If we ask why the world should generate that which convulses and wastes
it, the tragedy gives no answer, and we are trying to go beyond tragedy
in seeking one. But the world, in this tragic picture, is convulsed by
evil, and rejects it.
4
And if here there is 'very Night herself,' she comes 'with stars in her
raiment.' Cordelia, Kent, Edgar, the Fool--these form a group not less
remarkable than that which we have just left. There is in the world of
_King Lear_ the same abundance of extreme good as of extreme evil. It
generates in profusion self-less devotion and unconquerable love. And
the strange thing is that neither Shakespeare nor we are surprised. We
approve these characters, admire them, love them; but we feel no
mystery. We do not ask in bewilderment, Is there any cause in nature
that makes these kind hearts? Such hardened optimists are we, and
Shakespeare,--and those who find the darkness of revelation in a tragedy
which reveals Cordelia. Yet surely, if we condemn the universe for
Cordelia's death, we ought also to remember that it gave her birth. The
fact that Socrates was executed does not remove the fact that he lived,
and the inference thence to be drawn about the world that produced him.
Of these four characters Edgar excites the least enthusiasm, but he is
the one whose development is the most marked.
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