When he murmurs, 'Yet Edmund was beloved,' one
is almost in danger of forgetting that he had done much more than reject
the love of his father and half-brother. The passage is one of several
in Shakespeare's plays where it strikes us that he is recording some
fact about human nature with which he had actually met, and which had
seemed to him peculiarly strange.
What are we to say of the world which contains these five beings,
Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Cornwall, Oswald? I have tried to answer this
question in our first lecture; for in its representation of evil _King
Lear_ differs from the other tragedies only in degree and manner. It is
the tragedy in which evil is shown in the greatest abundance; and the
evil characters are peculiarly repellent from their hard savagery, and
because so little good is mingled with their evil. The effect is
therefore more startling than elsewhere; it is even appalling. But in
substance it is the same as elsewhere; and accordingly, although it may
be useful to recall here our previous discussion, I will do so only by
the briefest statement.
On the one hand we see a world which generates terrible evil in
profusion. Further, the beings in whom this evil appears at its
strongest are able, to a certain extent, to thrive.
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