'
But are we so sure that we are right when we unreservedly condemn the
feeling which prompted these alterations, or at all events the feeling
which beyond question comes naturally to many readers of _King Lear_ who
would like Tate as little as we? What they wish, though they have not
always the courage to confess it even to themselves, is that the deaths
of Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Gloster should be followed by the escape
of Lear and Cordelia from death, and that we should be allowed to
imagine the poor old King passing quietly in the home of his beloved
child to the end which cannot be far off. Now, I do not dream of saying
that we ought to wish this, so long as we regard _King Lear_ simply as a
work of poetic imagination. But if _King Lear_ is to be considered
strictly as a drama, or simply as we consider _Othello_, it is not so
clear that the wish is unjustified. In fact I will take my courage in
both hands and say boldly that I share it, and also that I believe
Shakespeare would have ended his play thus had he taken the subject in
hand a few years later, in the days of _Cymbeline_ and the _Winter's
Tale_. If I read _King Lear_ simply as a drama, I find that my feelings
call for this 'happy ending.' I do not mean the human, the
philanthropic, feelings, but the dramatic sense.
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