From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (Buffalo, NY: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 519-23.
[This section was prepared and proofread by Deborah Hill.]
KING LEAR
1606
M. William Shakespeare: | HIS | True Chronicle Historie of the life | and death of King LEAR and his three | Daughters. | With the unfortunate life of Edgar, sonne | and heire to the Earle of Gloster, and his | sullen and assumed humor of | Tom of Bedlam: | As it was played before the Kings Maiestie at Whitehall upon | S. Stephans night in Christmas Hollidayes. | By his Maiesties servants playing Usually at the Gloabe | on the Bancke-side. | LONDON. | Printed for Nathaniel Butter, and are to be sold at his shop in Pauls | Church-yard at the signe of the Pide Bull neere | St Austins Gate. 1608. -- TITLE PAGE OF FIRST EDITION, 1608.
Nothing but the Power of your Perswasion, and my Zeal for all the Remains of Shakespear, cou'd have wrought me to so bold an Undertaking. I found that the New-modelling of this Story, wou'd force me sometimes on the difficult Task of making the chiefest Persons speak something like their Character, on Matter whereof I had no Ground in my Author. Lear's real and Edgar's pretended Madness have so much of extravagant Nature (I know not how else to express it) as could never have started but from our Shakespear's Creating Fancy. The Images and Language are so odd and surprising, and yet so agreeable and proper, that whilst we grant that none but Shakespear could have form'd such Conceptions yet we are satisfied that they were the only Things in the World that ought to be said on those Occasions. -- TATE, NAHUM, 1681, The History of King Lear, Dedication.
"King Lear" is an admirable tragedy as Shakespeare wrote it; but as it is reformed according to the chimerical notion of poetical justice, in my humble opinion it has lost half its beauty. -- ADDISON, JOSEPH, 1711, The Spectator, No. 40, April 16.
Lear does not run mad till the third Act, yet his behaviour towards Cordelia in the first scene has all the appearance of a judgement totally depraved. Lear banishes (Cordelia) his sight, consigns her over to want, and loads her with the deepest imprecations. What less than Phrenzy can inspire a rage so groundless, and a conduct so absurd? Lear, while in his senses, acts like a madman, and from his first appearance to his last seems to be wholly deprived of his reason. -- LENNOX, CHARLOTTE, 1763-4, Shakespear Illustrated, vol. III, p. 287.
Can pity be more beautifully awakened than in the sufferings of the loyal and venerable Gloster, the miseries unnaturally inflicted on the tender, credulous, choleric, but noble Lear, or the unavailing filial piety of the angelic Cordelia? Can terror be more tremendously roused than by the wickedness of Goneril and Regan or the blind adoption of Edmund by Gloster? Can delight be more legitimately gratified than by the conquest of struggling virtue over inordinate vice? -- DIBDIN, CHARLES, 1795, A Complete History of the Stage, vol. III, p. 321.
We have here a plentiful crop of blunders. Kent talks, like a good Protestant, of eating no fish; and Gloster, of not standing in need of spectacles. We have Turks, Bedlam beggars, child Roland, Saint Withold, a Marshal of France, steeples, dollars, paper, holy water and the French disease. There is an allusion to the old theatrical moralities, and Nero, who did not live till several hundred years after Lear, is mentioned by Edgar as an angler in the lake of darkness. -- DOUCE, FRANCIS, 1807, Illustrations of Shakspeare vol. II, p. 295.
Were Lear alone to suffer from his daughters, the impression would be limited to the powerful compassion felt by us forhis private misfortune. But two such unheard of examples taking place at thesame time have the appearance of a real commotion in the moral world: the picture becomes gigantic, and fills us with such alarm as we should entertain at the idea that the heavenly bodies might one day fall out of their regular orbits. -- SCHLEGEL, AUGUSTUS WILLIAM, 1809, Dramatic Art and Literature, tr. Black, Lecture XII.
So to see Lear acted, -- to see an oldman tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. We want to take him into shelter and reIieve him. That is all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever produced in me. But the Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted. The contemptible machines by which they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear; they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension, but in intellectual: the explosions of passion are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage; while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear, -- we are in his mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms; in the aberrations of his reason, we discover a mighty irregular power of reasoning, immethodized from the ordinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth, at will upon the corruptions and abuses of mankind. -- LAMB, CHARLES, 1810? On The Tragedies of Shakespeare.
It is then the best of all Shakespear's plays, for it is the one in which he was the most in earnest. He was here fairly caught in the web of his own imagination. The passion which he has taken as his subject is that which strikes its root, deepest into the human heart, of which the bond is the hardest to be unloosed; and the cancelling and tearing to pieces of which gives the greatest revulsion to the frame. This depth of nature, this force of passion, this tug and mar of the elements of our being, this firm faith in filial piety, and the giddy anarchy and whirling tumult of the thoughts at finding this prop failing it, the contrast between the fixed, immoveable basis of natural affection, and the rapid, irregular starts of imagination suddenly wrenched from all its accustomed holds and resting-places in the soul, this is what Shakespear has given, and what nobody else but he could give. -- HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1817-69, Characters of Shakespear's Plays, p. 108.
Of all Shakspere's plays "Macbeth" is the most rapid, "Hamlet" the slowest, in movement. "Lear" combines length with rapidity -- like the hurricane and the whirlpool, absorbing while it advances. It begins as a stormy day in summer, with brightness, but that brightness is lurid and anticipates the tempest.-- COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1818, Lectures and Notes on Shakspere, ed. Ashe, p. 329.
The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle, but the comedy should be as in "King Lear," universal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps the intervention of this principle which determines the balance in favour of "King Lear" against "OEdipus Tyrannus" or the "Agamemnon," or, if you will, the trilogies with which they are connected unless the intense power of the choral poetry, especially that of the latter should be considered as restoring the equilibrium. "King Lear, " if it can sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world; in spite of the narrow conditions to which the poet was subjected by the ignorance of the philosophy of the drama which has prevailed in modern Europe. -- SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE, 1822? A Defence of Poetry, Works ed. Forman, vol. III, p. 114.
There is in the beauty of Cordelia's character an effect too sacred for words and almost too deep for tears; within her heart is a fathomless well of purest affection, but its waters sleep in silence and obscurity, -- never failing in their depth and never overflowing in their fulness. Every thing in her seems to lie beyond our view, and affects us in a manner which we feel rather than perceive. The character appears to have no surface, no salient points upon which the fancy can readily seize: there is little external development of intellect, less of passion, and still less of imagination. It is completely made out in the course of a few scenes, and we are surprised to find that in those few scenes there is a matter for a life of reflection, and materials enough for twenty heroines. If "Lear" be the grandest of Shakspeare's tragedies, Cordelia in herself, as a human being, governed by the purest and holiest impulses and motives, the most refined from all dross of selfishness and passion, approaches near to prefection; and in here adaptation, as a dramatic personage, to a determinate plan of action, may be pronounced altogether perfect. The character, to speak of it critically as a poetical conception, is not, however, to be comprehended at once, or easily; and in the same manner Cordelia, as a woman, is one whom we must have loved before we could have known her, and known her long before we could have known her truly. -- JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL, 1832, Characteristics of Women.
What "Lear" has in common with "Othello" is the soul of the Poet, dark melancholy, deeply wounded, well-nigh shattered by the world, only here in "Lear," still more than in "Othello," has he concentrated in his work, painted in burning colors, all the bitterness which the depravity of human nature must generate in a sensitive heart. -- RAPP, MORITZ, 1843, Shakspere's Schauspiele, Einleitung, p. 7.
Lear's is a genuine case of insanity from the beginning to the end; such as we often see in aged persons. On reading it we cannot divest ourselves of the idea that it is a real case of insanity correctly reported. Still, we apprehend the play, or case, is generally misunderstood. The general belief is, that the insanity of Lear originated solely from the ill-treatment of his daughters, while in truth he was insane before that, from the beginning of the play, when he gave his kingdom away, and banished, as it were Cordelia and Kent, and abused his servants. The ill-usage of his daughters only aggravated the disease, and drove him to raving madness. Had it been otherwise, the case, as one of insanity would have been inconsistent and very unusual. -- BRIGHAM, A., M. D., 1844, Shakespeare's Illustrations of Insanity, American Journal of Insanity, July.
Goethe has pronounced the first scene absurd. More recent criticism, certainly in view of that judgment harsh, but not without reason, has defended it as unobjectionable, but yet hardly with a convincing, decisive result. . . . It appears to me that Shakespeare here, in giving motive and a dramatic form to the legend, is lacking in his usual care. This want is assuredly considerably alleviated by the excellent elucidations of the scenes that follow. But the satisfaction subsequently afforded to the understanding cannot be any compensation to us if the imagination has previously had just reason to be offended. -- KREYSSIG, F., 1862, Vorlesungen uber Shakespeare, vol. II, p.316.
In "King Lear, " with its ever-thickening gloom and deepening sorrows, we see the tragic fate which, as the world of man is constituted, too often waits on folly no less than on guilt, and involves the innocent alike with the guilty in the train of terrible consequences. -- ARNOLD, THOMAS, 1862-87, A Manual of English Literature, American ed., p. 109.
"King Lear" is, indeed, the greatest single achievement in poetry of the Teutonic, or Northern, genius. By its largeness of conception and the variety of its details, by its revelation of a harmony existing between the forces of nature and the passions of man, by its grotesqueness and its sublimity, its own kinship with the great cathedrals of Gothic architecture. To conceive, to compass, to comprehend, at once in its stupendous unity and in its almost endless variety, a building like the cathedral of Rheims, or that of Cologne, is a feat which might seem to defy the most athletic imagination. But the impression which Shakspere's tragedy produces, while equally large -- almost monstrous -- and equally intricate, lacks the material fixity and determinateness of that produced by these great works in stone. Everything in the tragedy is in motion, and the motion is that of a tempest. -- DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1875-80. Shakspere, A Critical Study of His Mind and Art, p. 229.
"King Lear" deals especially with the natural man as opposed to the artificial man. When the King saw Edgar, then a Tom o' Bedlam, in the great storm scene, he exclaims -- "Is man no more than this?, Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on's (himself, the Fool, Kent) are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself unaccomodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come; unbutton here." And he tears his clothes off him. And this bare-stripped figure, in that awful scene, may serve as an image of the society the play represents. It is a society with all its disguises torn off. The passions walk abroad, bold and confidently. Greed lifts up its head unabashed; Lust scorns all holy ties, Wrath rages like a tempest. A fearful earth, indeed, if given over to such accursed powers! But it is not so. There is also the passion of Love, and throughout the play love is performing its secret ministry. Good and evil close in a fierce struggle, as always where there is life, and not mere death; and in the end good prevails, as in the end it must prevail: for evil has not only good to encounter, but it has to fight with itself: it is essentially self-consuming. So that in this play we have presented to us humanity in its purest and simplest elements -- humanity unsophisticated, denuded of all its "lendings," with its natural impulses all unchecked and potent. -- HALES, JOHN W., 1875-84, Notes and Essays on Shakespeare, p. 252.
Cordelia is as the sun above the deeps of hell shown in Goneril and Regan. One can hardly help wishing that Shakspere had followed the old story told by Layamon and other repeaters of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and made Cordelia set her father on the throne again, and reign after him for a while in peace. But the tragedian, the preacher of Shakspere's Third-Period lesson, did wisely for his art and meaning in letting the daughter and father lie in one grave. -- FURNIVALL, FREDERICK JAMES, 1877, ed. The Leopold Shakspere, Introduction to the Play.
Of all Shakespeare's plays, "King Lear" is unquestionably that in which he has come nearest to the height and to the likeness of the one tragic poet on any side greater than himself whom the world in all its ages has ever seen born of time. It is by far the most AEschylean of his works; the most elemental and primaeval, the most oceanic and Titanic in conception. He deals here with no subtleties as in "Hamlet," with no conventions as in "Othello:" there is no question of "a divided duty" or a problem half insoluble, a matter of country and connection, of family or of race; we look upward and downward, and in vain, into the deepest things of nature, into the highest things of providence; to the roots of life, and to the stars, from the roots that no God waters to the stars which give no man light, over a world full of death and life; without resting-place or guidance. -- SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p. 170.
"King Lear" cannot possibly be acted, it is too titanic. At the beginning of the play Lear, in his old age, has grown half mad, choleric and despotic, and therefore cannot brook Cordelia's silence. This play shows a state of society where men's passions are savage and uncurbed. No play like this anywhere -- not even the "Agamemnon" -- is so terrifically human. -- TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD, 1883, Some Criticisms on Poets, Memoir by His Son, vol. II, p. 292.
It is in "King Lear" that the poet attains the summit of his tragic powers. Higher than in "Lear" Shakespeare could not rise. -- TEN BRINK, BERNHARD, 1892-95, Five Lectures on Shakespeare, tr. Franklin, p. 87.
"Lear" is the greatest problem Shakespeare had yet proposed to himself, all the agonies and horrors of the world compressed into five short acts. The impression of "Lear" may be summed up in the words: a world-catastrophe. Shakespeare is no longer minded to depict anything else. What is echoing in his ears, what is filling his mind, is the crash of a ruining world. -- BRANDES, GEORGE, 1898, William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, vol. I, p. 283.
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