Part 14 (1/2)

The point is not insisted on; but some pa.s.sages in the play suggest that when Shakespeare began to write it he was minded to make the action the falling of a judgment upon Desdemona for her treachery to her father.

The treachery caused the old man's death. The too pa.s.sionate and hasty things always bring death in these plays. Violent delights have violent ends and bring violent ends to others.

The poetry of _Oth.e.l.lo_ is nearly as well known as that of _Hamlet_.

Many quotations from the play have pa.s.sed into the speech of the people.

A play of intrigue does not give the fullest opportunity for great poetry; but supreme things are spoken throughout the action. Oth.e.l.lo's cry--

”It is the very error of the moon.

She comes more near the earth than she was wont And drives men mad,”

is one of the most perfect of all the perfect things in the tragedies.

_King Lear._

_Written._ 1605-6.

_Published._ 1608.

_Source of the Plot._ The story of Lear is told in Holinshed's _Chronicles_, in a play by an unknown hand, _The True Chronicle History of King Leir_, and in a few stanzas of the tenth canto of the second Book of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_.

The character of Gloucester seems to have been suggested by the character of a blind king in Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_.

_The Fable._ King Lear, in his old age, determines to give up his kingdom to his three daughters. Before he does so, he tries to a.s.sure himself of their love for him. The two elder women, Goneril and Regan, vow that they love him intensely; the youngest, Cordelia, can only tell him that she cares for him as a daughter should. He curses and casts off Cordelia, who is taken to wife by the King of France.

Gloucester, deceived by his b.a.s.t.a.r.d Edmund, casts off Edgar his son.

King Lear, thwarted and flouted by Goneril and Regan, goes mad, and wanders away with his Fool. Gloucester, trying to comfort him against the wishes of Goneril and Regan, is betrayed by his b.a.s.t.a.r.d Edmund, and blinded. He wanders away with Edgar, who has disguised himself as a madman.

Regan's husband is killed. Seeking to take Edmund in his stead, she rouses the jealousy of Goneril, who has already made advances to him.

Cordelia lands with French troops to repossess Lear of his kingdom.

She finds Lear, and comforts him. In an engagement with the sisters' armies, she and Lear are captured.

Edmund's baseness is exposed. He is attainted and struck down.

Goneril poisons Regan, and kills herself. Edmund, before he dies, reveals that he has given order for Lear and Cordelia to be killed.

His news comes too late to save Cordelia. She is brought in dead.

Lear dies over her body.

Albany, Goneril's husband, Kent, Lear's faithful servant, and Edgar, Edmund's slayer, are left to set the kingdom in order.

The play of _King Lear_ is based upon a fable and a fairy story. It ill.u.s.trates the most terrible forms of treachery, that of child against father, and father against child. It is the most affecting and the grandest of the plays.

The evil which makes the action springs from two sources, both fatal.

One is the blindness or fatuity in Lear, which makes him give away his strength and cast out Cordelia. The other, equally deadly, but more cruel in its results, springs from an unrepented treachery, done long before by Gloucester, when he broke his marriage vows to beget Edmund.

Memory of the sweetness of that treachery gives to Gloucester a blindness to the boy's nature, just as a sweetness, or ease, in the treachery of giving up the cares of kings.h.i.+p (against oath and the kingdom's good) helps to blind Lear to the natures of his daughters.

The blindness in the one case is sentimental, in the other wilful. Being established, fate makes use of it. One of the chief lessons of the plays is that man is only safe when his mind is perfectly just and calm. Any injustice, trouble or hunger in the mind delivers man to powers who restore calmness and justice by means violent or gentle according to the strength of the disturbing obsession. This play begins at the moment when an established blindness in two men is about to become an instrument of fate for the violent opening of their eyes. The blindness in both cases is against the course of nature. It is unnatural that Lear should give his kings.h.i.+p to women, and that he should curse his youngest child. It is unnatural that Gloucester should make much of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d son whom he has hardly seen for nine years. It is deeply unnatural that both Lear and Gloucester should believe evil suddenly of the youngest, best beloved, and most faithful spirits in the play. As the blindness that causes the injustice is great and unnatural, so the working of fate to purge the eyes and restore the balance is violent and unnatural. Every person important to the action is thrust into an unnatural way of life.

Goneril and Regan rule their father, commit the most ghastly and beastly cruelty, l.u.s.t after the same man, and die unnaturally (having betrayed each other), the one by her sister's hand, the other by her own. Lear is driven mad. The King of France is forced to war with his wife's sisters.