William Shakespeare Part 14

The point is not insisted on; but some pa.s.sages in the play suggest that when Shakespeare began to write it he was minded to make the action the falling of a judgment upon Desdemona for her treachery to her father.

The treachery caused the old man's death. The too pa.s.sionate and hasty things always bring death in these plays. Violent delights have violent ends and bring violent ends to others.

The poetry of _Oth.e.l.lo_ is nearly as well known as that of _Hamlet_.

Many quotations from the play have pa.s.sed into the speech of the people.

A play of intrigue does not give the fullest opportunity for great poetry; but supreme things are spoken throughout the action. Oth.e.l.lo's cry--

"It is the very error of the moon.

She comes more near the earth than she was wont And drives men mad,"

is one of the most perfect of all the perfect things in the tragedies.

_King Lear._

_Written._ 1605-6.

_Published._ 1608.

_Source of the Plot._ The story of Lear is told in Holinshed's _Chronicles_, in a play by an unknown hand, _The True Chronicle History of King Leir_, and in a few stanzas of the tenth canto of the second Book of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_.

The character of Gloucester seems to have been suggested by the character of a blind king in Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_.

_The Fable._ King Lear, in his old age, determines to give up his kingdom to his three daughters. Before he does so, he tries to a.s.sure himself of their love for him. The two elder women, Goneril and Regan, vow that they love him intensely; the youngest, Cordelia, can only tell him that she cares for him as a daughter should. He curses and casts off Cordelia, who is taken to wife by the King of France.

Gloucester, deceived by his b.a.s.t.a.r.d Edmund, casts off Edgar his son.

King Lear, thwarted and flouted by Goneril and Regan, goes mad, and wanders away with his Fool. Gloucester, trying to comfort him against the wishes of Goneril and Regan, is betrayed by his b.a.s.t.a.r.d Edmund, and blinded. He wanders away with Edgar, who has disguised himself as a madman.

Regan's husband is killed. Seeking to take Edmund in his stead, she rouses the jealousy of Goneril, who has already made advances to him.

Cordelia lands with French troops to repossess Lear of his kingdom.

She finds Lear, and comforts him. In an engagement with the sisters' armies, she and Lear are captured.

Edmund's baseness is exposed. He is attainted and struck down.

Goneril poisons Regan, and kills herself. Edmund, before he dies, reveals that he has given order for Lear and Cordelia to be killed.

His news comes too late to save Cordelia. She is brought in dead.

Lear dies over her body.

Albany, Goneril's husband, Kent, Lear's faithful servant, and Edgar, Edmund's slayer, are left to set the kingdom in order.

The play of _King Lear_ is based upon a fable and a fairy story. It ill.u.s.trates the most terrible forms of treachery, that of child against father, and father against child. It is the most affecting and the grandest of the plays.

The evil which makes the action springs from two sources, both fatal.

One is the blindness or fatuity in Lear, which makes him give away his strength and cast out Cordelia. The other, equally deadly, but more cruel in its results, springs from an unrepented treachery, done long before by Gloucester, when he broke his marriage vows to beget Edmund.

Memory of the sweetness of that treachery gives to Gloucester a blindness to the boy's nature, just as a sweetness, or ease, in the treachery of giving up the cares of kingship (against oath and the kingdom's good) helps to blind Lear to the natures of his daughters.

The blindness in the one case is sentimental, in the other wilful. Being established, fate makes use of it. One of the chief lessons of the plays is that man is only safe when his mind is perfectly just and calm. Any injustice, trouble or hunger in the mind delivers man to powers who restore calmness and justice by means violent or gentle according to the strength of the disturbing obsession. This play begins at the moment when an established blindness in two men is about to become an instrument of fate for the violent opening of their eyes. The blindness in both cases is against the course of nature. It is unnatural that Lear should give his kingship to women, and that he should curse his youngest child. It is unnatural that Gloucester should make much of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d son whom he has hardly seen for nine years. It is deeply unnatural that both Lear and Gloucester should believe evil suddenly of the youngest, best beloved, and most faithful spirits in the play. As the blindness that causes the injustice is great and unnatural, so the working of fate to purge the eyes and restore the balance is violent and unnatural. Every person important to the action is thrust into an unnatural way of life.

Goneril and Regan rule their father, commit the most ghastly and beastly cruelty, l.u.s.t after the same man, and die unnaturally (having betrayed each other), the one by her sister's hand, the other by her own. Lear is driven mad. The King of France is forced to war with his wife's sisters.

Edmund betrays his half-brother to ruin and his father to blindness.

Cornwall is stabbed by his servant. Edgar kills his half-brother.

Gloucester, thrust out blind, dies when he finds that his wronged son loves him. Cordelia, fighting against her own blood, is betrayed to death by one who claims to love her sisters. The honest mild man, Albany, and the honest blunt man, Kent, survive the general ruin. Had Kent been a little milder and Albany a little blunter in the first act, before the fates were given strength, the ruin would not have been. All the unnatural treacherous evil comes to pa.s.s, because for a few fatal moments they were true to their natures.

The play is an excessive image of all that was most constant in Shakespeare's mind. Being an excessive image, it contains matter nowhere else given. It is all schemed and controlled with a power that he shows in no other play, not even in _Macbeth_ and _Hamlet_. The ideas of the play occur in many of the plays. Many images, such as the blasted oak, water in fury, servants insolent and servile, old honest men and young girls faithful to death, occur in other plays. That which each play added to the thought of the world is expressed in the single figure of someone caught in a net. Macbeth is a ruthless man so caught. Hamlet is a wise man so caught. Oth.e.l.lo is a pa.s.sionate and Antony a glorious man so caught. All are caught and all are powerless, and all are superb tragic inventions. King Lear is a grander, ironic invention, who hurts far more than any of these because he is a horribly strong man who is powerless. He is so strong that he cannot die. He is so strong that he nearly breaks the net, before the folds kill him.

No image in the world is so fierce with imaginative energy. The stormy soul runs out storming in a night of the soul as mad as the elements.

With him goes the invention of the Fool, the horribly faithful fool, like conscience or worldly wisdom, to flick him mad with ironic comment and bitter song.

The verse is as great as the invention. It rises and falls with the pa.s.sion like music with singing. All the scale of Shakespeare's art is used; the terrible spiritual manner of

"You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,"

as well as the instinctive manner of a prose coloured to the height with all the traditions of country life.

Dramatic genius has the power of understanding half-a-dozen lives at once in tense, swiftly changing situations. This power is shown at its best in the last act of this play. One of the most wonderful and least praised of the inventions in the last scene is that of the dying Edmund.

He has been treacherous to nearly every person in the play. His last treachery, indirectly the cause of his ruin, is still in act, the killing of Cordelia and the king. He has been stricken down. "The wheel has come full circle." He has learned too late that

"The G.o.ds are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us."

He can hardly hope to live for more than a few minutes. The death of his last two victims cannot benefit him. A word from him would save them. No one else can save them. Yet at the last minute, his one little glimmer of faithfulness keeps the word unspoken. He is silent for Goneril's sake. If he ever cared for any one in the world, except himself, he may have cared a little for Goneril. He thinks of her now. She has gone from him. But she is on his side, and he trusts to her, and acts for her. He waits for some word or token from her. He waits to see her save him or avenge him. The death of Lear will benefit her. It will be to her something saved from the general wreck, something to the good, in the losing bout. An impulse stirs him to speak, but he puts it by. He keeps silent about Lear, till one comes saying that Goneril has killed herself. Still he does not speak. The news p.r.i.c.ks the vanity in him. He strokes his plumes with a tender thought for the brightness of the life that made two princesses die for love of him. When he speaks of Lear, it is too late, the little, little instant which alters destiny has pa.s.sed.

Cordelia is dead. No mist stains the stone. She will come no more--

"Never, never, never, never, never."

The heart-breaking scene at the end has been blamed as "too painful for tragedy." Shakespeare's opinion of what is tragic is worth that of all his critics together. He gave to every soul in this play an excessive and terrible vitality. On the excessive terrible soul of Lear he poured such misery that the cracking of the great heart is a thing of joy, a relief so fierce that the audience should go out in exultation singing--

"O, our lives' sweetness!

That we the pain of death would hourly die Rather than die at once!"

Tragedy is a looking at fate for a lesson in deportment on life's scaffold. If we find the lesson painful, how shall we face the event?

_Macbeth._

_Written._ 1605-6 (?)

_Published_, in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ Raphael Holinshed tells the story of Macbeth at length in his _Chronicle of Scottish History_. He indicates the character of Lady Macbeth in one line.

When Shakespeare wrote the play, London was full of Scotchmen, brought thither by the accession of James I. Little details of the play may have been gathered in conversation.

_The Fable._ Macbeth, advised by witches that he is to be a king, is persuaded by his wife to kill his sovereign (King Duncan) and seize the crown. King Duncan, coming to Macbeth's castle for a night, is there killed by Macbeth and his lady. Duncan's sons fly to England. Macbeth causes himself to be proclaimed king.

Being king, he tries to a.s.sure himself of power by destroying the house of Banquo, of whom the witches prophesied that he should be the father of a line of kings. Banquo is killed; but his son escapes.

The witches warn Macbeth to beware of Macduff.

Macduff escapes to England, but his wife and children are killed by Macbeth's order.