A. C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 274

Table of Contents Previous Page Next Page

Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth.

2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1905.

PAGE 274
KING LEAR

are the sufferings of a strong man like Othello to those of helpless age? Much too that we have already observed -- the repetition of the main theme in that of the under-plot, the comparisons of man with the most wretched and the most horrible of the beasts, the impression of Nature's hostility to him, the irony of the unexpected catastrophe -- these, with much else, seem even to indicate an intention to show things at their worst, and to return the sternest of replies to that question of the ultimate power and those appeals for retribution. Is it an accident, for example, that Lear's first appeal to something beyond the earth,

                       O heavens,
If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
Allow¹ obedience, if yourselves are old,
Make it your cause:

is immediately answered by the iron voices of his daughters, raising by turns the conditions on which they will give him a humiliating harbourage; or that his second appeal, heartrending in its piteousness,

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both:

is immediately answered from the heavens by the sounds of the breaking storm?² Albany and Edgar may moralize on the divine justice as they will, but how, in face of all that we see, shall we believe that they speak Shakespeare's mind? Is not his mind rather expressed in the bitter contrast between their faith and the events we witness, or in the scornful rebuke of those who take upon them the mystery of things as if they were God's spies?³
   ¹= approve.
   ²The direction 'Storm and tempest' at the end of this speech is not modern, it is in the Folio.
   ³The gods are mentioned many times in King Lear, but 'God' only here (V. ii. 16).

Table of Contents Previous Page Next Page