But then, as we saw, neither do Shakespeare's
other tragedies contain these things. Any theological interpretation of
the world on the author's part is excluded from them, and their effect
would be disordered or destroyed equally by the ideas of righteous or of
unrighteous omnipotence. Nor, in reading them, do we think of 'justice'
or 'equity' in the sense of a strict requital or such an adjustment of
merit and prosperity as our moral sense is said to demand; and there
never was vainer labour than that of critics who try to make out that
the persons in these dramas meet with 'justice' or their 'deserts.'[157]
But, on the other hand, man is not represented in these tragedies as the
mere plaything of a blind or capricious power, suffering woes which have
no relation to his character and actions; nor is the world represented
as given over to darkness. And in these respects _King Lear_, though the
most terrible of these works, does not differ in essence from the rest.
Its keynote is surely to be heard neither in the words wrung from
Gloster in his anguish, nor in Edgar's words 'the gods are just.' Its
final and total result is one in which pity and terror, carried perhaps
to the extreme limits of art, are so blended with a sense of law and
beauty that we feel at last, not depression and much less despair, but a
consciousness of greatness in pain, and of solemnity in the mystery we
cannot fathom.
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