ACT II The daughters reduce the number of his attendants, refuse to be respectful to him, put the Earl of Kent in the stocks, and finally so irritate the old man that he goes forth on the open heath in a heavy storm. ACT III Only two of his retainers accompany him-his courtfool and Kent. They take refuge from the storm in a hovel, and there find Edgar, the son of the Earl of Gloucester. The latter has been supplanted in his father's affections by Edmund, his natural half-brother. The king's sorrows unbalance his mind. The Earl of Gloucester pities the old king and follows him that he may aid him. Edmund reports his deeds to Regan and Goneril, and the Duke of Cornwall, the former's husband, tears out Gloucester's eyes and thrusts him out of the gates to shift for himself. АСТ ІК Gloucester, wandering over the heath, is met and cared for by his son Edgar, who does not reveal his identity to his father. In the meantime Kent has sent word to Cordelia of her father's present condition and the cause of it, and she comes to his relief with a French army. By means of the doctors she has brought with her, Lear is re stored to his right mind. ACT In the battle between the French and British troops, Edmund commands for Goneril and Regan. Cordelia is defeated and she and her father taken prisoners. Goneril, for love of Edmund, poisons Regan, but afterward, when her dishonorable conduct is discovered by her husband, kills herself. Edgar charges Edmund with being a traitor and mortally wounds him in combat. Cordelia is hanged in the prison and Lear dies of a broken heart. THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR ACT FIRST SCENE I King Lear's palace. Enter Kent, Gloucester, and Edmund. Kent. I thought the king had more affected 5. The folio has qualities instead of equalities.-Johnson thinks "there is something of obscurity or inaccuracy” in the opening of the play. Coleridge remarks upon it as follows: "It was not without forethought, nor is it without its due significance, that the division of Lear's kingdom is in the first six lines of the play stated as a thing already determined in all its particulars, previously to the trial of professions, as the relative rewards of which the daughters were to be made to consider their several portions. The strange, yet by no means unnatural, mixture of selfishness, sensibility, and habit of feeling derived from, and fostered by, the particular rank and usages of the individual; the intense desire of being intensely beloved, selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature alone; the self-supportless leaning for all pleasure on another's breast; the craving after sympathy with a prodigal disinterestedness, frustrated by its own ostentation, and the mode and nature of its claims; the anxiety, the distrust, the jealousy, Kent. Is not this your son, my lord? Glou. His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: I have so often blushed to acknowl- 10 edge him that now I am brazed to it. 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 is some sue of it being so proper. hand Glou. But I have, sir, a son by order of law, 20 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? which more or less accompany all selfish affections, and are amongst the surest contradistinctions of mere fondness from true love, and which originate Lear's eager wish to enjoy his daughters' violent professions, whilst the inveterate habits of sovereignty convert the wish into claim and positive right, and an incompliance with it into crime and treason;-these facts, these passions, these moral verities, on which the whole tragedy is founded, are all prepared for, and will to the retrospect be found implied, in these first four or five lines of the play. They let us know that the trial is but a trick; and that the grossness of the old king's rage is in part the natural result of a silly trick suddenly and most unexpectedly baffled and disappointed.”—H. N. H. "equalities are so weighed." etc.; i. e. their shares are so nicely balanced that the closest scrutiny detects no superiority in either.C. H. H. 21. "some year"; a year or so.-C. H. H. 23. The folio has to instead of into.-H. N. H. Edm. No, my lord. t Glou. My lord of Kent: remember him here after as my honorable friend, Edm. My services to your lordship. Kent. I must love you, and sue to know you Edm. Sir, I shall study deserving. Glou. He hath been out nine years, and away he 30 Sennet. Enter one bearing a coronet, King Lear, Lear. Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Glou. I shall, my liege. [Exeunt Gloucester and Edmund. Lear. Meantime we shall express our darker pur 39 pose. Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Cornwall, 38. For "liege" the folio has lord.-H. N. H. 39. That is, "we have already made known our desire of parting the kingdom; we will now discover what has not been told before, the reasons by which we shall regulate the partition." This interpretation will justify or palliate the exordial dialogue (Johnson).— H. N. H. 42. "from our age"; so Ff.; Qq., "of our state."-I. G. I. G. now"); 52-53, omitted in Quartos. And you, our no less loving son of Albany, May be prevented now. The princes, France Great rivals in our youngest daughter's love, Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn, 50 And here are to be answer'd. Tell me, my daughters, Since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state, Which of you shall we say doth love us most? Where nature doth with merit challenge. Our eldest-born, speak first. Gon. Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter, Dearer than eye-sight, space and liberty, 60 Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare, As much as child e'er loved or father found; Beyond all manner of so much I love you. 56. "Where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril"; so Ff.; Qq. read "Where merit doth most challenge it.”—I. G. 60. Beyond all assignable quantity. I love you beyond limits, and cannot say it is so much.-In the next line the quartos have do instead of speak.-H. N. H. |