her failure--a failure a thousand-fold redeemed--is a compound
in which imperfection appears so intimately mingled with the noblest
qualities that--if we are true to Shakespeare--we do not think either of
justifying her or of blaming her: we feel simply the tragic emotions of
fear and pity.
In this failure a large part is played by that obvious characteristic to
which I have already referred. Cordelia is not, indeed, always
tongue-tied, as several passages in the drama, and even in this scene,
clearly show. But tender emotion, and especially a tender love for the
person to whom she has to speak, makes her dumb. Her love, as she says,
is more ponderous than her tongue:[182]
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth.
This expressive word 'heave' is repeated in the passage which describes
her reception of Kent's letter:
Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of 'Father'
Pantingly forth, as if it press'd her heart:
two or three broken ejaculations escape her lips, and she 'starts' away
'to deal with grief alone.' The same trait reappears with an ineffable
beauty in the stifled repetitions with which she attempts to answer her
father in the moment of his restoration:
_Lear._ Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
_Cor._ And so I am, I am.
_Lear._ Be your tears wet? yes, faith. I pray, weep not;
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.
_Cor._ No cause, no cause.
We see this trait for the last time, marked by Shakespeare with a
decision clearly intentional, in her inability to answer one syllable to
the last words we hear her father speak to her:
No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: