'
And then--so it naturally seemed to him--she put him to open shame.
There is a further point, which seems to have escaped the attention of
Coleridge and others. Part of the absurdity of Lear's plan is taken to
be his idea of living with his three daughters in turn. But he never
meant to do this. He meant to live with Cordelia, and with her
alone.[127] The scheme of his alternate monthly stay with Goneril and
Regan is forced on him at the moment by what he thinks the undutifulness
of his favourite child. In fact his whole original plan, though foolish
and rash, was not a 'hideous rashness'[128] or incredible folly. If
carried out it would have had no such consequences as followed its
alteration. It would probably have led quickly to war,[129] but not to
the agony which culminated in the storm upon the heath. The first scene,
therefore, is not absurd, though it must be pronounced dramatically
faulty in so far as it discloses the true position of affairs only to an
attention more alert than can be expected in a theatrical audience or
has been found in many critics of the play.
Let us turn next to two passages of another kind, the two which are
mainly responsible for the accusation of excessive painfulness, and so
for the distaste of many readers and the long theatrical eclipse of
_King Lear_.
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