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the trivial faults of the good are overwhelmed in the same ruin as the most revolting offences of the bad; with this difference, however, that whereas to the former purification and atonement (and consequently true life also) is conveyed in its annihilation, to the latter temporary destruction and punishment bring likewise eternal death.

"All the profound thoughtfulness on which the tragic view of the world ultimately rests, lies hidden in the deep meditative humour of the Fool, against which the tragic form of art is, as it were, broken, in order to display more clearly its inmost core. This genuine humour of the Fool plays, as it were, with the tragical; to it pain or pleasure, happiness or misery, are all the same; it makes a sport of the most heart-rending sufferings and misfortunes of earthly existence; even from death and destruction it can derive amusement. By these qualities he is raised high above this earthly existence; and he has already attained to that elevation of the human mind above all the pursuits or sorrows of this earthly life, which it is the end of this tragic art to set forth, and which is, as it were, personified in him. The humour itself is, in its very essence, the sublime of Comic. Although fully conscious of all the grave seriousness and responsibilities of life, in its profoundest depths, he yet pursues, even with this profundity and seriousness, his sportive mockery, and has no misgivings even, because he is raised far above this earth and its interests. To one who looks upon the whole of life as nothing, his outward position in it must be immaterial. Accordingly, the Fool departs from this life with a witticism in his mouth - He'll go to bed at noon.' But his sublime elevation is not a mere stoical indifference; it is united with the truest love and fidelity, and the most rare sympathy. His heartfelt sorrow for his dear Cordelia and his beloved King has sapped his life.

"Lear's madness, too, terminates with his mortal sigh for Cordelia's loss. In this moment of anguish all the rich intensity of love, which sat enthroned in the heart of Lear, has found its worthy object. While the faint sparks of life are extinguishing, his love puts off its last earthly weakness, and ascends purified and refined to heaven. The tragic impression loses its crushing and oppressive horror, and is transmuted into the calm consolatory feeling of a gentle death and a blissful peace."

VI. THE MADNESS OF KING LEAR.

"It is on the development of insanity, the gradual loosening of the mind from the props and supports of reason and of fact, the gradual transition of the feelings from their old habitudes and relations to morbid

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and perverted excess, the gradual exaggeration of some feelings and the extinction of others, and the utter loss of mental balance resulting therefrom; it is on this passage from the state of man, when reason is on its throne, to a state when the royal insignia of his pre-eminence among God's creatures are defaced, that the great dramatist loves to dwell. The wilfulness with which critics have refused to see the symptoms of insanity in Lear until the reasoning power itself has become undeniably alienated, is founded upon the view of mental disease which has, until recently, been entertained even by physicians, and which is still maintained in courts of law, namely, that insanity is an affection of the intellectual and not of the emotional part of man's nature. No state of the reasoning faculty can, by itself, be the cause or condition of madness; congenital idiocy and acquired dementia being alone excepted. The intellectual and excited babbling of the Fool and the exaggerated absurdities of Edgar are stated by Ulrici, and other critics, to exert a bad influence upon the king's mind. To persons unacquainted with the character of the insane, this opinion must seem, at least, to be highly probable, notwithstanding that the evidence of the drama itself is against it; for Lear is comparatively tranquil in conduct and language during the whole period of Edgar's mad companionship. The singular and undoubted fact was probably unknown to Ulrici, that few things tranquilize the insane more than the companionship of the insane. It is a fact not easily explicable, but it is one of which, either by the intuition of genius, or by the information of experience, Shakespeare appears to be aware." BUCKNILL.

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"In the anger and agony of Lear; in the muscular insanity with which he tries to grapple with fate, as if to catch it by the throat, and strangle it in mortal fight; in his measuring his passions with elemental forces; looking for sympathy with his age to the olden heavens, and finding in the hurricane but inadequate resemblance to the malignity of his daughters;-in all this we have no incidental ebullition: we have, in condensation, the wholeness of a life, the entireness of a self-willed, selfindulgent, impulsive mind, wrenched from all that kept it stable, and whirled into darkness, amidst tempest and convulsion -- the turbulence and fury of a most physical and most impassioned nature. It is thus that Shakespeare constantly shows us the radical nature of a man in his supreme trial, even in the wildness and terrors of insanity."

HENRY GILES.

"Edgar's assumed madness serves the great purpose of taking off part of the shock which would otherwise be caused by the true madness of Lear, and further displays the profound difference between the two. In every attempt at representing madness, throughout the whole range of dramatic literature, with the single exception of Lear, it is mere lightheadedness, as especially in Otway. In Edgar's ravings, Shakespeare all the while lets you see a fixed purpose, a practical end in view. In Lear's there is only the brooding of the one anguish, an eddy without progression." COLERIDGE.

VII. THE DRESSING, ETC., OF KING LEAR.

Guizot remarks that: "The time in which Shakespeare laid his action seems to have emancipated him from all conventional forms; and just as he felt no difficulty in placing a King of France, a Duke of Albany, and a Duke of Cornwall eight hundred years [and more] before the Christian era, so he felt no necessity for connecting the language and the characters of his drama with any determinate period." And Dr. Johnson says, in a kindred vein, that: "Shakespeare, by the mention of his earls and dukes [in this tragedy], has given us the idea of times more civilized and of life regulated by softer manners." - These views indicate the usage proper to be followed in mounting and dressing "King Lear." The Britons of A. M. 3105 probably wore skins-principally their own. The tragedy should be dressed according to the civilization of a much later period, with rude fabrics, but with some pomp and richness. The time of the action of this tragedy cannot be determined with absolute precision. Immediately after the partition of the kingdom is accomplished, Lear departs to the castle of Goneril. The first quarrel occurs before the close of the first month-apparently-of his residence in that place. There is nothing, however, to make it certain that this breach should not be referred to a later time - the third month or the fifth. It is here assumed, however, to occur in the first. Then comes the quarrel with Regan, which the text distinctly places within two days after the quarrel with Goneril. The incidents of the night and tempest, upon the heath, immediately follow. Three acts of the piece are thus comprised within less than a month. It seems sufficient to allow about three weeks for the military proceedings which bring on the final catastrophe. The scrupulous analyst of the text obtains many side lights upon points of this class: such as Lear's reference to his dead wife, and Regan's remembrance that Edgar, when an infant, received his name from Lear.

NEW-YORK, March 30th, 1878.

W. W.

JULIUS CAESAR

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