Othello above it; yet I am fain to believe that in some parts of this drama its author has fairly outdone himself, that he is here at his greatest, and that he has perhaps touched the highest pinnacle of all art. The poet here | calmly essays to handle a theme concerning the ways of men which any hand save his would have shrunk from attempting to grasp, a tale of savage and unnatural wrong ruthlessly and deliberately perpetrated on affectionate if impulsive parents by children cruel as the grave, cold, selfish, callous; where the good are beaten down in the struggle, and where the evil ones appear at first to triumph, but in the end, even "in the very blossoms of their fortune," receive a swift and condign punishment; a scene "dark as hell" is portrayed, yet out of the very depths of its central darkness, Love, ardent and unconquerable, asserts itself like a diamond which, in the very darkest recesses of the mine, shines out illumining the blackest depths with fervid and unquenchable splendour! And how high does he sometimes rise! what realms there are full of pity and pathos and passion! And these wondrously interlaced and blended with snatches of wild mirth, yet mirth full of wisdom even in the midst of the surpassing horrors of the scene; poor outcast Lear on that dark heath with his bare, discrowned head exposed to rain and storm, and To the most terrible and nimble stroke Of quick, cross lightning, attended still by his fool, who ever and anon, amid the moaning of the storm, chastises his loved master with the whip of most bitter and sarcastic words, which are most "aculeate and proper," while in the miserable hovel the outlawed Edgar is added to the group who personates, to the life, the well-known character of the Bedlam Beggar, a poor, miserable, suffering creature of Shakespeare's age, regarded with a sort of superstitious terror, and who now, "shown to our eyes to grieve our heart," is brimful of strange and wildly eloquent speeches, which, by reason of astonishing vigour and reach, both touch our hearts and appeal strongly to our imaginations; while as the wits of the poor and afflicted king are gradually turning, words fall from his lips pregnant with deep wisdom, and brimful of pity for the sad ills of suffering humanity. He is driven to exclaim: Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, a fellow-feeling giving him, for the first time, the power of fully sympathising with the woes of the poorest of his former subjects. Some modern critics of King Lear will have it that the tragedy owes its existence, largely if not entirely, to the state of mind which-as part of his personal experience our poet was in when he composed it. Some, indeed, feel confident that this great tragedy owes its being to this or that particular incident or event operating, or perhaps rankling in the mind of the poet; that some personal motive or mood, they argue, induced Shakespeare to compose it; that he brought to the work of its composition a mind full of melancholy or of spleen, and that, feeling a deep grudge, a "sæva indignatio," against mankind on account of some wrongs which he fancied he had received at its hands, he deliberately selected a subject fraught with sadness, and which exhibited mankind at its very worst. Some of these critics seem, indeed, to imply that, through feelings of pique at the remembrance of these wrongs of which his mind still "bore the print," and "out of his weakness and his melancholy," he was minded to give a sad and a miserable ending to these two "old, unhappy, far-off" tales of Leir and the Paphlagonian king, which he had blended into one, and which had before ended prosperously. To judge from the words of some of these critics, it looks as if they thought that the poet had fallen into a state of savage misanthropy, and that, to use the words of a writer of his time, "in other men's calamities he was as it were in season." Now, as in support of theories of this kind there is rarely, if ever, vouchsafed to us one grain of evidence, perhaps I may be permitted to record my personal belief that such an origin for this or any other tragedy of our poet is most improbable. Little, very little, is known to us about the details of Shakespeare's private life. Some modern critics seem to think themselves called upon to manufacture details concerning it brand-new from the mint of their own prolific imagination: giving to airy nothings A local habitation and a name. Little, I have just said, is known about the details of our poet's life, but from the little that can be gleaned re specting it, it would seem clear that he probably led a tranquil, easy existence, that "being of a constant, noble, loving nature," he was beloved by those who really knew him; that loving his art, he was very careless as to fame; and that, living in an age when men took their lives more quietly than it is the fashion to do in this busy and feverish age, he may have enjoyed a fair share of happiness. "I did love the man and do honour his memory on this side, idolatry as much as any," writes his choleric, and perhaps somewhat envious, brother-dramatist. "He was indeed honest," he goes on, "and of an open and free nature, had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions." A statement like that-and many more might be added to it is surely worth a wilderness of baseless conjectures. Doubtless that he elected to leave Comedy and History for a time, and to devote himself to Tragedy may have been owing to more causes than one, and it is possible that in doing so he may have been partly influenced by this sad truth, which every thinking man sooner or later becomes aware of, that much sadness and misery is mixed up in the cup which comes to the lips of most mortal men; such a contemplation of "the mystery of the cruelty of things' may, consciously or unconsciously, have turned his thoughts in this sombre direction. Further than this, I feel sure it is impossible for us to go. this most sad play of ours is there " And even through not a fresh breath blowing? We are not face to face with the work of a Tourneur, a Webster, or a Ford. There is "a wind on the heath" which purges the air from pestilence. I will quote some eloquent words on King Lear from an eminent critic of our poet still fortunately with us:1_ "In this play Shakespeare opposes the presence and influences of evil, not by any transcendental denial of evil, but by the presence of human virtue, fidelity, and self-sacrificial love. In no play is there a clearer and intenser manifestation of loyal manhood and of strong, tender womanhood." I can well believe that Shakespeare, when he penned this mighty drama, was in the mood to chide no breather in the world but himself, and that Timon-like or Jaques-like feelings no more had gained possession of his breast than they were working in the breast of a poet living not far from our own times, a man of mighty genius-if far below the author of King Lear-who, though in trouble and sickness, yet "great of heart," and loving his fellow-men, produced a work of rare genius, but full of intense sadness, and having a most tragic conclusion, and produced it in close connection with two other works formed of very different stuff. I, of course, refer to Scott's most powerful, yet dark and tragic, tale, The Bride of Lammermoor, which may have been said to have been forged on the same anvil-being written, or rather dictated, at exactly the same time as those other much less sombre tales, The Heart of Midlothian and The Legend of Montrose. "And now space will not permit my saying one word respecting the wonderful group of living and breathing characters which the play contains. But, indeed, I have already said too much. It is a play which, great as it is, presents itself plainly before the gaze of men, like a vast 1 Edward Dowden, Shakspere: His Mind and Art, 1875. |