But pity
begins to give way to another feeling when we witness the precipitance,
the despotism, the uncontrolled anger of his injustice to Cordelia and
Kent, and the 'hideous rashness' of his persistence in dividing the
kingdom after the rejection of his one dutiful child. We feel now the
presence of force, as well as weakness, but we feel also the presence of
the tragic [Greek: hubris]. Lear, we see, is generous and unsuspicious,
of an open and free nature, like Hamlet and Othello and indeed most of
Shakespeare's heroes, who in this, according to Ben Jonson, resemble the
poet who made them. Lear, we see, is also choleric by temperament--the
first of Shakespeare's heroes who is so. And a long life of absolute
power, in which he has been flattered to the top of his bent, has
produced in him that blindness to human limitations, and that
presumptuous self-will, which in Greek tragedy we have so often seen
stumbling against the altar of Nemesis. Our consciousness that the decay
of old age contributes to this condition deepens our pity and our sense
of human infirmity, but certainly does not lead us to regard the old
King as irresponsible, and so to sever the tragic _nexus_ which binds
together his error and his calamities.
The magnitude of this first error is generally fully recognised by the
reader owing to his sympathy with Cordelia, though, as we have seen, he
often loses the memory of it as the play advances.
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