網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

Whilst I was big in clamour, came there a man,
Who having seen me in my worst estate,
Shunn'd my abhorr'd society; but then, finding
Who 'twas that so endur'd, with his strong arms
He fasten'd on my neck, and bellow'd out
As he'd burst heaven; threw him on my father;
Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him,
That ever ear receiv'd: which in recounting
His grief grew puissant, and the strings of life
Began to crack: Twice then the trumpet sounded,
And there I left him tranc'd.

Alb.

guise

But who was this?

Follow'd his enemy king, and did him service
Improper for a slave.

To lay the blame upon her own despair,
That she forbids herself.

Alb. The gods defend her! Bear him hence
a while.
[Edmund is borne off.

Enter Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms; Ed-
gar, Officer, and others.

Lear. Howl, howl, howl, howl!-0, you are men of stones

eyes, I'd use them so
Had I your tongues and
That heaven's vault should crack:-0, she is gone
for ever!-

Edg. Kent, sir, the banish'd Kent; who in dis-I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She's dead as earth :-Lend me a looking-glass;
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives.
Kent.
Is this the promis'd end?'
Edg. Or image of that horror?"
Alb.
Fall, and cease!
Lear. This feather stirs; she lives! if it be so,
It is a chance that does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.

Enter a Gentleman hastily, with a bloody knife.

Gent. Help! help! O help!
Edg.

Alb.

What kind of help?

Speak, man.

[blocks in formation]

Edg. What means that bloody knife ?"
Gent.

It came even from the heart of-
Alb.

Who, man? speak.
Gent. Your lady, sir, your lady and her sister
By her is poison'd; she confesses it.

:

Edm. I was contracted to them both; all three Now marry in an instant.

Alb. Produce their bodies, be they alive or dead! This judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble,

Touches us not with pity.

[blocks in formation]

[Exit Gentleman.

Kent.
O my good master!
Lear. Pr'ythee, away.

Edg.

[Kneeling.

'Tis noble Kent, your friend. Lear. A plague upon you, murderers, traitors

all!

I might have sav'd her; now she's gone for ever!-
Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little. Ha!

What is't thou say'st ?-Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman:-
I kill'd the slave that was a hanging thee.
Offi. 'Tis true, my lords, he did.
Lear.
Did I not, fellow?
I have seen the day, with my good biting faulchion
I would have made them skip: I am old now,
And these same crosses spoil me.-Who are you?
Here comes Kent, sir. Mine eyes are none o'the best :-I'll tell you straight.

Enter Kent.

The time will not allow the compliment,
Which very manners urges.

Kent.

I am come

To bid my king and master aye' good night;

Is he not here?

Alb.

Kent. If fortune brag of two she lov'd and hated,
One of them we behold.

Lear. This is a duil sight: Are you not Kent?
Kent.
The same;
Your servant Kent: Where is your servant Caius ?
Lear. He's a good fellow, I can tell you that;

Speak, Edmund, where's the king? and where's He'll strike, and quickly too:-He's dead and

Great thing of us forgot!

Cordelia ?

See'st thou this object, Kent?

[The bodies of Goneril and Regan are
brought in.

Kent. Alack, why thus ?
Edm.

rotten.

Kent. No, my good lord; I am the very man ;-
Lear. I'll see that straight.

Kent. That, from your first of difference and
decay,

Lear.

Yet Edmund was belov'd; Have follow'd your sad steps.
The one the other poison'd for my sake,
And after slew herself.

[blocks in formation]

You are welcome hither. Kent. Nor no man else; all's cheerless, dark, and deadly.

Your eldest daughters have fore-doom'd themselves,
And desperately are dead.

Lear.

Ay, so I think.

Alb. He knows not what he says; and vain it is
That we present us to him.
Edg.

Very bootless,

Enter an Officer.

Offi. Edmund is dead, my lord.
Alb.

That's but a trifle here.-
You lords, and noble friends, know our intent.
What comfort to this great decay may come,
Shall be applied: For us, we will resign,
During the life of this old majesty,

To him our absolute power:-You, to your rights;
[To Edgar and Kent.

(4) i. e. Die; Albany speaks to Lear.
Useless. (6) i. e. Lear.

[ocr errors][ocr errors]

With boot,' and such addition as your honours
Have more than merited.-All friends shall taste
The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings.-O, see, see!

Lear. And my poor fool' is hang'd! No, no, no
life:

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

nicely discriminates, and so minutely describes the characters of men, he commonly neglects and confounds the characters of ages, by mingling customs ancient and modern, English and foreign.

My learned friend Mr. Warton, who has in The Adventurer very minutely criticised this play, remarks, that the instances of cruelty are too savage

And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no and shocking, and that the intervention of Edmund more,

destroys the simplicity of the story. These objecNever, never, never, never, never! tions may, I think, be answered by repeating, that Pray you, undo this button: Thank you, sir.- the cruelty of the daughters is an historical fact, to Do you see this? Look on her,-look,-her lips,-which the poet has added little, having only drawn Look there, look there![He dies. it into a series by dialogue and action. But I am Edg. He faints!-My lord, my lord,-not able to apologize with equal plausibility for the Kent. Break, heart; I pr'ythee, break! extrusion of Gloster's eyes, which seems an act too Edg. horrid to be endured in dramatic exhibition, and such as must always compel the mind to relieve its distress by incredulity. Yet let it be remembered that our author well knew what would please the audience for which he wrote.

Look up, my lord. Kent. Vex not his ghost:-0, let him pass! hates him,

That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.

he

Edg.
O, he is gone, indeed.
Kent. The wonder is, he hath endur'd so long:
He but usurp'd his life.

Alb. Bear them from hence.-Our present busi

ness

Is general wo. Friends of my soul, you twain
[To Kent and Edgar.
Rule in this realm, and the gor'd state sustain.
Kent. I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
My master calls, and I must not say, no.
Alb. The weight of this sad time we must
obey;

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we, that are young,
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
[Exeunt, with a dead march.

The injury done by Edmund to the simplicity of the action is abundantly recompensed by the addition of variety, by the art with which he is made to co-operate with the chief design, and the opportunity which he gives the poet of combining perfidy with perfidy, and connecting the wicked son with the wicked daughters, to impress this important moral, that villany is never at a stop, that crimes lead to crimes, and at last terminate in ruin.

But though this moral be incidentally enforced, Shakspeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and what is yet more strange, to the faith of chronicles. Yet this conduct is justified by The Spectator, who blames Tate for giving Cordelia success and happiness in his alteration, and declares, that in his opinion, the tragedy has lost half its beauty. Dennis has remarked, whether justly or not, that, to secure the favourable reception of Cato, the town was poisoned with much false and abominable The tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated criticism, and that endeavours had been used to among the dramas of Shakspeare. There perhaps discredit and decry poetical justice. A play in no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed; which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miswhich so much agitates our passions, and interests carry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just our curiosity. The artful involutions of distinct in- representation of the common events of human life: terests, the striking oppositions of contrary charac- but since all reasonable beings naturally love justers, the sudden changes of fortune, and the quick tice, I cannot easily be persuaded, that the obser succession of events, fill the mind with a perpetual vation of justice makes a play worse; or that, if tumult of indignation, pity, and hope. There is no other excellencies are equal, the audience will not scene which does not contribute to the aggravation always rise better pleased from the final triumph of of the distress or conduct to the action, and scarce persecuted virtue. a line which does not conduce to the progress of the In the present case the public has decided. Corscene. So powerful is the current of the poet's delia, from the time of Tate, has always retired' imagination, that the mind, which once ventures with victory and felicity. And, if my sensations within it, is hurried irresistibly along. could add any thing to the general suffrage, I might

On the seeming improbability of Lear's conduct, relate, I was many years ago so shocked by Corit may be observed, that he is represented accord- delia's death, that I know not whether I ever ening to histories at that time vulgarly received as dured to read again the last scenes of the play, till true. And, perhaps, if we turn our thoughts upon I undertook to revise them as an editor. the barbarity and ignorance of the age to which There is another controversy among the critics this story is referred, it will appear not so unlikely concerning this play. It is disputed whether the as while we estimate Lear's manners by our own. prominent image in Lear's disordered mind be the Such preference of one daughter to another, or re-loss of his kingdom or the cruelty of his daughters. signation of dominion on such conditions, would Mr. Murphy, a very judicious critic, has evinced be yet credible, if told of a petty prince of Guinea by induction of particular passages, that the cruelor Madagascar. Shakspeare, indeed, by the men- ty of his daughters is the primary source of his distion of his earls and dukes, has given us the idea tress, and that the loss of royalty affects him only of times more civilized, and of life regulated by as a secondary and subordinate evil. He observes, softer manners; and the truth is, that though he so with great justness, that Lear would move our compassion but little, did we not rather consider the (2) Titles. injured father than the degraded king.

(1) Benefit. (3) Poor fool in the time of Shakspeare, was an expression of endearment.

[blocks in formation]

The story of this play, except the episode of Ed-that it follows the chronicle; it has the rudiments mund, which is derived, I think, from Sidney, is of the play, but none of its amplifications: it first taken originally from Geoffry of Monmouth, whom hinted Lear's madness, but did not array it in cirHolinshed generally copied; but perhaps immedi- cumstances. The writer of the ballad added ately from an old historical ballad. My reason for something to the history, which is a proof that he believing that the play was posterior to the ballad, would have added more, if more had occurred to rather than the ballad to the play, is, that the bal- his mind; and more must have occurred if he had. lad has nothing of Shakspeare's nocturnal tempest, seen Shakspeare. which is too striking to have been omitted, and JOHNSON.

[ocr errors]
[graphic][subsumed][graphic][merged small]
« 上一頁繼續 »