King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

xlvi KING LEAR
characteristics in Edmund which make him, despite his
villany, somewhat engaging. 'Edmund,' says Professor
1
Danby, 'is the New Man. Shakespeare's understanding
of the type is so extensive as to amount to real sympathy.
The insight comes, I think, from Shakespeare's being in
part a New Man himself. This would account for the
colour and charm with which he always invests the
figure.' Professor Danby speaks of 'the attractiveness
of the portrait', though in almost the same breath he
speaks of Edmund as 'a Shakespearian villain'.
The modern mind may be inclined to feel that there
is something to be said in extenuation of Edmund's
wickedness. Society victimizes him for his bastardy, but
his bastardy is not his own fault. Is he not, it may be
asked, to some extent driven to his viUany by the in-
humanity of a traditional social view which looks askance
at a man because of his father's sin ? And is there not an
admirable courage about him as, by his own efforts—
however mistaken his methods—he strives to set the
balance right?
I cannot myself believe that Shakespeare was thinking
in these terms. What may be discerned in Edmund of
gallantry, or gaiety, or individualistic bravery, seems to
me to be presented all the time in a sinister light. The
wickedness of which he is guilty from the very start is
far in excess of anything that the most lenient modem
judgement could excuse him on account of his 'Why
bastard ? wherefore base ?' He is cynical, cold-blooded,
cruel, treacherous, inhuman. The flourish of bravado
merely adds to the sinister impression. And the dis-
advantages of bastardy are not his only motive. He is a
younger son who determines to seize by sheer treachery
the rights that belong to an elder son—cutting at the
roots of that normal law of succession which is an
essential part of'the Elizabethan World Picture', and
1
Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature, pp. 48, 50.

INTRODUCTION xlvii

which is upheld in all of Shakespeare's plays. At the end,
to be sure, Edmund is allowed a last-minute repentance
which is denied to Goneril and Regan. But any critic
who takes this as suggesting that Shakespeare was rather
fond of Edmund must allow that the repentance indi-
cates that what Edmund had previously thoughtand done
was evil: at the end Shakespeare, through Edmund's
repentance, repudiates what Edmund has thought and
done. In the clash between the old and the new,
Shakespeare is certainly on the side of the old.


IX. Man's Double Nature
In the universal hierarchy which the traditional scheme
envisaged, man is situated between angel and animal.
The best that is in him approximates him to the angelic:
we recall Hamlet's 'how like an angel', and we remem-
ber that Lear, wise after suffering, calls Cordelia 'a soul
in bliss'. The worst that is in man approximates him to
the animal. He has a double nature:
But to the girdle do the gods inherit;
Beneath is all the fiend's. (4. 6. 126-7)
He has free will. He may choose to give the higher part
of his being the leading role in the drama of his life, or
he may choose to give that role to the lower part. Again
and again Shakespeare, thinking in terms of the tradi-
tional scheme, makes his characters apply animal terms
1
to Goneril and Regan. I quote A. C. Bradley:
Goneril is a kite: her ingratitude has a serpent's tooth: she
has struck her father most serpent-like upon the very heart:
her visage is wolvish: she has tied sharp-toothed unkindness
like a vulture on her father's breast: for her husband she is
a gilded serpent: to Gloster her cruelty seems to have the
fangs of a boar. She and Regan are dog-hearted: they are
1
Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), p. 267.

xlviii K I N G L E A R
tigers, not daughters: each is an adder to the other: the
flesh of each is covered with the fell of a beast As we read,
the souls of all the beasts in turn seem to us to have entered
the bodies of these mortals; horrible in their venom,
savagery, lust, deceitfulness, sloth, cruelty, filthiness....
When Edgar, play-acting destitution and crazed wits,
pretends that in his past life he has been evil, he attaches
an animal name to each of his delinquencies: he has been

hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in mad-
ness, lion in prey. (3. 4. 92-3)

Evil in this play is conceived in terms of horrible besti-
ality, as it is in Othello also.


X. The Play's 'Pessimism'

What, as Shakespeare sees it in King Lear, is the rela-
tionship between mankind and the power or powers
which govern the universe?
We hear much in the play about astrology. That man's
fate lies not in his own keeping but under the control of
the stars was, of course, a commonly held medieval view:
it is part of an old-established tradition which, as we see
in 1. 2, Gloucester accepts. Edmund, the 'new man',
rejects it. In the essay in the Adams Memorial Studies to
which I have referred, Professor Bald deals excellently
with Shakespeare's probable attitude to Gloucester's
and Edmund's views. Acknowledging indebtedness to
Professor D. C. Allen, Professor Bald speaks of Shake-
speare's attitude—

While he would have hesitated to deny that the stars could
affect men's lives, there is nothing to suggest that he had so
much faith in their influence as to deny the freedom of the
will. Free-will is of the essence of tragedy, which cannot
exist under determinism, and astrology is only a crude form

INTRODUCTIO N xlix
of determinism. As an explanation of the tragic mystery,
the inadequacy of Kent's
It is the stars,
The stars above us, govern our conditions
1
is patent even in the play in which it occurs.
2
And, as Professor Danby says, 'belief or disbelief in
astrology was not in the sixteenth century definitive of
orthodoxy'. If we maintain—as I am sure we must—
that Shakespeare is not in this play conceiving of any
character as star-crossed, this does not necessarily imply
that he is in sympathy with the views of the 'new man'.
Gloucester, in a memorable passage, says—
As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods;
They kill us for their sport. (4. 1. 36-7)
Is this the philosophy that Shakespeare wants us to take
away from the theatre when the performance is over ?
There are some who think it is. Thus Professor G. B.
3
Harrison speaks of Shakespeare transmuting 'an old
tale in which evil is punished and good restored into a
tremendous and pessimistic drama, of which Glou-
cester's words [quoted above] form the most fitting
motto'. But do they?
All the evil characters are dead before the end, and
we cannot but relate this to the exercise of divine justice.
When Albany is told of how a servant has killed Corn-
wall, he exclaims—
This shows you are above,
You justicers, that these our nether crimes
So speedily can venge! (4. 2. 78-80)
There is no ground for pessimism here.
The sufferings of Lear and Gloucester are terrible to
1
Op. cit. pp. 348-9.
a
Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature, p. 37.
3 Shakespeare: 23 Plays and the Sonnets (1948), p. 781.

1 KIN G LEA R
behold. But before we are tempted on this score to speak
of pessimistic tragedy we should do well to remember
two things. First: their sufferings are to some extent,
though certainly not entirely, brought about through
their own errors, so that the conception of divine justice
is valid here also—
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us. (5. 3. 169-70)
It is true that here the 'just' dealings of the gods make us
more uneasy than does their treatment of the villains. If
admittedly it was 'the dark and vicious place' where
Gloucester begot Edmund that 'cost him his eyes',
there is much more to be said. Gloucester has to suffer
beyond his deserts, as has Lear—a common enough
phenomenon amongst humanity: we sow the wind and
reap the whirlwind. But, if tempted by the appalling
sufferings of Lear and Gloucester to regard this as a
'pessimistic' drama, we must bear in mind a second
point. The gods are merciful. If, after all their agony,
Lear and Gloucester died uneducated, unregenerate,
then we should indeed have to speak of pessimism. But
both, as they die, are wise, and redeemed. 'Nothing is
here for tears'—unless we weep for the means that
conduce to the end, for the dreadful cost of the salutary
outcome. We must do so; and the conclusion of the play
has indeed a sober colouring. Yet the unassailable fact
remains that the gods, in benignity, permit Lear and
Gloucester to die in a state of spiritual health. Their
sufferings are redemptive. There is no ultimate ground
for pessimism here.
But what of the death of Cordelia ? It troubles us all,
as it troubled Dr Johnson who, in a well-known passage,
1
declared —
1
See Walter Raleigh, Johnson on Shakespeare (1908);
1931 impression, pp. 161-2.

I N T R O D U C T I O N li

I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia's death, that
I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last
scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an
editor.
The gods allow the totally innocent Cordelia to be done
to death. Does not this at least, it may be asked, spell a
final pessimism, even if nothing else does? I cannot
think so.
I have said that I think Mr Maxwell is right when he
says that ' King Lear is a Christian play about a pagan
world'. The author's viewpoint is Christian. Now the
Christian outlook is, of course, the reverse of pessimistic.
To the Christian, God is, paradoxically, at once just,
merciful, and in his dealings bewildering. Almost every
day the Christian has to take account of happenings
which seem to mean that God at least acquiesces in the
incomprehensible destruction of the pure and good. The
temptation is strong to cry out, 'Why does God allow
this kind of thing—or is there a God at all?'. But the
true Christian, if agonized by such things, is neverthe-
less unable to let them overturn his faith. God over-
throws the absolutely evil—he destroys the Cornwalls,
the Gonerils, the Regans: he is just. God chastens those
who err but who can be regenerated—the Lears, the
Gloucesters—and in mercy he redeems them: he is just,
and merciful. But again, God moves in a mysterious
way—he deals strangely with the Cordelias of this
world. His methods are inscrutable. Shakespeare
presents the whole picture—the mysterious as well as
that which is plain. This, however, can mean 'pessi-
mistic' drama only to. those who cannot agree that the
play is a Christian play.

lii KING LEAR


XL D. G. James' View of the Play

In his distinguished book The Dream of Learning, the
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton
adopts a different view from that which I have taken.
Here and there, it is true, a sentence or two does suggest
the theme of regeneration through suffering. 'Lear
becomes mad in all truth,' says Mr James (p. 72); 'but
he comes out of his madness a changed man.' And
again, 'when the struggle in Lear is over and the true
sense of life becomes clear in him, he asks forgiveness of
Cordelia' (p. 74). Such sentences suggest the theme of
regeneration through suffering. Yet Mr James feels that
this is not the main thing. It is the suffering itself that
strikes him most forcibly. ' It is not chiefly the mind of
Lear we observe and study,' he says, 'but the world's
savagery as it overwhelms it' (p. 7 o). ' The ending of the
play is not...an end which looks on to a succeeding
order and condition. Fortinbras succeeds Hamlet,
Malcolm Macbeth: sanity and justice are restored. But
in King Lear we are given little of the feeling of this'
(p. 104). Again: 'The play seems to be designed to
exhibit suffering and helpless virtue, whether it be the
virtue of a Kent, the uncertain virtue of a Lear, or the
transcendent virtue of an Edgar and a Cordelia. None
of them may come to any happiness. Gloucester and
Lear are given, before they die, and by an irony, only a
kind of heartbroken joy. Kent and Edgar indeed sur-
vive; only...Kent speaks of imminent death, Edgar of
death not long delayed. For them also, life may not go
on' (p. 111). 'Shakespeare contrives to allow his
virtuous characters as little influence on the course of
events as possible; he holds them in a kind of silent and
helpless suffering' (p. 114). I quote at length, because
The Dream of Learning is an important book. It will be

INTRODUCTION liii
already clear, however, that I cannot agree with, its
author's interpretation.
Why does Edgar delay so long before revealing his
identity to his blinded father ? Edgar acknowledges that
this was a fault; but why should he have committed it?
And why does Kent not reveal his identity to Lear at the
beginning of the storm ? On the naturalistic plane there
is no reason why these revelations should not have been
made. And they would have given comfort to Lear and
Gloucester. Mr James sees in the failure of Edgar and
Kent to reveal themselves an indication that Shakespeare
is preoccupied with a world in which the good is not
allowed by the gods to intervene actively to palliate
suffering. 'Against the pure wickedness of Cornwall
and Edmund the beneficence of Edgar and Kent are
[sic] not allowed to work with any mitigation' (p. 108).
Lear and Gloucester are not granted this comfort—>
of knowing who these helpers are; but they are granted a
comfort—the helpers are there, and minister to them.
Neither of the suffering protagonists is left alone in his
agony. This is indeed some mercy. 'Solamen miseris
socios habuisse doloris.' In both plots Shakespeare keeps
a careful and subtle balance between providential mercy
and providential disciplining. On the one hand, Lear
and Gloucester are allowed to be devotedly attended;
on the other hand, they can win regeneration only
through purgatorial experience—their suffering must be
intense—it cannot be alleviated beyond a certain point—
they must not know who these attendants are until the
end: but the suffering produces a happy issue. Again:
in the final scene Edmund repents. Why, then, is
Cordelia not saved, as, by means of this turn in the plot,
she might easily have been? Perhaps the foregoing
explanation is relevant here too—Lear, about to be
redeemed, must suffer a Foutrance, but the redemption
is at hand. Or perhaps Shakespeare, seeing life whole, in

liv K I N G L E A R
all its complexity, is virtually saying to us that such tragic
accidents do occur through something as trivial as human
forgetfulness; but faith in the ultimate triumph of good
remains nevertheless.
1
Speaking of Othello and of Lear, Dr Tillyard —in my
view rightly—claims that a 'new order' is established
at the end of both. 'True,' he says,' the new order is cut
short in both plays, but its creation is an essential part of
the tragic pattern.' It is enough for Shakespeare to hint
at this new order. His main purpose has been to show
how it comes about that a new order can be established.
The sombre tone at the end is due to a pressing awareness
in the author of the price: but the price has not been paid
in vain.
Mr James declares that 'the play at its end at most
looks dimly ahead beyond itself as, at its beginning, it had
not looked back to what had gone before' (p. 104). The
opening scene, he says, 'cuts away from our imagina-
tions any sense of the preceding life of Lear and his
family', and' Shakespeare gives us very little which helps
to make the scene we see continuous with what had gone
before' (p. 101). I cannot agree with this; and, indeed,
if personal reminiscence is allowable in an Introduction
such as this, I would record my vivid recollection of
James entertaining in his home, years ago, the most
junior member of his Department, as he so often and so
generously did. I remember the tone of his voice as he
quoted, in conversation, the significant words, 'he hath
ever but slenderly known himself. We are told this early
in the play—and told that 'the best and soundest of his
time hath been but rash'. And, later on, Lear himself
speaks of the remote past:

They flattered me like a dog, and told me I had the white hairs
in my beard ere the black ones were there. (4. 6. 95-7)
1
Shakespeare's Last Plays (1938), p. 17.

INTRODUCTION lv
Here is a glimpse of the octogenarian Lear as he was
before he had grown up to full manhood—flattered long
ago, as he is at the start of the play. He himself brings his
youthful days before us. In a review praising a produc-
tion by Mr (now Sir Donald) Wolfit, Mr T. C. Worsley
1
wrote, in 1949, these words:
Every time I have read the play, and every other time I have
seen it acted, I have always had to swallow that first scene
of the dividing of the kingdom, taking its nasty premise as
one takes a dose for the good it will do one later. But with
Mr Wolfit it is quite otherwise. What the very first three
minutes manage marvellously to convey is the whole
history of the man that has led up to them; so that we are
dropped immediately not into a beginning but into a
climax.

The play looks before and after. Briefly, admittedly; for
it is the climax with which it is concerned—a climax
which itself has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The
middle compels us to keep watch over human suffering
that is appalling in its intensity. We cannot forget that
suffering when all is over—we cannot brush it out of our
minds. But the gods are merciful, and we discern the
glimmerings of a new sunrise. We are by no means left
darkling.

* The New Statesman and Nation, new ser. xxxvin, 354
(1 October 1949).
G. I. D.
June 1957

Ivi




THE STAGE-HISTORY OF
KING LEAR


Any survey, however summary, of the stage-fortunes of
our play must include its adaptation by Nahum Tate,
which displaced the original as the basis of all productions
for a century and a half. So popular was it that the
eighteenth-century performances far outnumber those
of any other period; and in the nineteenth century such
outstanding critics as Lamb, Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt
never saw the original staged.
Of pre-Restoration productions only two records are
known.The entry of Shakespeare's Learin the Stationers'
Register of 26 November 1607, mentions a performance
before the King at Whitehall on the night of St Stephen's
Day (26 December) 1606, 'by his maiesties servantes
playinge vsually at the Globe'; and the 'Pied Bull'
quarto (Q 1) of 1608 repeats the information on its
title-page. The other notice tells the story of a group of
Yorkshire players from Egton who at Candlemas
(2 February) 1610 acted the play at Sir John York's
mansion, Gowthwaite Hall in Nidderdale, when
Christopher Simpson, who originally gathered together
these strolling players, probably acted the king. They
used 'printed books', which for this play must have
1
been copies of Q i. After the Restoration at least two
revivals preceded the disappearance of Shakespeare's
Lear from the stage. John Downes in his Roscius
Anglicanus (1708) names it in a list of the plays pre-
sented by Davenant's company ('the Duke's') at
1
See for fuller details C. J. Sisson in The Review of
English Studies (1942), pp. 135-43, and the Stage-History
of Pericles in this edition, p. xxxi.

STAGE-HISTORY Ivii
Lincoln's Inn Fields, 'between 1662 and 1665',
Betterton playing Lear; while in June 1675, it is said to
have been seen by Nell Gwyn. 1
In 1681 Tate's History of KingLear'was published,
and was acted the same year at Dorset Garden by the
Duke's company. Tate's book gives the cast: Lear
(Betterton), Edgar (Smith), Kent (Wiltshire), Edmund
(Williams), Gloucester (Gillow), Albany (Bowman),
Cornwall (Norris); Mrs (i.e. Miss) Barry was Cordelia,
Mrs Shadwell (the poet's wife) Goneril, and a titled
lady, Lady Slingsby, Regan. Tate had remodelled the
play, making three major alterations: the happy ending
which everyone has heard of; a love-story, of Edgar and
Cordelia, running through the whole play (France and
Burgundy are cut out); and the omission of the Fool. The
love-theme Tate in his dedicatory epistle claims as an.
'Expedient' happily hit on 'to rectifie' a lack of'Regu-
larity and Probability' in Shakespeare's plot; it 'renders
Cordelia's Indifference and her Father's Passion prob-
able', and turns Edgar's disguise from 'a poor Shift to
save his Life' into 'a generous Design' for helping
Cordelia. Unfortunately it entailed many new scenes of
incongruous sentimentality in Tate's inferior verse. The
new ending which left Lear and Cordelia safe and happy
took the place of what many, notably Dr Johnson, have
felt to be unendurably painful; 4 it also conserved the
ideal of 'poetic justice' which many besides Johnson
clung to, and vindicated the righteous control of the
Universe, as its final lines emphasize—Cordelia's' bright
Example shall convince the World....That Truth and
1
Hazelton Spencer, Shakespeare Improved (1927), p. 7$,
and Montague Summers's ed. of Downes, op. at. (1928),
p. 188, cite for this the Historical MSS. Commission, in. 266.
s
See Raleigh, Johnson on Shakespeare (1908), pp. 161-25
cf. also A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (1904),
pp. 232-4.

lviii KING LEAR
Virtue shall at last succeed'. As to the Fool, Tate prob-
ably thought of him as the mere stage buffoon; Garrick
1
and most eighteenth-century readers did the same, and
not till 1838 was he again seen on the stage. Besides thus
remoulding the play, Tate reminted numerous lines and
even whole passages in his own debased poetic currency. 3
Protests from men of letters were heard from time to
time against what a pamphlet of 1747 called an 'exe-
crable alteration'. Thus as early as 1711 Addison in the
Spectator, no 40, declared that the play as thus 're-
formed according to the chimerical notion of poetical
justice...has lost half its beauty'; Lamb in 1811, and
Hazlitt in 1817, quoting Lamb in extenso, pronounced
emphatic condemnation of the 'happy ending'.3 But
1
For Garrick, who once thought of restoring the Fool,
but feared to 'hazard so bold an attempt', see Thomas
Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies (1783), 11, 267; cf. D.
Nichol Smith, Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century (1928),
p. 21; and for Column's view in 1768, ibid. p. 23. Even
Leigh Hunt in an Examiner article of May 1808 approved
Tate's excision of the Fool as 'now out of date' (see L. H.
and C. W. Houtchen's Leigh Hunt's Dramatic Criticism
(1950), pp. i5-2o)._
2
Tate's version is in Montague Summers's Shakespeare
Adaptations (1922); a useful analysis is in C. B. Hogan's
Shakespeare in the Theatre, 1701-1800: London, ijoi-50
(1952), p. 244; and an excellent short criticism in Nichol
Smith, op. cit. pp. 20-2. See also Genest, Some Account of
the English Stage, 1660-1830 (1832), V, 194-200; H. H.
Furness's New Variorum Shakespeare ed. of Lear (1882),
pp. 466-77; G. C. D. Odell, Shakespeare from Betterton to
Irving (1921), r, 53-6; Hazelton Spencer, op. cit. pp. 242-9.
3 See Genest, iv, 475-6 (for the pamphlet); Lamb, On
the Tragedies of Shakespeare with Reference to their Fitness
for Stage Representation (from the Reflector, No. IV, 1811),
in Lamb's Miscellaneous Prose, ed. E. V. Lucas, 1912,
pp. 124-5; Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays
(Works, edited Waller and Glover, 1, 270-1, 1902).

STAGE-HISTORY lix
the theatrical world remained unmoved and the spurious
version held the field for twenty more years. Mr Hogan
has listed productions in each year but three (1702,
1707,1740) in the first half of the century, and in every
1
year but six (after 1774) in the second half; thereafter its
vogue steeply declined, till Macready in 18 3 8 dealt it its
quietus. Betterton was Lear each year till his death in
1710. Wilks and Mills were his chief Edgars and
Edmunds, and Cibber took Gloucester; Mrs Brace-
girdle, Mrs Bradshaw and Mrs Rogers were successively
Cordelia.
Between Betterton and Garrick the chief Lears were
Barton Booth, Boheme till 1730, Quin (in six of the
years 1731—39), and Delane (eight of the years 1733—
41). Quin had done 'excellently', Davies judged, as
2
Gloucester previously, but was 'a much inferior Lear'.
Both he and Delane overlapped their greater successor,
till 1748 and 1743 respectively; for young Garrick,
after his triumphant debut as Richard III at Goodman's
Fields five months before, made his first appearance as
Lear on 11 March 1742, and then on ten other nights
till 19 May. On 28 May and in October to December
he acted the part five times at Drury Lane. At Drury,
Lane he had his early flame, Peg Woffington, as his
Cordelia; at Goodman's Fields Mrs Giffard. Mrs Cib-
ber, his most frequent subsequent Cordelia, was render-
ing her to Quin's Lear at the Garden in December; but
from 1747 to 1763 Drury Lane saw her with Garrick.
Another of his Cordelias of note was George Anne
Bellamy in 1750-2, but in 1757 and 1764 she was with
Spranger Barry at Covent Garden. Such was Garrick's
initial success that most years when the play was on in
1
See Hogan, op. cit. 245-67; and his sequel, London,
ly51—1800 (1957), pp. 335-61. His lists include Garrick's,
Column's and Kemble's versions, primarily based on Tate's.
* Davies, op. cit. H, 277-8.

Ix K I N G LEAR
London saw him as the King till he retired. In 1746 the
manager, Rich, induced him to come to Covent Garden;
but in autumn 1747 he was back in the Lane, now co-
manager with Lacy. Here on 28 October 1756 he
staged the play 'with restorations from Shakespeare',
having his friend and biographer Davies's wife as
1
Cordelia. His restorations, though once supposed to be
negligible, were in fact very considerable. The plot
remains Tate's, with the love story, the happy ending,
and no Fool; but apart from additions and omissions
which this entailed, the dialogue is chiefly Shakespeare's,
and Mr Hogan's calculation is that 'a good seventy per
cent' is 'Shakespeare verbatim'.* This year and the next
Barry was competing with him at the rival house in the
title part, but what Davies deemed Garrick's 'perfect
exhibition' of it so outshone Barry's 'very respectable'
3
rendering that from October 1767 to April 1774 he was
content to understudy him at Drury Lane before return-
ing to Covent Garden, where his last Lear was in
February 1776. Miss Nossiter was Barry's first Cordelia
at the Garden, 1756-7; but his most frequent partner
was Ann Dancer (Mrs Barry from 1768), who acted the
part with him from 1766 to 1776. In February 1768 a
more thorough-going revision of Tate by the elder
George Colman was acted at Covent Garden with
Powell and Mrs Yates as principals (they had partnered
thus at Drury Lane in the 1765-6 season). Working
largely from Shakespeare's text, Colman discarded the
love-scenes, but kept Tate's ending. He omitted
1
Hogan, op. cit. II, 337.
a
Privately communicated. Cf. his op. cit. ir, 334, and
A. C. Sprague, Shakespearian Players and Performances
(1954) (British ed.), p. 32: 'Shakespeare owes a great deal
to this actor—even... in the matter of restoring his words to
the stage.'
3 Thomas Davies, Life ofGarrick (1781), ir, 249.

S T A G E - H I S T O R Y ki
Gloucester's attempted fall from Dover Cliff while
retaining the fine description; and the blinding took
place offstage. He even thought of reinstating the Fool,
but felt the risk to be too great—'it would sink into
1
burlesque in the representation'. This first attempt at
superseding Tate failed. His version became defunct
after the 1770-1 season, and for virtually fifty years
Tate was not again challenged. Garrick was last seen as
Lear three times in the summer of 1776, ending
2
8 June.
The next notable actor of the part was J. P. Kemble.
To Mrs Siddons's Cordelia he first played it in the Lane
on 21 January 1788; and five more nights before 15 May.
As manager of the company he took the role in 1792 and
1793, and at the King's Theatre, Haymarket; and at the
Lane in 1795 and 1801. From 1808 to 1810 his
management of Covent Garden saw him in it each year;
he also took it with him to Bath in 1812 and 1817. But
his sister, of whose talents Tate's Cordelia was unworthy,
ceased after the 1801 revival, and Kemble had to do
with lesser partners. His brother Charles he took as
Edmund in 1801, and as Edgar in 1809 and 1810.
Using Garrick's version at first, he reverted to Tate
from 1792 with slight restorations of the original; in
1810 this was advertised as 'Shakespeare's King Lear'.
As in Colman's version, Gloucester was blinded off
stage, his cries being heard in the wings, and his fall at
Dover was forestalled by Lear's entry.3 Kemble's first

1
Cf. above, p. viii, n. 1. On Colman's version see
Nichol Smith,pp. 22-4; Odell, r, 379-81; Hogan, II, 333-4;
Genest, I, 191-203, compares it with Tate's act by act.
2
On Garrick's Lears, see A. C. Sprague, op. cit. pp. 21-
40.
3 For Kemble's Lear, see Harold Child, The Shake-
spearian Productions ofy. P. Kemble (1935), . 9; Genest,
p
Viii, 131-3; Odell, 11, 55; Hogan, 11, 335.
N.S.K.L.-4

kli KING LEAR
production was a triumph, never equalled in the later;
the house was packed with a fashionable audience. His
passionate intensity in his earliest renderings was, in the
later, Boaden felt, 1 'quenched' by over-elaboration of
Lear's age and infirmity.
Overlapping Kemble's was Cooke's at Covent Garden
in 1802 and 1807; but this was 'not one of Cooke's good
parts', says Genest, 2 and he played Kent in the 1808
revival. C. M. Young also played Lear at Bath for two
years before coming to the Garden with it in 1822. But
both were eclipsed by Kean, who first adopted the role on
24 April 1820 in the Lane. Though not such a triumph
as his Richard III six years before, the play ran for 28
nights, throwing into the shade two other revivals that
year at Covent Garden: J. B. Booth's on 13 April, and
Vandenhoff's on 9 December. On 21 August, Booth
was at Drury Lane as Edgar with Kean, on 15 November
he stood in for him as Lear, and migrated to the U.S.A.
the next year. Hazlitt, writing in June, reported a story
that Kean had said his London audiences should wait to
judge him finally till * they came to see him over the dead
body of Cordelia', but neither then nor in his next
revival, 1822, was the implied restoration of Shake-
speare's catastrophe carried out. For that London had
to wait till 1823, when on 10 and 24 February the
original act 5 was played, in deference, said the playbills,
to the views of 'men of literary eminence from the time
of Addison'. The reforms did not extend to the cutting
out of the love-scenes, nor to the recall of the Fool. This
version was repeated at Drury Lane in March and June,
and in three other years till 1829. He appeared in it
twice in 1828 at Covent Garden, and finally on 12 July
18 3 o at the Haymarket. For this last he had Miss F. H.
Kelly in the part of Cordelia, played till then by Mrs W.
1
Boaden, Memoirs ofj. P. Kemble (1825), I, 378-9, 386.
8
Op. cit. VII, 552.

STAGE-HISTOR Y kin
West. Lear, however, was not one of his greatest parts;
1
Hazlitt declared his bitter disappointment; and his
partial restoration proved abortive. Meanwhile Young
had continued, in Bath in 1823, and in London at
Covent Garden in 1824 (C. Kemble as Edgar), and at
Drury Lane in 1829 (Mrs West now Goneril, and
Miss Phillips Cordelia).
Lear was the latest of Macready's Shakespearian parts,
but one of his best. He had played Edmund to Booth's
Lear in 1820; his first Lear was not till 1834, when on
23 May he acted with Young's Cordelia, Miss Phillips,
at Drury Lane. A few days later he was seen twice at
Covent Garden. 'Excessively nervous' at first, as his
diary records, he gained confidence by act 3, and was
loudly applauded; but The Times' notice on the 24th was
chilly. On this, his first revival, he restored, with some
3
cuts and dislocations, Shakespeare's text, but not yet
with the Fool. This last-step in the rejection of Tate he
took in his next production, at Covent Garden from
2 5 January 1838, when he assigned the Fool to a young-
actress, Priscilla Horton, who played the part till his last
King Lear? In Helen Faucit he now had a very fine
Cordelia, and the play was shown ten times, winning
'very great applause', as The Times, still grudging in
praise, admitted. The following February it Was repeated
six times; on the 18th the Queen was present.- Elaborate
1
For Hazlitt on Kean as Lear, see his essay from the
London Magazine (June, 1820), in Dramatic Essays {Works,
ed. Waller and Glover, vin, 443-51), 1903.
2
See Odell, r, 95-6 for some details. In particular the
blinding does not occur even behind the scenes.
3
On Macready's Lear see J. C. Trewin, Mr Macreddy:
igth Century Tragedian (1955), pp. 139-40; on Miss Horton,
Miss M. St C. Byrne's Note 74, Catalogue of the Arts
Council's Exhibition (A History pf Shakespearean Produc-
tion (1947), pp. 18-19).

klv KING LEAR
scenery marked the revival, with realistic thunder and
lightning, wind and rain in the storm scenes. From 1845
to 1848 he produced the play each year at the Princess's
Theatre, and finally in 1849 and 1851 at the Hay-
market (3 February his last appearance). In 1845,
Mrs Stirling played Cordelia and in 1848 from 3 March
Mrs Butler (Fanny Kemble). In Macready's first year
Vandenhoff had reappeared at Covent Garden; 1836
brought a more dangerous rival in Edwin Forrest, the
American tragedian, to Drury Lane, whose Lear on
4 November was a considerable success. But when he
came back in March 1845, to the Princess's, still follow-
ing Tate's text, he met with a hostile reception which he
put down to Macready's instigation, who followed him
1
there in October.
This same year a third King Lear-was seen in London,
Samuel Phelps's first, at Sadler's Wells, in his second
year as manager. He had previously acted Lear in 1841
at the Surrey Theatre in Liverpool, in the winter of
1843-4.* Now he presented the genuine play with
much fewer cuts than Macready and in Shakespeare's
order of scenes. Miss Cooper was Cordelia, Marston
Edgar, and Bennett Edmund; and the Fool was now
played by a man (Scharf). It was acted six times. The
critics were full of praise for Phelps's acting; it would
'bear comparison', said the Observer, 'with the best by
any other actor ever'. 3 He again showed the play in
1852-3; in 1857 from 5 December Mrs Charles Young
was his Cordelia. His latest productions at Sadler's
Wells were in September and October 1859, and
1
On the rivalry of these two cf. Macbeth, Stage-History,
p. lxxxii.
2
See W. May Phelps and J. Forbes-Robertson, Life and
Life-Work of Samuel Phelps (1886), pp. 53, 61.
3 For this revival see op. cit. pp. 79, 81-6, 264; Odell,
op. cit. II, 272-3.

STAGE-HISTORY lxv

January 1861; but in May he acted Lear at the Princess's
Theatre, and here he was last seen in the part on
6 December. Charles Kean had essayed the part here
from 17 April 1858, but was an inadequate rival; 'he
gave the Fool again to a woman', says Hazelton Spencer. 1
He followed previous versions in omitting the blinding
of Gloucester and his fall at Dover, and his production
was characteristically spectacular in its dicor, which
aimed at representing Saxon Britain. 2
After Phelps had left, Sadler's Wells saw Charles
Dillon as Lear in 186 8, Drury Lane Mr and Mrs Rousley
in 1873 and Ernesto Rossi in 1876, and the Princess's
had Edwin Booth in his sole L,ondon Lear (Maud
Milton the Cordelia), in 1881. The next memorable
King Lear was Irving's one and only revival at the
Lyceum, opening on 10 November 1892. The Times on
11 November reported a 'most cordial reception', but
Irving had overstrained his voice and was barely audible.
He staged it till the end of January 1893, and again from
6 February for some nights, but it had by then proved a
failure. One critic, indeed, declared his Lear 'magni-
ficent and terrible in its pathos'; and Gordon Crosse
recalled it in detail sixty years later as a 'thrilling ex-
perience'; Professor Odell, who judges Lear to have
been beyond Irving's powers, records Ellen Terry's
Cordelia as 'a great moving performance' of 'ineffable
pathos'. Irving, like others, omitted the blinding of
Gloucester and cut very extensively; nor was the
scenery as splendid to the eye as in many of his produc-
tions, though he contrived realistic eifects of dazzling
lightning and terrifying thunder. 3
1
The Art and Life of Shakespeare (1940), p. 328.
2
Odell, 11, 294-5, 352.
3 For Irving's production see Odell, n, 387-8, 446;
Gordon Crosse, Shakespearean Play-going; 1890-1952(1953),
p. i2 j Laurence Irving, Henry Irving (1951), pp. 548-52.

Ixvi K I N G L E A R
In the early years of this century few revivals took
place in London, but of late they have greatly increased.
In 1909 the Haymarket showed the play from 8 Septem-
ber with Norman McKinnel and Ellen O'Malley. Nine
years later the Old Vic gave the first of its several Lears,
when Ben Greet produced it on 2 5 February 1918 with
Russell Thorndike and Mary Sumner, reviving the
older practice by giving the Fool to Sybil Thorndike. In
1920, from 29 November, Robert Atkins was the pro-
ducer and acted the King with Mary Sumner again as
Cordelia; Wilfrid Walter designed the settings, and the
play, little cut, lasted 3§ hours. 1 The following year he
repeated the production for the company. In May 1928,
Ernest Milton played the leading part in a full-length
King Lear produced by Andrew Leigh; Gordon Crosse*
thought him at the time the best Lear he had seen since
Irving. Meanwhile the play had been staged for the
Phoenix Society at the Regent Theatre in 19 24 (Hubert
Carter and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies), while Nugent
Monck at his Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich, had
shown it in 1926 in an unlocalized setting with one ten
minutes' interval. In April 1931 John Gielgud acted
his first Lear, Harcourt Williams producing, for the
Old Vic; Ralph Richardson played Kent and Patricia
McNabb Cordelia. His next, also for the Old Vic, was
in 1940 with Lewis Casson (not yet Sir Lewis) and
Harley Granville-Barker as producers,^ when Casson
acted Kent, Cathleen Nesbitt and Fay Compton were
Goneril and Regan, and Jessica Tandy was Cordelia.
The text was almost uncut. Meanwhile William Devlin
had appeared as Lear for the Old Vic in 1936 (Ion
Swinley as Kent and Vivienne Bennett as Cordelia); he
1
Gordon Crosse, p. 55.
a
P. 64.
3 For the partnership see C. B. Purdom, Harley Granville-
Barker (1955), pp. 261-3.

S T A G E - H I S T O R Y lxvii

had previously played the part at the Westminster
Theatre in 1934, and subsequently figured in it in Hugh
Hunt's 1947 revival at the Embassy Theatre, and in the
Old Vic's in 1952 at the end of its London run in which
Stephen Murray was the King and Daphne Slater
Cordelia. In the War years Donald Wolfit, who had
taken Kent earlier in Stratford, played Lear during his
autumn tour in 1942, Nugent Monck producing; and
then each year in London, 1943-7 and 1949 1 at
different theatres, with Rosalind Iden as Cordelia. In
1953 at the King's Theatre, Hammersmith, he played
the King with Sir Lewis Casson as Gloucester. In 1946,
from 14 September, Sir Laurence Olivier at the Old
Vic had Joyce Redman as Cordelia to his Lear, 2 with
Alec Guinness as the Fool, Pamela Brown as Goneril,
and Margaret Leighton as Regan. From 3 March 1952
the Old Vic once more staged the play, Hugh Hunt
producing—Stephen Murray and Daphne Slater as
Lear and Cordelia, Leo McKern as the Fool; and in.
February 1958 in its plan of producing all the plays in
the Folio in a period of five years presented it again,
under Douglas Seale's direction, with Paul Rogers as
Lear, Rosemary Webster as Cordelia, and Paul Dane-
man as the Fool. In 1955 the Stratford Memorial
Theatre Company under George Devine toured in
Britain and on the Continent ending up at Stratford in
December. John Gielgud played Lear throughout,
with Peggy Ashcroft, Claire Bloom and Mary Watson
as his successive Cordelias.
The first revival at Stratford itself was in 1883 on the
Birthday, when William Creswick was the king. After
1
See Introduction, p. Iv supra.
* On Olivier's Lear, see Four Lears, by Charles Land-
stone in Shakespeare Survey, 1 (1948), 98-102. He com-
pares Olivier's with three other Lears of 1946—7—Devlin's,
Philip Morant's, and Sofaer's.

Ixviii KIN G LEAR
Osmond Tearle's production in 1890, Benson produced
the play and acted Lear to his wife's Cordelia in 1902,
1
1904, and 1906, but, thinks J. C. Trewin, was never at
his best in the part; Matheson Lang was Edmund in
1902. Under Bridges-Adams it was again the birthday
play in 1924 with Arthur Phillips as Lear; Baliol Hollo-
way played Kent, and Dorothy Green was Goneril.
Four years in the 1930's saw Randle Ayrton, probably
the best of the Stratford Lears*—in 1931 and I932with
Bridges-Adams producing; in 1936 and 1937 in
Komisarjevsky's two productions, Donald Wolfit being
the Kent in the first of them, and Eric Maxon the
Gloucester as in 1931 (he had acted as Edgar in 1924).
In 1943 Abraham Sofaer acted Lear as his first appear-
ance in Stratford—the production Peter Cresswell's;
and in 1950 John Gielgud came to Stratford in the part
with Alan Badel as the Fool; Peggy Ashcroft was
Cordelia, and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies now played
Regan. In the 1953 production Michael Redgrave and
Yvonne Mitchell were Lear and Cordelia. 3
In America the earliest known performances were in
New York and Philadelphia in 1754 by Lewis Hallam's
company, his wife playing Cordelia to Malone's Lear.
The first memorable tragedian in the part was J. B.
Booth, who acted Lear from 1821 to 1852; but his
greater contemporary, Edwin Forrest, outdid this
record, spanning forty-five years from 1826 in his
renderings. Eddy overlapped the latter in seven seasons
1
See T. C. Kemp and J. C. Trewin, The Stratford
Festival (1953), p. 62.
2
Cf. Muriel C. Day and J. C. Trewin, The Stratford
Memorial Theatre (1932), p. 216; Ruth Ellis, The Stratford
Memorial Theatre (1948), p. 64; T. C. Kemp in his and
J. C. Trewin's op. cit. p. 165.
3
See T. C. Kemp's 'Acting Shakespeare: Modern
Tendencies', in Shakespeare Survey, 7 (1954), 127.

STAGE-HISTOR Y lxix
from 1852 to 1865. In the last quarter of the-century
Edwin Booth's (1875—8 8) were the most outstanding of
the productions; McCullough figured in five revivals
from 1877 to 1882. In the present century R. B.
Mantell has been the chief Lear (from 1905 onwards).
In California Mr Gilmor Brown staged King Lear at the
Pasadena Playhouse in 1922 and 1944.
C. B. YOUNG
May 1958




TO THE READER


The following typographical conventions should be
noted:
A single bracket at the beginning of a speech signifies
an ' aside \
An obelisk (f) implies probable corruption, and
suggests a reference to the Notes.
Stage-directions taken verbatim from the First Folio,
or the Quarto, are enclosed in single inverted commas.
The reference number for the first line is given at the
head of each page. Numerals in square brackets are
placed at the beginning of the traditional acts and scenes.



KING LEAR

The scene: Britain

CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY


LEAR, king of Britain
KING OF FRANCE
DUKE OF BURGUNDY
DUKE OF CORNWALL, husband to Regan
DUKE OF ALBANY, husband to Goneril
EARL OF KENT
EARL OF GLOUCESTER
EDGAR, son to Gloucester
EDMUND, bastard son to Gloucester
CURAN, a courtier
OSWALD, steward to Goneril
OLD MAN, tenant to Gloucester
DOCTOR
FOOL

GONERIL \
REGAN \ daughters to Lear
CORDELIAJ
1
Gentleman, Herald, Captains, Knights of Lear s
train. Messengers, Soldiers, Attendants, Servants

KING LEAR


[i. I.] The throne-room in King Lear'spalace

'Enter KENT, GLOUCESTER, and EDMUND*
Kent. I thought the king had more affected the Duke
of Albany than Cornwall.
Gloucester. It did always seem so to us; but now, in
the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the
dukes he values most, for equalities are so weighed that
curiosity in neither can make choice of either's moiety.
Kent. Is not this your son, my lord ?
Gloucester. His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge.
I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now
I am brazed to 't. 10
Kent. I cannot conceive you.
Gloucester. Sir, this young fellow's mother could;
whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had indeed,
sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her
bed. Do you smell a fault?
Kent. I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it
being so proper.
Gloucester. But I have a son, sir, by order of law, some
year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account.
Though this knave came something saucily to the world 20
before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was
good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be
acknowledged. Do you know this noble gentleman,
Edmund ?
Edmund. No, my lord.
Gloucester. My lord of Kent. Remember him here-
after as my honourable friend.

4 KIN G LEAR x.x.38

Edmund. My services to your lordship.
Kent. I must love you, and sue to know you better.
30, Edmund. Sir, I shall study deserving.
Gloucester. He hath been out nine years, and away he
shall again. \A sennet sounded] The king is coming.
'Enter one bearing a coronet.'' 'Enter King LEAR, CORN-
WALL, ALBANT, GONERIL, REGAN, CORDELIA, and
attendants'

Lear. Attend the lords of France and Burgundy,
Gloucester.
Gloucester. I shall, my liege.
\he goes out, attended By Edmund
Lear. Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.
Give me the map there. Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom; and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths while we
40 Unburdened crawl toward death. Our son
of Cornwall,
And you, our no less loving son of Albany,
We have this hour a constant will to publish
Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife
May be prevented now. The princes, France
and Burgundy,
Great rivals in our youngest daughter's love,
Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,
And here are to be answered. Tell me, my daughters
(Since now we will divest us both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state),
50 Which of you shall we say doth love us most,
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril,
Our eldest-born, speak first.

I.I.54 K I N G L E A R 5
Gonertl. Sir, I love you more than word can wield
the matter;
Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued rich or rare;
No less than life with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e'er loved, or father found:
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.
Beyond all manner of "so much" I love you. 60
{Cordelia. What shall Cordelia speak ? Love, and
be silent.
Lear, [showing the map] Of all these bounds, even
from this line to this,
With shadowy forests and with champaigns riched,
With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,
We make thee lady. To thine and Albany's issues
Be this perpetual. What says our second daughter,
Our dearest Regan, wife of Cornwall ?
Regan. I am made of that self metal as my sister,
And prize me at her worth. In my true heart
I find she names my very deed of love: 70
Only she comes too short, that I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys
Which the most precious spirit of sense possesses,
And find I am alone felicitate
In your dear Highness' love.
(Cordelia. Then poor Cordelia!
And yet not so, since I am sure my love's
More ponderous than my tongue.
Lear. To thee and thine, hereditary ever,
Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom,
No less in space, validity, and pleasure 80
Than that conferred on Goneril. Now, our joy,
Although our last and least, to whose young love
The vines of France and milk of Burgundy

6 K I N G LEAR 1.1.84
Strive to be mteressed, what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
Cordelia. Nothing, my lord.
Lear. Nothing?
Cordelia. Nothing.
Lear. Nothing will come of nothing; speak again.
90 Cordelia. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty
According to my bond, no more nor less.
Lear. How, how, Cordelia? Mend your speech
a little,
Lest you may mar your fortunes.
Cordelia. Good my lord,
You have begot me, bred me, loved me. I
Return those duties back as are right fit,
Obey you, love you, and most honour you.
Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all ? Haply, when I shall wed,
100 That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty.
Sure I shall never marry like my sisters,
To love my father all.
Lear. But goes thy heart with this ?
Cordelia. Ay, my good lord.
Lear. So young, and so untender ?
Cordelia. So young, my lord, and true.
Lear. Let it be so; thy truth then be thy dower!
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night,
n o By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me

X.I.XI5 K I N G LEAR 7
Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighboured, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.
Kent. Good my liege—
Lear. Peace, Kent! 120
Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
I loved her most, and thought to set my rest
On her kind nursery. [To Cordelid\ Hence, and
avoid my sight!—
So be my grave my peace as here I give
Her father's heart from her. Call France! Who stirs?
Call Burgundy! \A courtier hurries ford] Cornwall
and Albany,
With my two daughters' dowers digest the third;
Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.
I do invest you jointly with my power,
Pre-eminence, and all the large effects 130
That troop with majesty. Ourself* by monthly course,
With reservation of an hundred knights
By you to be sustained, shall our abode
Make with you by due turn. Only we shall retain
The name and all th' addition to a king: the sway,
Revenue, execution of the rest,
Beloved sons, be yours; which to confirm,
This coronet part between you.
Kent. Royal Lear,
Whom I have ever honoured as my king,
Loved as my father, as my master followed, 140
As my great patron thought on in my prayers—
Lear. The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.
Kent. Let it fall rather, though the fork invade
The region of my heart! Be Kent unmannerly

8 KING LEAR 1.1.145
When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?
Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows? To plainness
honour's bound
When majesty stoops to folly. Reserve thy state,
And in thy best consideration check
150 This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgment,
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,
Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sounds
Reverb no hollowness.
Lear. Kent, on thy life, no more!
Kent. My life I never held but as a pawn
To wage against thine enemies; ne'er feared to lose it,
Thy safety being motive.
Lear. Out of my sight!
Kent. See better, Lear, and let me still remain
The true blank of thine eye.
Lear. Now by Apollo—
Kent. Now by Apollo, king,
160 Thou swear'st thy gods in vain.
Lear. O vassal! miscreant!
[laying his hand on his sword

n ,, \ Dear sir, forbear!
Cornwall.)
Kent. Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow
Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift,
Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,
I'll tell thee thou dost evil.
Lear. Hear me, recreant,
On thine allegiance, hear me!
That thou hast sought to make us break our vow—
Which we durst never yet—and with strained pride
To come betwixt our sentence and our power—
170 Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,—

I.I.I7I KING LEAR 9
Our potency made good, take thy reward.
Five days we do allot thee for provision
To shield thee from disasters of the world,
And on the sixth to turn thy hated back
Upon our kingdom. If, on the tenth day following,
Thy banished trunk be found in our dominions,
The moment is thy death. Away! By Jupiter,
This shall not be revoked.
Kent. Fare thee well, king; sith thus thou wilt appear,
Freedom lives hence and banishment is here. 180
[To Cordelia] The gods to their dear shelter take
thee, maid,
That justly think'st and hast most rightly said.
[To Goneril and Regan] And your large speeches may
your deeds approve,
That good effects may spring from words of love.
Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu;
He'll shape his old course in a country new. [he goes

1
'Flourish . Re-enter GLOUCESTER, with FRANCE,
BURGUNDY, and Attendants
Gloucester. Here's France and Burgundy, my
noble lord.
Lear. My lord of Burgundy,
We first address toward you, who with this king
Hath rivalled for our daughter. What in the least 190
Will you require in present dower with her,
Or cease your quest of love?
Burgundy. Most royal majesty,
I crave no more than hath your highness offered—
Nor will you tender less ?
Lear. Right noble Burgundy,
When she was dear to us, we did hold her so;
But now her price is fall'n. Sir, there she stands.

io KING LEAR 1.1.197
If aught within that little seeming-substance,
Or all of it, with our displeasure pieced,
And nothing more, may fitly like your grace,
200 She's there, and she is yours.
Burgundy. I know no answer.
Lear. Will you, with those infirmities she owes,
Unfriended, new adopted to our hate,
Dowered with our curse and strangered with our oath,
Take her or leave her?
Burgundy. Pardon me, royal sir.
Election makes not up on such conditions.
Lear. Then leave her, sir; for, by the power that
made me,
I tell you all her wealth. \To France] For you,
great king,
I would not from your love make such a stray
To match you where I hate; therefore beseech you
210 T' avert your liking a more worthier way
Than on a wretch whom Nature is ashamed
Almost t' acknowledge hers.
France. This is most strange,
That she whom even but now was your best object,
The argument of your praise, balm of your age,
The best, the dearest, should in this trice of time
Commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle
So many folds of favour. Sure her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it, or your fore-vouched affection
220 Fall into taint; which to believe of her
Must be a faith that reason without miracle
Should never plant in me.
Cordelia. I yet beseech your majesty—
If for I want that glib and oily art
To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend,

I.I.225 KING LEAR «
I'll do 't before I speak—that you make known
It is no vicious blot, murder or foulness,
No unchaste action or dishonoured step,
That hath deprived me of your grace and favour;
But even for want of that for which I am richer—
A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue 230
That I am glad I have not, though not to have it
Hath lost me in your liking.
Lear. Better thou
Hadst not been born than not t' have pleased me better.
France. Is it but this—a tardiness in nature
Which often leaves the history unspoke
That it intends? My lord of Burgundy,
What say you to the lady? Love's not love
When it is mingled with regards that stands
Aloof from th' entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dowry.
Burgundy. Royal king, 240
Give but that portion which yourself proposed,
And here I take Cordelia by the hand,
Duchess of Burgundy.
Lear. Nothing. I have sworn; I am firm.
Burgundy. I am sorry then you have so lost a father
That you must lose a husband.
Cordelia. Peace be with Burgundy!
Since that respect and fortunes are his love,
I shall not be his wife.
France. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich,
being poor;
Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised; 250
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.
Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! 'Tis strange that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.

N.S.K.L.-5

12 KING LEAR 1.1.255
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France.
Not all the dukes of wat'rish Burgundy
Can buy this unprized precious maid of me.
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind;
260 Thou losest here, a better where to find.
Lear. Thou hast her, France; let her be thine, for we
Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see
That face of hers again. Therefore be gone
Without our grace, our love, our benison.
Come, noble Burgundy.
1
'Flourish . Lear, Burgundy, Cornwall, Albany,
Gloucester, and attendants depart

Trance. Bid farewell to your sisters.
Cordelia. The jewels of our father, with washed eyes
Cordelia leaves you. I know you what you are,
And like a sister am most loath to call
Your faults as they are named. Love well our father;
270 To your professed bosoms I commit him:
But yet, alas, stood I within his grace,
I would prefer him to a better place.
So farewell to you both.
Regan. Prescribe not us our duty.
Goneril. Let your study
Be to content your lord, who hath received you
At Fortune's alms. You have obedience scanted,
And well are worth the want that you have wanted.
Cordelia. Time shall unfold what plighted
cunning hides,
Who covert faults at last with shame derides.
280 Well may you prosper.
France. Come, my fair Cordelia.
[he leads her away

I.I.28I KING LEAR 13
Gotten!. Sister, it is not little I have to say of what
most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father
will hence tonight.
Regan. That's most certain, and with you; next
month with us.
Goneril. You see how full of changes his age is. The
observation we have made of it hath not been little. He
always loved our sister most, and with what poor
judgement he hath now cast her off appears too grossly.
Regan. 'Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever 290
but slenderly known himself.
Goneril. The best and soundest of his time hath been
but rash; then must we look from his age to receive, not
alone the imperfections of long-engraffed condition, but
therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and
choleric years bring with them.
Regan. Such unconstant starts are we like to have from
him as this of Kent's banishment.
Goneril. There is further compliment of leave-taking
between France and him. Pray you let us hit together. 300
If our father carry authority with such disposition as he
bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us.
Regan. We shall further think of it.
Goneril. We must do something, and i' th' heat.
[they go



[1.2] A room in the Earl of Gloucester's castle

Enter EDMUND, with a letter
Edmund. Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,

14 KING LEAR 1.2.5
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
10 With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of Nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to th' creating a whole tribe of fops
Got 'tween a sleep and wake? Well then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to th' legitimate. Fine word, 'legitimate'1
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
20 And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top th' legitimate. I grow, I prosper.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

'Enter GLOUCESTER*
(Gloucester. Kent banished thus ? and France ia
choler parted?
And the king gone to-night? Prescribed his power?
Confined to exhibition? All this done
Upon the gad?—Edmund, how now? What news?
Edmund. So please your lordship, none.
[putting the letter in Us pocket
Gloucester. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that
letter?
30 Edmund. I know no news, my lord.
Gloucester. What paper were you reading?
Edmund. Nothing, my lord.
Gloucester. No? What needed then that terrible
dispatch of it into your pocket? The quality of nothing

x.2.35 KING LEAR 15

hath not such need to hide itself. Let's see. Come, if it
be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.
Edmund. I beseech you, sir, pardon me. It is a letter
from my brother that I have not all o'er-read; and for
so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your
o'erlooking. 40
Gloucester. Give me the letter, sir.
Edmund. I shall offend either to detain or give it. The
contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.
Gloucester. Let's see, let's see.
Edmund. I hope, for my brother's justification, he
wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.
Gloucester, ['reads'] 'This policy and reverence of
age makes the world bitter to the best of our times, keeps
our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them.
I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppres- 50
sion of aged tyranny, who sways, not as it hath power,
but as it is suffered. Come to me, that of this I may
speak more. If our father would sleep till I waked him,
you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the
beloved of your brother. Edgar.'
Hum! Conspiracy ? ' Sleep till I waked him, you should
enjoy half his revenue.' My son Edgar! Had he a hand
to write this? A heart and brain to breed it in? When
came you to this? Who brought it?
Edmund. It was not brought me, my lord: there's the 60
cunning of it. I found it thrown in at the casement of
my closet.
Gloucester. You know the character to be your
brother's?
Edmund. If the matter were good, my lord, I durst
swear it were his; but, in respect of that, I would fain
think it were not.
Gloucester. It is his.

16 KING LEAR 1.2.69

Edmund. It is his hand, 1117 lord] but I hope his heart
70 is not in the contents.
Gloucester. Has he never before sounded you in this
business?
Edmund. Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft
maintain it to be fit that, sons at perfect age* and fathers
declined, the father should be as ward to the son, and
the son manage his revenue.
Gloucester. O villain, villain! His very opinion in the
letter! Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish
villain! Worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him. I'll
80 apprehend him. Abominable villain! Where is he?
Edmund. I do not well know, my lord. If it shall
please you to suspend your indignation against my
brother till you can derive from him better testimony
of his intent, you should run a certain course; where, if
you violently proceed against him, mistaking his
purpose, it would make a great gap in your own
honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience.
I dare pawn down my life for him that he hath writ
this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no other
90 pretence of danger.
Gloucester. Think you so?
Edmund. If your honour judge it meet, I will place
you where you shall hear us confer of this and by an
auricular assurance have your satisfaction, and that
without any further delay than this very evening.
Gloucester. He cannot be such a monster!
Edmund. Nor is not, sure.
T
Gloucester. o his father, that so tenderly and en-
tirely loves him! Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek
100 him out; wind me into him, I pray you; frame the
business after your own wisdom. I would unstate
myself to be in a due resolution.

I.2.IO3 KING LEAR 17

Edmund. I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the
business as I shall find means, and acquaint you
withal.
Gloucester. These late eclipses in the sun and moon
portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature
can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship
falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in n o
countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond
cracked 'twixt son and father. This villain of mine
comes under the prediction; there's son against father:
the king falls from bias of nature; there's father against
child. We have seen the best of our time. Machina-
tions, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders
follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out this villain,
Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully.
And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished; his
offence, honesty! 'Tis strange. [he goes 120
Edmund. This is the excellent foppery of the world
that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of
our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the
sun, the moon and stars; as if we were villains on
necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, 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 thrusting on. An admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to 130
the charge of a star! My father compounded with my
mother under the Dragon's tail, and my nativity was
under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and
lecherous. Fut, I should have been that I am, had the
maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my
bastardizing. Edgar—

18 K I N G LEAR 1.3.137

'Enter EDGAR*
Pat! he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy.
My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom
o' Bedlam—O these eclipses do portend these divisions.
140 [humming sadly] Fa, sol, la, me.
Edgar. How now, brother Edmund? What serious
contemplation are you in ?
Edmund. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read
this other day, what should follow these eclipses.
Edgar. Do you busy yourself with that?
Edmund. I promise you, the effects he writes of
succeed unhappily, as of unnaturalness between the
child and the parent, death, dearth, dissolutions of
ancient amities, divisions in state, menaces and male-
150 dictions against king and nobles, needless diffidences,
banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial
breaches, and I know not what.
Edgar. How long have you been a sectary astro-
nomical?
Edmund. When saw you my father last?
Edgar. The night gone by.
Edmund. Spake you with him?
Edgar. Ay, two hours together.
Edmund. Parted you in good terms? Found you no
160 displeasure in him, by word nor countenance?
Edgar. None at all.
Edmund. Bethink yourself wherein you may have
offended him; and at my entreaty forbear his presence
until some little time hath qualified the heat of his dis-
pleasure, which at this instant so rageth in him that
with the mischief of your person it would scarcely
allay.
Edgar. Some villain hath done me wrong.

x.2.169 KING LEAR 19

Edmund. That's my fear. I pray you have a continent
forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower; and, 170
as I say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence
I will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak. Pray ye,
go; there's my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed.
Edgar. Armed, brother?
Edmund. Brother, I advise you to the best. I am no
honest man if there be any good meaning toward you.
I have told you what I have seen and heard—but
faintly, nothing like the image and horror of it. Pray
you, away!.
Edgar. Shall I hear from you anon? 180
Edmund. I do serve you in this business. [Edgar goes
A credulous father! and a brother noble
Whose nature is so far from doing harms
That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty
My practices ride easy! I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;
All with me's meet that J can fashion fit. [he goes





[1. 3.] A room In the Duke of Albany's palace

Enter GONERIL and OSWALD, her steward
Qoneril. Did my father strike my gentleman for
chiding of his fool?
Oswald. Ay, madam.
Goneril. By day and night he wrongs me. Every hour
He flashes into one gross crime or other
That sets us all at odds. I'll not endure it.
His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us
On every trifle. When he returns from hunting
I will not speak with him: say I am sick.

ao KING LEAR 1.3.10

10 If you come slack of former services,
You shall do well; the fault of it I'll answer.
I horns heard
Oswald. He's coming, madam; I hear him.
Goneril. Put on what weary negligence you please,
You and your fellows; I'd have it come to question.
If he distaste it, let him to my sister,
Whose mind and mine I know in that are one,
Not to be overruled. Idle old man,
That still would manage those authorities
That he hath given away! Now, by my life,
20 Old fools are babes again, and must be used
With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abused.
Remember what I have said.
Oswald. Well, madam.
Goneril. And let his knights have colder looks
among you;
What grows of it, no matter. Advise your fellows so.
I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall,
That I may speak. I'll write straight to my sister
To hold my very course. Prepare for dinner.
{they go


[1.4.] A hall In the same

'Enter KENT 1 disguised
Kent. If but as well I other accents borrow,
That can my speech diffuse, my good intent
May carry through itself to that full issue
For which I razed my likeness. Now, banished Kent,
If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemned,
So may it come thy master whom thou lov'st
Shall find thee full of labours.

1.4.8 KING LEAR 21


Horns heard. LEAR enters from'huntings
with Knights and Attendants
Lear. Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it
ready. [Attendant goes out]
How now! what art thou? 10
Kent. A man, sir.
Lear. What dost thou profess? What would'st thou
with us?
Kent. I do profess to be no less than I seem, to serve
him truly that will put me in trust, to love him that is
honest, to converse with him that is wise and says little,
to fear judgement, to fight when I cannot choose, and
to eat no fish.
Lear. What art thou ?
Kent. A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as 20
the king.
Lear. If thou be'st as poor for a subject as he's for a
ling, thou art poor enough. What would'st thou?
Kent. Service.
Lear. Who would'st thou serve?
Kent. You.
Lear. Dost thou know me, fellow?
Kent. No, sir; but you have that in your countenance
which I would fain call master.
Lear. What's that? 30
Kent. Authority.
Lear. What services canst thou do?
Kent, I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a
curious tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message
bluntly; that which ordinary men are fit for I am
qualified in, and the best of me is diligence.
Lear. How old art thou ?
Kent. Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing,

zz KING LEAR 1.4.39
nor so old to dote on her for anything. I have years on
40 my back forty-eight.
Lear. Follow me; thou shalt serve me. If I like thee
no worse after dinner I will not part from thee yet.
Dinner, ho! dinner! Where's my knave? my fool? Go
you and call my fool hither. [Attendant goes out

Enter OSWALD
You! you, sirrah! Where's my daughter?
Oswald, [crossing the Aali without pausing] So please
you— [goes out
Lear. What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll
back! [Knight goes out] Where's my fool? Ho!
50 I think die world's asleep. [Knight returns] How now?
Where's that mongrel?
Knight. He says, my lord, your daughter is not well.
Lear. Why came not the slave back to me when I
called him?
Knight. Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner
he would not.
Lear. He would not?
Knight. My lord, I know not what the matter is,
but to my judgement your highness is not entertained
60 with that ceremonious affection as you were wont.
There's a great abatement of kindness appears as well in
the general dependants as in the duke himself also and
your daughter.
Lear. Ha! say'st thou so?
Knight. I beseech you pardon me, my lord, if I be
mistaken, for my duty cannot be silent when I think
your highness wronged.
Lear. Thou but rememb'rest me of mine own con-
ception. I have perceived a most faint neglect of late,
70 which I have rather blamed as mine own jealous

x.4.7t KING LEAR 23
curiosity than as a very pretence and purpose of un-
kindness; I will look farther into't. But where's my
fool? I have not seen him this two days.
Knight. Since my young lady's going into France, sir,
the fool hath much pined away.
Lear. No more of that; I have noted it well. Go you
and tell my daughter I would speak with her. [Atten-
dant goes out] Go you, call hither my fool. [Second
attendant goes out}
OSWALD returns

0 you sir, you, come you hither, sir. Who am I, sir?
Oswald. My lady's father. 80
Lear, [glares'] 'My lady's father', my lord's knave?
You whoreson dog, you slave, you cur!
Oswald, [glares back] I am none of these, my lord}
1 beseech your pardon.
Lear. Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?
[strikes Mm
Oswald. I'll not be strucken, my lord.
Kent. Nor tripped neither, you base football player.
[tripping up Ms heels
Lear. I thank thee, fellow. Thou serv'st me, and I'll
love thee.
Kent. Come, sir, arise, away! I'll teach you dif- 90
ferences. Away, away! If you will measure your
lubber's length again, tarry; but away! Go to; have
you wisdom? [Oswaldgoes] So.
Leaf. Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee. There's
earnest of thy service, [giving money]
Enter FOOL
Fool. Let me hire him too. Here's my coxcomb.
[offers Kent Ms cap

24 KING LEAR 1.4.97
Lear. How now, my pretty knave? How dost thou?
Fool. Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.
Kent. Why, fool?
100 Fool. Why? For taking one's part that's out of favour.
Nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou'lt
catch cold shortly. There, take my coxcomb! Why, this
fellow has banished two on's daughters, and did the
third a blessing against his will. If thou follow him thou
must needs wear my coxcomb. How now, nunclei
Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters!
Lear. Why, my boy?
Fool. If I gave them all my living, I'ld keep my cox-
combs myself. There's mine; beg another of thy
n o daughters.
Lear. Take heed, sirrah—the whip.
Fool. Truth's a dog must to kennel; he must be
whipped out, when the Lady's brach may stand by th,'
fire and stink.
Lear. A pestilent gall to me!
Fool. Sirrah, I'll teach thee a speech.
Lear. Do.
Fool. Mark it, nuncle!
Have more than thou showest,
12a Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score.
Kent. This is nothing, fool.
130 Fool. Then 'tis like the breath of an unfeed lawyer—

I.4.I3* KIN G LEAR 25
you gave me nothing for't. Can you make no use of
nothing, nuncle?
Lear. Why, no, boy; nothing Can be made out of
nothing.
Fool, [to Kent] Prithee tell him, so much the rent of
his land comes to. He will not believe a fool.
Lear. A bitter fool!
Fool. Dost thou know the difference, my boy, be-
tween a bitter fool and a sweet one?
Lear. No, lad; teach me. 140
Fool. That lord that counselled thee
To give away thy land,
Come place him here by me—
Do thou for him stand.
The sweet and bitter fool
Will presently appear:
The one in motley here,
pointing to himself
The other found out—there!
[pointing to Lear
Lear. Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool. All thy other titles thou hast given away; that 150
thou wast born with.
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:
and ladies too, they will not let me have all the fool to
myself; they'll be snatching. Nuncle, give me an egg,
and I'll give thee two crowns.
Lear. What two crowns shall they be ?
Fool. Why, after I have cut the egg i'th'middle and
eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou 160
clovest thy crown i'th'middle and gav'st away both
parts, thou bor'st thine ass on thy back o'er the dirt.