The Sword of Song

NOTES 45 ing Her Own Business; and surely it was unparalled insolence on the part of a dis- missed girl to lecture her more favourite sister on the very point for which she herself was at that moment being punished. It is the spite of baffled dissimulation against triumphant honesty. Goneril adds a word of positive advice. “You,” she says in effect, “who prate of duty thus, see you show it to him unto whom you owe it.” That this advice is wasted is clear from Act V. Sc. iii., where the King of France takes the first trivial opportunity* to be free of the vile creature he had so foolishly married. Cordelia goes, and the sisters talk together. Theirs is the language of quiet sorrow for an old man’s failing mind ; yet a most righteous determination not to allow the happiness of the English people to depend upon his whims. Bad women would have rejoiced in the banish- ment of Kent, whom they already knew to be their enemy ; these truly good women regret it. “Such unconstant stars are we like to have from him as this of Kent’s banishment” (Act I. Sc. i. ll. 304-5). In Scene ii. Edmund is shown ; he feels himself a man, more than Edgar : a clear- headed, brave, honourable man ; but with no maggots. The injustice of his situation strikes him ; he determines not to submit.† This is the attitude of a strong man, and a righteous one. Primogeniture is wrong enough ; the other shame, no fault of his, would make the blood of any free man boil. Gloucester enters, and exhibits himself as a prize fool by shouting in disjointed phrases what everybody knew. Great news it is, of course, and on discovering Edmund, he can think of nothing more sensible than to ask for more ! “Kent banished thus ! And France in choler parted ! And the king gone to-night ! sub- scrib’d his power ! Confin’d to exhibition ! All this done upon the gad ! Edmund, how now ! what news ?” (Act I. Sc. ii. ll 23-26). Edmund “forces a card” by the simple device of a prodigious hurry to hide it. Glou- cester gives vent to his astrological futilities, and falls to axiomania in its crudest form,— “We have seen the best of our time : machi- nations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our grave” (Sc. ii. ll. 125-127). Edmund, once rid of him, gives us the * H e le aves he r in c harge of M arshal Le Fer, whom a lone he c ould trust to be impervious to her wiles, he being devoted to a nother ; for a s a n in- valuable co ntemporary MS . h as i t, “ Seccotine colle même Le Fer.” † This may be, but I think should not be , used as an argument to prove the poet an illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth. plainest sense we are likely to here for the rest of our lives ; then, w ith the prettiest humour in the world takes the cue of his father’s ab- surdity, and actually plays it on his enemy. Edgar’s leg is not so easily pulled—(“How long have you been a sectary astronomical ?” ll. 169, 170)—and the bastard hero, taking alarm, gets right down to business. In Scene iii. we find Lear’s senile dementia taking the peculiarly loathesome form familiar to alienists—this part of my subj ect is so un- pleasant that I must skim over it ; I only mention it to show how anxious Shakespeare is to show his hidden meaning, otherwise his naturally delicate mind would have avoided the depiction of such phenomena. All this prepares us for Scene iv. , in which we get a glimpse of the w ay Lear’s attendants habitually behave. Oswald, who treats Lear throughout with perfct respect, and only shows honest independence in refusing to obey a man who is not his master, is insulted in language worthier of a bargee than a king ; and when he remonstrates in dignified and temper- ate language is set upon by the ruffianly Kent. Are decent English people to compain when Goneril insists that this sort of thing shall not occur in a royal house ? She does so, in lan- guage nobly indignant, yet restrained : Lear, in the hideous, impotent rage of senility, calls her —his own daughter—a bastard (no insult to her, but to himself or his wife, mark ye well!). Albany enters—a simple, ordely-minded man ; he must not be confused with Cornwall ; he is at the last Lear’s dog ; yet even he in decent measured speech sides with his wife. Is Lear quited ? No ! H e utters the most horrible curse, not excepting that of Count Cenci, that a father ever pronounced. Incoherent threats succeed to the boilings-over of the hideous malice of a beastly mind ; but a hundred knights are a hundred knights, and a threat is a threat. Goneril had not fulfilled her duty to herself, to her people, had she allowed this monster of mania to go on. I appeal to the medical profession; if one doctor will answer me that a man using Lear’s language should be allowed control of a hun- dred armed ruffians [in the face of Kent’s behaviour we know what weight to attach to Lear’s defence : “Detested kite ! thou liest” (I. iv. ll. 286)], should ever be allowed outside a regularly appointed madhouse, I will cede the point, and retire myself into an asylum. In fact, Lear is going mad; the tottering intellect, at no time strong (“’Tis the infirmity of age ; yet he hath ever but slenderly known himsef,” I. i. ll. 296-7), is utterly cast down by drink and debauchery : he even sees it himself, and with a pointless bestiality from the Fool, fit companion for the—king—and in that word