Alb. A herald, ho! A herald, ho, a herald! Alb. Trust to thy single virtue; for thy soldiers, Gon. This is mere practice, Gloster⚫ By the law of arms, thou wast not bound to answer This sickness grows upon me. Or with this paper shall I stop it:-Hold, sir :- Enter a Herald. Edm, Sound. [Gives the letter to Edmund. Gon. Say, if I do; the laws are mine, not thine : Know'st thou this paper? Most monstrous! Ask me not what I know. [Exit Goneril. Alb. Go after her: she's desperate; govern her. [To an Officer, who goes out. Edm. What you have charg'd me with, that have I done; And more, much more: the time will bring it out; 'Tis past, and so am 1: But what art thou, [1 Trumpet. That hast this fortune on me? If thou art noble, [2 Trumpet. I do forgive thee. 13 Trumpet. Edg. Let's exchange charity. [Trumpet answers within. I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund; Enter Edgar, armed, preceded by a trumpet. Alb. Ask him his purposes, why he appears Upon this call o'the trumpet. Her. What are you? Your name, your quality? and why you answer This present summons ? Edg. Know, my name is lost; Which is that adversary? Alb. Edm. Himself;-What say'st thou to him? That, if my speech offend a noble heart, Where have you hid yourself? This sword, this arm, and my best spirits, are Never (O fault!) reveal'd myself unto him, Edm. In wisdom, I should ask thy name;1 Alb. O save him, save him! (1) i. e. Valour. (2) Notwithstanding. (3) Because if his adversary was not of equal rank, Edmund might have declined the combat. Until some half-hour past, when I was arm'd, Whilst I was big in clamour, came there a man, And there I left him tranc'd. Alb. guise But who was this? To lay the blame upon her own despair, Alb. The gods defend her! Bear him hence a while. [Edmund is borne off. Enter Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms; Edgar, Officer, and others. Lear. Howl, howl, howl, howl!-0, you are men of stones; Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so 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; Follow'd his enemy king, and did him service 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. Enter Kent. [Exit Gentleman. Is this the promis'd end?' Fall, and cease! I Kent. O my good master! [Kneeling, 'Tis noble Kent, your friend. Lear. A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all! might have sav'd her; now she's gone for ever!- Did I not, fellow? Here comes Kent, sir. And these same crosses spoil me.-Who are you? The time will not allow the compliment, Which very manners urges. Kent. I am come Speak, Edmund, where's the king? and where's He'll strike, and quickly too:-He's dead and Kent. No, my good lord; I am the very man;- Kent. That, from your first of difference and Yet Edmund was belov'd; Have follow'd your sad steps. Lear. Your eldest daughters have fore-doom'd themselves, 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." With boot,' and such addition as your honours Lear. And my poor fool' is hang'd! No, no, no 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 crucity are too savage And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no and shocking, and that the intervention of Edmund more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button: Thank you, sir. destroys the simplicity of the story. These objec tions may, I think, be answered by repeating, that 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. Look up, my lord. horrid to be endured in dramatic exhibition, and Kent. Vex not his ghost:-0, let him pass! he such as must always compel the mind to relieve its hates him, distress by incredulity. Yet let it be remembered that our author well knew what would please the audience for which he wrote. That would upon the rack of this tough world 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. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. [Exeunt, with a dead march. The tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakspeare. There is perhaps no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed; which so much agitates our passions, and interests our curiosity. The artful involutions of distinct interests, the striking oppositions of contrary characters, the sudden changes of fortune, and the quick succession of events, fill the mind with a perpetual tumult of indignation, pity, and hope. There is no scene which does not contribute to the aggravation of the distress or conduct to the action, and scarce a line which does not conduce to the progress of the scene. So powerful is the current of the poet's imagination, that the mind, which once ventures within it, is hurried irresistibly along. 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, Snakspeare 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 criticism, and that endeavours had been used to discredit and decry poetical justice. A play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just representation of the common events of human life: but since all reasonable beings naturally love justice, I cannot easily be persuaded, that the obser vation of justice makes a play worse; or that, if other excellencies are equal, the audience will not always rise better pleased from the final triumph of persecuted virtue. In the present case the public has decided. Cordelia, from the time of Tate, has always retired with victory and felicity. And, if my sensations could add any thing to the general suffrage, I might relate, I was many years ago so shocked by Cor delia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play, till On the seeming improbability of Lear's conduct, it may be observed, that he is represented according to histories at that time vulgarly received as 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 dis tion of his earls and dukes, has given us the idea tress, and that the loss of rovalty 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 injured father than the degraded king. (1) Benefit. (2) Titles. (3) Poor fool in the time of Shakspeare, was an expression of endearment. The story of this play, except the episode of Ed-that it follows the chronicle; it has the rudiments muud, 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 eir Holinshed 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. |