_Timon_, lastly, in some of the
unquestionably Shakespearean parts, bears (as it appears to me) so
strong a resemblance to _King Lear_ in style and in versification that
it is hard to understand how competent judges can suppose that it
belongs to a time at all near that of the final romances, or even that
it was written so late as the last Roman plays. It is more likely to
have been composed immediately after _King Lear_ and before
_Macbeth_.[125]
Drawing these comparisons together, we may say that, while as a work of
art and in tragic power _King Lear_ is infinitely nearer to _Othello_
than to _Timon_, in its spirit and substance its affinity with _Timon_
is a good deal the stronger. And, returning to the point from which
these comparisons began, I would now add that there is in _King Lear_ a
reflection or anticipation, however faint, of the structural weakness of
_Timon_. This weakness in _King Lear_ is not due, however, to anything
intrinsically undramatic in the story, but to characteristics which were
necessary to an effect not wholly dramatic. The stage is the test of
strictly dramatic quality, and _King Lear_ is too huge for the stage. Of
course, I am not denying that it is a great stage-play. It has scenes
immensely effective in the theatre; three of them--the two between Lear
and Goneril and between Lear, Goneril and Regan, and the ineffably
beautiful scene in the Fourth Act between Lear and Cordelia--lose in the
theatre very little of the spell they have for imagination; and the
gradual interweaving of the two plots is almost as masterly as in _Much
Ado_.
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