' Cf. _Oxford Lectures_, p. 341.]
[Footnote 147: With this compare the following lines in the great speech
on 'degree' in _Troilus and Cressida_, I. iii.:
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.]
[Footnote 148: Nor is it believable that Shakespeare, whose means of
imitating a storm were so greatly inferior even to ours, had the
stage-performance only or chiefly in view in composing these scenes. He
may not have thought of readers (or he may), but he must in any case
have written to satisfy his own imagination. I have taken no notice of
the part played in these scenes by anyone except Lear.
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