King Lear: a Study.

Few plays of Shakespeare seem perhaps less attractive at first sight. Coleridge's objection occurs to most of us: "Lear is the only serious performance of Shakespeare, the interest and situation of which are derived from the assumption of a gross improbability." But I think there is none which, on a closer acquaintance, fulfils better all the conditions of a perfect tragedy. It is tragic from beginning to end. In the opening scene we hear the first muttering of the storm, the fitful gusts of that tempest which swells into a hurricane, and Ideafens us with its clamour: which subsides at last, but only to leave the landscape strewn with wrecks, the trees stripped of leaves and branches, and the massive oaks, the giants of the forest, prostrate. Although not classical in its execution, King Lear is Greek in its conception, and accomplishes what Aristotle conceives to be the end of tragedy, purifying us by pity and fear. Our gaze is turned, as in the noblest tragedies of Eschylus and Sophocles, almost without intermission, to one central suffering hero-great in his surroundings, great in his errors, great in his sufferings, yet "more sinned against than sinning"; one who wins, in spite of all his errors, and even his crimes, our pity and our love. We are allowed no respite from first to last our feelings of indignation, terror, sympathy, are stirred, and the inward storms of passion are outwardly symbolised by the elemental conflict, and the noise of the battlefield. There is strife too within, for our judgment, our moral sense, condemns what our feelings excuse,

and we are not able to be quite without compassion even for the darkest villain of all. Yet, though Greek in its conception and barbaric in scenery, the play is in its deepest spirit Christian. It is throughout a protest against the theory of blind fate: men reap the harvest they have sown

"All friends do taste

The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings".

And, if we except a very few irreconcilables, the agony is a purifying fire, and it is faith which gives the victory. The king recovers his lost faith in human virtue through the love of two faithful ones; he had never lost his faith in God. The earl, who had through his greater sin lost even faith in the gods, is able at last to rest in peace,

"Nor quarrel with their great opposeless wills".

As a musical study, too, the play seems to me a marvellous composition. The overture sets before us the chief themes, introducing us at once to Lear, his wicked daughters, and Cordelia, as also to Gloster, Edmund, and Kent, and reveals to us the selfish passions which are to swell to ever greater tumult, and bring about the final catastrophe. Then the music changes to pathetic tones, as we hear the pleading voice of her whose voice was "ever gentle and low"; and, mediating between the two, we have the calm persistent strain, telling of a love not to be cast down, a loyalty faithful unto death.

The first scene has shown us the fierce passion in the royal household, the second shows us how similar passions are stirred in the heart of Gloster; and then, like some intricate fugue, the two parallel themes are interlaced to the end,-and the tumult and clamour

swells until it reaches its climax at the beginning of act iii. Through the whole of that act, the strife

rages

within and without. Then the exhausted sufferers sink into repose, the healing process has begun; and when, at last, faint and wounded, they are borne from the battlefield, we know by their changed voices, their altered tones, that adversity has done its work. The concluding act brings all once more upon the scene, the wicked are cast down, and the jarring discords cease, then a quiet cadence tells us that the sufferers are at rest, and some final notes recall the opening theme, and tell us that faith and love and duty will reign victorious over a renovated earth.

Yet grand as is the form and scenery of Lear, magnificent as it is in its conception as a whole, it seems to me unrivalled for its subtle analysis of feeling.

"I

Do love you more than words can wield the matter;

As much as child e'er loved."

"I find she names my very deed of love."

"I

Obey you, love you, and most honour you."

Thus speak the three sisters.

"Thee I have ever honour'd as my king,
Loved as my father,"

cries Kent.

I loved her most,"

are Lear's words when casting off Cordelia.

"Peace be with Burgundy!

Since that respects of fortune are his love."

"Love's not love

When mingled with regards that stand

Aloof from th' entire point."

"'Tis strange that from their cold'st neglect

My love should kindle."

(Act i., sc. i.)

Such are the reflections of Cordelia and of France.

Did these, all or any of them, truly love? Of course we put aside at once Goneril and Regan and Burgundy-gain is their good. But surely, we say, the old king loved his "dog-hearted" daughters! He gave them all, asking only in return their love. He was content to make his "nursery with them; he had no other love, and, when theirs failed him, his poor heart broke.

No,

He

Yet if love be the highest good, it must bless, and Lear's did not bless his daughters: it fed their selfishness, it taught them to lie, at last it cursed them. his was mere affection or fondness, not love. thought himself loving, because he wanted to be loved. He is contrasted with Kent, who, for love's sake, threw away even the king's love. Shakespeare would show how this greed of love degrades the character, and blinds the affections, making us value people not for what they are, but for their attachment (real or imaginary) to us.

"Better thou hadst not been born

Than not to have pleased me better."

The contrast of the false love and the true, of Duessa and Fidessa, of the selfish and the self-forgetting, of that which degrades with that which purifies that which enslaves, and that which redeems, has been the theme of poets in all ages, but it has not always been treated with Shakespeare's discernment. Milton has truly depicted the base in Delilah, yet he would have Eve look no higher than Adam. We may doubt the love of an Alcestis, but not question, as some have done, her love, who would die but not sin for him whom she loved; who would rather he should perish than live degraded, who would with the fire of a loving hatred burn up the evil-for love is a con

suming fire. The false love is not to be found only in the Helens, the Viviens, or in such as the brides of the Huguenot and the Black Brunswicker; it is to be seen in the Rosie Mackenzies, the Rosamond Vinceys of the present day, who, in their petty selfishness, lay waste noble lives; in kindred and friends, who cry out, "Better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better," who hinder others from doing what duty bids, what honour commands, what God requires saying to some brave heart, "this be far from thee," and then they turn away in anger from the stern reproof, "Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men".

With this, Tennyson has contrasted the true love, content for love's sake not to be loved.

"Oh if an eye that's downward cast

Could make thee somewhat blench or fail,
Then be my love an idle tale

And fading legend of the past."

Doubtless there is joy in loving sympathy, it is the sunlight of life, the music of the soul-but the unselfish are never without this sympathy, for they ever share others' gladness and griefs, and learn that "it is more blessed to give than to receive". And greed of love tempts to sin like any other greed, and to sins more terrible—" If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness". Jealousy is a passion as much stronger than covetousness or ambition, as love is more than gain or glory-a passion incompatible with true love, but close as the shadow to its counterfeit, and the jealous person (a Tantalus) pines for love, yet never can he lift the cup to his parched and fevered lips. We cannot but regard with the deepest pity the victim of this sin, the Deijanira, who sees the intoler