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Than twenty times your stop but, O vain boast!

Who can control his fate? 'tis not so now. Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon'd;

Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.
Do you go back dismay'd? 'tis a lost fear;
Man but a rush against Othello's breast, 270
And he retires. Where should Othello go?
Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starr'd
wench !

Pale as thy smock! when we shall meet at
compt,
This look of thine will hurl my soul from
heaven,

And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl!

Even like thy chastity. O cursed slave !
Whip me, ye devils,

From the possession of this heavenly sight!
Blow me about in winds! roast me in sul-

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Cas. Dear general, I never gave you cause Oth. I do believe it, and I ask your pardon. Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil 301 Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and

body?

Iago. Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:

From this time forth I never will speak word.
Lod. What, not to pray?
Gra.
Oth. Well, thou dost best.
Lod. Sir, you shall understand what hath
befall'n,

Torments will ope your lips.

Which, as I think, you know not. Here is a

letter

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O the pernicious caitiff ! How came you, Cassio, by that handkerchief That was my wife's? Cas. I found it in my chamber: And he himself confess'd but even now That there he dropp'd it for a special purpose Which wrought to his desire.

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Cas. There is besides in Roderigo's letter, How he upbraids lago, that he made him Brave me upon the watch; whereon it came That I was cast: and even but now he spake, After long seeming dead, Iago hurt him, Iago set him on.

Lod. You must forsake this room, and go with us: 330

Your power and your command is taken off,
And Cassio rules in Cyprus. For this slave,
If there be any cunning cruelty
That can torment him much and hold him

long,

It shall be his. You shall close prisoner rest,
Till that the nature of your fault be known
To the Venetian state. Come, bring him

away.

Oth. Soft you; a word or two before you go.

I have done the state some service, and they know't.

No more of that. I pray you, in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak

Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose

Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose sub

For he was great of heart.

Lod.

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nor,

I took by the throat the circumcised dog

And smote him, thus.

[Stabs himself.

Lod. O bloody period ! Gra.

All that's spoke is marr'd. Oth. I kiss'd thee ere I kill'd thee: no way but this;

[Falls on the bed, and dies.

Cas. This did I fear, but thought he had no

weapon;

360

More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea!
Look on the tragic loading of this bed;
This is thy work the object poisons sight;
Let it be hid. Gratiano, keep the house,
And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor,
For they succeed on you. To you, lord gover-

Remains the censure of this hellish villain;
The time, the place, the torture: O, enforce
it!
Myself will straight aboard: and to the state
This heavy act with heavy heart relate. 371
[Ezeuni

[To Iago] O Spartan dog,

KING LEAR.

(WRITTEN ABOUT 1605.)

INTRODUCTION.

Among the tragedies of passion King Lear is the one in which passions assume the largest pro. portions, act upon the widest theatre, and attain their absolute extremes. The story of Lear and his daughters was found by Shakespeare in Holinshed, and he may have taken a few hints from an old p.ay, The True Chronicle History of King Leir. In both Holinshed's version and that of the True Chronicle, the army of Lear and his French allies is victorious; Lear is reinstated in his kingdom; bat Holinshed relates how, after Lear's death, her sister's sons warred against Cordelia and took her prisoner, when "being a woman of a manly courage and despairing to recover liberty," she slew herself. With the story of Lear Shakespeare connects that of Gloucester and his two sons. An episode in Sir Philip Sidney's y's Arcadia supplied characters and incidents for this portion of the play, Sidney's blind king of Paphlagonia corresponding to the Gloucester of Shakespeare. But here, too, the story had in the dramatist's original a happy ending: the Paphlagonian king is restored to his throne, and the brothers are reconciled. The date of the play is probably 1605 or 1606. It was en- 16: tered on the Stationers' register, Nov. 26, 1607, and the entry states that it had been acted "upon St. Stephen's day at Christmas last," i. e. Dec, 26, 1606. It was printed in quarto in 1608. Shakespeare cares little to give the opening incidents of his play a look of prosaic, historical probability. The spectator or reader is asked, as it were, to grant the dramatist certain data, and then to observe what the imagination can make of them. Good and evil in this play are clearly severed from one another-(more so than in Macbeth or in Othello) and at the last, goodness, if we judge merely by external fortune, would seem to be, if not defeated, at least not triumphant. Shakespeare has dared, while paying little regard to mere historical verisimilitude, to represent the most solemnand awful mysteries of life as they actually are, without attempting to offer a ready-made explanation of them. Cordelia dies strangled in prison; yet we know that her devotion of love was not misspent. Lear expires in an agony of grief; but he has been delivered from his pride and passionate wilfulness: he has found that instead of being a master, at whose nod all things must bow, he is weak and helpless, a sport even of the wind and the rain; his ignorance of true love, and pleasure in false professions of love, have given place to an agonized clinging to the love which is real, deep, and tranquil because of its fulness. Lear is the greatest sufferer in Shakespeare's plays; though so old, he has strength which makes him a subject for prolonged and vast agony; and patience is unknown to him. The elements seem to have conspired against him with his unnatural daughters; the upheaval of the moral world, and the rage of tempest in the air seem to be parts of the same gigantic convulsion. In the midst of this tempest wanders unhoused the white-haired Lear; while his fool-most pathetic of all the minor characters of Shakespeare-jests half-wildly, half-coherently, half-bitterly, half-tenderly, and always with a sad remembrance of the happier past. The poor boy's heart has been sore ever since his "young mistress went to France." If Cordelia is pure love, tender and faithful, and Kent is unmingled loyalty, the monsters Goneril and Regan are gorgons rather than women, such as Shakespeare has nowhere else conceived. The aspect of Goneril can almost turn to stone; in Regan's tongue there is a viperous hiss. The story of Gloucester enlarges the basis of the tragedy. Lear's affliction is no mere private incident; there is a breaking of the bonds of nature and society all around us. But Gloucester is suffering for a former sin of selfindulgence, Lear is "more sinned against than sinning." Yet Gloucester is granted a death which is half joyful. Hisaffiction serves as a measure of the longer afflictior of the king. Edgar and Edmund are a contrasted pair-both are men of penetration, energy, and skill, one on the side of evil, the other on the side of good. Everywhere throughout the play Shakespeare's imaginative daring impresses us. Nothing in poetry is bolder or more wonderful than the scene on the night of the tempest in the hovel where the king, whose intellect has now given way, is in company with Edgar, assuming madness, the Fool, with his forced pathetic mirth, and Kent.

LEAR, king of Britain,
KING OF FRANCE.

JUKE OF BURGUNDY.
DUKE OF CORNWALL.
DUKE OF ALBANY.
EARL OF KENT.

DRAMATIS PERSONE.

EARL OF GLOUCESTER.

EDGAR, son to Gloucester.

EDMUND, bastard son to Gloucester.

CURAN, a courtier.

Old man, tenant to Gloucester.

Doctor,

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SCENE L. King Lear's palace.

Enter KENT, GLOUCESTER, and EDMUND. Kent. I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall,

Glou. It did always seem so to us: but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most; for equalities are so weighed, that curiosity in neither can make choice of either's moiety. Kent. Is not this your son, my lord? Glou. His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it.

11

Kent. I cannot conceive you. Glou. Sir, this young fellow's mother could: whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had, indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault? Kent. I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.

Glou. But I have, sir, a son by order of law, some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account: though this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged. Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund ?

Edm. No, my lord. Glou. My lord of Kent: remember him hereafter as my honorable friend.

Edm. My services to your lordship.

Kent. I must love you, and sue to know you better.

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Edm. Sir, I shall study deserving. Glou. He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again. The king is coming. Sennet. Enter KING LEAR, CORNWALL, ALBANY, GONERIL, REGAN, CORDELIA, and Attendants.

Lear. Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.

Glou. I shall, my liege.

[Exeunt Gloucester and Edmund. Lear. Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.

divided

Give me the map there. Know that we have In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age; Conferring them on younger strengths, while 41

we

Unburthen'd crawl toward death. Our son of

Cornwall,

And you, our no less loving son of Albany, We have this hour a constant will to publish Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife

May be prevented now. The princes, France and Burgundy, Great rivals in our youngest daughter's love, Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,

And here are to be answer'd. Tell me, my

daughters,

Since now we will divest us, both of rule, 50
Interest of territory, cares of state, -
Which of you shall we say doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge.

Goneril,

Our eldest-born, speak first.

Gon. Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter;

Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare ;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty,

honor;

As much as child e'er loved, or father found; A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable;

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Beyond all manner of so much I love you. Cor. [Aside] What shall Cordelia do? Love, and be silent.

Lear. Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,

With shadowy forests and with champains rich'd,

With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads, We make thee lady: to thine and Albany's issue

Be this perpetual. What says our second

daughter,

Our dearest Regan, wife to Cornwall? Speak. Reg. Sir, I am made

70

Of the self-same metal that my sister is,
And prize me at her worth. In my true heart
I find she names my very deed of love;
Only she comes too short: that I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys,
Which the most precious square of sense pos-

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When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom;

And, in thy best consideration, check This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgment,

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least;

Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound

Lear. Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy Reverbs no hollowness.

Lear.

Kent, on thy life, no more. Kent. My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to

Lear. But goes thy heart with this? Cor.

Ay, good my lord. Lear. So young, and so untender ? Cor. So young, my lord, and true.

dower:

110

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lose it,

From whom we do exist, and cease to be; Here I disclaim all my paternal care, Propinquity and property of blood,

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And as a stranger to my heart and me

main

Kent. See better, Lear; and let me still re160

The true blank of thine eye.

Now, by Apollo, king,

Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barbar

ous Scythian,

Or he that makes his generation messes

To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom 120 Be as well neighbor'd, pitied, and relieved,

As thou my sometime daughter.

Kent.

Lear. Peace, Kent!

Good my liege,

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

I loved her most, and thought to set my rest

On her kind nursery. Hence, and avoid my sight!

So be my grave my peace, as here I give

Her father's heart from her! Call France; who stirs ?

Lear. Now, by Apollo, -
Kent.

Thou swear'st thy gods in vain.

Lear.

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O, vassal! miscreant!

[Laying his hand on his sword.

Dear sir, forbear.

Do:

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Call Burgundy. Cornwall and Albany, With my two daughters' dowers digest this third: 130 Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.

On thine allegiance, hear me! Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow,

Which we durst never yet, and with strain'd pride To come between our sentence and our powers,

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