Shakespearean Tragedy Part 42

[Footnote 268: These are I. i.; II. i.; II. ii., except 194-204; in III.

vi. Timon's verse speech; IV. i.; IV. ii. 1-28; IV. iii., except 292-362, 399-413, 454-543; V. i., except 1-50; V. ii.; V. iv. I am not to be taken as accepting this division throughout.]

NOTE T.

DID SHAKESPEARE SHORTEN _KING LEAR_?

I have remarked in the text (pp. 256 ff.) on the unusual number of improbabilities, inconsistencies, etc., in _King Lear_. The list of examples given might easily be lengthened. Thus (_a_) in IV. iii. Kent refers to a letter which he confided to the Gentleman for Cordelia; but in III. i. he had given to the Gentleman not a letter but a message.

(_b_) In III. i. again he says Cordelia will inform the Gentleman who the sender of the message was; but from IV. iii. it is evident that she has done no such thing, nor does the Gentleman show any curiosity on the subject. (_c_) In the same scene (III. i.) Kent and the Gentleman arrange that whichever finds the King first shall halloo to the other; but when Kent finds the King he does not halloo. These are all examples of mere carelessness as to matters which would escape attention in the theatre,--matters introduced not because they are essential to the plot, but in order to give an air of verisimilitude to the conversation. And here is perhaps another instance. When Lear determines to leave Goneril and go to Regan he says, 'call my train together' (I. iv. 275). When he arrives at Gloster's house Kent asks why he comes with so small a train, and the Fool gives a reply which intimates that the rest have deserted him (II. iv. 63 ff.). He and his daughters, however, seem unaware of any diminution; and, when Lear 'calls to horse' and leaves Gloster's house, the doors are shut against him partly on the excuse that he is 'attended with a desperate train' (308). Nevertheless in the storm he has no knights with him, and in III. vii. 15 ff. we hear that 'some five or six and thirty of his knights'[269] are 'hot questrists after him,' as though the real reason of his leaving Goneril with so small a train was that he had hurried away so quickly that many of his knights were unaware of his departure.

This prevalence of vagueness or inconsistency is probably due to carelessness; but it may possibly be due to another cause. There are, it has sometimes struck me, slight indications that the details of the plot were originally more full and more clearly imagined than one would suppose from the play as we have it; and some of the defects to which I have drawn attention might have arisen if Shakespeare, finding his matter too bulky, had (_a_) omitted to write some things originally intended, and (_b_), after finishing his play, had reduced it by excision, and had not, in these omissions and excisions, taken sufficient pains to remove the obscurities and inconsistencies occasioned by them.

Thus, to take examples of (_b_), Lear's 'What, fifty of my followers at a clap!' (I. iv. 315) is very easily explained if we suppose that in the preceding conversation, as originally written, Goneril had mentioned the number. Again the curious absence of any indication why Burgundy should have the first choice of Cordelia's hand might easily be due to the same cause. So might the ignorance in which we are left as to the fate of the Fool, and several more of the defects noticed in the text.

To ill.u.s.trate the other point (_a_), that Shakespeare may have omitted to write some things which he had originally intended, the play would obviously gain something if it appeared that, at a time shortly before that of the action, Gloster had encouraged the King in his idea of dividing the kingdom, while Kent had tried to dissuade him. And there are one or two pa.s.sages which suggest that this is what Shakespeare imagined. If it were so, there would be additional point in the Fool's reference to the lord who counselled Lear to give away his land (I. iv.

154), and in Gloster's reflection (III. iv. 168),

His daughters seek his death: ah, that good Kent!

He said it would be thus:

('said,' of course, not to the King but to Gloster and perhaps others of the council). Thus too the plots would be still more closely joined.

Then also we should at once understand the opening of the play. To Kent's words, 'I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall,' Gloster answers, 'It did always seem so to us.' Who are the 'us' from whom Kent is excluded? I do not know, for there is no sign that Kent has been absent. But if Kent, in consequence of his opposition, had fallen out of favour and absented himself from the council, it would be clear. So, besides, would be the strange suddenness with which, after Gloster's answer, Kent changes the subject; he would be avoiding, in presence of Gloster's son, any further reference to a subject on which he and Gloster had differed. That Kent, I may add, had already the strongest opinion about Goneril and Regan is clear from his extremely bold words (I. i. 165),

Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon thy foul disease.

Did Lear remember this phrase when he called Goneril 'a disease that's in my flesh' (II. iv. 225)?

Again, the observant reader may have noticed that Goneril is not only represented as the fiercer and more determined of the two sisters but also strikes one as the more sensual. And with this may be connected one or two somewhat curious points: Kent's comparison of Goneril to the figure of Vanity in the Morality plays (II. ii. 38); the Fool's apparently quite irrelevant remark (though his remarks are scarcely ever so), 'For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a gla.s.s'

(III. ii. 35); Kent's reference to Oswald (long before there is any sign of Goneril's intrigue with Edmund) as 'one that would be a bawd in way of good service' (II. ii. 20); and Edgar's words to the corpse of Oswald (IV. vi. 257), also spoken before he knew anything of the intrigue with Edmund,

I know thee well: a serviceable villain; As duteous to the vices of thy mistress As badness would desire.

Perhaps Shakespeare had conceived Goneril as a woman who before her marriage had shown signs of sensual vice; but the distinct indications of this idea were crowded out of his exposition when he came to write it, or, being inserted, were afterwards excised. I will not go on to hint that Edgar had Oswald in his mind when (III. iv. 87) he described the serving-man who 'served the l.u.s.t of his mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her'; and still less that Lear can have had Goneril in his mind in the declamation against lechery referred to in Note S.

I do not mean to imply, by writing this note, that I believe in the hypotheses suggested in it. On the contrary I think it more probable that the defects referred to arose from carelessness and other causes.

But this is not, to me, certain; and the reader who rejects the hypotheses may be glad to have his attention called to the points which suggested them.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 269: It has been suggested that 'his' means 'Gloster's'; but 'him' all through the speech evidently means Lear.]

NOTE U.

MOVEMENTS OF THE DRAMATIS PERSONae IN ACT II. OF _KING LEAR_.

I have referred in the text to the obscurity of the play on this subject, and I will set out the movements here.

When Lear is ill-treated by Goneril his first thought is to seek refuge with Regan (I. iv. 274 f., 327 f.). Goneril, accordingly, who had foreseen this, and, even before the quarrel, had determined to write to Regan (I. iii. 25), now sends Oswald off to her, telling her not to receive Lear and his hundred knights (I. iv. 354 f.). In consequence of this letter Regan and Cornwall immediately leave their home and ride by night to Gloster's house, sending word on that they are coming (II. i. 1 ff., 81, 120 ff.). Lear, on his part, just before leaving Goneril's house, sends Kent with a letter to Regan, and tells him to be quick, or Lear will be there before him. And we find that Kent reaches Regan and delivers his letter before Oswald, Goneril's messenger. Both the messengers are taken on by Cornwall and Regan to Gloster's house.

In II. iv. Lear arrives at Gloster's house, having, it would seem, failed to find Regan at her own home. And, later, Goneril arrives at Gloster's house, in accordance with an intimation which she had sent in her letter to Regan (II. iv. 186 f.).

Thus all the princ.i.p.al persons except Cordelia and Albany are brought together; and the crises of the double action--the expulsion of Lear and the blinding and expulsion of Gloster--are reached in Act III. And this is what was required.

But it needs the closest attention to follow these movements. And, apart from this, difficulties remain.

1. Goneril, in despatching Oswald with the letter to Regan, tells him to hasten his return (I. iv. 363). Lear again is surprised to find that _his_ messenger has not been sent back (II. iv. 1 f., 36 f.). Yet apparently both Goneril and Lear themselves start at once, so that their messengers _could_ not return in time. It may be said that they expected to meet them coming back, but there is no indication of this in the text.

2. Lear, in despatching Kent, says (I. v. 1):

Go you before to Gloster with these letters. Acquaint my daughter no further with anything you know than comes from her demand out of the letter.

This would seem to imply that Lear knew that Regan and Cornwall were at Gloster's house, and meant either to go there (so Koppel) or to summon her back to her own home to receive him. Yet this is clearly not so, for Kent goes straight to Regan's house (II. i. 124, II. iv. 1, 27 ff., 114 ff.).

Hence it is generally supposed that by 'Gloster,' in the pa.s.sage just quoted, Lear means not the Earl but the _place_; that Regan's home was there; and that Gloster's castle was somewhere not very far off. This is to some extent confirmed by the fact that Cornwall is the 'arch' or patron of Gloster (II. i. 60 f., 112 ff.). But Gloster's home or house must not be imagined quite close to Cornwall's, for it takes a night to ride from the one to the other, and Gloster's house is in the middle of a solitary heath with scarce a bush for many miles about (II. iv. 304).

The plural 'these letters' in the pa.s.sage quoted need give no trouble, for the plural is often used by Shakespeare for a single letter; and the natural conjecture that Lear sent one letter to Regan and another to Gloster is not confirmed by anything in the text.

The only difficulty is that, as Koppel points out, 'Gloster' is nowhere else used in the play for the place (except in the phrase 'Earl of Gloster' or 'my lord of Gloster'); and--what is more important--that it would unquestionably be taken by the audience to stand in this pa.s.sage for the Earl, especially as there has been no previous indication that Cornwall lived at Gloster. One can only suppose that Shakespeare forgot that he had given no such indication, and so wrote what was sure to be misunderstood,--unless we suppose that 'Gloster' is a mere slip of the pen, or even a misprint, for 'Regan.' But, apart from other considerations, Lear would hardly have spoken to a servant of 'Regan,'

and, if he had, the next words would have run 'Acquaint her,' not 'Acquaint my daughter.'

NOTE V.

SUSPECTED INTERPOLATIONS IN _KING LEAR_.

There are three pa.s.sages in _King Lear_ which have been held to be additions made by 'the players.'

The first consists of the two lines of indecent doggerel spoken by the Fool at the end of Act I.; the second, of the Fool's prophecy in rhyme at the end of III. ii.; the third, of Edgar's soliloquy at the end of III. vi.

It is suspicious (1) that all three pa.s.sages occur at the ends of scenes, the place where an addition is most easily made; and (2) that in each case the speaker remains behind alone to utter the words after the other persons have gone off.

I postpone discussion of the several pa.s.sages until I have called attention to the fact that, if these pa.s.sages are genuine, the number of scenes which end with a soliloquy is larger in _King Lear_ than in any other undoubted tragedy. Thus, taking the tragedies in their probable chronological order (and ignoring the very short scenes into which a battle is sometimes divided),[270] I find that there are in _Romeo and Juliet_ four such scenes, in _Julius Caesar_ two, in _Hamlet_ six, in _Oth.e.l.lo_ four,[271] in _King Lear_ seven,[272] in _Macbeth_ two,[273]

in _Antony and Cleopatra_ three, in _Coriola.n.u.s_ one. The difference between _King Lear_ and the plays that come nearest to it is really much greater than it appears from this list, for in _Hamlet_ four of the six soliloquies, and in _Oth.e.l.lo_ three of the four, are long speeches, while most of those in _King Lear_ are quite short.

Of course I do not attach any great importance to the fact just noticed, but it should not be left entirely out of account in forming an opinion as to the genuineness of the three doubted pa.s.sages.

(_a_) The first of these, I. v. 54-5, I decidedly believe to be spurious. (1) The scene ends quite in Shakespeare's manner without it.

(2) It does not seem likely that at the _end_ of the scene Shakespeare would have introduced anything _violently_ incongruous with the immediately preceding words,