King Lear

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

one of Shakespeare's great tragedies. It was written in 1605 and was published in 1608. The story of Lear and his three daughters is an old one. It is found in the Gesta Romanorum and in the Holinshed Chronicle. Layamon told it in Brut, Geoffrey of Monmouth gives a version of it in Historia Regum Britanniae, and Spenser tells it in the Faerie Queene. There is also an old ballad of King Leir and His Three Daughters, although this may have been written after Shakespeare's play appeared. An old play of King Leir, which had been acted many times, last in 1594, was published shortly before Shakespeare's Lear. This play is not a tragedy, the story having a happy ending. Shakespeare's King Lear is tragedy in the most sublime, the most awful sense of the word. The injustice of a father to a noble daughter, the ingratitude of selfish daughters toward an indulgent and affectionate father, the tenderest of human affections thus outraged--this is Shakespeare's theme--which he has so handled that "in every act the pity and terror of which tragedy is capable reach the climax." As Rolfe says, "To presume to comment upon Lear seems little short of profanity." Two characters in the play have given rise to much discussion. King Lear himself--"the very foolish, fond old man, fourscore and upward," is regarded by certain critics as insane from the beginning of the play. Others claim that he is insane only after the ill-treatment received at the hands of his daughters. It is an interesting fact that several physicians, experts in insanity, have written essays to prove the insanity of Lear from the opening scene. Their opinions may be received with all respect without being accepted as a proof that Shakespeare intended to represent Lear as insane. Shakespeare may have pictured a personality truthfully without himself understanding the cause of the peculiarities that characterize it. Another subject much discussed is the character of Cordelia. Cordelia is true, pure, brave, womanly; yet all her own troubles and her father's woes are a result of her refusal to give expression to the filial affection which no one can doubt she feels. Is she of so reticent a nature that it is impossible, as she herself says, for her to "heave her heart into her mouth?" Or is she simply obstinate and selfwilled? Cordelia cannot foresee the result of her act. She does see that she is wounding her father when she maintains that she loves him only as is due from child to father, "no more, no less." She knows, however, as no one else knows, the hard and selfish nature of her sisters, and the expressions of affection which she would have given readily enough to her father had she been alone with him, she cannot bring herself to utter after the insincere exaggeration of these heartless and grasping women. Any honest asseveration of love would have fallen flat after their hypocrisy.