;' 
 
 THREE ESSAYS 
 
 ON 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDY 
 
 OF 
 
 KING LEAR 
 
 BY PUPILS OF THE CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 BEUCE AND FOED, PRINTERS, 
 
 TRUMP STREET, KING STREET, CHEAPSIDE. 
 
 J851. 
 
THE following Essays, by Pupils of the City of London 
 School, are selected from a number of similar compo- 
 sitions for which the first award of Prizes was made, 
 (in April, 1851,) under an Endowment established by 
 HENRY BENJAMIN HANBURY BEAUFOY, Esq., F.R.S.j 
 for encouraging in the School a study of the Works ol 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 3?o 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 A Parallel between Shakespeare's Tragedy of King Lear 
 and the CEdipus in Colono of Sophocles ; stating the 
 general design of each Play, and contrasting the Cha- 
 racters introduced, in their points of similarity and 
 dissimilarity , 1 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 On the Character of the Religious Belief and Feeling which 
 pervade the Tragedy of King Lear. Illustrated by short 
 quotations 53 
 
 ESSAY III. 
 
 On the Tragedy of King Lear; quoting and illustrating 
 such passages as allude to the Usages of the Times in 
 which Shakespeare lived 95 
 
ESSAY I 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I CONCEIVE that in the subject proposed, the 
 comparison is not so much between two poets as 
 between two systems. Had .ZEschylus been put 
 in opposition to Sophocles, it would have been 
 for us to have decided, as those judges would have 
 done who, in ancient times at the feast of Bacchus, 
 weighed the merits of the contending bards, and ad- 
 judged the ivy-wreath. Or had Webster's Duchess 
 of Amalfi been brought into comparison with King 
 Lear, the question would still have been one of 
 individual merit. But when a poem composed 
 by the military compeer of Pericles for the applause 
 of a generation which had seen that mighty states- 
 man on the bema* and followed him to the field 
 a poem preserved in mouldy manuscripts during 
 eighteen centuries, and rescued from an oblivion 
 deep as the grave, at a period when the British 
 stage was but beginning its career, is compared 
 with a drama of the Elizabethan age, which has 
 never been absent from the theatre, and which 
 time has not yet antiquated, the question becomes 
 
 * The orator's platform. 
 B 
 
immeasurably wider. We are no longer comparing 
 Shakespeare with Sophocles, but modern art with 
 ancient, Britain with Attica, Christianity with 
 Paganism. Is there, then, no difference of design, 
 of principle, of dramatic art, concealed under the 
 superficial coincidence of a dialogical form, and 
 a so-called tragical conclusion ? Many such dif- 
 ferences undoubtedly there are, and that not merely 
 in the detail or the unimportant machinery of the 
 plot, or in the trifling discrepancies of metre and 
 diction, but in the moral of the piece, in the 
 conception of character, in the degree of imitation 
 of life, in fact, in every point of moment wherein 
 any difference could rationally be conceived to 
 exist. And yet the Greek drama and our own 
 are not altogether heterogeneous creations. The 
 points of divergence are neither capricious nor 
 unaccountable, nor is it difficult to discern a law 
 in them; where there is not identity there is 
 commonly analogy. These analogies and dissimi- 
 larities could scarcely be better traced and illustrated 
 than by a parallel between two pieces, both highly 
 characteristic of the school which shaped and of the 
 genius which gave them birth, and both acknow- 
 ledged masterpieces of their kind the (Edipus at 
 Colonus and King Lear. To accomplish this, then, 
 I consider the principal object of this Essay. 
 
 We are accustomed to call these two poems 
 tragic dramas. Both words are Greek, and both 
 words properly convey ideas indigenous to Greece. 
 
They are of that class which an undiscerning 
 reverence for the antique has made of universal 
 use. It is of importance that their significations 
 should be rightly ascertained. A drama in its 
 simplest and most comprehensive meaning signifies 
 a fact, not a fact narrated, but re-called, re-enacted. 
 And the addition of the qualifying tragic superadds 
 an idea of religion, and a reference to a divine 
 purpose fulfilled and discerned in the fact re- 
 presented. The (Edipus Coloneus, therefore, as 
 a drama of the Attic system, is the representation 
 of an incident wherein the sequence of cause and 
 effect, as designed and directed by Divine Wisdom, 
 is revealed and distinctly marked. For tragedy 
 among the Greeks was, from first to last, a religious 
 institution. The populace assembled to behold 
 it, not as a pastime, but as a solemn rite and 
 mystery belonging to their Bacchic festival. And 
 when the rude hymn of the periods antecedent to 
 Thespis became matured, in the fulness of time, 
 into that superb combination of the lyric and 
 the dramatic, wherein the heterogeneous elements 
 were arranged and united into a musical contrast 
 by the poet's inspiration, no change passed over 
 the sacred and solemn nature of the institution. 
 The rights of religion in it were inalienable; and 
 though the direct worship of Bacchus was merged 
 in a more comprehensive spirit of devotion, which 
 addressed the whole number of the immortals, yet 
 that spirit of devotion lost none of its fervency. 
 
4 
 
 and only declined with the drama itself. It was 
 its Helicon. 
 
 Similar in origin, although widely different in 
 its subsequent history, was the British drama. 
 Invented by priests, and made subservient in the 
 first instance to the interests of religion, it resembled, 
 though in humbler guise and on a less ambitious 
 scale, the pantomimic representations of the principal 
 events of the Evangelical history, still annually 
 exhibited at Rome during the festival of the Holy 
 Week. But the same great event which decided 
 the political destinies of Great Britain, determined 
 also the course of her dramatic history. The 
 founders of our national theatre, after the accession 
 of Queen Elizabeth, dropped the religious character 
 of the drama, and leaving holy things to a more 
 appropriate sphere, established other principles and 
 a new basis of dramatic art. The Greeks had 
 made their tragic Muse a priestess of religion ; 
 the English taught her to minister to their thirst 
 for recreation and love of pastime. The former 
 attracted auditors as suppliants to a shrine, by 
 addressing their respect for religion and their 
 affection for their national deities, and fascinated 
 them by gratifying their love of moral beauty and 
 grace; the latter addressed that fellow-feeling for 
 and sympathy with human nature in the extremity 
 of misfortune and peril, which leads us to hold 
 our breath with a painful interest, while the tale 
 goes round the Christmas fire, of murders com- 
 
mitted in the silent night, and of the ghost that 
 scares those who walk the churchyard after dark. 
 The former only is the Tragic Drama, the latter 
 is the Romance. 
 
 Yet, although not essentially, the romance is 
 often accidentally tragic. For if the principle of 
 tragedy consist, as we have said, in ideas of religion 
 and of Providence, that principle must almost of 
 necessity enter into any drama in which the 
 catastrophe is either terrible or mournful. Death 
 and the grave are among the most strongly sug- 
 gestive objects of solemn and religious sentiments 
 that we can conceive. And dreadful or serious 
 incident of this kind is almost indispensable to a 
 production whose principal object is to enchain the 
 sympathies and to fascinate the audience. 
 
 The QEdipus Coloneus is essentially a tragic 
 drama. It is the punishment of unnatural sin by 
 supernatural means. If the subject were simply the 
 death of the hero, it would not at once follow that 
 the piece would be a tragedy. But it is a death by 
 the judgment of God, and a judgment mysteriously 
 foretold by the oracle of Apollo, and more mysteri- 
 ously executed by the agency of the Erinyes.* It has 
 throughout the fearful majesty of a stern religion. 
 
 King Lear is accidentally a tragic drama. There 
 is no manifestation of Providence in the death of the 
 sovereign or of his heroic daughter. But the de- 
 struction of the three criminals, terribly struck down 
 
 * The Furies or destroying Angels of Greek mythology. 
 
6 
 
 in the successful climax of their iniquity, is acknow- 
 ledged, and represented by the poet, as a dispensation 
 of vengeance. Their death is accomplished, not in- 
 deed by miraculous suspension, but by all-wise direc- 
 tion of natural laws. The poet's commentary is : 
 
 " The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
 Make instruments to scourge us." 
 
 Yet this tremendous incident is not interwoven 
 with the design of the play, nor in any way essential 
 to it. It is rather a point of detail, an unintentional 
 coincidence with the primary law of the Greek 
 drama. 
 
 It is then, I hope, obvious that King Lear is not 
 in the strict (i.e., the Greek) sense of the word, a 
 tragedy, although some scenes may accidentally 
 possess a tragic tendency. Upon this principle, 
 then, I intend to proceed ; viz., that while the poem 
 of the Greek tragedian is a sacrifice to piety and 
 religious feeling, that of Shakespeare can be con- 
 sidered only as a story told for effect and interest ; 
 a study of human nature in extreme anguish and 
 distortion, demanding and extorting a sympathetic 
 impression of pity and terror from all who bear the 
 image or partake the feelings of humanity. 
 
 To establish this fundamental proposition was 
 the single object of this introductory chapter. I 
 believe that I shall find it a convenient centre from 
 which to deduce all that I have thought and read 
 upon the proposed subject of the Essay. I purpose 
 now to add a full account of both the plays which 
 
we are discussing, in my next two chapters. A 
 fourth chapter will wind up the subject, with a full 
 exposition of such similarities or discrepancies as 
 may be observed in the general design, and in the 
 characters introduced. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FORTUNATELY for our purpose, the story of 
 CEdipus and that of Lear, in their historical, or 
 rather unhistorical, character are very similiar. Both 
 belong to that extensive and pre-eminently poetical 
 class of tales, which, springing up in the earlier ages 
 of national prosperity, are preserved, no one knows 
 how, until they are incorporated without question in 
 the annals of the country. 
 
 These romantic and many of them beautiful 
 legends may delight the reader by their individual 
 grace, but they will at the same time offend his eye 
 by the false perspective of their relative position. 
 Stretching back into the most remote periods, they 
 notwithstanding bring us into such proximity with, 
 and familiar knowledge of, the most primitive peo- 
 ples as contemporary history can rarely attain to. 
 The same roving fancy produced them which created 
 those strange tales of father Jove, his multitu- 
 dinous amours and his conjugal quarrels. They 
 have long lost credit with the historical, though they 
 
8 
 
 continue to delight the poetical, reader. The old 
 British lays, preserved as they have been by the 
 tedious old proser, Geoffrey, though immeasurably 
 inferior to the stately epics of the Greek bards, and 
 many of them extremely dull, are not without re- 
 deeming strokes of a more fertile genius; and the 
 legends of Arthur, Merlin, Sabrina, Cymbeline, and 
 Lear, have furnished some of our leading poets with 
 occasional themes. 
 
 It is impossible at this distance of time, and in 
 the absence of the earlier poems (those of Pisander 
 and Stesichorus) in which was contained the (Edipo- 
 dean mythus, to decide how much Sophocles found, 
 and how much he invented. The tale in its original 
 form may in all probability have been something 
 like the following. 
 
 In the days when the states of Greece were under 
 the rule of despotic sovereigns, the line of Labdacus 
 reigned over Thebes, and Labdacus was the father 
 of Laius. 
 
 Now, the crimes* of Laius had displeased the 
 gods, so that when he besought the Delphic god 
 that he might beget children, Apollo laid a curse 
 upon him, saying, that from the hand of his offspring 
 he should meet his death. So when the child was 
 born, Laius commanded that he should be exposed 
 on Mount Cithaeron ; but the god watched over the 
 
 c yap 
 
 Ztvg Kpovicijg HtXoTrog aTvyepdlc apaion Trtdrj 
 nv tyi\ov ripTratrae vioV Xp/o-yuoc SoOtiQ Aaiy 
 
fulfilment of his predictions. A shepherd found the 
 young (Edipus and carried him to Corinth to King 
 Polybus, and he was brought up at Corinth as 
 the king's son. When he was grown up, being 
 informed by chance of the mystery which hung over 
 his birth, he inquired at Delphi. Then the god re- 
 vealed to him the decree of the fates, that his father 
 should fall by his hand, and further, that he should 
 be united in unnatural wedlock with his mother. 
 So the affrighted youth returned no more to Corinth, 
 and being led by destiny, took the way to Thebes. 
 And meeting, in a place where three ways met, the 
 Theban king his father, with his train of attendants, 
 and being wantonly attacked by them, he ^was 
 roused to anger and slew the whole company. On 
 his arrival at Thebes he found the city of Cadmus 
 oppressed by a portentous evil; for the Sphinx, 
 an unnatural and blood-thirsty monster, having the 
 head of a woman, combined with the body and 
 savage nature of a brute beast, haunted the country 
 and destroyed many people. But in those days, 
 ere yet the kingly office was disgraced by tyranny 
 or degraded by unworthiness, a royal nature was 
 not concealed by rags nor lost its superiority when 
 it lost its power. The kingly wisdom of CEdipus 
 vanquished and destroyed the Sphinx, and adding 
 the right of merit to that of descent, he assumed 
 again with superior glory the alienated sceptre 
 of his ancestors. The unwitting parricide receives 
 now with the same unconsciousness the hand of 
 
10 
 
 his widowed mother. But the vengeance of the 
 gods tarries not. Withered by the visitation of pes- 
 tilence, the Theban state is commanded by Apollo 
 to make inquisition for the blood of their former 
 sovereign. The shepherds of Mount Cithseron 
 give conclusive evidence, and the dreadful deeds 
 of (Edipus are brought to light. The miserable 
 queen, thus awakened from her deceitful dream of 
 prosperity, dies by her own hand; and the king 
 himself, after lingering through his remaining years 
 under the torments of the Erinyes, is yet found 
 worthy to fall in battle,* and is buried with funeral 
 honours in the temple of Ceres at Eteon. j* 
 
 TJiis is the original mythus, to which Homer, in 
 the single mention which he makes of the name of 
 (Edipus, bears indirect testimony. But a younger 
 legend, and one perhaps of Attic origin, recom- 
 mended itself as possessing many advantages to an 
 
 * " 
 
 ig To.(j)ov 
 
 II. if/. 679. 
 
 j- Lysimachus, quoted by the Scholiast, gives the following de- 
 tailed account of his funeral : OI&'TTOV e rfXeurr/o-avroj; KCU 
 t&v (f)i\(t>v iv &fi(3aig 6cnrTtv avrov diavoovfjilvwv /caXvov oi 
 0/7/3a7oi ta rag Trpoyfyevij/itVag ^vp^opag ae ovrog acreflovg. 
 Qi $ KopiffCLvrtg avrbv eg nva TOTTOV rrjg IBotiariag KaXovfJiEvov 
 Keov e'Scupav avrov. Fty^o/itvwv Ze rulg iv rrj Kwfjiri KCITOIKOIHTIV 
 arv^/uarwv TIV&V OLr\QivTQ alriav el^ai rr\v Ot&Vov ra0ryv 
 EKtXevov rovg <f)i\ovc avaipziv CLVTOV K rijg \wpag. Qi oe airopov- 
 fj,vot Tolg Zvfjifiaivovffiv aviXovreg KOfj.iffay elg Erew^ov. 
 BovAojueyot $e \aOpa ra^v Troirjaaadat KaradaTTTOVcri rvKrog iv 
 upw ArmrjTpog ayvoi}aavftQ rov TOTTOV. Karcujtavovg yiyvo- 
 p.vov Tre/i^avrcc ot TOV Erewyov KarotKovvrfg rov QOV iTnjpdtTwv 
 ri iroi&ffiv. 'O $ Otbg UTTEV p.rj Kivtlv TOV IKTTJV Ttjg BLOV. 
 avrov 
 
11 
 
 / 
 Athenian dramatist. In this version, the unhappy 
 
 son of the unhappy Laius, self-banished and blinded 
 by his own desperate hand, is said to have wandered 
 into Attica, attended only by his daughter Antigone, 
 and to have expired in some unknown manner in the 
 vicinity of Athens, leaving to the issue of his unhal- 
 lowed marriage, an awful legacy of quarrels and 
 mutual slaughter, and an overflowing measure of that 
 curse, which had gone forth beyond recall against 
 the haughty, but ill-fated house of the Labdacidae. 
 
 This legend, I have said, would probably be pre- 
 ferred by Sophocles as an Athenian dramatist, as 
 an Athenian, because it furnished material for a dis- 
 play, highly acceptable, of course, to an Athenian 
 audience, of national sentiment; as a dramatist, 
 because in it the idea of a Providence, rewarding 
 and retributive, is more impressively developed. For, 
 besides the strictly poetical character of the (Edipus 
 at Colonus, it has patriotic, political, and private 
 aspects highly various and remarkable. But of 
 these I shall have occasion hereafter to speak. 
 
 Our poet probably found no more than the vague 
 tradition which connected the fate of (Edipus in 
 some undefined manner with Athens, and conse- 
 quently with Theseus; the detail and embellish- 
 ment of the story we may suppose to have been his 
 own. Hippius Colonus, a little deme* to the north- 
 west of the city of Athens, naturally suggested itself 
 as the first resting-place to the journey er from 
 
 * The population of Attica was scattered through upwards of 
 170 demes or hamlets. 
 
12 
 
 Thebes, after his arrival in the city ; and the mys- 
 terious manner of the ex-king's death, unrelated by 
 tradition, was the foundation of the closing-scene, in 
 which the poet supposes CEdipus to be removed 
 from the society of mortals by the personal inter- 
 ference of the Avengers. All that lies between 
 is merely the necessary working of machinery pre- 
 viously set in motion in the CEdipus Rex. So 
 little of this drama is founded upon tradition, and so 
 meagre the pre-existing foundation upon which 
 it was reared ! 
 
 / To the north-west of Athens, as we have said, 
 and at the distance of ten stadia, is the deme of 
 Colonus, adorned with an equestrian statue of its 
 hero-guardian. There are altars and statues of 
 Neptune and Minerva ; and there too is the sacred 
 grove of the Furies, by men uninhabited and un- 
 trodden, where the vine, the olive, and the laurel 
 flourish, and the song of the nightingale is heard 
 continually. Hither comes the fallen monarch, a 
 man self-banished and long a wanderer ; the young 
 Antigone supports his steps, protecting (frail guar- 
 dian !) his eyeless old age. They bring with them 
 words of hope from the gods, and oracles promising 
 a term of labours ; and even now, though they know 
 it not, a present destiny is leading them onwards 
 towards the completion of its decrees. Wearied, the 
 old man seeks a resting-place within the precincts of 
 the hallowed grove, resigning himself, like a victim 
 on the altar, to the sacrificial knife. In a brief 
 dialogue with a passer-by, he informs himself of the 
 
13 
 
 name of that stately city whose marble fanes and 
 gilded turrets are rising into the sky at some dis- 
 tance; is told of the opulence and growing fortune 
 of the Attic metropolis, then reposing in glorious 
 tranquillity beneath the benignant sceptre of The- 
 seus; is warned of his unlawful desecration of the 
 grove, and being informed of the name by which the 
 goddesses, who inhabited it, were known among the 
 people of Attica, recognises therein the fulfilment of 
 an oracle, and breaking forth into passionate suppli- 
 cation, refuses to quit the seat to which he has un- 
 consciously been led. The stranger departs to call 
 in the aid of his fellow-citizens, and then enter the 
 chorus in an ecstacy of lyrical frenzy. An agitating 
 dialogue ensues, in which the name and fortunes of 
 the unhappy intruder, but too well known through- 
 out Greece, are revealed, a communication which 
 is received at first with religious horror, and then 
 with emotions of pity, by the Athenian citizens, 
 humane as well as pious. Ismene, his other 
 daughter, now enters, bringing new responses from 
 the Delphic god, in which the body of QEdipus is 
 mysteriously connected with the fortune of states, 
 and reporting the near arrival of Creon, reigning 
 king of Thebes, with the purpose of reconducting 
 him to that land which is to be blessed by his pre- 
 sence. The chorus regard with silent sympathy 
 the affectionate meeting of parent and child, and, 
 attentive to the dictates of religion, counsel a peace- 
 offering to the venerable sisters, a libation of water 
 and honey from the fleece-crowned goblet. Ismene 
 
14 
 
 departs upon this errand. Now enters Theseus. 
 We may conceive with what rapturous applause an 
 Athenian audience would greet this genuine emblem 
 of the majesty of their city in that her cloudless day. 
 He receives his illustrious visitor with compassion- 
 ate respect, and departs, having with prompt gene- 
 rosity extended to him the pledge of his protection. 
 
 The action here pauses, and the choral ode mounts. 
 In that sublime strain, by the reading of which 
 Sophocles is said to have confounded the accusers 
 who slandered him for a dotard, they sing thy praise, 
 O sunny plain of Colonus, flower-enamelled, watered 
 by fair streams, fertile of vine and olive, blessed by 
 the favour of sage Pallas and of Morian Jove ; thence 
 extending their theme as the exulting spirit swells 
 within them, they recount the glories of the Athe- 
 nian state, gifted by earth-shaking Neptune with 
 the prancing steed and with the many-oared galley. 
 (We must remember that Colonus was sacred to 
 Neptune.) At the close of the strain Creon enters, 
 having previously seized Ismene while sacrificing 
 unattended to the Erinyes. After an angry dialogue, 
 he carries off Antigone by force, and threatens GEdi- 
 pus himself. But the turmoil of the conflict reaches 
 Theseus at the altar of Poseidon, and brings him to 
 the succour. Creon is arrested, and the city is 
 roused to the rescue of the kidnapped maidens. 
 The chorus raises a martial strain, predictive of 
 victory ; and the reappearance at its close of Theseus 
 in company with the princesses verifies their con- 
 fident anticipations. But CEdipus is not yet free 
 
15 
 
 from quarrels, nor spent with cursing ; his son 
 Polynices, now entering, receives in abundant mea- 
 sure the paternal malediction for his criminal ingra- 
 titude, and departs to receive its fulfilment in civil 
 war and from a brother's hand. 
 
 It is evident that this whole succession of scenes 
 is aimless and useless to the ends of the drama, 
 except indeed to develop the characters of the dra- 
 matis personae, as well as for another object which 
 will be explained hereafter. But now a thunder- 
 peal, sent not without significance from the celestial 
 powers, announces the winding up of the mystery. 
 The hero recognises the signal, and calls for Theseus. 
 Meanwhile the storm increases, and prostrates the 
 soul of the chorus with a pious awe. They pour forth 
 their prayers with incoherent vehemence to the 
 father of gods. Theseus enters, and to him CEdipus 
 gives his dying directions concerning the place of 
 his burial, and enjoins inviolable secrecy respecting 
 it; prophecies the unfading prosperity of Athens 
 while the secret of his resting-place should be pre- 
 served sacredly in the line of kings; and finally 
 breaks out into solemn appeals to the goddess of the 
 shades. The two kings leave the stage together. 
 
 Then follows a supplicatory ode, and a messenger 
 enters with tidings of the mysterious removal of the 
 wanderer from the eyes of men; he recounts in 
 detail the solemn pomp and circumstance attending 
 his last moments. The wailings of the bereaved 
 daughters conclude the drama. 
 
16 
 
 Sophocles died about 405 B.C., at a period when 
 the loss of the Sicilian armament and the renewed 
 activity of the Peloponnesian commanders had re- 
 duced the daring enterprise of the Athenian demo- 
 cracy to a convulsive struggling to retain that liberty 
 which seemed about to slip from its grasp. Then 
 it was that those petty states, which had bowed their 
 heads in abject terror before the sweep of her fierce 
 anger, started up around her in the day of her adver- 
 sity, eager for revenge and bloodshed. Foremost in 
 the attack and loudest in the bark was Thebes. It 
 is not surprising, therefore, that the patriotic bard, 
 whose name was known and respected all over Greece, 
 should in this, his latest work, have taken advantage 
 of the story of GEdipus to deter the descendants of 
 Cadmus from an impious hostility against the land 
 protected by the bones and the manes of the Theban 
 QEdipus. From the same source sprang, no doubt, 
 that fierce spirit of enmity against the hostile metro- 
 polis of Bceotia, which is perpetually flashing and 
 blazing in the GEdipus Coloneus; hence came the 
 mission and defeat of Creon, hence the ascribed 
 virtue in the tomb of CEdipus, which Sophocles, 
 presuming probably on the prophetical powers sup- 
 posed to form a part of the poetical faculty, has 
 ventured to tack on to the original myth. The 
 prophecy was not inspired, but the poet did not live 
 to be mortified by the failure of his patriotic prog- 
 nostication. But the charm which was wanting to 
 the ashes of CEdipus seemed to be supplied in those 
 
17 
 
 of Sophocles. Through the day of his funeral the 
 enmity of Sparta and Athens slept. Spear and 
 sword kept holiday while the remains of the great 
 poet were committed to the dust. 
 
 Besides these more particular political allusions, 
 the character of the work is so distinctly national / 
 presenting such a grand vision of the mythical 
 age of Athens abounding so remarkably in songs 
 and odes of fatherland that we may imagine it to 
 have been to Athens, although in an inferior degree, 
 what the Iliad was to Greece in general, what the 
 ./Eneid was to Rome, and what the Henriade was 
 intended to be to France. 
 
 And yet, further, the (Edipus Coloneus abounds in i 
 allusions of a more private nature. A story told by 
 Cicero, and repeated in every modern notice of the 
 life of Sophocles, represents the poet to have been 
 deeply injured in his old age by the avarice and 
 ingratitude of his grandsons. Very frequent and 
 sorrowful are the poet's allusions to these misfortunes 
 of his old age, conveyed sometimes in the bitter re- 
 proaches of CEdipus, addressed to his ungrateful son, 
 and sometimes in sad reflections upon the decay of 
 affection and faith among men. We may imagine 
 what was passing through the old man's mind, when 
 he composed those noble and melancholy lines : 
 
 T il 0/\rar' AlyeuQ TTCU, povoig ov yiyverat 
 Qtoiai yrjpag, ovde KarQavtlv TTOTE' 
 TO. cTaXXa avyyjii TravQ' 6 Trayk'parfjQ xporof 
 00/rei ptv iffxyg yrjg, fyOivet Se 
 
18 
 
 I have endeavoured in this rapid sketch in some 
 measure to show what appearance the (Edipus 
 Coloneus might be expected to present to an 
 Athenian well versed in the mythology of his 
 country, in the history of Athens, and in the private 
 biography of the poet. No play perhaps owed 
 more, at its first appearance, to those adventitious 
 merits which have other founts than that of Helicon, 
 and which recommend themselves only to contem- 
 poraneous critics ; at the same time it is but fair to 
 state that no poem could better afford to do without 
 them. In none of his works is Sophocles more 
 exalted in sentiment, or more magnificent in diction ; 
 in none is the interest more successfully supported 
 without the artificial machinery of a plot! If in 
 artful management of the fable it be inferior to the 
 CEdipus Rex, or in the living picture of active 
 heroism to the Antigone, yet in its magnificent 
 display of the mysteries of the old Greek mythology 
 it is unequalled. We are there admitted into the 
 solemn groves of that chivalrous and martial 
 Paganism, which surpassed in romantic grace all 
 those immemorial superstitions which vegetated like 
 noxious weeds on the banks of the Nile, the 
 Euphrates, or the Ganges. In the piety of Sophocles 
 there is something far more sincere and reverent 
 than is generally found in the votaries of a refined 
 heathenism like his. 
 
19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IN the remotest periods, long before Britain pos- 
 sessed either authentic history, or even genuine tra- 
 ditions ; before Roman ambition, or Saxon tyranny, 
 the rude ferocity of the Dane, or the statelier 
 chivalry of the adventurous Norseman, came to 
 desolate our island ; nay, before the massy granites 
 of Stonehenge were piled upon one another by the 
 rude art of those primitive ages, the story of Lear 
 is placed by those monkish chroniclers who re- 
 corded, and perhaps invented, it, Sixty years did 
 that unhappily celebrated monarch sway the sceptre 
 of his ancestor, Brute: old age came upon him 
 still in undisturbed prosperity, and he might look 
 forward to a peaceful close of a fortunate and 
 protracted career. But the powers which guide v 
 the stars of heaven, and the fortunes of men, had 
 already foretold in the one what they designed to 
 accomplish in the other ; and had reserved for the 
 declining years and faculties of Lear, a load of 
 disaster, such as manhood in its vigorous prime 
 could barely have supported. His blasted old age 
 sunk beneath the reiterated strokes, smiting like 
 successive lightnings upon a head enfeebled already 
 by the slower weapon of time, and he presented 
 at length the sad and wondrous spectacle of frenzy 
 following in the wake of dotage, and calamity 
 treading upon the heels of decay. 
 
 c2 
 
20 
 
 His story was perhaps as celebrated in the earlier 
 days of our English literature, when it was looked 
 upon with the reverence belonging to an authentic 
 narrative, as ever was that of GEdipus or Priam in 
 the corresponding period of Athenian annals. It 
 was copied by Holingshed from Geoffrey; it was 
 made familiar to the lower classes in the form of 
 a ballad ; it was incorporated by Edmund Spenser 
 into the second book of the Faery Queene. But 
 all these earlier celebrations have faded from re- 
 membrance before the magnificent dramatic version 
 in which it has been remoulded by a greater pen 
 even than Spenser's, and compared with which they 
 are but as the grub to the various coloured and 
 bright-winged butterfly. 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth's narration is a mere nur- 
 sery tale, destitute of dignity and almost of interest, 
 and in style insufferably tedious and prosaic. 
 Spenser has softened the improbability, but at the 
 same time has weakened the point of his original. 
 He relates it briefly and incidentally, but not 
 without a full measure of that rich elegance and 
 fascinating sweetness of expression by which he 
 is wont to illustrate the meanest theme, and to 
 render the foulest odoriferous. But in none of 
 these narratives could there have been discerned 
 the faintest indication of the importance and trans- 
 cendent interest which this legend was destined to 
 possess in the estimation of posterity. 
 
 Shakespeare has employed a most singular and 
 
21 
 
 original device to overshadow and to conceal the 
 inherent improbability of the tale. He has asso- 
 ciated with it another story, almost precisely similar 
 in circumstances, thereby to preserve the unity of 
 interest, but more easy of belief, that its juxta- 
 position may raise the credit of the former incident. 
 We are easily inclined to believe that a royal dotard, 
 unaccustomed to contradiction, might, on slight 
 provocation, disown a daughter whom he loved, 
 when we have seen how easily, and at the same time 
 how plausibly, a powerful intellect, unimpaired by 
 age, may be duped into the same rashness. The 
 misfortune of Gloster leads us to believe in the folly 
 of Lear, which in some degree reflects back the 
 probability it receives. This appears to me to be 
 the obvious explanation of the episode of Gloster, 
 which has been so often censured and so often 
 defended on other grounds. 
 
 The opening scene is peculiarly Shakesperian. 
 What Euripides and JEschylus effected by a pro- 
 logue, Shakespeare commonly employs a few of his 
 subordinate characters to manage in a few lines of 
 introductory dialogue. In a conversation between 
 the earls of Gloster and of Kent, we are informed 
 that the old king, weary of the cares of state, is 
 meditating the division of his kingdom among his 
 three daughters. The intended consorts of the 
 princesses are introduced to us ; we learn the 
 situation of Gloster himself, see before us his 
 bastard son, and conceive no very favourable idea 
 
22 
 
 of the father who can confess his fault with such 
 easy levity. Then Lear entering in state, formally 
 allots to his two elder daughters their share of the 
 kingdom in solid return for empty professions. The 
 disinheritance of Cordelia follows, the high-souled 
 girl disdains to buy a kingdom with falsehood ; 
 her love is of a kind which dispenses with pro* 
 fessions. From this difficult point the poet hastens 
 to draw 7 the attention of the reader by means of the 
 interference and banishment of Kent, Burgundy's 
 rejection, and France's acceptance of Cordelia's 
 hand. We are then carried back to the episode of 
 Gloster; Edmund's daring, unprincipled character 
 is revealed in a short soliloquy ; his plot against the 
 character and life of his brother is traced through 
 its first stages. We then return to the court to see 
 the first sparks of discontent flashing out, and the 
 true nature of the professing Goneril displaying its 
 fierce features through the hypocrite's mask. The 
 quick-darting eye of suspicion pierces with ready 
 penetration the thin veil which yet conceals the 
 unnatural treachery, and the whole plot, in all its 
 malignant perfection of detail, bursts at once upon 
 the ex-king's eye, when the time for repentance and 
 the necessity of concealment has passed away. 
 
 How pitiable, how hopelessly overwhelming, the 
 condition of the man thus late enlightened ! It is 
 as when the felon whose sleep has been full of the 
 memory of past joys which may never return save 
 in the mockery of dreams, awakens to the sudden 
 
23 
 
 consciousness of fetters and the dungeon. Thus 
 old Lear, who, in the dreams of his dotage, has 
 cherished enmity for affection, and banished love 
 for hatred; who, in the judicial infatuation which 
 precedes destruction, has poured out the fulness of 
 his love upon the bloodthirsty Goneril, upon the 
 pitiless Eegan, and has expelled from his presence 
 the gentle affection of Cordelia and the manly 
 fidelity of Kent ; now, for the first time, opens his 
 eyes to the fierce looks and scowling brows which 
 surround him on every side. His heart sickens at 
 the view ; he speeds from one enemy to another 
 still more determined, from Goneril to Began, and 
 from Regan back to Goneril. Repulsed with 
 almost undisguised insult, and with still increasing 
 indignities, driven even from shelter by those who 
 owed to him a kingdom, he hurries forth from the 
 society of men, and there, with the tempest raging 
 above him, and the palace of his relentless daughter 
 behind him, he pours forth that tremendous torrent 
 of mingled sorrow, fury, and despair, which has 
 been always so celebrated among the dramatic por- 
 traitures of extreme passion. 
 
 By a masterly alternation of scenes, the two 
 parallel plots have been carried to the same point 
 of development, and are here united. By the 
 artifices of Edmund, the fiery duke of Gloster is 
 incensed against his eldest son, who is compelled 
 to take refuge in a precipitate flight from the sus- 
 picion and penalty of parricide. In the extremity 
 
24 
 
 of peril and indigence he wanders through the 
 country, seeking to disguise his dignity under the 
 appearance of beggary and madness. 
 
 " His face he grimes with filth, 
 Blankets his loins ; elfs all his hair in knots ; 
 And with presented nakedness out-faces 
 The winds, and persecutions of the sky." 
 
 In a wretched hovel, Edgar and Lear, accompanied 
 by the faithful Kent in disguise, and the babbling, 
 wild, but affectionate fool, meet. The feigned 
 lunacy of the unfortunate young hero and the 
 ceaseless chattering of the fool, present a powerful 
 contrast to the more passionate raving of the king. 
 The tempest rages without, and the loud strife of 
 passion and lunacy answers from within, in accents 
 of yet intenser horror. But from this depth of 
 misery Lear is extricated by the interposition of 
 Gloster, and carried to Dover to elude the snares 
 which the savage vigilance of the princesses is still 
 plotting for his life. For this act of loyalty and 
 fidelity Gloster is carried before Regan, and his 
 eyes are put out by her order. But here occurs 
 the first check in the triumphant career of the 
 criminals. Cornwall, husband of Eegan, and fully 
 worthy of her. is cut off by his serf, roused to 
 violence by this extremity of outrage. Gloster, 
 blind and beggared, is led by his disguised son to 
 Dover, and there saved, first from suicide by the 
 affectionate artifice of his companion, and afterwards, 
 by his valour, from the violence of his enemies. 
 
25 
 
 At Dover, a French army, accompanied by Queen 
 Cordelia, is found encamped ; Albany, Goneril's hus- 
 band, and Edmund, collect the powers of England 
 to oppose the invading army. Lear is found preach- 
 ing misanthropy about the fields, and brought into 
 the French camp by the order of the queen; and 
 here occurs a brief lull in the aggravated anguish 
 of the piece. Between two giant waves the 
 tempest-driven boat finds a spot where the hurricane 
 is quiet, and the storm cannot come ; even so Lear, 
 hopelessly embosomed in woes that swell and tower 
 on every side, finds a serene interval of profoundest 
 tranquillity where the gale roars aloof. The meeting 
 between Lear and Cordelia has ever been a favourite 
 subject for the painter's pencil. Standing as it 
 does in its lonely beauty amidst the frowns and 
 horrors of this tremendous drama, it shows like the 
 silver-mantled moon beaming out from the murky 
 depth of two seemingly impenetrable clouds. 
 
 But the dark masses again roll over its fair face, 
 and the returning night seems yet more fearful 
 from this temporary interruption of its reign. In 
 the battle which succeeds victory remains with the 
 side of England and Edmund. Johnson is at a loss 
 to know why, " contrary," as he says, " to the faith of 
 chronicles," Shakespeare chose to bring this drama 
 to so tragical a conclusion. A different issue to 
 the battle would, as he justly remarks, have set 
 the whole matter to rights, and the curtain would 
 have fallen upon a catastrophe highly satisfactory 
 
26 
 
 to his critical code. Such a course was indeed 
 plainly open to the poet, and it remains for us to 
 be thankful that he did not determine upon it. 
 For in truth a happy issue to King Lear would 
 have been as misplaced as an unfortunate issue to 
 " Twelfth Night," or to the " Merchant of Venice." 
 It would have been destructive to the unity of 
 interest. The drama of Lear is of a gloomy and 
 sombre cast ; the incidents and the characters 
 strange and portentous. Its sphere is either in 
 the heaven of virtue, or in the very abyss of moral 
 depravity. The iniquity of Edmund, Goneril, 
 Regan, Cornwall, is too pitiless to find pardon ; 
 the heroism of Cordelia is too celestial, too sur- 
 passingly pure for association with the contami- 
 nating influence of baser clay, too elevated to play 
 a part in the universal game of expediency. We 
 should feel ourselves defrauded of our indignation 
 and our tears, should the objects of either remain 
 unpunished or unrelieved. For Lear the aged, 
 the weary-hearted, in the grave alone he is not 
 the object of compassion. 
 
 " O, let him pass ! he hates him, 
 That would upon the rack of this tough world 
 Stretch him out longer." 
 
 Lear and Cordelia are made prisoners of war; 
 but vengeance is even now preparing for the 
 oppressors of virtue. Discords in the British camp 
 have been hinted at, and their nature in part 
 
27 
 
 unfolded. The two sisters, unaccustomed to curb 
 their violent passions, have each, with characteristic 
 vehemence, set their affections upon Edmund, and 
 therefore their hatred upon each other. The young 
 and politic general deems it imprudent to thwart 
 the wishes of either; and Goneril, ever promptest 
 to dark deeds, has already mingled the poisoned 
 cup for her sister. Edmund, in the moment of his 
 exultation, is cut off, the fabric of his fortunes 
 bursting like a bubble at the moment of its greatest 
 expansion, by the hand of Edgar, who impeaches 
 him of treason and vanquishes him in single fight ; 
 Regan dies with him, and Goneril closes her . 
 desperate career by suicide. Lear, released when 
 too late by the dying repentance of Edmund, 
 appears upon the scene, bearing in his arms the 
 corpse of the gentle and noble heroine, Cordelia, 
 and in the profound agonies of hopeless desolation 
 breathes out his wearied spirit. The curtain falls > 
 upon the final triumph of the knightly and 
 chivalrous Edgar, the easy and honourable Albany, 
 the loyal and undaunted Kent. 
 
 In a brief sketch like the present, it is impos- 
 sible to give any but an imperfect idea of a 
 drama so superabundantly profuse of incident as 
 King Lear. Yet I trust it is sufficiently full to 
 convey some impression of the design and character 
 of the piece. Nearly the same period in the life 
 of Shakespeare gave birth to Hamlet, to King Lear, 
 to Timon of Athens. A mind penetrated by the 
 
28 
 
 same convictions and pursuing the same trains of 
 thought palpably created all the three. All are 
 bitter and misanthropic in their reflections upon 
 nature and the fortunes of man ; all abound in 
 mighty but groaning bursts of dark and melancholy 
 power. In the wild, aimless taunting of Hamlet, 
 in the bitter sallies of Timon, in the lunatic 
 morality of Lear, the poet preserves the same mood, 
 utters the same sentiment: 
 
 " I am misanthropes, and hate mankind." 
 
 We cannot now conjecture the cause of this 
 moroseness, which seems to have been the inspira- 
 tion of Shakespeare in some of his grandest works. 
 But in none of the many changeful shapes into 
 which the restless and boundless versatility of his 
 genius threw itself did his vast mind gird itself 
 to the strife with such angry majesty, or his 
 imagination assert such sovereign mastery over the 
 whole machine of the passions. His sudden and 
 strange sublimity, his dreary pathos, his con- 
 ceptions of monstrous iniquity contrasting fearfully 
 with those angel forms which he just displays 
 and then instantly withdraws from the view, form, 
 perhaps, the most remarkable and amazing of his 
 many dramatic moods. 
 
29 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AT the beginning of this Essay I laid down 
 in the briefest manner the general principles of 
 the Greek as contrasted with the British drama. 
 What I simply stated there, the time has arrived to 
 discuss more fully and to determine more accurately. 
 
 I explained that the root of Greek tragedy was 
 in religion, and that before Euripides brought 
 forward his incongruous and unsuccessful novelties, 
 no effort of tragic genius was without its theological 
 tendency, and few without their philosophical 
 significance. I contrasted with this the absence of 
 religious ideas and a sacred spirit in the Elizabethan 
 theatre, and I showed how exclusively and essen- 
 tially it is to be considered a pastime. It becomes 
 my business to develop and apply these general 
 ideas. 
 
 In the progress of religious error among heathen 
 nations, the first transition from strict monotheism 
 is to pantheism. This again is corrupted to 
 polytheism. Of the polytheistic age we have a 
 distinct representation in the poems of Homer. 
 But civilization established in Greece brought 
 philosophy in its train, and philosophy effected a 
 partial return to pantheism. The mysteries at 
 Eleusis and elsewhere, as we have every reason 
 to believe, resolved the tales of the cosmogony and 
 the generations of the gods into that allegorical 
 
30 
 
 significance which in all probability belonged to 
 their first conception. The universe itself was the 
 god of their worship ; and in the sun and the moon, 
 in the ocean and the sky, in the cycle of the 
 revolving year, in the oak of the forest and in the 
 floweret of the vale, in height and depth, in the 
 whole circle of created being, they adored the 
 visible manifestation of the Unseen and the All- 
 pervading. This system of emblem and allegory, 
 travelling back towards the old pantheistic creed, 
 was in its existence and after its extinction a 
 profound secret. But the scanty knowledge of it 
 which we possess leads us strongly to conjecture 
 that we trace something of its nature and tendency 
 in the extant monuments of the tragic literature of 
 Greece. We know that the dramatist, ^Eschylus, 
 was accused of having in one of his pieces violated 
 the secrecy of the Eleusinian mysteries, and some 
 writers* have gone so far as to suppose a philo- 
 sophical signification throughout in some of his 
 works. But be this as it may, we cannot doubt 
 that there is throughout the dramatic literature of 
 Attica a more philosophical view of divine things 
 than can be discerned in the Homeric poems, and 
 a disposition to treat the gods rather as ideal 
 abstractions than as positive existences. Thus it 
 is remarkable that Comedy, which in the experience 
 of all nations has asserted the deity of chance and 
 
 * See Coleridge's " Essay on the Idea of the Prometheus 
 Vinci us of TKschvlus." 
 
31 
 
 taken a practically atheistic view of nature and 
 human life, assuming the existence of man to be 
 aimless and purposeless, made its earliest appearance 
 among the Greeks in close association with the 
 Satyric mythology, that embodiment of the careless 
 and superficial creed which supposes the order of 
 nature to be a mere dance of jovial gods without 
 design or systematic action ; while Tragedy, which, 
 on the contrary, mixes up the idea of God and a 
 Providence in all things, associated itself with the 
 grander and more devotional side of the national 
 mythology, telling dire tales of the relentless rule 
 of destiny, and of the sure though tardy retribution 
 executed on the guilty by the hands of the dread 
 Erinyes or ministers of divine justice. We seem 
 to trace in this spontaneous attraction of the 
 dramatic spirit in its two opposite manifestations 
 of Tragedy and Comedy towards their mythological 
 correspondents, some recognition of the symbolic 
 character and disguised doctrines of the traditional 
 theology of the Greeks. The tendency, which 
 always marks a philosophical spirit, to substitute 
 principles for individuals is moreover conspicuous 
 in the dramatic version of the mythus of Fate. 
 The elder mythologists had imagined three sisters of 
 immortal birth, Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos, 
 who spin and cut with relentless pre-determination 
 the thread of human fortune. But among the 
 tragedians we hear little of " the sisters three, and 
 such branches of learning." The idea has been 
 
32 
 
 rarified and intellectualized until it has lost its 
 definiteness and parted with its circumstantiality ; 
 a single, half-embodied, grim-visaged idea is left, 
 whom the poets named Destiny. 
 
 But before this philosophical process was brought 
 to bear upon the mythological system of their 
 ancestors, Thespis and Susarion had lived and died, 
 and had left to a future ^Eschylus to develop the idea 
 of a drama. They had related the achievements and 
 sung the praises of Bacchus, as Homer and Hesiod 
 might have done. But when jEschylus began to 
 write the age of philosophy had begun, the Eleu- 
 sinian mysteries had whispered strange doctrines in 
 the ear of Greece. The mythical odes and narratives 
 of this poet are therefore of far profounder import. 
 They abound in philosophical doctrine and meta- 
 physical theories, conveyed in richly-coloured and 
 sublime allegory. And where the populace was 
 probably content to admire brilliant imagery and 
 golden opulence of fancy, the initiated might, 
 perhaps, applaud in secret the magnificent exposition 
 of moral truth and philosophical theory which 
 presented itself to the eye privileged to decipher 
 the splendid hieroglyphic. 
 
 He who studies the Prometheus Vinctus or the 
 Eumenides with this idea will not fail to discover 
 much to confirm it, and though he may not be 
 disposed to carry the doctrine of allegorical inter- 
 pretation to the length to which some writers have 
 pushed it, he will observe with what evident intention 
 
33 
 
 the poet has mingled the symbolical with the real, 
 and what a gorgeous superstructure of philosophical 
 conjecture he has erected upon the slight basis 
 which had been the work of preceding architects. 
 
 Now, a polytheism thus philosophized assumes 
 by nature a pantheistic shape. It throws off its 
 grosser sensualities, and mounts upon the wing, 
 like the soul quitting the body, glorified and spirit- 
 ualized, to the region of ethereal ideas and exalted 
 mysticisms. The ferocious and despotic super- 
 stition of India becomes in the philosophical pages 
 of the Vedas a pantheistic code of misty meta- 
 physics. All created things, say they, whether 
 of benignant or pernicious influence, are to be 
 worshipped, because all things partake of the divine 
 nature. This is the latent principle of all super- 
 stitious imaginings, whether among Hindoos or 
 Greeks. The Greek philosophizer of the creed of 
 his forefathers regarded each of his multitudinous 
 gods as a member or organ of the great, the 
 universal Being. If the heart is the centre and 
 source of vitality and motion in the human system, 
 so was Jove in the system of the world. If the 
 mind is the guide and directing principle of the 
 human system, though not itself belonging to or 
 connatural with it, so was Destiny in the system 
 of the world. In this way the whole Olympian 
 crew found a solution and an interpretation of their 
 characters and functions. Ceres represented the 
 principle of generation ; Apollo, all spiritual impulse ; 
 
34 
 
 Bacchus was the god of instinct, whether generous 
 and lofty, as in heroes, or sensual, as in satyrs and 
 drunkards. Hence (be it observed in passing) 
 came his twofold character, the jolly god of wine 
 and the heroic conqueror of India. 
 
 From ^Eschylus dates the introduction of actors 
 representing and imitating the characters necessary 
 to the narrative. Having shown the original design 
 of the drama, as an institution subservient to the 
 religion of Greece, viz., to exhibit the working 
 of the great mundane constitution of which Destiny 
 represented the legislative, and the Olympian 
 divinities the executive, organ, it will be evident 
 with what view men were introduced to speak and 
 act. They are necessary to complete the repre- 
 sentation ; they represent the objects worked on. 
 Exhibited in this principally passive light, they 
 needed obviously but little depth of characterization. 
 Drawn with a few bold touches, and invested with 
 ideas of nobleness and grandeur such as the might 
 of the jEschylean mind bestowed upon everything 
 it touched, they worthily filled up the picture in 
 which the poet designed to sketch, on a small scale, 
 and within narrow limits, the whole economy of 
 his theoretical Providence. 
 
 But with Sophocles came in a new principle, 
 but little known or practised by his ruder pre- 
 decessors. Their vehicle of attraction had been 
 the sensuous splendour of the spectacle, the dignity 
 of the sentiment, and the brilliancy of diction and 
 
35 
 
 imagery. Sophocles was the inventor of the plot. 
 He was the first to discover the fascinating 
 influence of sympathy, and the foundation upon 
 which that sympathy must be built; he perceived 
 the necessity of enlarging the original design in one 
 material point. ^Eschylus had lightly sketched, and 
 with a careless pencil, the lineaments of humanity ; 
 his men are the prey for which the gods quarrel, 
 prizes affixed to the strifes of superior natures ; 
 their fate was the vicissitude of a combat in which 
 they had small share, their heroism was resignation, 
 their duty to expect the victor. Sophocles elevated 
 his heroes to a wider and a freer sphere of action ; 
 they collect upon themselves the eyes and interest 
 of the audience ; the soul of the piece is in the 
 daring independence of their wills. The man of 
 .ZEschylus is an inanimate mass, helplessly trodden 
 down in the stern discord of principalities and 
 powers, to the might of whose heaven-born sinews 
 his puny strength is as nothing, dragged by turns, 
 like the corpse of Patroclus, from combatant to 
 combatant, until the commanding voice of fate 
 decides the conflict and awards the prize. The 
 man of Sophocles is the living hero, befriended 
 indeed or warred upon by the gods, but no longer 
 their plaything, daring rather, like Diomede, to 
 return blow for blow, nor fearing to shake the 
 spear at celestial armour, and to shed pure ichor 
 from immortal veins. 
 
 We may entertain interest for that which has 
 
 D2 
 
36 
 
 life and the power of volition, but not for that which 
 is inanimate and at the beck of others, for the 
 free man and for the reluctant captive, though not 
 for the willing slave. We can sympathize with 
 human nature in any shape except that of baseness. 
 The base man, who has lost all self-respect, has 
 no claim upon the respect of others, But with all 
 other forms, whether of exalted virtue or of daring 
 guilt, it is possible, nay, it is natural, to us to 
 sympathize. .Independence of character, therefore, 
 must be the foundation of dramatic interest, and 
 this Sophocles saw. But he went further, and 
 added virtue and magnanimity. It was not con- 
 sonant to the purely religious character of the Greek 
 drama to associate vice and moral impurity or 
 imperfection with that compassionate interest which 
 involves a kind of affection. But to make virtue 
 an object of compassion was difficult to a religion 
 which inculcated the doctrine of rewards and 
 punishments in this life. This dilemma the tragic 
 poets eluded by a somewhat singular device. They 
 distinguished and disjoined the crime of the heart 
 from the crime of the hand, and vindicated the 
 perfect justice of fate, while they excited the 
 compassionate regard of the spectators, by punishing 
 the latter, while they avoided the former. This 
 artificial arrangement may be observed throughout 
 the works of Sophocles, and in some of the later 
 pieces of ^Eschylus. Witness the unconscious 
 crime of (Edipus and of Dejanira, the pious yet 
 
37 
 
 appalling vengeance of Orestes, the heroic dis- 
 obedience of Antigone. 
 
 Let us for a moment survey the idea of Greek 
 tragedy which we have been depicting. Beginning 
 in times when Greek Paganism was a fanciful 
 polytheism, it came into the hands of .ZEschylus 
 at a period when a race of speculative philosophers 
 had resolved that Paganism, as we believe, into 
 a magnificent though disguised pantheism. This 
 system, we have reason to think, may be traced 
 throughout the Greek drama, which thus became 
 a sublime embodying, animated and endued with 
 poetical reality, of a philosophical theory. The 
 fervid principle of enthusiasm and poetic life which 
 ever burnt and ever rose upwards in the mind of 
 jEschylus, gave it at once the vital warmth and 
 the superb brightness of a celestial birth. Such 
 was tragedy when Sophocles arose. That poet of 
 fine fancy and correct taste introduced a new 
 element of less lofty, but more attractive character. 
 He combined the dignity of mythical conceptions 
 with human sensibilities and sympathies; added 
 to the attractions of a religious ceremonial the 
 indescribable and unaccountable fascination which 
 attends the spectacle of human nature in situations 
 of misfortune and peril. If the Greek drama be 
 compared to the car of Achilles, drawn by twin 
 coursers of immortal breed, it was Sophocles who 
 yoked with them the earthly steed, 
 
 o'e KOI QvrJTos e'wi' 7r0' 'tinroic; ct 
 
38 
 
 If, then, we be asked to state in general terms 
 the design which we may suppose Sophocles to 
 have had before his mind's eye, and to have 
 steadfastly pursued throughout his career as the 
 model of perfect excellence, we answer, that had 
 his life been long enough and his resolution strong 
 enough to have surmounted the prejudices of his 
 age and of national feeling, the goal, when attained, 
 would have proved in principle identical with the 
 romance of Calderon and Shakespeare. 
 
 Thitherward pointed all his intellectual tendencies, 
 and thither, had he fallen on better times, he would 
 undoubtedly have been among the foremost to arrive. 
 But a splendid and gay theology, the fountain of all 
 that was sparkling to the eye, damped his intended 
 song, and withheld his fancy and genius from the 
 triumphs they were born to win. His fetters were, 
 indeed, of gold ; and an ivy-wreath and an immor- 
 tality were the fruits of his brilliant slavery. But 
 his vocation was the mastery of the passions; he 
 v was created to disturb and to soothe the sensibilities 
 of men ; and, like the moon directing the tides, to 
 sit in a higher sphere, with the placid might of a 
 being of higher order, guiding the flux and reflux 
 of emotions which swell below. But fortune shut 
 against him the path whither genius led him: 
 thus much he effected, that human sympathies and 
 feelings should be intermingled, though imperfectly, 
 with that which had belonged only to the super- 
 natural world. 
 
39 
 
 If, then, we are asked to state more particularly 
 the design of Sophocles in the QEdipus at Colonus, 
 we answer that his design was twofold. He chose 
 the subject probably as a my thus powerfully dis- \ 
 playing the spirit of the religion of Greece ; he ( 
 found in the progress of the story inducements 
 irresistibly according with his natural impulses to 
 give it the tone of a romantic drama, i.e., of a 
 pathetic and passionate narrative of human suffering 
 and fortitude under calamity. It will require no close 
 examination or protracted inquiry to show this. 
 
 That the sacred and theological character may 
 be made palpably manifest at the commencement, 
 the scene is laid in the hallowed grove adjoining 
 the temple of the Eumenides, and beneath the 
 shadow of their awful presence. The fate of * 
 GEdipus is a sacrifice consummated on hallowed 
 ground ; the Eumenides are the priests ; Destiny 
 is the idol on whose altar the victim is laid. All 
 the incidental circumstances, with which the poet 
 interrupts the progress of the plot, reflect light upon 
 this central point. The mission of Creon is not 
 for the living QEdipus, but for his corpse; it 
 anticipates the approaching judgment. After the 
 defeat of his machinations, the tone of the play, 
 which before had had something of triumph in it, 
 becomes strangely mournful. The hour draws 
 nigh ; the chorus utters at intervals a wailing 
 note ; the thunder-trumpet sounds ; the snaky folds 
 embrace their victim ; the fearful Presence reveals 
 
40 
 
 itself, and Theseus is left standing in stupified 
 amazement by the corpse of his friend, whose spirit 
 the gods have taken to themselves. 
 
 This is the religious aspect of the piece, but 
 Sophocles tells the tale not only as a worshipper 
 of the gods, but as a sympathizer with men. The 
 wretchedness of (Edipus, touchingly associated with 
 the heroic virtue of Antigone, and contrasted with 
 the triumphant ingratitude of Polynices, and the 
 relentless cruelty of Creon, divides the spectator's 
 interest with the unseen but not unfelt policies of 
 the gods. Thus religious awe struggles with human 
 pity, and alternately with it takes possession of the 
 mind. 
 
 It requires no long inquiry into the history of 
 the British drama to determine the design of the 
 tragedy of King Lear. The poets of the Elizabethan 
 age were shackled by no dominant and oppressive 
 theology, nor compelled to sacrifice the freedom of 
 their inspiration to the force of uncongenial circum- 
 stances. They copied natural models as genius 
 taught them. They told the story with that 
 regularity which is engendered by natural emotions, 
 and which can afford to sacrifice that superficial 
 symmetry of form, which is indeed the appropriate 
 characteristic of classical literature. 
 
 King Lear is a tale of unnatural sins and 
 monstrous villainies, of warm hearts contending 
 with cold ones, of childish affection matched against 
 calculating and far-reaching malignity, of old age 
 
41 
 
 against youth, and fathers against children. It may 
 be summed up in the vigorous words of Gloster: 
 
 " These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to 
 us : love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide : in cities, 
 mutinies ; in countries, discord ; in palaces, treason ; and the bond 
 cracked between son and father. This villain of mine comes 
 under the prediction ; there's son against father : the king falls 
 from the bias of nature ; there's father against child. - And the 
 noble and true-hearted Kent banished ! his offence, honesty ! 
 Strange ! strange ! " 
 
 But Gloster had not seen the half of the strange 
 things growing up around him. He had seen the 
 rash anger of Lear, but he had not seen the 
 glorious heroism of Cordelia ; he himself had begun 
 to be involved in the prevailing plague of unnatural 
 divisions, but he had not yet been consoled by the 
 daring virtue and dauntless fidelity of his first-born, 
 Edgar. Sombre and terrific as the story is, it has 
 its brilliant lights as well as its dark shadows, and 
 the beauty of the former is as overpowering as 
 the horror of the latter. It is as though every 
 fresh outpouring of infernal fire were followed by 
 a counteracting flood of heaven's own blessed light, 
 and every new armament of the evil cause were 
 met and turned to flight by a fresh band of the 
 chivalry of virtue. 
 
 It remains to contrast the characters introduced 
 in their points of similarity and dissimilarity. 
 From what I have said upon the nature of the 
 Greek drama, the tone of characterization peculiar to 
 the Greek tragedians will be at once gathered. I 
 showed how, in the first age of tragedy, they were 
 
42 
 
 represented but as prizes affixed to the combats 
 of the gods, and therefore portrayed with little 
 discrimination or precision. They were always 
 splendid and beautiful, but without individuality; 
 rather idealized representatives of a species of men, 
 than possessing the marks of independent character, 
 which may be in many cases indistinct, and in some 
 imperceptible, but which must always belong to 
 an individual. They resemble the wondrous images 
 which are revealed to the closed eye and the 
 slumbering fancy. Whether represented as virtuous, 
 or as familiar with every species of guilt, they have 
 always a grandeur and a beauty mingled with a 
 certain ideal obscurity which repels sympathy even 
 while it excites admiration. Sophocles indeed 
 reduced this ethereal conception in pursuance of his 
 scheme of uniting the Classical with the Romantic ; 
 but if in his hands they fall from heaven, yet it is 
 not in their nature to' breath the misty atmosphere 
 of this earth. 
 
 " In their proper motion they ascend 
 Up to their native seat ; descent and fall 
 To them is adverse. Who but felt of late 
 With what compulsion and laborious flight 
 They sank thus low ?" 
 
 Their march is still in mid-air. We can neither 
 think of them as human beings, nor yet as beings 
 of another sphere. They are not without the power 
 of exciting our interest and sympathy ; nor do they 
 forfeit their mysterious grace. Shakespeare's art 
 of characterization is to that of Sophocles what 
 
43 
 
 painting is to music in the power of expressing 
 ideas. Painting transcribes the appearances of 
 nature and life ; music creates less lively but more 
 ideal images, visions of remote beauty, but formless 
 and ethereal as the shapes of a dream. 
 
 Coleridge has well said that Shakespeare's 
 g "S^mop jjJYirhialJffH There are 
 
 qualities and habits which enter in various stages 
 of maturity into the composition of every character. 
 They have names in the vocabulary of every nation, 
 and it requires no profundity to perceive or skill 
 to delineate them. But to imbed these in the rough 
 stratum of an embryo man; to subject them to 
 the refining and modifying and colouring process, 
 by which they become assimilated and combined 
 with the surrounding mass; to cause elements 
 widely diffused and common to a large proportion 
 of the human race to shape themselves to a new 
 appearance, and to assume a new texture from the 
 character into which they interweave themselves, 
 as transplanted flowers change their hues with their 
 soil ; in fine, to stamp the species with the 
 individual, Me labor, hoc opus est. 
 
 Many of Shakespeare's most celebrated characters 
 are created J3y_ tfrp. n^dnp. Hi station nf snmp par. 
 ticular passion or propensity jof a^ 
 
 powerful and noble. A state of agitation or 
 diseased activity is thus induced in the mental 
 system, which is followed out by the poet through 
 a variety of circumstances gradually aggravating 
 
44 
 
 and intensifying the disease, until it either destroys 
 itself by its own violence, or disturbs the reason 
 and unhinges the intellectual power. 
 
 Sometimes a mind thus disordered acts upon 
 external circumstances, so as to bring about some 
 terrible catastrophe, with which the play closes. 
 For example, the peculiarity of Hamlet's mind is 
 a propensity to a procrastinating meditativeness, 
 resolving all that is external and tangible into 
 abstract propositions, the " airy nothings " of the 
 mind, and thus destroying all power of resolve and 
 all decision of character. This, associated with a 
 constitutional fearlessness and an ardour approaching 
 to temerity, creates a kind of internal jar, and 
 produces a perpetual capriciousness of conduct, 
 according as his generous instinct or his calculating 
 intellect gains the ascendency. This peculiarity 
 of mental constitution, dexterously accommodated to 
 external circumstances, causes at length a scene 
 of bloodshed such as even that strong-nerved 
 generation seldom witnessed, and which is only 
 surpassed in Titus Andronicus. 
 
 These general principles of characterization will 
 probably be of use in enabling us to understand 
 and compare the conceptions of Shakespeare, always 
 profound and striking, with those of Sophocles, 
 attractive in their simplicity and imposing in their 
 religious significance. 
 
 The similarity of the incidents in the (Edipus 
 Coloneus and in King Lear is certainly extraordinary, 
 

 45 
 
 but a similarity purely accidental could hardly hold 
 to any great extent in the characterization. The 
 fool, that eccentric mixture of professional buffoonery, 
 sound wisdom, and affectionate fidelity ; the rugged 
 and savage-hearted Cornwall; Kent, one of those 
 honest, loyal, impetuous, outspoken cavaliers, whom 
 the parliamentary wars brought into notice, but 
 whom Shakespeare had no doubt seen and studied 
 at the court of the first James ; Goneril and Eegan, 
 the one impetuous, the other pitiless and merciless 
 in deeds of villainy ; all these are without corre- 
 spondents in the Sophoclean drama. The paucity 
 of character peculiar to a Greek play compels us 
 to be sparing of examples. We must here limit- 
 our remarks to CEdipus, Lear, and Gloster, Edmund 
 and Creon, Antigone and Cordelia. 
 
 GEdipus is a man struck down and overwhelmed, 
 not by misfortune (this was a light weight, and 
 moreover self-inflicted), but by the consciousness of 
 guilt, a king distinguished for his piety and 
 devotion to the gods, and now oppressed by the 
 consciousness of tremendous crimes. When we 
 are introduced to him in this play he has already 
 borne the load for many years ; the frenzied grief 
 which followed the first discovery has long ago 
 settled down into a serene resignation, from which 
 no protraction of suffering can move it. On the 
 throne his haughtiness and irascible temper moved 
 our dislike, but he rises with adversity, and shows 
 himself the Prometheus of a lower region, and a 
 
46 
 
 gentler, yet not less patient soul, bearing the chain 
 with triumphant dignity, and presenting to the 
 vulture Grief "a heart not to be changed by 
 space or time." 
 
 It is remarkable how carefully Sophocles avoids 
 raising sympathy out of that which is not in itself 
 purely virtuous. Shakespeare takes a course diame- 
 trically opposite. Lear's almost incredible weakness, 
 and Gloster's coarse language and shameless senti- 
 ments, raise in our minds, before the conclusion of 
 the first scene, unmitigated contempt for the former, 
 and aversion to the latter. Yet what heroes of 
 the ancient or modern theatre are honoured more 
 signally with the compassion and love of the 
 audience ? As the character of each is gradually 
 revealed, we begin insensibly fo pity in place of 
 despising the weakness of old age in the one, and 
 to pardon rather than condemn what clearly appears 
 a fault of the surface in the other. 
 
 Lear is a man whose faculties, decaying with 
 time, have been gradually absorbed and swallowed 
 up in the enjoyment of loving, and the intense 
 craving to be loved in return. This all-mastering 
 passion presses all the faculties and energies of his 
 enfeebled mind into one channel, and hurries him 
 on in its steady and impetuous current. And when 
 the stream that flowed in search of smiling scenery 
 and green vegetation finds nought on either bank 
 but a desert, bleak and bare, waste and unproductive, 
 then it is that the agony of the play commences: 
 
47 
 
 and as each successive discovery of the dissimulation 
 and treachery of those about him forces itself upon 
 his mind, leaving his childish desires all disap- 
 pointed and unsatisfied, then it is pitiable to see 
 how his aged mind, rudely disturbed from its quiet 
 grave of dotage, yields up again the dead passions 
 of its younger self, and starts into a frenzied and 
 unnatural vigour, like the ghost of what it once 
 was. In his madness he is gifted with an unearthly 
 knowledge; his mental eye seems at once obscured 
 and unsealed; as though, through the twilight of 
 his darkened reason, are revealed strange shapes 
 and bodiless creations walking the earth secure in 
 their invisibility. Thus all the wisdom which the 
 powerful intellects of GEdipus or of Gloster has been 
 able to gather from an experience of unrivalled 
 bitterness, is surpassed by the supernatural pene- 
 tration of the royal dotard, gifted, as he was, by the 
 inspiration of lunacy. 
 
 Such a character as this is not to be sought 
 among the conceptions of any less mighty imagina- 
 tion ; it is exclusively Shakespeare's. It belongs * 
 to the same class, and stands upon the same unap- 
 proached eminence, as Hamlet. Gloster, possessing 
 an idiosyncrasy far less marked than that of Lear, - 
 is more nearly allied to the Greek (Edipus. Under 
 misfortunes greater even than those of Lear, he 
 stands, like (Edipus, erect and unshaken. But he 
 differs from the Greek hero in two material points: 
 First, he has not the same unresisting dignity of 
 
48 
 
 passive deportment. The miseries of (Edipus are 
 of divine appointment, the relief pre-determined and 
 predicted by the god. The lot, then, of the mortal 
 is uncomplaining expectance. The miseries of the 
 British hero are such as it behoves a man to struggle 
 against; he has no oracle to look to, save the 
 voice of heaven in his conscience. More than this, 
 the idea of a perfection in human nature, which 
 belonged to the dramatic principles of the Greeks, 
 made no part of the system of Shakespeare. His 
 heroes have the flexibility, the limited resource, 
 which we see in everything that is mortal and 
 transient. Secondly, he has not the same ideal 
 beauty. His features and his language are homely, 
 and it is only the distinction of unequalled calamity 
 which can, in spite of nature, raise him to a situa- 
 tion of majesty. 
 
 We cannot observe the same distinction in com- 
 paring Cordelia with Antigone. The heroine of 
 Shakespeare is viewed at a distance throughout the 
 play ; we seldom approach her, or listen to the 
 unreserved unfolding of her secret soul. She is 
 like a gay vision, hovering as a guardian angel over 
 her suffering father, and suffering, with unobtrusive 
 heroism, a martyrdom in his cause. But we can 
 still discern the same want of perfeqtness and 
 indomitable moral strength 'which is as illustriously 
 manifest in Antigone as in (Edipus. With a 
 firmness and fortitude almost masculine, however 
 softened by the delicacy of her address and manner, 
 
49 
 
 the Theban maiden, sprung from demigods and 
 impeccable like them, though not, like them, 
 impassive, guides and protects the helpless outcast 
 from land to land, among unexplored solitudes and 
 half-savage nations. Cordelia is far more gentle 
 in her affection, far less daring in her heroism. If 
 she comes to the relief of her father, it is with an 
 army and a French marshal ; if she falls a victim 
 to the readiness and eagerness of her succour, it- 
 is with the submissive patience of Ismene rather 
 than with the high and haughty magnanimity of 
 Antigone. 
 
 Edmund and Creon are placed in a somewhat 
 similar position of the plot. The latter is the 
 messenger sent to obtain possession of the person 
 of (Edipus ; the former is the chief of the party 
 which pursues, and succeeds in capturing, Lear. 
 But there is little analogy in their characters. 
 Creon, in Sophocles's conception of the character, is 
 an anomalous personage, who has always a plausible 
 reason to allege for his base acts, while he creates 
 in the reader's mind an immitigable and immea- 
 surable aversion. Edmund is of a species which 
 Shakespeare was fond of reproducing, a softened 
 version of lago and Richard III. Exulting in a 
 powerful intellect, and deliberately abjuring all 
 honourable principle, he entertains the ambition of 
 being, as it were, an evil angel to mankind, of 
 building a sullen supremacy upon the subject necks 
 and down-trodden liberties of his fellow-creatures. 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 But Edmund is not completely hardened. His dying 
 moments are passed in repentance and attempted 
 reparations of some of the evils which his life has 
 caused. 
 
 We might, perhaps, imagine some correspondence 
 between the characters of Edgar and of Theseus. 
 Both are the protectors of wandering misery, and 
 both finally frustrate the designs of the evil cause. 
 But Theseus is not an individual, but rather a 
 stately impersonation of the Athenian state in the 
 heroic age ; he is ever associated with the name 
 of Athens, as the eagle with Jupiter, or the owl 
 with Minerva. Edgar is the model of a knight 
 of the middle ages, the mirror of chivalry and 
 heroic virtue, joining splendid talents with a love 
 of enterprise and with a proud sense of honour that 
 sanctifies both. To compare the two would be to 
 confound the ideal with the real, the poetical per- 
 sonification with the dramatic character. 
 
 But it is time to bring this Essay to a conclusion. 
 In comparing Sophocles with Shakespeare, I have 
 compared the representative of antiquity with that 
 of chivalry ; the representative of a time when the 
 highest excellence was placed in devotion to the 
 gods, with that of an age when knightly honour 
 and heroic valour were the object of pursuit among 
 men. Sophocles, led by his own genius towards 
 the principle of Eomance, was shackled by the 
 fetters of an ancestral theology, of old custom, of 
 national feeling. His design, therefore, was to com- 
 
51 
 
 bine and melt into one the Classic and the Romantic 
 drama. Shakespeare, a genius of higher order, and 
 more independent strain, and born in more congenial 
 times, followed the dictates of nature without opposi- 
 tion. Sophocles is the poet of religion and human 
 nature united ; Shakespeare, of human nature alone. 
 The works of Sophocles, therefore, are poems of 
 a particular age and form of society, though con- 
 taining something of the balm which will preserve 
 them when no other memorial shall remain of 
 Greece and its heroes ; Shakespeare is the bard 
 of all times, whose works will perish only with 
 the human race itself. 
 
ESSAY II. 
 
 ON THE CHAEACTER 
 
 
 
 RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND FEELING 
 
 WHICH PERVADE THE 
 
 TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY SHORT QUOTATIONS. 
 
 BY WILLIAM YOUNG. 
 
ANALYSIS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Connexion of Religion and Morality ivith the English Drama before 
 the appearance of Shakespeare. 
 
 Origin of the English Drama. "Religion. The Mysteries gra- 
 dually give way to the Moralities. Moralities become secularized. 
 Reformation and the Study of the Ancient Writers. Their general 
 effect upon the English Stage. Disadvantage of the Christian 
 with respect to the Pagan "Writers. State of the English Drama 
 in point of Morality when it passed into the hands of Shakespeare. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The part that Shakespeare took in Exalting and Purifying the 
 English Stage. 
 
 The hidden Moral Principle in all his Plays the reason of their 
 Simplicity and Unity. Shakespeare, a great Philosopher. The 
 Christian View of Life exhibited in all Shakespeare's Plays. 
 Shakespeare's occasional Coarseness of Language explained, more 
 than atoned by the deep under-current of pure Morality. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Design of Shakespeare in King Lear is to Exhibit and Inculcate 
 Parental and Filial Virtue. 
 
 Importance of the Subject. God the Author of it. Influence on 
 all future relations. Youth the time for learning great Lesson of 
 Obedience to Authority. It is the Type and Foundation of all 
 other Social Relations. Importance of the Affections. Youth pre- 
 eminently the season for forming or correcting them. This is 
 peculiarly the Office of the Parent. Shakespeare's selection of such 
 a Subject by itself a proof of pure moral tendency. 
 
56 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The manner in which Shakespeare proceeds to execute this design. 
 
 The Fortunes of Lear and his Family. Character of Lear. The 
 Family Bond broken. Consequences on Lear. His Crime one of 
 the grayest nature. Necessity of some signal Punishment. The 
 Ingratitude of his Children most severe of all Punishments. 
 Discipline has no salutary effect on Groneril and Regan. Their 
 Conduct as Wives. Their respective Punishments. The Conduct 
 of the Two Sisters contrasted with that of Cordelia. Moral beauty 
 of Cordelia's Character. Shakespeare's truthfulness as a Painter of 
 Human Nature. Cordelia's Death. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Other Religious and Moral Principles taught in this Play beside 
 that which is its chief design. 
 
 First. The Freedom and Responsibility of Man. Christian 
 View of Men as responsible Beings contrasted with Pagan Views. 
 Importance of this Truth. 
 
 Second. Universal Providence of God. Christian View of Life 
 does not limit the Powers of Deity. Universality of this Principle 
 a Justification of Shakespeare's putting it into the mouth of a 
 Heathen. 
 
 Third. Faithful Representation of Virtue and Vice, and their 
 effects. Gloster's Misfortunes the Punishment of his old Sin. 
 Edmund meets the due Punishment of his Crimes. Virtue and 
 Vice at last disclosed. Shakespeare always seizes any opportunity 
 that may present itself of exposing particular Vices. Selfishness. 
 
 Fourth. Power of Conscience- Forms great distinction between 
 Man and brute Creation. Long before Conscience can be entirely 
 stifled.--- Conclusion. 
 
57 
 
 ESSAY II. 
 
 ON THE CHARACTEK OF THE RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND FEELING 
 WHICH PERVADE THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR. 
 
 FROM the very earliest periods in the history of 
 civilized man, scenic representations have been 
 considered a valuable agent in the conveyance of 
 moral truth. 
 
 Of the two great avenues to the mind, the eye 
 and the ear, the former is more calculated to give 
 striking and vivid, but, at the same time, less 
 particular and minute impressions than the latter. 
 In scenic representations, the capabilities of the 
 eye and the ear are united to produce a vivid and 
 accurate conception of facts or ideas. It was, 
 without doubt, the aptitude of the stage for con- 
 veying thought in a lively and impressive manner, 
 that led to its being so universally employed in 
 all nations and ages for the purposes of religion. 
 And it is a remarkable fact, that wherever the 
 drama has risen to excellence, it has been connected 
 in its origin with religion. Such, certainly, was 
 the case with the English drama. 
 
58 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CONNEXION OF RELIGION AND MORALITY WITH THE ENGLISH 
 DRAMA BEFORE THE APPEARANCE OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 THE ancient representations, called Mysteries, 
 or Miracle-plays, were introduced into England 
 before the close of the eleventh century. They 
 seem to have derived their origin from the custom 
 that had prevailed from time immemorial in the 
 Eoman Catholic Church of exhibiting, during the 
 service, a picture representing the part of scripture 
 then being read, which was designed to supply the 
 place of books to those who were unable to read. 
 By degrees this pictorial exhibition gave way to 
 something more regular. Instead of painted figures, 
 living personages were introduced, who moreover 
 frequently told the story they were personating. 
 These rude representations then, modified and 
 altered from time to time, formed the foundation 
 of what were called the Mysteries or Miracle- pi ays. 
 
 Their design was the conveyance of some scrip- 
 tural truth or fact, frequently taken from the Mosaic 
 account of the earlier state of the world, the 
 Apocrypha, the life of Christ, &c. ; and the play 
 consisted in nothing more than a rude personification 
 of the characters in the holy narrative. The whole 
 piece followed the same order, and, as much as 
 possible, the same words as the sacred text. It is 
 
59 
 
 evident that these representations must have been 
 of the very simplest kind, and totally wanting in 
 " proper dramatic action." 
 
 By degrees, however, as the taste for theatrical 
 representations increased, more attention was paid 
 to them, and the stage, instead of being regarded 
 merely as a means to an end, became cultivated for 
 its own sake. 
 
 The exhibition of these pieces also was taken out 
 of the hands of the priests, who had heretofore had 
 the exclusive management of them. As a necessary 
 consequence, their purely religious character was no 
 longer inviolably preserved ; and they were at last 
 united with the profane Mimes or Mummings, which 
 boasted of an origin equally ancient with their own. 
 This union gave birth to a new species, which 
 gradually took the place of the old Mysteries. 
 
 These new plays, which were called Moralities, 
 first appeared about the middle of the fifteenth 
 century. The distinguishing feature in them was, 
 that the characters, instead of being historical, as 
 heretofore, were allegorical. The design still was 
 to promote religion, to uphold virtue (it might be 
 under the names of the principal graces, Justitia, 
 Veritas, Pax\ and in the same way to expose 
 vice, and to represent the general consequences of 
 each. But the wholly religious character and 
 tendency were now gone, and one of the chief 
 attractions was created by the introduction, in the 
 most grotesque and fantastic forms, of Vice and the 
 
60 
 
 Devil, who, as Coleridge tells us, were the proto- 
 types of the modern characters of Harlequin and 
 the Clown. 
 
 The Mysteries were solely religious, in their 
 origin, in their purpose, and, indeed, in everything 
 connected with them. From their very nature they 
 were thoroughly epical. 
 
 In the Moralities, on the other hand, the design 
 was still highly religious, but the execution of that 
 design was far more artistic. Their object was to 
 draw a representation of ideal excellence, worthy 
 of universal imitation. 
 
 Under allegorical garbs, the world of morals was 
 brought forth, and brought down to the under- 
 standing of every-day men. The Mysteries were 
 entirely epical, the Moralities were as entirely lyrical. 
 Thus the two great elements of dramatic poetry 
 were at hand. But it was only when these had 
 been properly united and blended, that the drama 
 could be said to have risen to its last and perfect 
 form. To accomplish this union, however, required 
 an interval of more than a century, and a genius 
 no less than that of Shakespeare himself. 
 
 The Moralities gradually became more and more 
 secularized in their details, and in the reign of Henry 
 VII. they had all but lost their wholly moral aim. 
 Thus we find one Morality of this period having for 
 its title, cc The Necessity of the Study of Philosophy." 
 About this time, too, the practice of introducing 
 characters in real life arose, which perhaps contributed 
 
61 
 
 as much as anything to the extension of the domain 
 of the drama. And here I must point out two 
 causes which mightily affected the English Drama. 
 
 The first of these was the Reformation, which so 
 completely changed the tone of thinking of that age. 
 The spirit of the Reformation was liberty. It 
 ridiculed and cast behind it the blind belief in 
 whatever was old (as being such), and taught that 
 whatever is true, either in art, or natural philo- 
 sophy, or morals, or religion, deserves attention 
 and respect, whether it be new, or decked out in 
 the hoary vesture of antiquity. 
 
 The effect upon the drama was, that the English 
 writers freely followed their natural bent, untram- 
 melled by laws, which would inevitably have dwarfed 
 and ruined them. As might naturally have been 
 expected, this freedom of the earlier dramatists 
 often degenerated into a wild irregularity, which 
 might have proved extremely hurtful, had not a 
 counteracting cause been at hand to check it. 
 
 The second circumstance which exerted a power- 
 ful influence on the English stage, was the study of 
 the great masters of antiquity. The great imper- 
 fection of the English stage, at the period to which 
 we now refer, was undefinedness of form, and want 
 of order and perspicuity, and also of probable and 
 natural causes for the events of the play. This 
 naturally led to a heaping together of characters and 
 incidents, in order to make up for the interest lost 
 by a want of proper dramatic action. A powerful 
 antidote to these evils was supplied by the study 
 
62 
 
 of writers, who perhaps are more distinguished for 
 " finished perfection of form," than for anything else. 
 
 While this study could not fetter the force of 
 native genius, it nevertheless inspired profound 
 respect for those rules of art, on which the ancient 
 drama depended. 
 
 But in examining the ancient classical models, 
 the Christian dramatist must at once have seen 
 that he stood at a great disadvantage, in certain 
 respects, when compared with the Pagan writer. 
 The Pagan regarded the Deity in an aspect totally 
 different from the Christian. His god was altogether 
 objective, palpable, could appear visibly, and take 
 an actual share in the affairs of mortals. Did 
 justice and morality demand a speedy punishment 
 for some extraordinary crime, then either the father 
 of the gods himself, or his immediate messenger, 
 appeared to chastise the glaring impiety. The poet 
 considered it no way degrading to represent Jove 
 himself as visibly interposing, with his avenging 
 thunderbolt, and hurling the impious Phaeton to 
 the lowest Hades, and restoring moral order to 
 the universe. 
 
 Again, the mystic heroes of the ancient drama, 
 half divine, half human, were the representatives of 
 universal qualities. Was the object for the while 
 the portrayal of any one of the attributes of 
 human nature, it was easily effected in the peculiar 
 character of the hero introduced. 
 
 The Christian God, on the other hand, is unseen, 
 is wholly spiritual ; and consequently none of the 
 
63 
 
 effects ascribed in the ancient drama simply and 
 naturally to the power of the Deity, could be repre- 
 sented in the same way by the Christian poet. 
 
 This circumstance it was, perhaps, more than 
 anything else, that gave rise to the vast and awkward 
 machinery of personages, intrigues, incidents, &c., 
 that are observed in the early English drama. 
 
 Again, the want of emblematic representations of 
 the general qualities of human nature had to be 
 compensated by numerous repetitions of it, in 
 different characters, scenes, and conditions, so as to 
 produce the same effect, which the symbolical 
 representation of the quality, in the person of a 
 demi-god, had otherwise done. 
 
 Such was, as it were, the exterior condition of 
 the drama when Shakespeare appeared. Was it 
 at heart sound and uncorrupted? Truth compels 
 us to confess it was far from being so. The dra- 
 matists of that day had no proper notion of the 
 dignity and high aim of their work. Many of the 
 most talented and popular among them were immoral 
 in the extreme. From them nothing high or great, 
 nothing at least pure or ennobling, could be expected. 
 Even the best of them looked upon the drama in 
 scarcely any other light than as a means of affording 
 passing gratification. There was need of a genius 
 who, by his talents, should not only perfect the 
 drama considered as a work of art, but who should 
 also raise it to its true position, as an instrument of 
 instruction to the people. Shakespeare gloriously 
 performed this great work. 
 
64 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PART THAT> SHAKESPEARE TOOK IN EXALTING AND 
 PURIFYING THE ENGLISH STAGE. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE saw that the great defect of his 
 predecessors had been the want of a deep hidden 
 centre, around which all the visible exterior of the 
 play should move. 
 
 On this subject, Dr. Ulrici, in his Dramatic 
 Art of Shakespeare, says: 
 
 " It has already been frequently observed, and 
 among others by Goethe, that, unlike other poets, 
 Shakespeare did not choose for his several works a 
 particular subject-matter, but that, setting out with a 
 certain idea, he makes this the centre to which he 
 adjusts his materials, and applies for its elucidation 
 the world of history and imagination." 
 
 It is this fact that distinguishes him from all the 
 dramatists of his country. 
 
 However varied his characters and scenes may 
 be, his plays invariably present to the spectator the 
 appearance of a complete and perfect whole, finished 
 in itself. The hidden idea which pervades the 
 whole, like a concealed magnet, draws into and 
 sustains every character in its proper position. His 
 mighty genius reduced the vast chaos to order, and 
 blended the unwieldy masses into a natural and 
 simple union of the epic with the lyric. His 
 
65 
 
 catastrophe was the inevitable result to be expected 
 in the natural and ordinary course of events. 
 . More than all, Shakespeare was not only a keen 
 observer and a true poet, but he was a profound 
 philosopher. He had looked upon life from dif- 
 ferent points of view, and had been enabled to 
 obtain a just and comprehensive idea of it. 
 
 He exhibits God as the Moral Governor of the 
 universe, and the Disposer of the effects of the 
 actions of men, but he nevertheless declares that 
 no constraint is put upon them, but that they are 
 left to choose and act for themselves. 
 
 This is the general Christian view of life that 
 is exhibited by Shakespeare in his plays, the pure 
 stream that flows through them all, enriching 
 and beautifying wherever it goes. This it is that 
 renders Shakespeare's plays valuable, not merely 
 as works of art, but as storehouses of morality and 
 virtue. Shakespeare's language often sounds to our 
 ears coarse and gross ; but we should remember that 
 it is not fair to take him out of his age, and com- 
 pare his diction with that of an age infinitely more 
 refined. The only just way is, to compare him 
 with other writers of his own time, and we shall 
 find such comparison turn out immeasurably to 
 his advantage. But even if this fault were far 
 worse than it is, we should nevertheless feel that 
 it is more than corrected by the great moral current 
 that flows through, sweeping and bearing away all 
 the imperfections that float on the surface. And 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 to continue the analogy, all that is reprehensible 
 floats on the surface, and is seen at once. There is 
 no hidden under-current, which, while smooth and 
 pure at the surface, is nevertheless silently bearing 
 away the spectator to unfathomable depths. On 
 the contrary, the tendency of all that is underneath 
 is pure and ennobling. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE MORAL AIM OF SHAKESPEARE IN THE PLAY OF KING 
 LEAR is TO EXHIBIT AND INCULCATE PARENTAL AND 
 FILIAL AFFECTION. 
 
 I HAVE stated that in all his plays Shakespeare 
 has some deep underlying truth, the illustration of 
 which is his great end. Perhaps in none of his 
 plays is this more strikingly the case than in King 
 Lear. 
 
 The object here is to exhibit, in all its different 
 aspects and effects, the relation between parent and 
 child ; to show that unless the love of the parent 
 be real and penetrating, the love of the child will 
 be false and unsubstantial ; and further, that if the 
 first and highest (because divine) law of our nature 
 be trampled under foot, no other relation of life 
 can be duly observed. 
 
 To state it briefly, the great subject of the play 
 is, " Parental and Filial Virtue." 
 
67 
 
 And if we examine the importance of this subject 
 more closely, we shall perceive the greatest wisdom 
 in such a selection. 
 
 From its very nature, the relation between child 
 and parent is the most binding and sacred in the 
 world. It is the earliest; it influences us when 
 our hearts are fresh and green, not yet chilled and 
 frozen by contact with a cold world. God himself 
 is the author of it. It seems as if He had planted 
 that sacred feeling in our hearts on purpose to give 
 men a model of the intercourse they ought to have 
 with one another. Every other connexion is con- 
 ventional, and can be dissolved at pleasure ; but the 
 union of parent and child lasts till God himself, 
 who founded it, severs it again. 
 
 If this great and primary relation be misunder- 
 stood and broken, no other relation of life can be 
 rightly fulfilled. The being that can withstand the 
 strongest and most holy yearnings of his nature, 
 and that when both internally and externally he 
 has been least provoked to such a course, can never 
 be expected to fulfil his duties as a brother, a 
 husband, or a citizen. 
 
 Youth is the season when we receive our deepest 
 and most lasting impressions. The mind is then 
 of that plastic nature which can be moulded and 
 shaped into any form we please. If we have then 
 learned the lesson of obedience to authority, custom 
 and judgment, and even inclination, will all prevent 
 us from rising up against it afterwards. If in 
 
 F2 
 
68 
 
 youth we have learned that hardest of all lessons, 
 to subdue ourselves, we are far less likely to forget 
 it afterwards. But if, on the other hand, we have 
 never learned to respect a father's authority, if we 
 have disregarded paternal counsels and warnings, 
 if we have grown up with false ideas of ourselves 
 and those whom God and nature alike command us 
 to obey, how is it possible that ideas, thus early 
 acquired, can be prolific of any but the most direful 
 consequences 2 The seed will bear its own fruit, 
 and we shall not only be wanting in duty to those 
 who have failed to instruct us in it, but in no other 
 relation of life shall we ever conduct ourselves 
 aright. We shall make bad relations, bad citizens, 
 bad men. 
 
 A right and intelligent understanding and obser- 
 vance of the relation between child and parent is of 
 the highest importance, 
 
 First, because this is the type and foundation of 
 all the other relations ; and because, 
 
 Secondly, the affections are the great moving 
 spring in all our actions. True, if we have leisure 
 and will to weigh any action in the strict scales of 
 reason, the decision of the heart may be overruled ; 
 but how often is it that we have neither leisure 
 nor mind thus to scrutinize the promptings of our 
 heart ! 
 
 How necessary, then, that this mighty moving 
 principle of our nature be right in its foundation ! 
 
 Youth is pre-eminently the season for forming and 
 
69 
 
 moulding the affections, and bringing them into the 
 proper and lofty position they ought to fill. 
 
 And by what care and love is not the affection of 
 the child drawn out and formed by its parent ! The 
 watchful and untiring love of the mother to her 
 infant has been the wonder of all ages, ever since 
 the creation of the world. It would seem that the 
 Creator had deemed it indispensable that the human 
 being, before one other latent faculty was developed, 
 should be fortified by this great defence, before 
 plunging into the cares and sorrows and selfishness 
 that form the ocean of life. 
 
 " Out of the heart proceed all manner of evil 
 things " was the witness of the wisest Being that 
 ever trod this earth. The very same cause that 
 renders the affections, rightly governed, one of the 
 strongest and best barriers against evil, makes them, 
 when unsubjected to the restraints of reason and 
 conscience, as fearfully prolific of evil and sin. 
 
 And it is to be observed, that not only is youth 
 the best season for developing the affections, when 
 already rightly disposed, but it is also the best 
 period for checking them when bent perniciously. 
 The same pliant quality which renders the young 
 plant capable of being directed into the right form, 
 renders it also all the more easily brought back out 
 of a distorted and unnatural one. Thus, to check 
 the evil passions of his child, forms one peculiar 
 part of the parent's duty. 
 
 For this important task no one is or can be 
 
70 
 
 so well fitted as himself. He has watched its mind 
 ever since it had one at all; and knowledge thus 
 early gained in the open hours of childhood is more 
 valuable than any that can be gained at any sub- 
 sequent period. Strangers, too, would not bear 
 with its failings in the same way in which the deep 
 natural affection of the parent enables him to do. 
 These, and many other reasons, combine to show 
 clearly that the parent is of all men the most fitted 
 for correcting and counteracting any evil tendency 
 in his child. 
 
 But if, notwithstanding all this, either from the 
 natural perversity of the child, or any such cause, 
 this great bond is roughly broken or despised, it 
 betokens a heart radically evil, and fit for the 
 commission of almost any crime, if only inducement 
 sufficiently strong can be held forth. Thus, the 
 daughter whose heart is bad enough to injure and 
 ill-treat the father, turns out, if possible, a worse 
 wife than child. 
 
 All this, and far more than this, is comprised 
 under the "Relation between Parent and Child." 
 The limits of an essay do not permit me to say 
 more on this subject. 
 
 It lies at the basis of all moral good ; and Shake- 
 speare has borne witness, in the selection of such 
 a fundamental and all-pervading truth, as well to 
 his deep penetration and acquaintance with human 
 nature, as to his profound wisdom as a moralist. 
 
71 
 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MANNER IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE EXECUTES HIS DESIGN 
 IN THE PLAY OF KING LEAR. 
 
 SOME critics have denied that in all the plays of 
 Shakespeare a great moral end can be found. At 
 all events there can be no such doubt in the play of 
 King Lear. In the whole of the plot, frequently 
 in the particular sentiments delivered, there is a 
 most marked and striking reference to the grand 
 truth of which we have just spoken. 
 
 Albany, his eyes at last opened to a full perception 
 of his wife's crimes, thus addresses her : 
 
 " I fear your disposition : 
 That nature, which contemns its origin, 
 Cannot be border'd certain in itself." Act IV. Scene 1. 
 
 It was the sense of her filial impiety, without 
 knowledge of any other crimes, which led him thus 
 bitterly to upbraid her. 
 
 We shall now, however, proceed to the particular 
 consideration of the play with reference to the way 
 in which Shakespeare executes his great design in it. 
 
 We have, brought before our eyes, Lear and his 
 family, and it is on their fortunes that the moral 
 aim of the play depends. Lear is represented to 
 us as a man of ardent and unrestrained passions. 
 Accustomed to all the deference and servility of 
 absolute sovereignty, he had never put the least 
 
72 
 
 constraint on his will, whether for good or for evil. 
 To oppose that will for one instant is, to his mind, 
 lothing less than treason, and merits nothing less 
 death. Witness the faithful Kent, banished, on 
 pain of death, solely for his honest, self-sacrificing 
 concern for his master's interests. Lear has equally 
 false notions respecting his position as a parent, 
 as he has respecting that of a sovereign. Not 
 content with unlimited power over the outward 
 actions, he aims at nothing less than the same 
 subjection of the inward feelings. Loving un- 
 boundedly himself, he demands a like love from 
 his children. He demands it, as if the love of 
 the heart could be compelled and constrained. 
 Unwittingly, he shows us much of his character 
 in that single line : 
 
 " Better thou 
 Had'st not been born, than not to have pleas d me better" 
 
 Besides, he altogether misunderstands the nature 
 of that love he yet so eagerly desires. 
 
 He takes the outward, idle, and worthless pro- 
 testations of love for the deep and hidden devotion 
 of the heart. Even in this his will must be obeyed ; 
 he will judge love according to HIS standard, and 
 of necessity he must take the consequences of his 
 judgment. 
 
 And yet the mere wish for this love, which he 
 so urgently yet blindly craves, denotes the imperfec- 
 tion of a warm and noble nature. 
 
 " He loved well, but not wisely." His passions 
 
73 
 
 are his moving principle ; and as these have never 
 been subjected to reason or conscience, the actions, 
 the habits, the life, must necessarily be lawless and 
 imperfect. His example has its inevitable effect 
 on his children. He had never implanted in them 
 a due reverence for his authority and for his charac- 
 ter. He had never properly set himself to the 
 education of their minds. 
 
 Even the great natural tie, which might have yet 
 served in some degree to sustain filial duty, was 
 broken through his false estimate of it. He had 
 habitually received flattery and hypocrisy in its 
 place, and rewarded them instead of it. The great 
 connexion between parent and child was wholly 
 broken. Its nature and its obligations had been 
 totally misunderstood, both by parent and child. 
 Nothing, then, remains but to trace the sure and 
 inevitable consequences' to each. 
 
 It may be asked, Was not the evil effect of Lear's 
 conduct, in his paternal character, to be expected to 
 prove as detrimental to Cordelia as to her sisters'? 
 We answer, theoretically it was, but in point of 
 fact it did not. Often, in spite of every disadvan- 
 tage, the soul is yet kept pure and bright; and at 
 last bursts forth from the surrounding gloom, all the 
 fairer through the contrast with the darkness from 
 which it has escaped. Cordelia, in spite of all, 
 escapes contamination ; and her virtue appears all 
 the more lovely, contrasted with the moral deformity 
 of her sisters. 
 
74 
 
 To return, however, to the subject, viz., the con- 
 sequences that inevitably result from the breaking 
 of this great relation we see them first in Lear ; 
 and second, in his children. 
 
 ; With a master's skill, Shakespeare assigns to 
 each the due reward of his crimes. He sees at 
 once the magnitude of the evil, its vast influence 
 over the future and all the different circumstances 
 with which it is connected; and with this en- 
 lightened view of the crime he proceeds to adjudge 
 the penalty that is fitting. 
 
 One would be disposed to say, at first sight, that 
 the punishment in the case of Lear was totally 
 disproportioned to the fault ; so much so, indeed, as 
 to be a positive imperfection, a want of adequate 
 cause for the evolution of the plot. Such, however, 
 as I have above shown, is very far from being the 
 case. Lear's fault was one of the very gravest 
 nature, extending not only over the present, but 
 influencing, to an immense extent, the whole future 
 lives of his offspring, and of every one with whom 
 they were connected. It was fitting that a crime 
 of such sweeping and universal importance should 
 be punished in some most signal manner. 
 
 The great root of all Lear's faults was his uncon- 
 
 _ 
 
 trolled obedience to the passion of the moment; his 
 arbitrary spirit, which would allow him to obey no 
 rules in his conduct to his children, which would 
 not suffer him to submit to the task of watching 
 and directing them. 
 
75 
 
 The same spirit would lead him to break out now 
 in passionate love, now in despotic and tyrannical 
 anger. He had thus completely lost the respect 
 of his children, who could not fail of seeing their 
 father's fault, 
 
 Gon. " The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash ; 
 then must we look to receive from his age, not alone the imper- 
 fections of long-engrafted condition, but, therewithal, the unruly 
 waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them." 
 
 Act I. Scene 1. 
 
 Respect was entirely gone ; and if this be shaken, 
 the relation between child and parent rests on a 
 tottering foundation, and any unusual blast may 
 level it to the ground. He had neglected his 
 children, and they are the means used for bringing 
 down punishment on his head. 
 
 And how exquisite the pain of such a punishment 
 to such a heart ! For, whatever he had been to 
 others, to them he had been generous and loving 
 to a fault. He had even wronged others to benefit 
 them. Upon them he had blindly lavished, in the 
 rich love of his heart, power, wealth, honoui 
 everything. He had stripped himself of all t< 
 benefit them, and the sole recompense he ask; 
 \yas^gratitude. 
 
 Tired of the pomps and empty honours of the 
 world, he endows them with all he possessed, and 
 seeks a quiet place where he may rest his weary 
 head, happy in the love of his children. How 
 bitter, how inexpressibly bitter, must be the anguish 
 that rends the heart of the old king to meet such 
 
76 
 
 a return for all his goodness! At first, all his old 
 spirit comes back. His wrath swells high ; he 
 rouses all the haughty pride of his heart, and 
 indignantly spurns the shelter of such a roof: 
 
 " Saddle my horses ; call my train together. 
 Degenerate bastard ! I'll not trouble thee." Act I. Scene 4. 
 
 But when his passion is exhausted, the full force 
 of the overwhelming blow strikes him. How full 
 of bitter, repentful sorrow is that exclamation : 
 
 " O Lear, Lear, Lear ! 
 Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, 
 And thy dear judgment out." 
 
 And with what terrible truthfulness does he 
 describe the pain : 
 
 " Sharper than a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child." 
 
 There is, however, still one alleviation. " Yet 
 has he left a daughter ;" and how he clings to it, as 
 the last hope ! But when here too he finds that he 
 has been deceived, convulsed nature is almost too 
 weak to bear the mighty shock, and reason, over- 
 whelmed by such vast calamities, is for a time 
 shaken from its throne. 
 
 Under, however, the salutary discipline he re- 
 ceives, he learns to see his selfishness while in 
 power, and to think for the interests of others. 
 Formerly, as Regan said, 
 
 " He had but slenderly known himself." 
 
 Under his severe trials, he learned at length his 
 
77 
 
 past errors. He perceived that his former love 
 was headstrong and untrue. . Thus he is at last 
 brought to own to Cordelia : 
 
 " I know, you do not love me ; for your sisters 
 Have, as I do remember, done me wrong : 
 You have some cause, they have not." Act IV. Scene 7. 
 
 When he is at last restored to his senses and 
 this correct view of things, his course is finished, 
 and a welcome death releases him from all his 
 sorrows. 
 
 But in the case of Goneril and Eegan very 
 different is the result. They had nothing whatever 
 to plead in palliation of their dreadful crime. 
 There was no reason why they should have acted 
 as they did, any more than Cordelia. No ; it was 
 nothing hut the complete eradication of all moral 
 feeling from their breasts, a perfectly fiendlike 
 wickedness of heart, that could have urged them 
 to the commission of such crimes. They have not 
 the very remotest idea of the duty they owe to 
 their father. Like true hypocrites, they flatter him 
 servilely while he has anything to give them, but 
 no sooner has he bestowed upon them all he pos- 
 sesses, than they show, plainly enough, their true 
 feelings toward him. 
 
 Gon. " Idle old man ! that still would manage those authorities 
 that he hath given away. Now, by my life, old fools are babes 
 again, and must be us'd with checks as flatteries." 
 
 Far from treating him with the respect his years, 
 if not the circumstance of his being their father, 
 
78 
 
 would demand, they look upon him as an useless 
 and wearisome encumbrance, and ill-treat and abuse 
 him in every possible way, and at last refuse him 
 the shelter of their roof, and thrust him forth to 
 the mercy of the furious elements. Such is their 
 conduct as children, and, if our hypothesis be true, 
 we may expect the very worst crimes from natures 
 so utterly devoid of moral feeling. 
 
 Regan is united to a man dark and ungovernable, 
 like herself, where everything is adapted to bring 
 her worst passions into full play. Her season of 
 hopeful probation is over, and she is introduced 
 into circumstances where we can only expect to see 
 her speedily fall the victim of her sins. 
 
 Goneril, on the other hand, is placed in widely 
 different circumstances. Her husband is a man 
 who, though vacillating and indolent, is yet de- 
 cidedly of good bias. He is, too, tenderly devoted 
 to herself. In short, everything favours the good 
 principle in its struggle with evil. But in vain. 
 It is too late to hope for any real change. There 
 is a certain depth in sin, to which if any mind has 
 sunk, it is next to impossible that it should ever 
 recover. 
 
 When the moral feelings are so far gone as to 
 permit such a want of filial reverence as these two 
 daughters are represented to exhibit, it indicates a 
 progress in evil, from which it is almost hopeless 
 that they should ever rise. Like as pent up waters, 
 when they have broken down the dam which has 
 
79 
 
 hitherto restrained them, roll on the more furiously 
 by reason of the coercion they have experienced, 
 so Goneril, when she has overcome the restraint 
 of her husband's virtue, rushes into still more 
 fearful depths of guilt, and proves decidedly the 
 worse of the two. 
 
 For a short time all goes on well, but the calm 
 cannot last. The appearance of Edmund is the 
 commencement of the temptation, and, as was to 
 be expected, it is immediately yielded to by both 
 sisters. No restraint of modesty, of law, or of 
 affection, is regarded; and they set themselves at 
 once to overcome everything that opposes their 
 wishes. The death of Cornwall seems to favour 
 Regan's design, while it urges Goneril to make a 
 bold stroke for the accomplishment of her end, if 
 she ever wishes it to be accomplished at all. 
 Regan, on the other hand, heartlessly banishing 
 every memory of her late husband, is equally bent 
 upon her views. Goneril, at last seeing no other 
 way, determines to break over the last feeble 
 restraint, and adds the murder of her husband to 
 her other crimes. But here Justice, " tardo pede" 
 comes up with the offenders. Regan is poisoned 
 by her sister, who fears she may prove a dangerous 
 rival. Thus her heartless, if not immoral, conduct 
 to her husband becomes the ultimate instrument 
 of her punishment. At the same time, Goneril's 
 plot is discovered by Edgar, whom, by marrying 
 Edmund, she was about unjustly to have deprived 
 
80 
 
 of his rights. When all her crimes are thus dis- 
 closed, and Edmund, the only one on whom she 
 could now rely, meets his just doom, despair and 
 rage take possession of her, and she fills up the 
 long list of her enormities by adding that of self- 
 destruction. 
 
 There is yet one aspect in which Shakespeare 
 has exhibited the great truth, which it is the design 
 of the play to inculcate, and in a way much more 
 pleasing than the last; and that is, by contrasting 
 the cruelty of Goneril and Regan with the dutiful 
 conduct of Cordelia. And how perfect in its moral 
 beauty does her character appear! Here Shake- 
 speare has strikingly shown his vast dramatic 
 talents. We have no long and tedious speeches, 
 no prosaic descriptions. She is seldom brought 
 before us at all, and then very cursorily. But in 
 these passing glimpses we see enough to form a 
 distinct conception of her in all her feminine 
 softness and grace. She stands forth, the represen- 
 tative of all that is lovely and virtuous. She has 
 resisted all the pernicious effects of her sisters* 
 example, her father's injudicious and false training, 
 and the natural effects of her position. The good 
 has overcome the evil, and come out untarnished 
 from the conflict. Her perfect truthfulness, her 
 sincerity and genuine affection, are all brought 
 forward in the first scene, and are sustained with 
 equal art throughout. There is, however, as Cole- 
 ridge remarks, " some little faulty admixture of 
 
81 
 
 pride and sullenness in the tone of Cordelia's reply 
 to her father." This, however, is but another proof 
 of Shakespeare's truthfulness as a painter of human 
 nature. A character without a single fault in it 
 would not be true to nature. 
 
 It would seem necessary, that in drawing a 
 picture of human virtue, some slight remains of 
 the earthy must still be exhibited, or the picture 
 ceases to be true. And Cordelia's fault is one to 
 which she would be peculiarly liable. Her parent's 
 folly, nay, arbitrary conduct, and the base, cringing 
 fawning of her sisters, are indeed enough to rouse 
 up her indignation and disgust. And yet there 
 is nothing absolutely culpable. The fault (if fault 
 it be) is rather negative than positive. It is rather 
 a coldness, a curtness, not quite suitable from a 
 child to a .parent, than any disrespect, much less 
 positive dereliction of duty. But whatever her 
 feelings to her father at the first moment, they are 
 almost immediately softened down afterwards, and 
 all her anxiety is for his comfort and happiness, 
 when she will be no longer present to look after 
 and care for him. The anxiety and pain she feels 
 on leaving her father to her sisters are sufficiently 
 exemplified in her parting speech : 
 
 " Use well our father : 
 To your professed bosoms I commit him : 
 But yet, alas I stood I within his grace, 
 I would prefer him to a better place. 
 So farewell to you both." Act I. Scene I. 
 
 Yet in spite of all her virtues and loveliness, 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 Cordelia is involved in the same ruin as the rest. 
 And this, as we are taught by daily experience, 
 is the case in real life. So intimately are the good 
 and the bad united in this world, that the punish- 
 ment, deserved only by the one, frequently falls 
 with equal severity on both. And yet there is a 
 marked and striking difference in the respective 
 fates of the characters of our story. While the 
 grim tyrant, death, is, to the two sisters, the break- 
 ing up of all their hopes, a forestalling of future 
 misery, it comes to Cordelia resting in her father's 
 arms, as the release from all troubles and the 
 commencement of uninterrupted moral perfection. 
 Shakespeare, too, thus gives terrible emphasis to 
 a law which, when violated, demands punishment 
 even from 'those who personally have not broken 
 any of its requirements. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OTHER RELIGIOUS AND MORAL PRINCIPLES TAUGHT IN THIS 
 PLAY, BESIDES THAT WHICH is ITS CHIEF DESIGN. 
 
 EVEN if there had been no one great moral aim 
 in King Lear, there yet remains more than enough 
 to prove Shakespeare to have been indeed a moralist 
 no less than a poet. 
 
 The play is full of sentiments of profound 
 
83 
 
 religious significance. These I shall proceed to 
 notice singly, in what seems to me to be the most 
 natural order. Shakespeare teaches evidently the 
 doctrine of 
 
 I. THE FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY OF MAN. 
 
 Edm. " This is the excellent foppery of the world ! that, when 
 we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), 
 we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars : 
 as if we were villains by necessity ; fools, by heavenly compul- 
 sion ; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance ; 
 drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of 
 planetary influence ; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrust- 
 ing on." Act I. Scene 2. 
 
 The Christian view of men, as responsible beings, 
 is essentially different from the pagan one. In the 
 ancient view, man is not the guide and chooser of 
 his own steps. He is represented altogether in an 
 objective light. From the instant he opens his 
 eyes to the light of the world, till the moment in 
 which he drops into the abyss of the past, he 
 appears guided and governed by a mysterious and 
 resistless destiny. From this destiny we see him 
 for ever trying madly to escape, and yet for ever 
 vainly. 
 
 The more that it is resisted, only the more surely 
 and quickly is destruction brought down. 
 
 The effects of such a theology are evident at the 
 first glance. If all the actions of man are the 
 effects of a will superior and acting in opposition 
 to his own, he cannot in justice be held responsible 
 for them. If they are good, he is not to be com- 
 mended ; if they are bad, he is not to be blamed. 
 
 o2 
 
84 
 
 One of two results must follow. Either, since the 
 sense of responsibility is removed, the human being 
 will give himself up entirely to the government of 
 his passions, will almost lose the distinction between 
 right and wrong, will finally lower himself from 
 the man into the brute, or else, as the poet says, 
 "involvet virtute sua" he will gather himself into 
 himself, will summon up all the affections, powers, 
 and aspirations of his soul ; and thus fortified, will 
 struggle to stand firm against the fiercest blasts of 
 the tempest. 
 
 But stunted, indeed, must be the stature of a mind 
 that lives by such a philosophy ! Poor, indeed, this 
 defence against temptation ! It effectually dwarfs 
 the powers of the soul, it shows no other relation 
 between man and man than as fellow-sufferers. It 
 freezes the mental vigour, and leaves the individual 
 at last like the solitary pine spared by the wood- 
 man's axe, standing in the forest's gloom. The 
 autumn winds whistle around, and one by one its 
 sear leaves are swept away, till at last it stands 
 bare and desolate, bereft of all. 
 
 The Christian view of men and life is the direct 
 opposite of this. It declares that there is no force 
 exerted on any man, that he is left to himself to 
 choose good or evil. 
 
 It follows, then, directly, that every man must be 
 responsible for his deeds. Thus, in so far, every man 
 might be called " the arbiter of his own fate." It is 
 evident that this truth is one of the most important 
 
85 
 
 and fundamental in the whole range of morals. We 
 have it, therefore, brought forward in the very out- 
 set, and again at intervals, in the course of the play. 
 
 It is taught in the fact that Cordelia, although 
 surrounded by so many temptations, nevertheless 
 preserves her integrity in spite of all. 
 
 This freedom of will is dependent neither on 
 time, place, outward circumstances, nor anything 
 else. It is in the power of each to make his 
 election on the great questions of morals. 
 
 II. UNIVERSAL PROVIDENCE OF GOD. 
 
 While the Christian doctrine concedes to man 
 the fullest freedom of will that it is possible for 
 him to enjoy in a world of mutations and chances, 
 it does not thereby limit, in the smallest degree, 
 the omnipotent power of the Deity. This freedom 
 ofLwill, it declares, is the gift of God, who yet 
 ordains and disposes for the best all the events of 
 Providence. 
 
 Alb. " If that the heavens do not their visible spirits 
 Send quickly down to tame these vile offences, 
 'Twill come, 
 
 Humanity must perforce prey on itself, 
 Like monsters of the deep." Act IF. Scene 2. 
 
 The belief in this superintendence and governing 
 providence which here marks, and in due time 
 brings down punishment upon the transgressor, is 
 innate in the human breast. It is universal, 
 belonging neither to age, race, nor even religion. 
 
 Regarding it in this general light, Shakespeare 
 puts the sentiment into the mouth of a heathen. 
 
He describes in remarkably striking language the 
 lawlessness and anarchy that would inevitably result 
 if there were no such providence. 
 
 Alb. " This shows you are above, 
 
 You justices, that these our nether crimes 
 So speedily can venge ! " 
 
 The same remark applies here also. As the sen- 
 timent is general, and in a certain degree common to 
 all men, such a sentiment (and many of the sentiments 
 of the play are of this general nature) can be put with 
 perfect reason into the mouth of a heathen, even 
 though it may have a far deeper significance than 
 he can be supposed to have intended in uttering it. 
 
 III. FAITHFUL REPRESENTATIONS OF VIRTUE 
 
 AND VlCE, AND THEIR EFFECTS. 
 
 Here we have a good illustration of the superiority 
 of the drama over all didactic teaching. 
 
 The nature of vice, and its inevitable and ruinous 
 effects, might be set forth in language eloquent and 
 thundering as that of Demosthenes, and yet this 
 would not make the tenth part of the impression 
 that this story does. The reason is just this, that 
 the only way to reach a human heart is through 
 human personalities, possessing human thoughts and 
 human affections. 
 
 Of Lear and his punishment we have already 
 spoken. There is a peculiar fitness in the punish- 
 ment of Gloster. Gloster's fault was an unrepented 
 crime, committed long ago. Though it may be 
 long, yet it is seldom that vice, even in this world, 
 
87 
 
 escapes wholly unpunished. " His sin at last finds 
 him out ; " and he is punished through the instru- 
 mentality of that very son, the fruit of his unlawful 
 marriage. 
 
 Edg. " The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
 Make instruments to scourge us : 
 The dark and vicious place where thee he got, 
 Cost him his eyes." Act V. Scene 3. 
 
 All may go on well for a time, but it is a deceitful 
 calm. It is like the earth, which indeed may 
 appear green and verdant, but bears within its 
 bosom the seed of that dire upas tree, which, when 
 sprung up, will ruin everything that grows near it. 
 
 Edmund is represented to us as endowed with an 
 intellect keen and penetrating, which sees at once 
 into and rejects the superstitions of the ignorant and 
 credulous around him. We see in him, however, a 
 radical corruption and badness of heart. 
 
 Admire his talents as we may, we yet feel no 
 regard for his person, and a thorough detestation of 
 his character. Shakespeare never clothes vice in 
 a pleasing garb, but sets it out in its true colours, 
 loathsome in itself, and ruinous in its consequences. 
 Edmund's very first speech lets us into his pene- 
 trating but unscrupulous character. 
 
 Well then, 
 
 Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land : 
 Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund, 
 As to the legitimate : Fine word, legitimate ! 
 Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, 
 And my invention thrive, Edmund the base 
 Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper: 
 Now, gods, stand up for bastards !" Act I. Scene 2. 
 
After his diabolical schemes upon his innocent 
 brother and his confiding father meet with success, 
 he aspires to nothing less than the crown itself. 
 Nay, it is almost within his grasp. One final 
 stroke, and then but his villainy has reached its 
 height. Thus far he has been suffered to go with 
 impunity ; farther he may not. 
 
 When he fancied himself already at the summit 
 
 of his wishes, he is arrested by the hand pf_that 
 
 brother he had so vilely injured, and meets the 
 
 /death he so richly deserves. He at last learns the 
 
 / lesson that vice, though long unrequited, must, 
 
 sooner or later, bring down its effects on the head 
 
 V of the offender. 
 
 Edm. " Thou hast spoken right, 'tis true ; 
 
 The wheel is come full H Q T am fa " dct V. Scene 3. 
 
 We have the same great moral truth set forth 
 in the fate of the rascally steward. His dastardly 
 love of gain was the immediate cause of his well- 
 merited death. Sin is sin in spite of every 
 meretricious ornament in which it may be decked 
 out; and virtue is great and sterling, despite all 
 the outward circumstances which veil it. 
 
 Goneril and Regan, Edmund and Cornwall, high 
 in station, possessed of all the appendages of wealth, 
 birth, beauty, are nevertheless wholly corrupt and 
 bad. For a time Goneril imposed upon her hus- 
 band, but at last he saw her true character. 
 
 When it came out fully, how great his detestation 
 and horror of her in spite of all his former love ! 
 
89 
 
 Shakespeare sets fairly before us the evil, spread- 
 ing, nature of sin. No matter how externally 
 beautiful any object, if at heart corrupted by sin, 
 he exhibits it as most foul and deadly. 
 
 Virtue, on the other hand, may for a while be 
 clouded. Cordelia may be an outcast child, spurned 
 away by her father, and received, as it were, " as 
 fortune's alms," by a mere stranger ; yet she at last 
 appears in all the piety and love of the child, in all 
 the patience and true dignity of the woman. Kent 
 may be totally hidden for a time, he may change his 
 lofty rank for that of a humble servant. Yet his 
 virtue, and honest, heartfelt devotion to his master, 
 appear only the more noble for the temporary cloud. 
 
 Edgar may be compelled to renounce for a time 
 his proper station, and descend into the very lowest 
 depths of outward human misery, and be obliged 
 by the .persecutions of vice "to take the basest and 
 poorest shape that ever penury in contempt of 
 man brought near to beast." 
 
 But yet at last the good triumph. Edgar, in 
 spite of his manifold outward troubles, yet stands 
 firm, endeavouring to discharge his duties in the 
 station he now occupies. Meanwhile the shadows 
 pass. Virtue has been shown to be able to give 
 support in the veriest extremities of earthly misery. 
 It alone can preserve us untarnished in the still 
 more dangerous season of prosperity. 
 
 Edgar emerges from the cloud that has hitherto 
 enveloped him, and stands forth as the avenger of 
 
90 
 
 crime and the defender of order. Thus Albany 
 feels that, excepting Kent, Edgar alone is worthy or 
 capable of sustaining the empire. 
 
 Alb. " Friends of my soul, you twain 
 
 Rule in this realm, and the gor'd state sustain." Act V. Scene 3. 
 
 Under this head it may be well to notice that, 
 wherever it is possible, Shakespeare takes every 
 opportunity to lash with unsparing severity par- 
 ticular vices, and especially the vice of selfishness. 
 For instance: 
 
 Glo. " Here, take this purse, thou whom the heaven's plagues 
 Have humbled to all strokes : 
 
 Heavens, deal so still ! 
 Let the superfluous, and lust-dieted man, 
 That slaves your ordinance, that will not see 
 Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly ; 
 So distribution should undo excess, 
 And each man have enough." Act IV. Scene 1. 
 
 Shakespeare here sternly rebukes that selfishness 
 that seems innate in the heart of man. There is 
 no vice more widely spread and few more radically 
 injurious. In a certain degree, it is wise and right 
 that we should be anxious and diligent in our own 
 behalf. There is much truth in the old proverb, 
 " God helps those who help themselves." But very 
 different are the feelings and conduct of the greater 
 part of mankind. They seem to make their object 
 not " how they may most wisely and usefully 
 spend their time," but how they may get through 
 life with the least possible trouble and the greatest 
 possible comfort to themselves. On such principles 
 it is not difficult to explain the gross selfishness 
 
91 
 
 and utter disregard to the interests of others mani- 
 fested by such a vast majority of men. This, too, 
 is often more especially the case when, loaded with 
 the gifts of fortune, they have all the greater 
 opportunities of doing good, if so disposed. So 
 rooted is this principle of selfishness in the human 
 breast, that when a man truly learns to pity those 
 whom fortune has not favoured equally with himself, 
 there is strong reason to hope that a great change 
 has been wrought in him, and that his future life 
 will be on far nobler and wider principles. 
 
 It shows the importance that Shakespeare attached 
 to this point that he should have mentioned the 
 sentiment of sympathy with our fellow-men, both 
 in the case of Gloster and of Lear, as one of the 
 first indications of a change to the better, of thinking 
 and feeling. 
 
 The sentiment is exactly the same in the collateral 
 passage : 
 
 Lear. " Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, 
 That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, 
 How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides, 
 Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you 
 From seasons such as these ? O, I have ta'en 
 Too little care of this ! Take physic, pomp ; 
 Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel ; 
 That thou may'st shake the superflux to them, 
 And show the heavens more just." Act III. Scene 4. 
 
 IV. POWER OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Conscience has been well called, "the voice of 
 God in man." It is conscience, or the power of 
 distinguishing right from wrong, that, even still 
 
92 
 
 more than reason itself, makes the great distinction 
 between man and the brute creation. 
 
 The wonderful instinct, indeed, of certain of the 
 
 lower animals is so marvellous, as very closely to 
 
 approach to intellect. But there is this conscience 
 
 still that separates eternally the man and the mere 
 
 animal. And in proof of this we observe that in 
 
 some of the human race who have almost lost this 
 
 great distinction (for instance, the wretched inhabi- 
 
 C tants of Central Africa) the line of demarcation 
 
 \ between the man and the brute is so faint as to be 
 
 \ almost imperceptible. But in cases where conscience 
 
 \has been resuscitated, in proportion as it has become 
 
 healthy and vigorous, has the individual been 
 
 raised in the social scale. 
 
 1 It is long, too, before conscience can be entirely 
 stifled. Ever and anon it will break out, and cause 
 itself to be heard above the roar of the tempest, 
 even above the ceaseless clatter of the world. When 
 the tumult has a little subsided, and a moment's 
 quiet snatched from its unending hurry, then there 
 darts into the soul the remembrance of the past 
 and it may be half-forgotten evil, and remains, like 
 an uncured wound, ever festering and green. Thus : 
 
 Lear. " Tremble, thou wretch, 
 
 That hast within thee undivulged crimes, 
 Unwhipp'd of justice: Hide thee, thou bloody hand; 
 Thou perjur'd, and thou simular man of virtue 
 Thou art incestuous : Caitiff, to pieces shake, 
 That under covert and convenient seeming 
 Hast practis'd on man's life ! Close pent-up guilts, 
 Rive your concealing continents, and cry 
 These dreadful summoners grace." Act HI. Scene 2. 
 
93 
 
 Edm, (Aside.^ "I will persevere in my course of loyalty, 
 /though the conflict be sore between that and my blood." Act Ill- 
 Scene 5. 
 
 How true to nature ! Conscience is, indeed, hard 
 to be mastered, even in the most depraved and 
 abandoned villains, and they are fain to get some 
 pretext or other, which, though it cannot satisfy, 
 may at least quiet the unwelcome reprover. Edmund 
 tries to justify his horrible crime by persuading 
 himself that in murdering his father he is only 
 acting the part of a loyal citizen ! 
 
 Just so with Goneril and Eegan. After their 
 abominable cruelty to their old father, they en- 
 deavour by all manner of excuses to persuade them- 
 selves that it is owing to his own stubborn self-will, 
 and to no want of filial duty on their part, that he 
 is deprived of a roof under which he may protect 
 his hoary head from the pitiless tempest. 
 
 Reg. " This house 
 
 Is little; the old man and his people cannot 
 Be well bestow'd." 
 
 Gon. " Tis his own blame ; he hath put 
 
 Himself from rest, and must needs taste his folly." Act II. Scene 4. 
 
 How perfect a knowledge of the human heart do 
 not these few lines exhibit! How well the great 
 master understood the doublings and shifts by which 
 evil is fain to hide from its votary its loathsome 
 and deadly nature ! Well was it for the drama, in 
 an age when licentiousness and vice in every shape 
 were riding rampant, that there was one so able 
 to explain its nature and its powers. 
 
 I 
 
94 
 
 We do not mean to assert that Shakespeare is the 
 best of Religious Teachers. 
 
 We have a far higher and purer standard, along 
 with which Shakespeare must not even be named! 
 But it is sufficient that we have shown he is on the 
 side of virtue, that he has a moral end in his plays, 
 and that his influence is very generally favourable to 
 the great cause of Religion. 
 
 J 
 
ESSAY III. 
 
 TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR; 
 
 QUOTING AND ILLUSTRATING SUCH PASSAGES 
 
 AS ALLUDE TO 
 
 THE USAGES OF THE TIMES IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE LIVED. 
 
 BY EENEST ABRAHAM HART. 
 
ESSAY III 
 
 " When learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes 
 First reared the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose." 
 
 IN the history of the world occur periods when 
 the earth seems overspread with a bleak and wintry 
 chill ; when the sciences and arts are at a stand ; 
 when nothing is added to the great store of the 
 world's knowledge, and men's minds seem covered 
 with a thick veil of intellectual darkness : opposed 
 to such gloomy periods, in strong contrast, stand 
 others, when the sunny light of reason, bursting 
 forth from behind the clouds of ignorance and 
 superstition, diffuses a genial warmth throughout 
 the globe; when great discoveries are made, and 
 works are written, which secure a world-long fame 
 to their authors; when the arts and sciences alike 
 flourish. 
 
 Two of these illustrious epochs glitter with 
 especial brilliancy. The one, when Greece was at 
 the climax of her glory, when on the plains of 
 Marathon she had shown herself worthy of her 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 long-boasted liberty and independence; when a 
 complete system of philosophy had for the first 
 time been given to the world; when the glorious 
 triumvirate of the Drama composed their noble 
 works ; when Phidias sculptured and when Pericles 
 harangued. The other, when Shakespeare entered 
 the arena of life. This was indeed a memorable 
 period. The gloomy night of what are aptly called 
 "the dark ages," had now disappeared; the print- 
 ing-press that faithful assistant in the progress of 
 civilization was in full operation ; mankind began 
 once more to exercise their intellectual powers, and 
 assert their right to think for themselves; and a 
 galaxy of talent shone forth, " such as the world 
 
 ne'er saw." 
 
 It is of this illustrious age that Shakespeare has 
 become the great exponent to all succeeding genera- 
 tions. One section of his works, his historical 
 plays, he has devoted exclusively to relating the 
 history, and portraying the character, feelings, habits, 
 and manners of the English of his own and pre- 
 ceding ages ; and these plays must ever be read, by 
 all who rejoice in the name of Englishmen, with 
 the utmost interest, for truer or more vivid pictures 
 are nowhere to be found. But it is not in these 
 alone that we are to look for illustrative notices of 
 the times in which our poet lived ; all his works 
 are thickly studded with incidental allusions of the 
 highest interest, and frequently of some historical 
 value. It is here my intention to notice and explain 
 
99 
 
 such of these allusions as occur in the tragedy of 
 King Lear. 
 
 " These late eclipses of the sun and moon portend no good to us." 
 
 Act I. Scene 2. 
 
 A firm belief in the influence of the heavenly 
 bodies over the affairs of men is as ancient as it 
 was universal; but it was especially the besetting 
 sin of the middle ages. It was shared alike by the 
 peasant and the sovereign; the former of whom 
 had some excuse for his credulity when he saw 
 a learned impostor, such as the famous Dr. Dee, not 
 only visited and furnished with funds by the strong- 
 minded Queen Elizabeth, but afterwards protected 
 and encouraged by some of the most considerable 
 of the European potentates. Astrology was indeed 
 " the excellent foppery of the age," and well deserved 
 the satire of our poet, whose strength of mind and 
 clearness of intellect enabled him to see and boldly 
 to expose its absurdity, in an age when the belief 
 in it was so firm and general. 
 
 "Eclipses of the sun and moon" have always 
 been regarded by the superstitious with especial 
 dread; all mishaps which occurred subsequently to 
 the awful event were referred to the dread influence 
 of this now well-understood phenomenon of nature. 
 Shakespeare again alludes to this superstition in 
 the following passage : 
 
 Othello. " O insupportable : O heavy hour ! 
 Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse 
 Of sun and moon" 
 
 H2 
 
100 
 
 To all operations of the moon especially was 
 ascribed in Shakespeare's age great influence over 
 this sublunary sphere. Shakespeare addresses the 
 moon as the " sovereign mistress of true melancholy ;" 
 tells us that when " she comes more near to the earth 
 than she was wont," she "makes men mad;" and 
 that, when she is "pale in her anger, rheumatic 
 diseases do abound." He tells us also, through the 
 medium of Hecate, that 
 
 " Upon the corner of the moon 
 There hangs a vaporous drop profound," 
 
 of power to compel the obedience of infernal spirits ; 
 and that its eclipses, its sanguine colour, and its 
 apparent multiplication, are certain prognostics of 
 disaster. 
 
 " To kill hogs, to collect herbs, and to sow seed, 
 when the moon was increasing, was deemed a most 
 essential observance ; the bacon was better, the 
 plants more effective, and the crops more abundant, 
 in consequence of this attention."* 
 
 We must not, however, be too severe upon the 
 age which fostered these absurd and puerile super- 
 stitions, since three centuries, during which science 
 and philosophy have been industriously and success- 
 fully cultivated, have not been found sufficient to 
 
 * Dr. Drake's " Shakespeare and his Times," vol. ii. p. 385. 
 Edmund's speech, commenting on his father's superstition, will 
 sufficiently show that Shakespeare, in ascribing to the moon power 
 over human affairs, does not speak according to his own conviction, 
 but uses the language of the times. 
 
101 
 
 eradicate all traces of them. The doctrine of 
 planetary influence still finds its followers in this 
 country, and that, too, we are given to understand, 
 among the highest classes. Astrological prophetic 
 almanacs still find numerous purchasers ; * and 
 Dr. Dee's old trick with the crystal has again been 
 revived within these few last years. 
 
 " I do profess to be no less than I seem ; to serve him truly, that 
 will put me in trust ; . . . . and to eat nojish" Act I. Scene 4. 
 
 This phrase, " to eat no fish," is a remarkable 
 one; it shows us to what absurd lengths party- 
 feeling will sometimes induce men to go. The 
 explanation of it is this : In Queen Elizabeth's 
 reign, when the Papists were greatly detested in 
 England, and regarded as enemies of the government, 
 their opponents were carried so far by their dislike 
 to them and their customs, as entirely to abstain 
 from the use of fish, simply because the former 
 party were then, as now, in the habit of frequently 
 consuming it, always eating it on Fridays and other 
 fast days. Thus, "to eat no fish" became the mark 
 of a zealous Protestant and a loyal subject ! 
 
 This " anti-Papist demonstration " was, however, 
 soon checked by the government ; for it was found 
 that if it were allowed to continue, the results 
 would be highly injurious to the fisheries and the 
 
 * Witness " Zadkiel's Prophetic Almanac," the author of which 
 boasts of the sale of scores of thousands of his vapid publication. 
 
102 
 
 numerous body of persons depending upon them 
 for support. An act was therefore passed to compel 
 all persons to have fish at their tables every Wed- 
 nesday and Friday, a declaration being appended 
 to the effect that this law proceeded from no super- 
 stitious motives, but the anxiety on the part of her 
 Majesty and her ministers, lest permanent injury 
 should be inflicted on the fisheries of Great Britain, 
 or rather England. 
 
 An allusion is made to this somewhat whimsical 
 prejudice in Marston's "Dutch Courtezan:" "I 
 trust that I am none of the wicked that eat fish 
 a Fryday." King also has the following passage, 
 illustrative of this point in his " Vestry : " 
 
 " On Wednesdays only, fast by parliament, 
 And Friday is the proper day for fish." 
 
 Mr. Pye, in his Commentary on Shakespeare, 
 informs us that at the table of the king's chaplain, 
 which followed the custom of the old kitchen, fish 
 was for many years only served on Wednesdays 
 and Fridays. 
 
 Fool. " Here's my coxcomb." Act I. Scene 4. 
 
 The fool in King Lear plays a prominent and 
 well-sustained part, and is employed by the poet 
 as a powerful dramatic agent; we might therefore 
 expect to find in him a character, although taken 
 from life, yet considerably altered to suit the pur- 
 
103 
 
 poses of the drama. This is, however, not the case. 
 Shakespeare has in him presented to us an exact 
 picture of that once indispensable appendage to the 
 household of our ancestors the domestic fool. 
 
 The practice of retaining fools is a very ancient 
 one. " It may be traced," says Mr. Douce, " in 
 very remote times throughout almost all civilized, 
 and even among some barbarous nations." In^ 
 Shakespeare's time they were to be found in every \ 
 rank and grade of society ; the monarch, the noble, \ 
 the squire, and even the churchman, had, each and 
 all, their fools : they were to be found alike in the 
 royal palace and the lowly tavern. The materials 
 for a history of them are abundant, and even a close 
 condensation of all that might be gathered relating 
 to them, would occupy far more space than I should 
 be justified in here assigning to it. A general 
 sketch of their manners and habits, including a 
 notice of their more prominent peculiarities, must 
 therefore suffice. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the ordinary run 
 of domestic fools possessed the superabundant wit 
 and readiness of their prototype in King Lear; 
 they were, for the most part, such as the " Innocent," 
 described by Sir Thomas More in his "Utopia," 
 who "so studied his words and sayings, brought 
 forth so out of time and place to make sport and 
 laughter, that he was oftener laughed at than his 
 jests were." An excellent idea of their general 
 manners and habits may be obtained from the 
 
104 
 
 following account of them given by a writer who 
 was contemporary with our poet: "Immoderate 
 and disordinate joy become incorporate in the bodie 
 of a jeaster; this fellow in person is comely, in 
 apparell courtly, but in behaviour a very ape and 
 no man ; his studie is to coine bitter jeasts, or to 
 shew antique motions, or to sing baudie sonnets 
 and ballads. Give him a little wine in his head, 
 he is continually flearing and making of mouths; 
 he laughs intemperately at every little occasion, and 
 dances about the house, leaps over tables, outskips 
 men's heads, trips up his companions' heeles, burns 
 sack with a candle, and hath all the feats of a Lord 
 of Misrule in the country : feed him in his humor, 
 you shall have his heart ; in meere kindness he will 
 hug you in his armes, kisse you on the cheeke, and 
 rapping out an horrible oth, crie, ' God's soul, Tim, 
 I love you ; you know my poore heart come to my 
 chamber for a pipe of tobacco, there lives not a man 
 in all the world that I more honour.' In these 
 ceremonies you shall know his courting ; and it is 
 a special mark of him at the table, he sits and 
 makes faces."* 
 
 On the passages in this quotation which I have 
 marked, it will be proper to offer a few remarks. 
 Although the making " bitter j easts " was one 
 principal employment of the " all licensed fool," it 
 became necessary to take care that this was not 
 carried too far, that the jest was not lost sight of 
 
 * Lodge's " Wit's Miserie and the World's Madnesse," 1599, 4to. 
 
105 
 
 in the sarcasm, and that the satire was not too 
 biting. One means of softening down the bitterness 
 of their ridicule was to put on an innocent and 
 burlesque air in the delivery ; but they had a more 
 effective method of blunting the edge of their sar- 
 casm, or at least of appearing to do so, in the use of 
 fragments of sonnets and ballads. Of this practice 
 the fool in King Lear affords us a full exemplifica- 
 tion. Thus also in an old play, which Dr. Drake 
 asserts to have been published about 1580, entitled, 
 " A Very Merry and Pythie Commedie, called, The 
 Longer thou Livest, the more Foole thou art," we 
 have at the beginning the following stage direction : 
 " Entreth Moros (the fool of the piece), counter- 
 failing a vaine gesture and foolish countenance, 
 synging the foot of many songs, as fooles were 
 wont."* 
 
 It will have been seen from the quotation from 
 Dr. Lodge's "Wit's Miserie," that great liberties 
 were allowed to these hirelings, and that they were 
 admitted to close familiarity with their masters, 
 both of these being absolutely necessary for the 
 free exercise of their buffoonery. They were a 
 privileged class with respect to their wit and satire, 
 but their character did not always protect them, as 
 in the well-known case of the poor fool Archee, 
 who, having offended the Archbishop Laud, was by 
 him persecuted with the most disgraceful severity. 
 
 * See Mr. Steevens's Note, King Lear, Act III. Scene 6. 
 
106 
 
 This was, however, an exception to the general 
 treatment of these " innocents." Sir Thomas More * 
 declares, with his usual goodness of heart, that "it is 
 a great reproach to do any of them an injury ; " and 
 a similar opinion is expressed by Antony Stafford, in 
 his " Guide of Honour." Olivia, in Twelfth Night, 
 says that " there is no slander in an allowed fool, 
 though he do nothing but rail;" and in As You 
 Like It, the whimsical Jaques exclaims : 
 
 " I must have liberty 
 Withal, as large a charter as the wind, 
 To blow on whom I please; for so fools have."f 
 
 They do not, however, seem always to have 
 escaped punishment ; they were subject to, and 
 occasionally visited with, severe domestic castigation. 
 Thus King Lear, whose kindness to the "poor fool 
 and knave" who follows his master's fortunes is 
 one of the best traits in his character, threatens him 
 with the whip in Act I. Scene 4; and Mr. Douce 
 records several instances of a similar nature, from 
 one of which we find, that when by any instance 
 of intolerably gross licentiousness of speech the fool 
 had offended the ears of modest females, he was 
 treated with great severity. J In the latter case the 
 punishment was certainly well merited; but in 
 general I think, with Mr. Douce, that the "chastising 
 
 * In his " Utopia," Book II. Chap. 8. 
 
 f As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7. 
 
 j See note to page 506 of the " Illustrations of Shakespeare." 
 
107 
 
 the poor fools seems to have been a very unfair 
 practice." 
 
 I had intended to have given an account of the 
 dress, &c., of the domestic fool, but as I have 
 already exceeded the bounds I had placed for myself 
 in "writing this article, I must refer the reader to 
 Douce's " Dissertation on the Clowns and Fools of 
 Shakespeare,"* and Strutt's "Dress and Habits of 
 the People of England," where he will find a 
 detailed and very learned description, and must here 
 content myself with the following extract from 
 Minshew's Dictionary, 1627, illustrative and ex- 
 planatory of the passage with which I head this 
 notice: ''Natural ideots and fools have, and still 
 do, accustome themselves to weare in their cappes 
 cocke's feathers, or a hat with a neck and combe 
 of a cocke on the top, and a bell thereon." 
 
 P.S. Still further information with regard to the " Old English 
 Fools and Jesters," including an interesting account of Archibald 
 Armstrong and his jests, will be found in the third and fourth 
 volumes of the " London Magazine," in several articles by the 
 late Mr. Octavius Gilchrist ; and many interesting anecdotes will 
 be found collected in Armin's " Nest of Ninnies," and the notes 
 contributed by Mr. Payne Collier and Mr. W. S. Thorns. The 
 introduction to this pamphlet (which is among the publications of 
 the Shakespeare Society) will also be found to contain some inter- 
 esting remarks, as likewise the reviews of it, contained in the 
 " Athenaeum," &c. 
 
 * Page 497 of the "Illustrations of Shakespeare." To this 
 dissertation my obligations are numerous ; it is the most original 
 and most learned dissertation on this subject anywhere to be found. 
 
108 
 
 " How now, daughter ? what makes that frontlet on ?" 
 
 ... "Act I. Scene 4. 
 
 The allusion here is to the frontlet which in the 
 sixteenth century formed part of a woman's dress. 
 It was the fashion at this time to wear all sorts of 
 coverings for the face, or " mufflers ; " these were 
 of different kinds, sometimes concealing the lower 
 part of the face, sometimes the upper part, and 
 occasionally even the whole face ; the first being 
 usually called frontlets, the second chin-cloths: 
 their professed object was to keep off the sun, but 
 they seem frequently to have been used for the 
 purpose of concealing the face ; for this purpose the 
 third description seem especially to have been used. 
 This usage gave great offence to the gentlemen, and 
 in Scotland, where it seems to have been more 
 prevalent than in England, it was enacted, in 1457, 
 that " na woman cum to kirk nor mercat with her 
 face mussaled or covered that sche may not be kend." 
 Steevens quotes the following passages in illustration 
 of this practice : 
 
 " Forsooth, women have many lets, 
 And they be masked in many nets, 
 As frontlets, fillets, partlets, and bracelets, 
 And their bonnets and their pionets." Foure P's. 1569. 
 
 " Hoods, frontlets, wires, cauls, curling-irons, perriwigs, 
 
 bodkins, fillets, hair-laces, ribbons, roles, knotstrings, glasses," &c. 
 
 Lillys Midas, 1592. 
 
 " And vayle thy face with frownes as with a frontlet." 
 
 A Collection of Sonnets, 4to, 1594, 
 
109 
 
 Kent. " This is not altogether fool, my lord." 
 
 Fool. " No, 'faith, lords and great men will not let me ; if I had 
 a monopoly^ out, they would have part on't," &c., &c. Act I. 
 *cene 4. 
 
 This is a well-merited satire on the numerous and 
 disgraceful monopolies so freely granted in the age 
 of Elizabeth, which were usually obtained by bribing 
 the courtiers to assert their influence, in return for 
 which they frequently received one-half the profits 
 accruing to the monopolist. During the reign of 
 Elizabeth monopolies were granted on almost every 
 article of necessity ; and Mr. Hackwell might well 
 declare, as he did in parliament, that " he wondered 
 that bread was not of the number." This pre- 
 rogative of the crown was abolished by the 31st 
 of James I., and all monopolies, except those for 
 a limited time, were annulled ; it was, however, 
 exerted for long after the passing of this act, which 
 was evaded in various ways, and the abuse continued 
 unabated until the conclusion of the rule of the 
 Stuart family. It is alluded to by Decker, in his 
 " Match me in London " (1631), thus:- 
 
 " Give him a court-loaf, stop his mouth with a monopoly." 
 
 And again, in the ct Birth of Merlin " (1622) :- 
 
 " So foul a monster would be a fair monopoly worth the begging." 
 
 " If I had thee in Lipsbury pinfold, I would make thee care 
 for me." Act II. Scene 2. 
 
 The allusion contained in these lines is but ill 
 understood. A pinfold is a pound. Thus says 
 
110 
 
 Steevens, in Gascoigne's "Dan Bartholomew of 
 Bathe" (1587), 
 
 " In such a pin-folde were his pleasures pent." 
 
 Capell asserts, "With certainty, that it was some 
 village or other famed for boxing ; that the boxers 
 fought in a ring or enclosed circle, and that this 
 ring was called Lipsbury Pinfold." "But," says 
 Archdeacon Nares, " there is no such place or 
 village." 
 
 Steevens attempts to get over the difficulty by 
 supposing that " Lipsbury Pinfold is a cant expres- 
 sion importing the same as Lob's Pound." Other 
 commentators have brought forward various explana- 
 tions, differing from both those which I have given 
 as being the most pertinent and most probable, but 
 Capell's is, perhaps, after all, the best; and if it 
 should be found that there actually was such a place 
 as Lipsbury, which is really not impossible nor im- 
 probable, though all traces of it have disappeared, I 
 should unhesitatingly adopt it, as would, I believe, 
 most others. 
 
 " A knave ; a rascal, .... a beggarly, three-suited) hundred- 
 pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave." Act II. Scene 2. 
 
 Neither of the two epithets which I have marked 
 would now be used to express contempt, but the 
 usages of society in Shakespeare's time were such as to 
 render them highly offensive. It is to be remembered 
 that the age of Queen Elizabeth was remarkable for 
 
 ' 
 
Ill 
 
 the ostentatious finery and absurd love of dress which 
 universally prevailed, and which was encouraged by 
 the queen herself. In the " Gull's Horn-book" (1619), 
 you are informed, that in order to be in the fashion, 
 it is necessary, after having twice or thrice traversed 
 Paul's Walk, to enter an eating-house, and before 
 you return to take your afternoon's walk, "to trans- 
 late yourself out of your English cloth into a light 
 Turkey grogram." With such fashions as these in 
 vogue, and under the rule of a queen who left behind 
 her a wardrobe of 3,000 dresses, (some of them of 
 the most gorgeous description,/ we can easily under- 
 stand the reproach implied in the expression " three- 
 suited." 
 
 " Worsted-stocking "is an epithet of similar sig- 
 nification, implying meanness and poverty on the 
 part of the person to whom it is applied. From 
 Stubbe's "Anatomie of Abuses" (1595), we learn that 
 although silk stockings were extremely expensive in 
 England at this time, even persons who had not 
 more " than 40s. per annum, did not wear them of 
 any other kind." 
 
 Silk stockings were not known until the second 
 of Queen Elizabeth's reign, in which year her majesty 
 was presented by her silk-woman, Mrs. Montague, 
 with the first pair ever worn in England. But from 
 Stubbes and other authors we find that they soon 
 became universal, and, in common with all other 
 articles of dress, were carried to a most ridiculous 
 excess of gaudiness. They consisted either of woven 
 
112 
 
 silk, or, as it seems, were cut out by the tailor " from 
 silke, velvet, damaske, or other precious stufife."* 
 The low estimation in which worsted stockings soon 
 came to be held, is evinced by various passages in 
 contemporary writers. Out of those furnished us by 
 Steevens, I select the following illustration : 
 
 " Good parts are no more set by in these times, than a good leg 
 in a woollen stocking" The Hog hath Lost his Pearl (1611), 
 by Taylor. 
 
 We find a similar application of the epithet, 
 "three-suited," to that of our poet here, in Ben 
 Jonson's " Silent Woman : " 
 
 "Wert a pitiful fellow, and hadst nothing but three suits of 
 apparel." 
 
 " I'll make a sop o the moonshine of you : Draw, you whoreson 
 cullionly barbermonger." Act II. Scene 2. 
 
 "Sop o' the moonshine;" probably alluding to 
 some dish current at this time, known by that name. 
 There was a way of dressing eggs called " eggs in 
 moonshine," for which the following is the receipt: 
 
 " Break them in a dish upon some butter and oyl, melted or 
 
 cold ; strow on them a little salt, and set it on a chafing-dish of 
 coals : make not the yolks too hard, and in the doing cover them 
 and make a sauce for them of an onion cut into round slices and 
 fried in sweet oyl or butter ; then put to them verjuyce, grated 
 nutmeg, a little salt, and so serve them."f 
 
 Three other methods are subjoined. 
 
 * " Anatomic of Abuses," p. 30 ; and see Drake's " Shakespeare 
 and his Times," vol. ii. p. 105. 
 f Mayslie's Cook," p. 437. 
 
113 
 
 Farmer tells us, that in the " Old Shepherd's 
 Kalendar," among the dishes recommended by 
 Prymelyne, one is " egges in moneshine." This 
 dish is alluded to by Ho well in a letter to Sir 
 Thomas How : 
 
 " Could I those whitely stars go nigh, 
 Which make the milky way i' th' skie, 
 I'd poach them, and as moonshine dress, 
 To make my Delia a curious mess." 
 
 "A sop in the moonshine must have been a 
 tippet in the above mess."* 
 
 Such is the generally received explanation of this 
 now obsolete term of reproach. Warburton and 
 Capell adopt a fanciful explanation of the phrase. 
 According to Warburton, it is equivalent to our 
 modern phrase of making " the sun shine through 
 any one; " according to Capell, "this ludicrous phrase 
 imports that he should lay the person he speaks to 
 upon his back on the earth, like a sop in a dripping- 
 pan, for the beams to baste him." Neither of these 
 conjectures will, however, stand for a moment ; and 
 though many ingenious explanations have been 
 suggested to me by persons whom I have consulted, 
 that adopted by the elder commentators seems to be 
 by far the best, inasmuch as it has at least some little 
 ground to rest upon, which none of the others have. 
 
 A "cullionly barbermonger." " Cullionly " sig- 
 nifies doltish, and is supposed to be derived from the 
 Italian coglione. What may be the meaning of the 
 
 * Nare's " Glossary ;" article " Sop o' the Moonshine." This 
 is the opinion of almost all except Warburton. 
 
114 
 
 term " barbermonger " is by no means well known. 
 Dr. Farmer conjectures, with much appearance of 
 likelihood, that it is intended to convey a reproach 
 against the steward as taking fees of barbers and 
 other tradesmen for a recommendation to the business 
 of the family, and thus acquiring property by mean 
 artifices. 
 
 Edgar. " My face I'll grime with filth ; 
 Blanket my loins ; elf all my hair in knots." Act II. Scene 3. 
 
 This expression, "to elf the hair in knots," is 
 connected with a superstition which prevailed in the 
 middle ages: hair thus knotted being supposed to 
 be the work of elves and fairies in the night, and 
 therefore called " elf-locks " and " elf-knots." Shake- 
 speare again notices this superstition, and another 
 somewhat similar to it in his Romeo and Juliet, 
 
 " This is that very Mab, 
 That plats the manes of horses in the night ; 
 And bakes* the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, 
 Which, once entangled, much misfortune bode."f 
 
 Mr. Douce here remarks : " The line, 
 
 * And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs/ 
 
 seems to be unconnected with the preceding, and to 
 mark a superstition which, as Dr. Warburton has 
 observed, may have originated from the Plica 
 Polonica, supposed to be the work of wicked elves. 
 
 * Others, and perhaps better, " cakes the elf-locks." 
 f Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Scene 4. 
 
115 
 
 .... Lodge, in his ' Wit's Miserie ' (before men- 
 tioned), describing a devil whom he names ' Brawling- 
 Contention,' says, ' his ordinary apparell is a little 
 low- crowned hat, with a fether in it like a fore- 
 horse ; his haires are wild and full of elves locks, and 
 withy for want of kombing.'"* 
 
 " The country gives me proof and precedent 
 Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, 
 Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms 
 Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary." 
 
 Act II. Scene 3. 
 
 We have here an exact description of a class of 
 beggars now entirely obsolete, but who were very 
 numerous in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; 
 and while exciting much compassion from their miser- 
 able appearance and semi-insanity, were indirectly 
 the source of considerable annoyance, in consequence 
 of the numerous impostors, who, imitating their 
 wildness of speech and manners and squalor of 
 appearance, went about the country,, and, in Edgar's 
 words, 
 
 " From low farms, 
 
 Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes and mills, 
 Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, 
 Enforce their charity." 
 
 Decker describes one of these, in his " Bellman 
 of London," thus : " He sweares he hath been in 
 Bedlam, and will talke frantickely of purpose : you 
 see pinnes stuck in sundry places of his naked flesh, 
 
 * Douce's " Illustrations," &c., p. 426. 
 
 i2 
 
116 
 
 especially in his armes, which paine he gladly put 
 himselfe to, only to make you believe he is out of 
 his wits. He calls himselfe by the name of Poors 
 Tom, and coming near anybody, cries out, ' Poore 
 Tom is a-cold. 1 * Of these Abraham-men some be 
 exceeding merry, and doe nothing but sing songs 
 fashioned out of their owne braines ; some will 
 dance, others will doe nothing but either laugh or 
 weepe ; others are dogged, and so sullen withal 
 both in loke and speech, that spying but a small 
 company in a house, they boldly and bluntly enter, 
 compelling the servants through feare to give them 
 what they demand." It will be observed how closely 
 this account tallies with that of Shakespeare, who 
 has given us a vivid picture of the appearance, cus- 
 toms, &c., of this remarkable race of beggars. 
 
 In addition to the artifices here mentioned and 
 those spoken of by Shakespeare, Harrison mentions 
 other means which they possessed of exciting pity : j- 
 u As by niaking of corrosives, and applying the same 
 to the most fleshy part of their bodies, and also 
 laying of ratsbane, spearwort, crowfoot, and such 
 like into their whole members, thereby to raise 
 pitiful and odious sores, and move the hearts of the 
 goers by such places as they lie, to yearn at their 
 
 * It will scarcely be necessary to remind the reader that both 
 the soubriquet and the exclamation are used by Edgar in his 
 assumed character, in different parts of the play. The singing 
 songs " fashioned out of his owne braine " will also be recognised 
 as one of his practices. 
 
 -f- Harrison's "Description of England," published with 
 Holinshed's " Chronicle ;" Knight's " Shakespeare," vol. i. p. 427. 
 
117 
 
 misery, and thereupon bestow large alms upon 
 them." Thus we have enough of material to enable 
 us to form a pretty correct idea of the habits of the 
 vagabonds who affected the pitiable condition of 
 the real " Bedlam beggars ; " and I believe there 
 will be few who will not agree with the author of 
 the "Pictorial History of England," when he says 
 that "the merry England of the days of Elizabeth 
 was, in some respects, a terrible country to live in," 
 if they reflect on the rude state of society which 
 some of the particulars mentioned clearly point out. 
 The real Bedlam beggars seem to have been 
 much less formidable personages than some of 
 their imitators. "They were," says Mr. Knight, 
 " probably out-pensioners of the hospital, never 
 dangerous, seldom mischievous." In Aubrey's 
 manuscript "History of Wiltshire," which contains, 
 as do all his other works, an unusual amount of 
 accurate and original information, we find the 
 following minute description of this singular and, 
 as it would appear, harmless race of mendicants: 
 "Till the breaking out of the civil war, Tom 
 o' Bedlams did travel about the country ; they had 
 been poor distracted men that had been put into 
 Bedlam, where, recovering some soberness, they 
 were licentiated to go a begging. They had on 
 their left arms an armilla of tin, about four inches 
 long.* They could not get it off; they wore about 
 
 * The copy in the Lansdowne collection of MSS., among 
 other various readings, has this passage thus : " i.e., they had on 
 
118 
 
 their necks a great horn of an ox in a string or 
 baudrick, which, when they came to a house 
 for alms, they wind; and they did put the drink 
 given to them into this horn, whereto they did 
 put a stopple. Since the wars I do not remember to 
 have seen them." This last particular of the great 
 horn into which the Tom o' Bedlams put their drink 
 serves to explain a passage in Edgar's speech 
 " Poor Tom, thy horn is dry," (Act III. Scene 6,) 
 which greatly puzzled the elder commentators to 
 explain, as Mr. Steevens's note will sufficiently 
 testify. 
 
 The dress of the Bedlam beggars is described by 
 Handle Holme in his " Academy of Armour," who 
 says that he had " a long staff, and a cow or ox-horn 
 by his side ; his clothing (is) fantastic and ridiculous, 
 for being a madman, he is madly decked and dressed 
 all over with rubins, feathers, cuttings of cloth, 
 and what not."* 
 
 " Poor Turlygood ! v poor Tom ! " Act II. Scene 3. 
 
 " Turlygood " seems to have been another name 
 for these Bedlam beggars. There was formerly 
 some little doubt about the origin of this word and 
 how it came to be applied in this way, but Mr. 
 
 their left arm an armilla, an iron ring for the arm, about foul- 
 inches long, as printed in some works." MS. Lans. p. 226. 
 
 * "Academy of Armour," book iii. c % hap. 3, p. 161. ("Illus- 
 trations," p. 416.) 
 
119 
 
 Douce's very interesting note is, I think, perfectly 
 satisfactory on these points. This very learned and 
 judicious commentator says that " Turlygood " is 
 a corruption of " Turlupin," and that the Turlupins 
 were a wild and fanatical sect that overran France, 
 Italy, and Germany, in the thirteenth century and 
 part of the fourteenth. " Their manners and 
 appearance exhibited the strongest indications of 
 
 lunacy and distraction.*. Their subsequent 
 
 appellation of the fraternity of poor men might have 
 been the cause why the wandering rogues called 
 Bedlam beggars, one of whom Edgar personates, 
 assumed and obtained the title of Turlupins or 
 Turlygoods ; especially if their mode of asking 
 alms was accompanied by the gesticulations of 
 madmen."* 
 
 Fool. " I'll speak a prophecy ere I go." Act III. Scene 2. 
 
 Shakespeare seems to have had in all his plays a 
 secondary object in view, independent of the main 
 point of working out his plot successfully. In 
 King Lear his object was evidently to ridicule the 
 leading follies of his age, and more especially its 
 weakness in believing in astrology, demonology, and 
 witchcraft, and expecting the fulfilment of the 
 trivial prophecies which were circulated. We have 
 already seen him, through the mouth of Edmund, 
 
 * Douce's " Illustrations," p. 406. 
 
120 
 
 most effectually endeavour to cast ridicule on the 
 so-called science of astrology, and the burlesque 
 prophecy spoken by the fool seems directly to aim 
 at the last absurdity. 
 
 Preceding commentators, overlooking the object 
 of the poet in introducing this "heap of nonsense 
 and confusion," have laboriously endeavoured to 
 make sense of it, and Dr. Warburton, by an un- 
 warrantable transposition of the text, has succeeded 
 in some measure in doing so; bift Mr. Knight has 
 shown that the intention of the poet is best ful- 
 filled by leaving it in its original condition. I will 
 give this gentleman's very excellent remarks in his 
 own words. Speaking of the theories of Warburton 
 and Capell, he says: "All this appears to us to 
 pass by the real object of the passage, which by the 
 jumble of ideas, the confusion between manners that 
 existed, and manners that might exist in an improved 
 state of society, was calculated to bring such pre- 
 dictions into ridicule. The conclusion, 
 
 ' Then comes the time, who lives to see 't, 
 That going shall be used with feet,' 
 
 leaves no doubt of this. Nor was the introduction 
 of such a mock prophecy mere idle buffoonery. 
 There can be no question, from the statutes that 
 were directed against these stimulants to popular 
 credulity, that they were considered of importance 
 in Shakespeare's day. Bacon's Essay of Prophecies 
 shows that the philosopher gravely denounced what 
 
121 
 
 our poet pleasantly ridiculed. Bacon did not scruple 
 to explain a prophecy of this nature in a way that 
 might disarm public apprehension. ' The trivial 
 prophecy which I heard when I was a child, and 
 Queen Elizabeth was in the flower of her years, was 
 
 " When hempe is sponne 
 England 's done ;" 
 
 whereby it was generally conceived that after the 
 princes had reigned which had the principal letters 
 of that word hempe (which were Henry, Edward, 
 Mary, Philip, and Elizabeth), England should come 
 to utter confusion, which, thanks be to God, is veri- 
 fied only in the change of name ; for that the king's 
 style is now no more of England, but of Britain.' 
 Bacon adds, 'My judgment is that they ought all 
 to be despised, and ought to serve but for winter 
 talk by the fireside : though when I say despised, 
 I mean it as for belief; for otherwise, the spreading 
 or publishing of them is of no sort to be despised, 
 for they have done much mischief, and I see many 
 severe laws made to suppress them.' ' 
 
 Edgar. " Away ! the foul fiend follows me !" Act III. Scene 4. 
 
 I have in the preceding note affirmed that Shake- 
 speare had a secondary object in view in the play of 
 King Lear ; viz., to throw ridicule on the follies and 
 reprove the vices of his age, instancing the passages 
 in which he has attacked astrology and the pre- 
 tended prophecies; we shall now see that he has 
 
122 
 
 availed himself of the pretended madness of Edgar 
 /to assist in exposing the fallacy of the theory that 
 / evil spirits took possession of men and tormented 
 / them who might he driven out by the exorcisms of 
 the priests: for by making Edgar in his feigned 
 insanity assume the character and use the expressions 
 of a demoniac, he tacitly hints that such was the case 
 with those who were believed really to be possessed 
 by a devil, at the same time that by fastening upon 
 the names of certain devils who figured in a case of 
 pretended exorcism, an account of which had recently 
 been published, exposing in the clearest manner 
 the imposture of the whole affair, he has taken the 
 best possible method of throwing discredit on such 
 a theory, and teaching the people to look upon it 
 with the contempt it merited. The affair alluded to 
 had been recently inquired into and exposed by Dr. 
 Harsnet, afterwards Archbishop of York, in "A 
 Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures," pub- 
 lished in 1603. It was briefly this : Some Popish 
 priests, desirous of gaining converts in England, set 
 about dispossessing some feigned demoniacs of the 
 devils which possessed them ; the farce being played 
 in the family of a Mr. Edmund Peckham, a Roman 
 Catholic. This gross imposture was at length dis- 
 covered and confessed to by the actors in it. In the 
 confession of Sarah Williams, one of the possessed, 
 a list is given of the names of the devils who infested 
 them, which includes all the most extraordinary and 
 fantastical appellations that surrounding objects sug- 
 
123 
 
 gested or old traditions furnished them with. Among 
 others, we find "Pippin, Philpot, Mahu, Modo, 
 Soforce, Smolkin, Fliberdigibet, Fratiretto" and 
 numerous other gentlemen, whose names impress 
 us with a more favourable opinion of the ingenuity 
 than of the taste of their baptizers. 
 
 These names Shakespeare puts into the mouth of 
 Edgar while he is acting in his character of a Bed- 
 lamite, in order by this means to throw ridicule on 
 the belief in the existence of devils or evil spirits 
 who possessed human beings. "Peace, Smolkin, 
 peace," could not fail to recall to the minds of the 
 audience the Smolkin of this story ; that " the Prince 
 of Darkness " was " a gentleman " called " Modo," 
 and sometimes " Mahu," is told us by Sarah 
 Williams as well as by Edgar ; and, as Mr. Hunter 
 remarks, " The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet would lose 
 his veritable existence even in the minds of the most 
 credulous, when it is seen how, in case of merely 
 assumed madness, such names could be used.*" 
 
 Thus here also Shakespeare, while employed in 
 carrying out a design conceived in the purest spirit 
 of romantic poetry, and exhibiting the most daring 
 flights of imagination, has consulted the interests 
 of humanity, and has availed himself of the ravings 
 of a pretended madman to combat the superstitions 
 of his time and bring them into ridicule. 
 
 * " New Illustrations of the Life, &c., of Shakespeare." By 
 Rev. T. Hunter, F.S.A. 
 
124 
 
 "A serving-man, proud in heart and mind ; that curled my hair; 
 
 wore gloves in my cap, swore as many oaths as I spake 
 
 words, .and broke them in the sweet face of heaven : one, that 
 slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it. Wine loved I 
 deeply ; dice dearly : and in woman, out-paramoured the Turk," 
 &c., &c. Act III. Scene 4. 
 
 The list of vices and follies of the fashionable 
 rou6* of the day given us in this passage presents 
 many features of resemblance to those which now 
 disgrace the same class, vices too generally toler- 
 ated, and perhaps even most generally found, in the 
 highest ranks of life, and in classes of society where 
 purity of morals ought above all other qualifications 
 strictly to be demanded from their members. But, 
 notwithstanding this general resemblance, which I 
 believe the vices and follies of the same class in 
 different ages will ever be found to bear to each 
 other, some of the particulars here mentioned being 
 peculiar to the middle ages, seem ' to require illus- 
 tration and explanation. 
 
 The custom of "wearing gloves in the cap" was 
 a relic of the times of chivalry which still existed 
 under altered conditions in Shakespeare's time. Mr. 
 Steevens tells us, that gloves were worn in the hat 
 " on three distinct occasions ; viz., (1) as the favour 
 of a mistress ; (2) as the memorial of a friend ; and 
 (3) as a mark to be challenged by an enemy. 
 Numerous allusions to this occur in contemporaneous 
 
 * It may perhaps be as well here to observe, that the " serving- 
 man " of this passage is not used in the sense of the present day, 
 but in that of a lover, the devoted " servant " of his mistress. 
 
125 
 
 literature ; from those given by the commentators, I 
 will select three, each illustrative of one of these 
 occasions : 
 
 (1) "Thou shalt wear her glove in thy worshipful hat like 
 to a leather broach." Deckers Satiromastix. (Steevens.) 
 
 (2) Hen. " Here, uncle Exeter, fill this glove with crowns, 
 And give it to this fellow. Keep it, fellow ; 
 
 And wear it for an honour in thy cap." King Henry V. 
 
 (3) Hen. " Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it 
 in my bonnet ; then, if ever thou darest acknowledge it, I will make 
 it my quarrel." 
 
 Williams. " Here's my glove." Ibid. (Theobald.) 
 
 With regard to curling the hair, we may observe, 
 that the fashion of dressing the hair was considered 
 by the beaux and belles of these times as an affair of 
 primary importance, with regard to the adornment 
 of their persons. " The gentlemen's hair was worn 
 long and flowing, ' whose length,' says Decker, 
 'before the rigorous edge of any puritanical pair of 
 scissors should shorten the breadth of a finger, let 
 the three housewifely spinsters of destiny rather 
 curtail the thread of thy life ; let it play openly with 
 the lascivious wind, even on the top of your shoul- 
 ders.' " * It was also fashionable to cherish a long 
 lock of hair under the left ear, called a love-lock. 
 " This love-lock, with its termination in a silken rose, 
 had become so notorious, that Prynne at length 
 wrote an express treatise against it, which he entitled 
 6 The Unloveliness of Love-locks, and Long Woman- 
 ish Hair,' " 1628.t 
 
 * Decker's "Gull's Horn-Book," reprint of 1812, pp. 83, 87; 
 Drake's " Shakespeare and his Times," vol. ii. p. 1 02. 
 f Ibid. vol. ii. p. 103. 
 
126 
 
 It may not be improper to add, that in Dr. Hars- 
 net's " Declaration," the spirit of pride is said to have 
 manifested itself by compelling the person possessed 
 to curl his hair. 
 
 JThe prevalence of swearing, in the age of Shake- 
 speare, was one of its most marked and most dis- 
 graceful features. " Oaths," says Dr. Drake, "were 
 unfortunately considered as ornaments of conver- 
 sation, and adopted by both sexes, in order to give 
 spirit and vivacity to their language ;\a shocking 
 practice, which seems to have been rendered fashion- 
 able by the very reprehensible habit of the queen, 
 whose oaths were neither diminutive nor rare; for 
 it is said that she never spared an oath either in 
 public speech or private conversation when she 
 thought it added energy to either." After this 
 example we need not be surprised when Stubbe 
 tells us, speaking of the great body of the people, 
 that, " If they speake but three or four words, yet 
 they must be interlaced with a bloudie oath or two." 
 
 These abominable expletives appear to have 
 formed no small share of the language of compli- 
 ment, a species of simulation which was carried to 
 an extraordinary height in the days of our poet: 
 thus Marston says 
 
 Marke nothing but his clothes, 
 
 His new stampt compliment, his cannon oathes, 
 
 Mark those." Scourge of Villanie, 1599, book ii. sat. 7. 
 
127 
 
 " This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet : he begins at curfew, 
 and walks till the first cock ; he gives the web and the pin, squints 
 the eye, and makes the hare-lip ; mildews the white wheat, and 
 hurts the poor creature of earth." Act III. Scene 4. 
 
 Of the superstition alluded to in the first part of 
 this speech, Shakespeare himself gives us the best 
 explanation in a drama, in which he has introduced 
 many of the superstitions of his age regarding 
 spirits with a most admirable effect ; treating them 
 in a philosophical spirit, which, together with the 
 appositeness of their introduction and the excellent 
 language in which they are related, has immortal- 
 ized them. I allude to the tragedy of Hamlet. 
 Horatio, relating the sudden departure of the ghost 
 when the cock crew, remarks: 
 
 " I have heard, 
 
 The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, 
 Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat 
 Awake the god of day ; and, at his warning, 
 Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, 
 The extravagant and erring spirit hies 
 To his confine." 
 
 Thus also in a hymn composed by St. Ambrose, 
 and supposed formerly to have been used in the 
 Salisbury service, which is quoted by Mr. Douce 
 
 " Preco diei jam sonat 
 
 Hoc excitatus Lucifer 
 Solvit polum caligine 
 Hoc omnis errorum chorus 
 Viam nocendi deserit 
 Gallo canente spes redit," &c., 
 
 the misfortunes here ascribed to the spirit were 
 usually considered to be the operation of witches, 
 
128 
 
 who were generally held accountable for all the mis- 
 haps of their neighbours ; on the other hand, Shake- 
 speare had doubtless authority for attributing these 
 effects to the malevolence of spirits, as he certainly 
 had for accusing the " foul fiend " of leading Edgar 
 through fire and through flame, through ford and 
 whirlpool, over bog and quagmire;" which was a 
 superstition firmly implanted in the breasts of the 
 vulgar of the age of Shakespeare, the wandering 
 fires which were the means of deluding the un- 
 fortunate victim a benighted traveller or otherwise 
 being known by the name of Will-o'-Wisp and 
 Jack-o'-Lantern, and believed to be occasioned by 
 demons and malignant spirits. Nor was this belief 
 confined to the common people alone, it was shared 
 in by the educated classes, and we find it acknow- 
 ledged to be in some degree true in a work written 
 by Lavaterus De Spectris, which was translated 
 into English in 1572 (two years after it was first 
 written), in which, after giving an account of these 
 wandering fires (which modern chemical science 
 teaches us have their origin in decayed vegetable 
 matter), he thus concludes : " But these things and 
 many suche lyke have their natural causes ; and 
 yet I will not denye, but that many tymes Dyvels 
 delude men in this manner/"* 
 
 * " Shakespeare and his Times," vol. i. p. 400. And this 
 concession, be it remembered, is in a work written for the express 
 purpose of censuring the superstitious credulity which put faith in 
 the wildest legends of supernatural interference. 
 
129 
 
 " Saint Withold footed thrice the wold ; 
 He met the night-mare, and her nine-fold ; 
 Bid her alight, 
 And her troth plight, 
 And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee ! " 
 
 Act HI. Scene 4. 
 
 One of the chief of those malignant supernatural 
 beings to whom the gross superstitions of the middle 
 ages, which ever exceeded those of the earliest and 
 most idolatrous ages, had given birth, was the 
 Incubus or Night-mare.* " The Incubus," observes 
 Batman, upon Bartholome, " doth infest and trouble 
 women, and Succubus doth infest men." For the 
 manner in which it molested its victims, I would 
 refer to the quotation as given in eoctenso by Dr. 
 Drake,f and to Mr. Douce's illustration of a pas- 
 sage in Act Y. Scene 2, of the Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, where he quotes the following passages from 
 Shakespeare as alluding to this influence : 
 
 Imogen. " To your protection I commend me, gods ! 
 From fairies, and the tempters of the nighty 
 Guard me, beseech ye ! " Cymbeline, Act II. Scene 2. 
 
 Banquo. " Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature 
 Gives way to in repose." Macbeth. 
 
 To check and counteract these influences, the help 
 of the saints was called in ; and invocations to these 
 spells and charms were believed generally to resist 
 
 * It may not be unnecessary to observe, that the "night-mare" 
 of the middle ages had no connexion whatever with the equine 
 quadruped so called ; the word mare being here derived from the 
 Saxon word " mara," an incubus. See Pye's " Commentary on 
 Shakespeare." 
 
 f " Shakespeare and his Times," vol. ii. p. 521. 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 the efforts of the Incubus, and enabled the person 
 armed with them to shake off the fiend, who is re- 
 presented as riding upon its victim. The word 
 night-mare we still retain, but i's signification is 
 now altered; and the disgusting superstition con- 
 nected with it, the offspring of that intellectual and 
 moral darkness which the Popish domination in 
 Europe had fostered for many ages before that in 
 which Shakespeare wrote, has fled before the light 
 of reason and religion. 
 
 The rhyme which Edgar repeats is one of the 
 spells against night-mare which I have above men- 
 tioned, and only differs in substance from some 
 others found elsewhere, in that it assigns to Saint 
 Withold the power of subduing the "Incubus;" 
 this part of the subject has, however, been fully 
 explored by the commentators, and it will not be 
 necessary for me to enlarge upon it. One point, 
 however, seems worthy of notice, which I do not 
 remember ever to have seen remarked upon. Edgar, 
 after reciting the spell against the " Incubus," which 
 was a spirit, concludes thus : 
 
 " Aroint thee, witch, aroint thee !" 
 
 Now it has never occurred to any of the gentlemen 
 employed in explaining and illustrating this passage 
 to inquire into the propriety of here introducing this 
 exclamation, though it would certainly seem at first 
 to be somewhat out of place at the conclusion of a 
 spell against a spirit which the Incubus was believed 
 
131 
 
 to be ; it will, however, admit of a very satisfactory 
 explanation. It is, as I think, to be explained thus : 
 Scot, in his " Discoverie of Witchcraft," gives us 
 a remarkably succinct enumeration of the feats which 
 witches were supposed to be capable of performing ; 
 and among those which were said to be done by the 
 worst description of witches, we find this : " Some 
 write that they can plaie the part of Succubus and 
 transform themselves to Incubus"* The adaptation of 
 this extract is, I think, sufficiently obvious. I con- 
 ceive, therefore, that by the addition of this line the 
 spell is made to include not only the Incubus itself, 
 but the witch assuming, or as Scot has it, " playing 
 the part of the Incubus." Should, then, my expla- 
 nation be adopted, this rhyme will be seen to allude 
 to another superstition connected with that of 'the 
 Incubus or night-mare, not noticed by the commenta- 
 tors; and it is this which has induced me to introduce 
 here what might else be considered irrelevant matter. 
 
 " Whipped from ty thing to ty thing, and stocked, punished, and 
 imprisoned." Act ill. Scene 4. n 
 
 In this place Shakespeare, with the kindliness of 
 feeling which invariably characterizes him, en- 
 deavours to impress us with the cruelty of the laws 
 which were in that age mercilessly but vainly en- 
 forced for the suppression of mendicancy. The 
 
 * " Discoverie of Witchcraft," book i. chap. 4. 
 K2 
 
132 
 
 severity of the previous laws may be judged of, when 
 it is remembered that these were modified in the 
 cruelty of the penalties attached to the infringing 
 of them by the statutes 39th of Elizabeth and 
 1st of James I., which directed that the " rogue, 
 vagabond, or sturdy beggar " was to be " stripped 
 naked from the middle upwards, and to be whipped 
 until his body was bloody, and to be sent from 
 parish to parish the next straight way to the place 
 of his birth." Harrison has described the state of 
 the law previous to the passing of these acts with 
 much clearness and simplicity, but in a spirit widely 
 different from that with which Shakespeare has 
 viewed the cruel working of the laws relating to 
 mendicancy. The whole extract, which is one of 
 much interest, will be found in Mr. Knight's notes 
 on this passage. The punishment for " their idle 
 rogueing about the country " was originally, that for 
 the first offence they should " be grievously whipped, 
 and burned through the gristle of the right ear with 
 a hot iron of the compass of an inch about," unless 
 some honest person of substance would undertake 
 under a certain penalty to retain the convicted person 
 in his service for one whole year; and whosoever 
 was a second time convicted, was (unless released as 
 above) to be treated as before, and again set to 
 service for a year; which, if he forsook once more 
 before the year expired, he was to suffer death as a 
 felon without benefit of clergy or sanctuary. 
 
133 
 
 Edgar. " Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me." Act III. Scene 6. 
 
 The propriety of putting this fragment of a song 
 into the mouth of Edgar was, I believe, first noticed 
 by Mr. Malone, who informs us that " Bessy and 
 Poor Tom usually travelled together." The author 
 of " Conscience, or Dick Whipper's Sessions," 1607, 
 describing beggars, idle rogues, and counterfeit mad- 
 men, thus speaks of these associates : 
 
 " Another sort there is among you : they 
 
 Do rage with furie as if they were so frantique 
 They knew not what they did, but every day 
 
 Make sport with stick and flowers like an antique. 
 One calls herself poor Besse, the other Tom." 
 
 An old woman who was called Bessy* was intro- 
 duced in the festivities formerly customary on Plough- 
 Monday (the first Monday after Twelfth-day). 
 
 Lear. " That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper : draw 
 
 me a clothier's yard O, well-flown, bird ! i' the clout, i' the 
 
 clout: hewgh ! Give the word." Act IV. Scene 6. 
 
 Lear here raves of archery, an amusement much 
 in vogue during the reign of Elizabeth ; I say an 
 amusement, for the long bow had become obsolete 
 as a weapon of warfare, notwithstanding various 
 efforts to prevent its falling into disuse. It is yet 
 practised by some few persons, but it is very far 
 from being so popular now as it then was. It will 
 not be needful to enter into particulars here con- 
 cerning the practice of archery, but a few observations 
 
 * Stubbe's " Sports and Pastimes of the People of England." 
 
134 
 
 regarding the " crow-keeper," and the length of the 
 shaft employed by the English archers, may not be 
 thought superfluous. 
 
 The " crow-keeper " was a man armed with a bow 
 and arrow set up to frighten the crows from the fruit 
 and corn, or in other words, a living " scare-crow." 
 " The ' crow-keeper,' " says Dr. Johnson, " was so 
 common in the author's time, that it is one of the 
 few peculiarities mentioned by Ortelius in his de- 
 scription of our island." So in Drayton's " Forty- 
 Eighth Idea :" 
 
 " And when corn's sown or grown into the ear, 
 Practice thy quiver and turn crow-keeper."" 
 
 Thus much to identify the character of a crow- 
 keeper; to explain the comparison, Mr. Douce has 
 called in the assistance of the venerable Ascham, 
 who in his " Toxophilus," speaking of awkward 
 shooters, says, " Another coweth downe, and layeth 
 out his buttockes, as though hee should shoote at 
 crows." 
 
 With regard to the " clothier's yard," that is, the 
 cloth-yard arrow here spoken of, I take the liberty 
 of quoting the following excellent note by Sir 
 Walter Scott on a line in " Marmion" 
 
 " The cloth-yard arrows flew like hail," 
 
 which will render any further comment on my part 
 quite unnecessary: " In some of the counties of 
 England distinguished for archery, shafts of this 
 extraordinary length were actually used. Thus at 
 
135 
 
 the battle of Blackheath, between the troops of Henry 
 VII. and the Cornish insurgents, in 1496, the bridge 
 of Dartford was defended by a picked band of 
 archers from the insurgent army, ' whose arrows,' 
 says Hollinshed, ' were in length a full cloth-yard.' 
 The Scotch, according to Ascham, had a proverb, 
 that every English archer carried under his belt 
 twenty-four Scots, in allusion to his bundle of un- 
 erring shafts." 
 
 So in the ancient and beautiful ballad of Chevy 
 Chase : 
 
 " An arrow of a cloth-yard long 
 Up to the head drew he." 
 
 " Change places ; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which 
 is the thief ?"Act IV. Scene 6. 
 
 " Handy-dandy," says Malone, who seems to have 
 explained this passage better than any previous 
 commentator, " is, I believe, a play among children, 
 in which something is shaken between two hands, 
 and then a guess is made in which hand it is re- 
 tained. & See Florio's 'Italian Dictionary,' 1598: 
 6 Bazzichiare, to shake between two hands, to play 
 handy-dandy. " : Mr. Douce quotes the following 
 passage from " A Free Discourse Touching the 
 Manners of the Times," MS.: "They hold safe 
 your children's patrimony, and play with your ma- 
 jesty as men play with children at handye-dandye, 
 which hand will you have ? " Mr. Douce considers 
 that this quotation confirms Mr. Malone's explana- 
 
136 
 
 tion, which to a certain extent it unquestionably 
 does ; but with all due submission to both these 
 authorities, I think that, were the discussion worth 
 entering into, it might be easily shown from this 
 very passage, that Mr. Malone's explanation is pro- 
 bably in some respects incorrect. 
 
 " It were a delicate stratagem, to shoe 
 A troop of horse with felt i I'll put it in proof; 
 And when I have stolen upon these sons-in-law, 
 Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill." Act IV. Scene 6. 
 
 Shoeing horses with felt seems occasionally to 
 have been practised in Shakespeare's age,^ and an 
 instance of it is recorded by Lord Herbert of Cher- 
 bury, in his " Life of King Henry the Eighth," p. 41, 
 where he tells us of a joust " held in an extraordinary 
 manner; the place being a fore-room raised high 
 from the ground by many steps, and paved with 
 black square stones like marble ; while the horses, 
 to prevent sliding, were shod with felt or flocks." 
 Other passages are adduced by the commentators 
 which tend to show that the idea was by no means 
 a novel one, either with regard to horse or man, 
 having been occasionally put yi practice with respect 
 to both. 
 
 During the Hussite war in Germany also, this 
 "delicate stratagem" of King Lear was, I believe, 
 fully carried out, the Hussites shoeing parties of 
 horse and men with felt, and thus stealing upon tfreir 
 enemies and taking them by surprise. 
 
137 
 
 "Kill, kill!" was formerly the word given in the 
 English army, when an onset was made on the 
 enemy. Thus, in the " Mirour for Magistrates," 
 1610: 
 
 " Our Englishmen came boldly forth at night, 
 Crying St. George, Salisbury, kill, kill ! " 
 
 So in Venus and Adonis : 
 
 " And in a peaceful hour doth cry kill, kill."* 
 
 " To watch (poor perdu !) 
 
 With this thin helm." Act IV. Scene 7. 
 
 The " perdu," or " enfant perdu," of the middle 
 ages seems to have differed somewhat from the 
 " forlorn hope " of modern times, although not very 
 widely. The " enfant perdu " was a brave man, 
 or as Polemon has it, " a man of great forwardness," 
 who, wishing to distinguish himself, volunteered for 
 "all perilous and harde pieces of service:" a per- 
 manent band of these was formed, ^to which was 
 intrusted the carrying out of all difficult enterprises ; 
 it is this permanence which constituted one of the 
 principal distinctions between the forlorn hope and 
 the enfants perdus. To the members of this band 
 it was " lawfull by reason of the prerogative of their 
 prowesse, to beare an ensigne, to have conducte and 
 double wages all their life long." j- The institution 
 
 * Malone's Notes to King Lear, Act IV. Scene 6. 
 j- Polemon's " Collection of Battels," 4to, Book I. Also see 
 Notes by Warburton. &c. 
 
138 
 
 of the " enfants perdus " partook more of the spirit 
 of the age of chivalry, when every gentleman was 
 required to prove himself worthy of his spurs by 
 individual acts of prowess. 
 
 To explain the propriety of here comparing Lear 
 to a "perdu," it may be added, that among other 
 services, that of keeping the night-watches seems to 
 have been a common one. Thus : 
 
 " I have endured 
 
 Another night would trie a 'perdu.' " Love and Honour. 
 
 Again : 
 
 " I am set here like a perdu, to watch a fellow that has wronged 
 my mistress." 
 
 ADDENDUM. 
 
 Fool. " For you trow, nuncle, 
 
 The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long-, 
 That it had its head bit off by its young." 
 
 Act I. Scene 4. 
 
 This is a remarkable instance of Shakespeare's 
 knowledge of truths of natural history, derived 
 essentially from his own observation ; he has ex- 
 hibited his discrimination between the popular 
 belief and the scientific fact, in this and another 
 notice of the habits of the cuckoo. The fool here 
 
139 
 
 expresses the popular belief, which it is natural for 
 a person of his class to participate in, in a proverbial 
 sentence introduced with the usual preface to the 
 introduction of a proverb or trite saying, "for you 
 trow." Worcester, in his address to Henry IV., 
 expresses the scientific fact without falling into the 
 vulgar error "a fact unnoticed until the time of 
 Dr. Tenner by any writer, except by the naturalist, 
 William Shakespeare."* The passage in Worces- 
 ter's speech referred to is the following : 
 
 Being fed by us, you us'd us so 
 
 As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo's bird, 
 
 Useth the sparrow : did oppress our nest ; 
 
 Grew by our feeding to so great a bulk, 
 
 That even our love durst not come near your sight, 
 
 For fear of swallowing ; but with nimble wing 
 
 We were enforc'd, for safety sake, to fly 
 
 Out of your sight." 
 
 Henry IV. Part I. Act V. Scene 1. 
 
 " Shakespeare ; a Biography : " by Charles Knight ; 
 found this curious and interesting fact noticed. 
 
 . ., where I 
 
 first found 
 
140 
 
 Strictly speaking, my task is now concluded. 
 I have carefully selected and illustrated all passages 
 in the play of King Lear which seem to allude to, 
 and throw light upon, the habits, manners, feelings, 
 and superstitions of the times in which Shakespeare 
 lived, confining myself to the antiquarian method of 
 illustration, which the nature of the subject seemed 
 to demand, and carefully avoiding the introduction 
 of any remarks which might be considered irrele- 
 vant; but the tendency of these passages has been 
 to give so very unfavourable an idea of the general 
 intellectual condition of this age, that I cannot but 
 think it incumbent on me to endeavour to correct 
 this false impression, by giving a slight sketch 
 which may enable the reader to form a more correct 
 estimate of the real state of society at this period in 
 a moral and intellectual point of view. I have only 
 to add, that should it be considered superfluous 
 (which I would fain hope it will not), the essay 
 may be regarded as complete without it, that which 
 was literally demanded having in fact been already 
 fulfilled. 
 
 In the first place, it is to be observed, that the 
 mere circumstance of this age having produced a 
 genius such as Shakespeare, will itself go very far to 
 prove that it must have possessed rare virtues and 
 powers. For it is now a generally acknowledged 
 truth, that when great geniuses appear in this world, 
 as when great inventions are made, it is not merely 
 
141 
 
 accidental, but it is to supply some want to make 
 use of some peculiar capability of their age. This 
 remark may be universally applied, and its truth 
 will at once be evident when we examine it in 
 connexion with any of the great discoveries and 
 inventions which signally benefited mankind the 
 art of printing, the telescope, the steam engine, 
 the telegraph ; and it will be found to hold equally 
 well in this instance. The age had unquestionably 
 a great need of a poet, who might serve as an 
 exponent of the new state of affairs, who might at 
 the same time establish a new school of dramatic 
 poetry in unison with the altered condition of 
 matters, temporal and spiritual, and ennoble and 
 render it permanent by his genius ; and who might 
 also prevent the too servile imitation of the literary 
 productions, noble as they were, of an age in which 
 the moral and religious belief fell far below that of 
 his own age, and which productions were therefore 
 in this respect of an inferior level, and so much the 
 more likely to be injurious, if too closely copied, 
 that they were in all other respects of superlative 
 merit. To supply this want Shakespeare arose. 
 The capability of fostering such a genius is as little 
 to be questioned as the need for him. This point 
 will, however, require to be discussed at greater 
 length. 
 
 In the sixteenth century England occupied the 
 foremost place among the states of Europe for 
 greatness and importance. The wise administration 
 
142 
 
 of Burleigh and Elizabeth enabled the English to 
 prosecute successfully wars in various parts of the 
 globe, chiefly in aid of the reformed religion, while 
 matters at home were but little disturbed. This 
 success, together with the triumphant appeal to the 
 bravery and patriotism of the nation, on the invasion 
 of England by Philip's invincible Armada, had 
 excited a strong feeling of " amor patrice " and of 
 national self-respect. This laudable feeling is mani- 
 fested in a high degree throughout all the plays of 
 Shakespeare ; in fact it pervades the whole of the 
 literature of the age, and gives it not unfrequently 
 a lofty and high-spirited tone, which is very favour- 
 able to the spirit of poetry, more especially of that 
 description of poetry which unites a semi-epic 
 character with the dramatic form. 
 
 The new discoveries also in remote quarters of 
 the globe, of which the most extravagant and ex- 
 aggerated accounts were published, afforded a fine 
 field for the play of a poetical imagination. In 
 addition to these accounts of newly-discovered 
 places, the era of which we are treating afforded an 
 abundant crop of voyages and travels ; witness the 
 bulky compilations of Hakluyt and Pinchas, in the 
 former of which we have an account of upwards of 
 two hundred voyages, and in the latter the substance 
 of above twelve hundred writers on this subject. 
 But although these must have been of great utility 
 to Shakespeare, and although we find particular and 
 continual traces of them in his works, and more 
 
143 
 
 especially of Hakluyt, it nevertheless seems pro- 
 bable that these had by no means so marked an 
 effect as the additions which were now made to the 
 literature of the age in the shape of translations 
 from the Greek and Roman classics. Every clas- 
 sical author of any celebrity was translated into 
 English, with more or less fidelity ; the Greek 
 authors, in many instances, from Latin or French 
 versions, but the Roman more generally from the 
 original tongue. Classical literature was much 
 cultivated in this age ; Elizabeth was herself a good 
 linguist, better, probably, than any English queen 
 who has succeeded her, and certainly far superior 
 to any who preceded her ; her successor, James I., 
 was also a good classical scholar ; and people 
 generally, as might be expected under these circum- 
 stances, had an excellent knowledge of the classical 
 languages. Nor was fashion the only reason for 
 encouraging the study of these languages, as the 
 following extract from a letter written by Petruccio 
 Ubaldini, in the year 1551, will testify : " Whoever 
 has the means, has his sons and daughters taught 
 Latin, Greek, and Hebrew ; for since the first 
 storm of heresy burst over this land, it has been 
 held necessary for every one to read the scriptures 
 in their original languages."* Thus the general 
 acquaintance with the dead languages was turned 
 to an excellent purpose, and tended to foster and 
 
 * Ulrici's " Dramatic Art of Shakespeare," p. 61 
 
144 
 
 encourage that praiseworthy feeling which was one 
 great characteristic of the age the earnest desire 
 to understand and appreciate the Bible. 
 
 This feeling and its results were among the most 
 prominent and the best features of the age; its 
 immediate effects were to induce an earnestness of 
 purpose which distinguishes the serious writers of 
 these times, and is always felt in a greater or less 
 degree by the attentive reader. It impressed the 
 literature of the period with a character of thought- 
 fulness, and deep, solemn reflection, which is nowhere 
 more apparent than in the works of Shakespeare. 
 But it did more than even this; it promoted and 
 led to a course of free scientific inquiry, founded 
 on the only true basis, which has since occupied the 
 attention of the most intellectual men of all succeed- 
 ing ages, none of which can, however, boast of a 
 name that stands higher in this branch of literature 
 than does that of Bacon, who though emulated, in 
 his own age, but by few, was nevertheless followed 
 at a distance by Lord Edward of Cherbury, John 
 Barclay, William Gilbert, John Napier, Thomas 
 Harriot, and some others of the same school. With 
 all the refining influences at work which I have 
 indicated, it would be matter for great surprise if 
 we did not find a certain polish and refinement 
 diffused over all classes of society, which rendered 
 them far above the standard of the preceding ages. 
 This was eminently the case both in mind and body. 
 In the latter, it was carried to so great an excess as 
 
145 
 
 to become in some persons a considerable abuse, 
 but one which found severe castigators in Prynne, 
 Stubbe, and many other writers of the Puritanical 
 sect, who attacked the inordinate love of dress, and 
 the excessive refinement, degenerating very fre- 
 quently into effeminacy, with the greatest bitterness. 
 And here again, it may be observed, we have a fine 
 poetical contrast; on the one hand, the stern, 
 gloomy Puritans, standing aloof from every pleasure, 
 every light amusement, and denouncing, in the 
 strongest terms, all who took part in them ; and on 
 the other, the light, gay Cavaliers of the court, 
 thinking only of gratifying their appetite for pleasure, 
 and their desire for the continued excitement, by 
 long habit become necessary to them. 
 
 Another very remarkable feature in the intel- 
 lectual history of this period (the last, I believe, 
 on which I shall find it necessary to remark) was 
 the mingling of the spirit and the forms of the 
 middle ages of the period which had passed 
 with that of the new era the age which had 
 just commenced. It is this which gives peculiar 
 propriety to the epithet "picturesque," which has 
 been very judiciously employed to express the 
 effect of this intermingling of the peculiarities of 
 two eras widely dissimilar in character. It was 
 indeed a picturesque age. The stately grandeur, 
 the haughty spirit of exclusiveness, the wild, yet 
 frequently deeply significant superstitions of the 
 middle ages, were slowly melting away before the 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 intellectual vigour and philosophical depth of the 
 new era, which was daily and hourly gaining the 
 ascendency over the minds of men. But while this 
 process was going on, the aspect of the times was a 
 very remarkable one. Chivalry itself, as an institu- 
 tion, was gone ; nevertheless, many of its forms still 
 remained, and its influence continued to be felt, in 
 the spirit of gallantry, and of devotion and respect 
 to females, which its laws rigidly and carefully 
 inculcated; albeit, it also left a legacy of covert 
 immorality and profligacy which was a foul stain 
 upon the character of the age. The ancient legends 
 and superstitions, also, were far from being dis- 
 credited. " The world of spirits, elves, and fairies, 
 magic and witchcraft, astrology and alchemy, and 
 all the secret arts and sciences of the middle 
 ages, still lived in the popular belief, feeding and 
 filling the fancy with their wonderful and poetical 
 imagery."* The old customs, the old festivals, the 
 old games and holidays, were still retained. In 
 short, the fantastic and poetic spirit of the middle 
 ages yet survived in a time which was nevertheless 
 the dawn of a mental tendency directly opposed 
 to it. Thus there was a strong and poetical 
 contrast furnished. All this tended to nourish and 
 foster the spirit of poetry in a high degree; and 
 accordingly this age is marked by a burst of poetic 
 talent, which has rarely, if ever, been equalled. 
 
 * " Dramatic Art of Shakespeare," p. 165. 
 
147 
 
 In the history of this country it is certainly 
 unparalleled, and it has but one rival in that of 
 the universe ; of this I have already spoken in 
 the introductory remarks which I have prefixed. 
 
 I have now, I trust, succeeded in showing that 
 the intellectual merits of this period were many and 
 rare, notwithstanding that the obvious necessity for 
 brevity has prevented me from entering into many 
 particulars, by which the list might have been 
 considerably swelled. Of its defects, I have already 
 had occasion to speak, and need therefore here only 
 remark, that they consisted principally of a certain 
 looseness of morals, profligacy, gaming, and an inor- 
 dinate love of dress and ostentatious finery generally ; 
 the prevalence of swearing, even among women, in 
 whose mouths an oath is both unnatural and dis- 
 creditable ; a lingering belief in the superstitions and 
 impieties of that most superstitious of all periods, the 
 middle ages ; and many other vices and follies of 
 greater or less enormity. These are, undoubtedly, 
 considerable defects, but they are, many of them, the 
 faults of a great age; some of them, indeed, were 
 merely the degrading legacy of the preceding ages of 
 comparative intellectual darkness, but others were 
 the result of that exuberant vigour and energy 
 which was so eminently the characteristic of the 
 times. I think that, on the whole, weighing the 
 merits of the age against its dements, it will be 
 confessed by all that the balance is very greatly in 
 favour of the former. At the least, no one can 
 
148 
 
 refuse to look upon that age as an eminently glorious 
 one, which has contributed to the list of the literary 
 and scientific benefactors of our country and of the 
 whole world, names such as those of Bacon, Raleigh, 
 Napier, Harriot, Donne, Hales, Pyne, Sidney, 
 Spenser, Abraham Cowley, Green, Peele, Marlowe, 
 Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Chap- 
 man, Decker, and greatest of all Shakespeare ! 
 
 FINIS. 
 
149 
 
 List of Works used or referred to in the course of this Essay, 
 and containing useful information on its subject. 
 
 1. Dr. Drake's Shakespeare and his Times. 
 
 2. Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare. 
 
 3. Knight's Edition (Pictorial) of Shakespeare. 
 
 4. Notes to the Variorum Edition of Shakespeare; including 
 Notes by Johnson, Steevens, Malone, Capell, Warburton, 
 Theobald, Hanmer, Jennens, Ritson, et alii multi. 
 
 5. Knight's Shakespeare ; a Biography. 
 
 6. Romantic Biography of the Age of Elizabeth, by Dr. Cooke 
 Taylor. Article, Life of Dr. Dee. 
 
 7. Nare's Glossary of Obsolete Words. 
 
 8. Pye's Commentary on Shakespeare. 
 
 9. Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. 
 
 10. Armin's Nest of Ninnies (Shakespeare Society) ; with 
 Introduction and Notes, by Mr. P. Collier and Mr. Thorns. 
 
 11. London Magazine, Vols. II., III., IV., &c. (Taylor and 
 Hessey.) 
 
 12. Ulrici's Dramatic Art of Shakespeare. Part II., Shakes- 
 peare and his Times. 
 
 13. Stubbe's Anatomic of Abuses, and View of Vanitie. 
 
 14. Eccles's Edition of the Plays of King Lear and Cymbeline 
 (1801). 
 
 15. Harrison's Description of England ; published with Hollin- 
 shed's Chronicle. 
 
 16. New Illustrations of the Life and Studies of Shakespeare, 
 by the Rev. T. Hunter, F.S.A., &c. 
 
 17. Aubrey's Manuscript History of Wiltshire. 
 
 18. Dr. Harsnet's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, 
 published in 1603; &c., &c. 
 

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