Those last thoughts are romantic in their
strangeness: Lear's five-times repeated 'Never,' in which the simplest
and most unanswerable cry of anguish rises note by note till the heart
breaks, is romantic in its naturalism; and to make a verse out of this
one word required the boldness as well as the inspiration which came
infallibly to Shakespeare at the greatest moments. But the familiarity,
boldness and inspiration are surpassed (if that can be) by the next
line, which shows the bodily oppression asking for bodily relief. The
imagination that produced Lear's curse or his defiance of the storm may
be paralleled in its kind, but where else are we to seek the imagination
that could venture to follow that cry of 'Never' with such a phrase as
'undo this button,' and yet could leave us on the topmost peaks of
poetry?[163]
2
Gloster and Albany are the two neutral characters of the tragedy. The
parallel between Lear and Gloster, already noticed, is, up to a certain
point, so marked that it cannot possibly be accidental. Both are old
white-haired men (III. vii. 37); both, it would seem, widowers, with
children comparatively young. Like Lear, Gloster is tormented, and his
life is sought, by the child whom he favours; he is tended and healed by
the child whom he has wronged.
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