They show that, although
he has already recognised his injustice towards Cordelia, is secretly
blaming himself, and is endeavouring to do better, the disposition from
which his first error sprang is still unchanged. And it is precisely the
disposition to give rise, in evil surroundings, to calamities dreadful
but at the same time tragic, because due in some measure to the person
who endures them.
The perception of this connection, if it is not lost as the play
advances, does not at all diminish our pity for Lear, but it makes it
impossible for us permanently to regard the world displayed in this
tragedy as subject to a mere arbitrary or malicious power. It makes us
feel that this world is so far at least a rational and a moral order,
that there holds in it the law, not of proportionate requital, but of
strict connection between act and consequence. It is, so far, the world
of all Shakespeare's tragedies.
But there is another aspect of Lear's story, the influence of which
modifies, in a way quite different and more peculiar to this tragedy,
the impressions called pessimistic and even this impression of law.
There is nothing more noble and beautiful in literature than
Shakespeare's exposition of the effect of suffering in reviving the
greatness and eliciting the sweetness of Lear's nature.
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