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_Tolstoy on Shakespeare_
Tolstoy on Shakespeare
_A critical Essay on Shakespeare_
By
LEO TOLSTOY
_Translated by V. Tchertkoff and I. F. M._
Followed by
Shakespeare's Attitude to the Working Classes
By
ERNEST CROSBY
And a Letter From
G. BERNARD SHAW
NEW YORK & LONDON
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
1906
_This Volume is issued by arrangement with V. Tchertkoff, sole literary
representative of Leo Tolstoy outside Russia, and Editor of "The Free
Age Press," Christchurch, Hants._
NO RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published, November, 1906_
CONTENTS
PART I
PAGE
TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 1
PART II
APPENDIX
I. SHAKESPEARE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE
WORKING CLASSES, BY ERNEST CROSBY, 127
II. LETTER FROM MR. G. BERNARD SHAW, 166
PART I
TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE
I
Mr. Crosby's article[1] on Shakespeare's attitude toward the working
classes suggested to me the idea of also expressing my own
long-established opinion about the works of Shakespeare, in direct
opposition, as it is, to that established in all the whole European world.
Calling to mind all the struggle of doubt and self-deceit,--efforts to
attune myself to Shakespeare--which I went through owing to my complete
disagreement with this universal adulation, and, presuming that many have
experienced and are experiencing the same, I think that it may not be
unprofitable to express definitely and frankly this view of mine, opposed
to that of the majority, and the more so as the conclusions to which I
came, when examining the causes of my disagreement with the universally
established opinion, are, it seems to me, not without interest and
significance.
My disagreement with the established opinion about Shakespeare is not
the result of an accidental frame of mind, nor of a light-minded
attitude toward the matter, but is the outcome of many years' repeated
and insistent endeavors to harmonize my own views of Shakespeare with
those established amongst all civilized men of the Christian world.
I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I
expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one
after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and
Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I
felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I
was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by
the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or
whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the
works of Shakespeare was itself senseless. My consternation was
increased by the fact that I always keenly felt the beauties of
poetry in every form; then why should artistic works recognized by the
whole world as those of a genius,--the works of Shakespeare,--not only
fail to please me, but be disagreeable to me? For a long time I could
not believe in myself, and during fifty years, in order to test
myself, I several times recommenced reading Shakespeare in every
possible form, in Russian, in English, in German and in Schlegel's
translation, as I was advised. Several times I read the dramas and the
comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same
feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time,
before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself,
I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of
Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "Henrys," "Troilus
and Cressida," the "Tempest," "Cymbeline," and I have felt, with even
greater force, the same feelings,--this time, however, not of
bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the
unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and
which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and
spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,--thereby
distorting their esthetic and ethical understanding,--is a great evil,
as is every untruth.
Altho I know that the majority of people so firmly believe in the
greatness of Shakespeare that in reading this judgment of mine they will
not admit even the possibility of its justice, and will not give it the
slightest attention, nevertheless I will endeavor, as well as I can, to
show why I believe that Shakespeare can not be recognized either as a
great genius, or even as an average author.
For illustration of my purpose I will take one of Shakespeare's most
extolled dramas, "King Lear," in the enthusiastic praise of which, the
majority of critics agree.
"The tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of
Shakespeare," says Dr. Johnson. "There is perhaps no play which keeps
the attention so strongly fixed, which so much agitates our passions,
and interests our curiosity."
"We wish that we could pass this play over and say nothing about it,"
says Hazlitt, "all that we can say must fall far short of the subject,
or even of what we ourselves conceive of it. To attempt to give a
description of the play itself, or of its effects upon the mind, is mere
impertinence; yet we must say something. It is, then, the best of
Shakespeare's plays, for it is the one in which he was the most in
earnest."
"If the originality of invention did not so much stamp almost every play
of Shakespeare," says Hallam, "that to name one as the most original
seems a disparagement to others, we might say that this great
prerogative of genius, was exercised above all in 'Lear.' It diverges
more from the model of regular tragedy than 'Macbeth,' or 'Othello,' and
even more than 'Hamlet,' but the fable is better constructed than in the
last of these and it displays full as much of the almost superhuman
inspiration of the poet as the other two."
"'King Lear' may be recognized as the perfect model of the dramatic art
of the whole world," says Shelley.
"I am not minded to say much of Shakespeare's Arthur," says Swinburne.
"There are one or two figures in the world of his work of which there
are no words that would be fit or good to say. Another of these is
Cordelia. The place they have in our lives and thoughts is not one for
talk. The niche set apart for them to inhabit in our secret hearts is
not penetrable by the lights and noises of common day. There are chapels
in the cathedrals of man's highest art, as in that of his inmost life,
not made to be set open to the eyes and feet of the world. Love, and
Death, and Memory, keep charge for us in silence of some beloved names.
It is the crowning glory of genius, the final miracle and transcendent
gift of poetry, that it can add to the number of these and engrave on
the very heart of our remembrance fresh names and memories of its own
creation."
"Lear is the occasion for Cordelia," says Victor Hugo. "Maternity of the
daughter toward the father; profound subject; maternity venerable among
all other maternities, so admirably rendered by the legend of that Roman
girl, who, in the depths of a prison, nurses her old father. The young
breast near the white beard! There is not a spectacle more holy. This
filial breast is Cordelia. Once this figure dreamed of and found,
Shakespeare created his drama.... Shakespeare, carrying Cordelia in his
thoughts, created that tragedy like a god who, having an aurora to put
forward, makes a world expressly for it."
"In 'King Lear,' Shakespeare's vision sounded the abyss of horror to its
very depths, and his spirit showed neither fear, nor giddiness, nor
faintness, at the sight," says Brandes. "On the threshold of this work,
a feeling of awe comes over one, as on the threshold of the Sistine
Chapel, with its ceiling of frescoes by Michael Angelo,--only that the
suffering here is far more intense, the wail wilder, and the harmonies
of beauty more definitely shattered by the discords of despair."
Such are the judgments of the critics about this drama, and therefore I
believe I am not wrong in selecting it as a type of Shakespeare's best.
As impartially as possible, I will endeavor to describe the contents of
the drama, and then to show why it is not that acme of perfection it is
represented to be by critics, but is something quite different.
II
The drama of "Lear" begins with a scene giving the conversation between
two courtiers, Kent and Gloucester. Kent, pointing to a young man
present, asks Gloucester whether that is not his son. Gloucester says
that he has often blushed to acknowledge the young man as his son, but
has now ceased doing so. Kent says he "can not conceive him." Then
Gloucester in the presence of this son of his says: "The fellow's mother
could, and grew round-wombed, and had a son for her cradle ere she had a
husband for her bed." "I have another, a legitimate son," continues
Gloucester, "but altho this one came into the world before he was sent
for, his mother was fair and there was good sport at his making, and
therefore I acknowledge this one also."
Such is the introduction. Not to mention the coarseness of these words
of Gloucester, they are, farther, out of place in the mouth of a person
intended to represent a noble character. One can not agree with the
opinion of some critics that these words are given to Gloucester in
order to show the contempt for his illegitimacy from which Edmund
suffers. Were this so, it would first have been unnecessary to make the
father express the contempt felt by men in general, and, secondly,
Edmund, in his monolog about the injustice of those who despise him for
his birth, would have mentioned such words from his father. But this is
not so, and therefore these words of Gloucester at the very beginning of
the piece, were merely intended as a communication to the public--in a
humorous form--of the fact that Gloucester has a legitimate son and an
illegitimate one.
After this, trumpets are blown, and King Lear enters with his daughters
and sons-in-law, and utters a speech to the effect that, owing to old
age, he wishes to retire from the cares of business and divide his
kingdom between his daughters. In order to know how much he should give
to each daughter, he announces that to the one who says she loves him
most he will give most. The eldest daughter, Goneril, says that words
can not express the extent of her love, that she loves her father more
than eyesight, space, and liberty, loves him so much that it "makes her
breath poor." King Lear immediately allots his daughter on the map, her
portion of fields, woods, rivers, and meadows, and asks the same
question of the second daughter. The second daughter, Regan, says that
her sister has correctly expressed her own feelings, only not strongly
enough. She, Regan, loves her father so much that everything is
abhorrent to her except his love. The king rewards this daughter, also,
and then asks his youngest, the favorite, in whom, according to his
expression, are "interess'd the vines of France and the milk of
Burgundy," that is, whose hand is being claimed by the King of France
and the Duke of Burgundy,--he asks Cordelia how she loves him. Cordelia,
who personifies all the virtues, as the eldest two all the vices, says,
quite out of place, as if on purpose to irritate her father, that altho
she loves and honors him, and is grateful to him, yet if she marries,
all her love will not belong to her father, but she will also love her
husband.
Hearing these words, the King loses his temper, and curses this favorite
daughter with the most dreadful and strange maledictions, saying, for
instance, that he will henceforth love his daughter as little as he
loves the man who devours his own children.
"The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved.
As thou, my sometime daughter."
The courtier, Kent, defends Cordelia, and desiring to appease the King,
rebukes him for his injustice, and says reasonable things about the evil
of flattery. Lear, unmoved by Kent, banishes him under pain of death,
and calling to him Cordelia's two suitors, the Duke of Burgundy and the
King of France, proposes to them in turn to take Cordelia without dowry.
The Duke of Burgundy frankly says that without dowry he will not take
Cordelia, but the King of France takes her without dowry and leads her
away. After this, the elder sisters, there and then entering into
conversation, prepare to injure their father who had endowed them. Thus
ends the first scene.
Not to mention the pompous, characterless language of King Lear, the
same in which all Shakespeare's Kings speak, the reader, or spectator,
can not conceive that a King, however old and stupid he may be, could
believe the words of the vicious daughters, with whom he had passed his
whole life, and not believe his favorite daughter, but curse and banish
her; and therefore the spectator, or reader, can not share the feelings
of the persons participating in this unnatural scene.
The second scene opens with Edmund, Gloucester's illegitimate son,
soliloquizing on the injustice of men, who concede rights and respect to
the legitimate son, but deprive the illegitimate son of them, and he
determines to ruin Edgar, and to usurp his place. For this purpose, he
forges a letter to himself as from Edgar, in which the latter expresses
a desire to murder his father. Awaiting his father's approach, Edmund,
as if against his will, shows him this letter, and the father
immediately believes that his son Edgar, whom he tenderly loves, desires
to kill him. The father goes away, Edgar enters and Edmund persuades him
that his father for some reason desires to kill him. Edgar immediately
believes this and flees from his parent.
The relations between Gloucester and his two sons, and the feelings of
these characters are as unnatural as Lear's relation to his daughters,
or even more so, and therefore it is still more difficult for the
spectator to transport himself into the mental condition of Gloucester
and his sons and sympathize with them, than it is to do so into that of
Lear and his daughters.
In the fourth scene, the banished Kent, so disguised that Lear does not
recognize him, presents himself to Lear, who is already staying with
Goneril. Lear asks who he is, to which Kent answers, one doesn't know
why, in a tone quite inappropriate to his position: "A very
honest-hearted fellow and as poor as the King."--"If thou be as poor for
a subject as he is for a King, thou art poor enough--How old art thou?"
asks the King. "Not so young, Sir, to love a woman, _etc._, nor so old
to dote on her." To this the King says, "If I like thee no worse after
dinner, I will not part from thee yet."
These speeches follow neither from Lear's position, nor his relation to
Kent, but are put into the mouths of Lear and Kent, evidently because
the author regards them as witty and amusing.
Goneril's steward appears, and behaves rudely to Lear, for which Kent
knocks him down. The King, still not recognizing Kent, gives him money
for this and takes him into his service. After this appears the fool,
and thereupon begins a prolonged conversation between the fool and the
King, utterly unsuited to the position and serving no purpose. Thus, for
instance, the fool says, "Give me an egg and I'll give thee two crowns."
The King asks, "What crowns shall they be?"--"Why," says the fool,
"after I have cut the egg i' the middle, and eat up the meat, the two
crowns of the egg. When thou clovest thy crown i' the middle, and gavest
away both parts, thou borest thine ass on thy back o'er the dirt: thou
hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gavest thy golden one away.
If I speak like myself in this, let him be whipp'd that first finds it
so."
In this manner lengthy conversations go on calling forth in the
spectator or reader that wearisome uneasiness which one experiences when
listening to jokes which are not witty.
This conversation was interrupted by the approach of Goneril. She
demands of her father that he should diminish his retinue; that he
should be satisfied with fifty courtiers instead of a hundred. At this
suggestion, Lear gets into a strange and unnatural rage, and asks:
"Doth any here know me? This is not Lear:
Does Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied. Ha! 'tis not so.
Who is it that can tell me who I am?"
And so forth.
While this goes on the fool does not cease to interpolate his humorless
jokes. Goneril's husband then enters and wishes to appease Lear, but
Lear curses Goneril, invoking for her either sterility or the birth of
such an infant-monster as would return laughter and contempt for her
motherly cares, and would thus show her all the horror and pain caused
by a child's ingratitude.
These words which express a genuine feeling, might have been touching
had they stood alone. But they are lost among long and high-flown
speeches, which Lear keeps incessantly uttering quite inappropriately.
He either invokes "blasts and fogs" upon the head of his daughter, or
desires his curse to "pierce every sense about her," or else appealing
to his own eyes, says that should they weep, he will pluck them out and
"cast them with the waters that they lose to temper clay." And so on.
After this, Lear sends Kent, whom he still fails to recognize, to his
other daughter, and notwithstanding the despair he has just manifested,
he talks with the fool, and elicits his jokes. The jokes continue to be
mirthless and besides creating an unpleasant feeling, similar to shame,
the usual effect of unsuccessful witticisms, they are also so drawn out
as to be positively dull. Thus the fool asks the King whether he can
tell why one's nose stands in the middle of one's face? Lear says he can
not.--
"Why, to keep one's eyes of either side 's nose, that what a
man can not smell out, he may spy out."
"Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?"
"No."
"Nor I either; but I can tell why a snail has a house."
"Why?"
"Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his
daughters and leave his horns without a case."
"----Be my horses ready?"
"Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the seven
stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason."
"Because they are not eight?"
"Yes, indeed: thou would'st make a good fool."
And so on.
After this lengthy scene, a gentleman enters and announces that the
horses are ready. The fool says:
"She that's a maid now, and laughs at my departure,
Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter."
The second part of the first scene of the second act begins by the
villain Edmund persuading his brother, when their father enters, to
pretend that they are fighting with their swords. Edgar consents, altho
it is utterly incomprehensible why he should do so. The father finds
them fighting. Edgar flies and Edmund scratches his arm to draw blood
and persuades his father that Edgar was working charms for the purpose
of killing his father and had desired Edmund to help him, but that he,
Edmund, had refused and that then Edgar flew at him and wounded his arm.
Gloucester believes everything, curses Edgar and transfers all the
rights of the elder and legitimate son to the illegitimate Edmund. The
Duke, hearing of this, also rewards Edmund.
In the second scene, in front of Gloucester's palace, Lear's new
servant, Kent, still unrecognized by Lear, without any reason, begins to
abuse Oswald, Goneril's steward, calling him,--"A knave, a rascal, an
eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave;--the son and heir of a
mongrel bitch." And so on. Then drawing his sword, he demands that
Oswald should fight with him, saying that he will make a "sop o' the
moonshine" of him,--words which no commentators can explain. When he is
stopped, he continues to give vent to the strangest abuse, saying that a
tailor made Oswald, as "a stone-cutter or a painter could not have made
him so ill, tho they had been but two hours o' the trade!" He further
says that, if only leave be given him, he will "tread this unbolted
villain into mortar and daub the wall of a jakes with him."
Thus Kent, whom nobody recognizes, altho both the King and the Duke of
Cornwall, as well as Gloucester who is present, ought to know him well,
continues to brawl, in the character of Lear's new servant, until he is
taken and put in the stocks.
The third scene takes place on a heath. Edgar, flying from the
persecutions of his father, hides in a wood and tells the public what
kind of lunatics exist there--beggars who go about naked, thrust wooden
pricks and pins into their flesh, scream with wild voices and enforce
charity, and says that he wishes to simulate such a lunatic in order to
save himself from persecution. Having communicated this to the public,
he retires.
The fourth scene is again before Gloucester's castle. Enter Lear and the
fool. Lear sees Kent in the stocks, and, still not recognizing him, is
inflamed with rage against those who dared so to insult his messenger,
and calls for the Duke and Regan. The fool goes on with his jokes.
Lear with difficulty restrains his ire. Enter the Duke and Regan. Lear
complains of Goneril but Regan justifies her sister. Lear curses
Goneril, and, when Regan tells him he had better return to her sister,
he is indignant and says: "Ask her forgiveness?" and falls down on his
knees demonstrating how indecent it would be if he were abjectly to beg
food and clothing as charity from his own daughter, and he curses
Goneril with the strangest curses and asks who put his servant in the
stocks. Before Regan can answer, Goneril arrives. Lear becomes yet more
exasperated and again curses Goneril, but when he is told that it was
the Duke himself who ordered the stocks, he does not say anything,
because, at this moment, Regan tells him that she can not receive him
now and that he had best return to Goneril, and that in a month's time
she herself will receive him, with, however, not a hundred but fifty
servants. Lear again curses Goneril and does not want to go to her,
continuing to hope that Regan will accept him with the whole hundred
servants. But Regan says she will receive him only with twenty-five and
then Lear makes up his mind to go back to Goneril who admits fifty. But
when Goneril says that even twenty-five are too many, Lear pours forth a
long argument about the superfluous and the needful being relative and
says that if man is not allowed more than he needs, he is not to be
distinguished from a beast. Lear, or rather the actor who plays Lear's
part, adds that there is no need for a lady's finery, which does not
keep her warm. After this he flies into a mad fury and says that to take
vengeance on his daughters he will do something dreadful but that he
will not weep, and so he departs. A storm begins.
Such is the second act, full of unnatural events, and yet more unnatural
speeches, not flowing from the position of the characters,--and
finishing with a scene between Lear and his daughters which might have
been powerful if it had not been permeated with the most absurdly
foolish, unnatural speeches--which, moreover, have no relation to the
subject,--put into the mouth of Lear. Lear's vacillations between pride,
anger, and the hope of his daughters' giving in, would be exceedingly
touching if it were not spoilt by the verbose absurdities to which he
gives vent, about being ready to divorce himself from Regan's dead
mother, should Regan not be glad to receive him,--or about his calling
down "fen suck'd frogs" which he invokes, upon the head of his daughter,
or about the heavens being obliged to patronize old people because they
themselves are old.
The third act begins with thunder, lightning, a storm of some special
kind such as, according to the words of the characters in the piece, had
never before taken place. On the heath, a gentleman tells Kent that
Lear, banished by his daughters from their homes, is running about the
heath alone, tearing his hair and throwing it to the wind, and that none
but the fool is with him. In return Kent tells the gentleman that the
dukes have quarrelled, and that the French army has landed at Dover,
and, having communicated this intelligence, he dispatches the gentleman
to Dover to meet Cordelia.
The second scene of the third act also takes place on the heath, but in
another part of it. Lear walks about the heath and says words which are
meant to express his despair: he desires that the winds should blow so
hard that they should crack their cheeks and that the rain should flood
everything, that lightning should singe his white head, and the thunder
flatten the world and destroy all germens "that make ungrateful man!"
The fool keeps uttering still more senseless words. Enter Kent. Lear
says that for some reason during this storm all criminals shall be found
out and convicted. Kent, still unrecognized by Lear, endeavors to
persuade him to take refuge in a hovel. At this point the fool
pronounces a prophecy in no wise related to the situation and they all
depart.
The third scene is again transferred to Gloucester's castle. Gloucester
tells Edmund that the French King has already landed with his troops,
and intends to help Lear. Learning this, Edmund decides to accuse his
father of treason in order that he may get his heritage.
The fourth scene is again on the heath in front of the hovel. Kent
invites Lear into the hovel, but Lear answers that he has no reason to
shelter himself from the tempest, that he does not feel it, having a
tempest in his mind, called forth by the ingratitude of his daughters,
which extinguishes all else. This true feeling, expressed in simple
words, might elicit sympathy, but amidst the incessant, pompous raving
it escapes one and loses its significance.
The hovel into which Lear is led, turns out to be the same which Edgar
has entered, disguised as a madman, _i.e._, naked. Edgar comes out of
the hovel, and, altho all have known him, no one recognizes him,--as no
one recognizes Kent,--and Edgar, Lear, and the fool begin to say
senseless things which continue with interruptions for many pages. In
the middle of this scene, enter Gloucester, who also does not recognize
either Kent or his son Edgar, and tells them how his son Edgar wanted to
kill him.
This scene is again cut short by another in Gloucester's castle, during
which Edmund betrays his father and the Duke promises to avenge himself
on Gloucester. Then the scene shifts back to Lear. Kent, Edgar,
Gloucester, Lear, and the fool are at a farm and talking. Edgar says:
"Frateretto calls me, and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake of
darkness...." The fool says: "Tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or
a yeoman?" Lear, having lost his mind, says that the madman is a king.
The fool says no, the madman is the yeoman who has allowed his son to
become a gentleman. Lear screams: "To have a thousand with red burning
spirits. Come hissing in upon 'em,"--while Edgar shrieks that the foul
fiend bites his back. At this the fool remarks that one can not believe
"in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's
oath." Then Lear imagines he is judging his daughters. "Sit thou here,
most learned justicer," says he, addressing the naked Edgar; "Thou,
sapient sir, sit here. Now, you she foxes." To this Edgar says: "Look
where he stands and glares! Wantest thou eyes at trial, madam?" "Come
o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me,----" while the fool sings:
"Her boat hath a leak
And she must not speak
Why she dares not come over to thee."
Edgar goes on in his own strain. Kent suggests that Lear should lie
down, but Lear continues his imaginary trial: "Bring in their evidence,"
he cries. "Thou robed man of justice, take thy place," he says to Edgar,
"and thou" (to the fool) "his yoke-fellow of equity, bench by his side.
You are o' the commission, sit you too," addressing Kent.
"Purr, the cat is gray," shouts Edgar.
"Arraign her first, 'tis Goneril," cries Lear. "I here take my oath
before this honorable assembly, she kicked the poor king, her father."
"Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?" says the fool, addressing
the seat.
"And here's another," cries Lear. "Stop her there! arms, arms, sword,
fire! Corruption in the place! False justice, why hast thou let her
'scape?"
This raving terminates by Lear falling asleep and Gloucester persuading
Kent, still without recognizing him, to carry Lear to Dover, and Kent
and the fool carry off the King.
The scene is transferred to Gloucester's castle. Gloucester himself is
about to be accused of treason. He is brought forward and bound. The
Duke of Cornwall plucks out one of his eyes and sets his foot on it.
Regan says, "One side will mock another; the other too." The Duke wishes
to pluck the other out also, but some servant, for some reason, suddenly
takes Gloucester's part and wounds the Duke. Regan kills the servant,
who, dying, says to Gloucester that he has "one eye left to see some
mischief on him." The Duke says, "Lest it see more, prevent it," and he
tears out Gloucester's other eye and throws it on the ground. Here Regan
says that it was Edmund who betrayed his father and then Gloucester
immediately understands that he has been deceived and that Edgar did not
wish to kill him.
Thus ends the third act.
The fourth act is again on the heath. Edgar, still attired as a lunatic,
soliloquizes in stilted terms about the instability of fortune and the
advantages of a humble lot. Then there comes to him somehow into the
very place on the heath where he is, his father, the blinded Gloucester,
led by an old man. In that characteristic Shakespearean language,--the
chief peculiarity of which is that the thoughts are bred either by the
consonance or the contrasts of words,--Gloucester also speaks about the
instability of fortune. He tells the old man who leads him to leave him,
but the old man points out to him that he can not _see_ his way.
Gloucester says he has no way and therefore does not require _eyes_. And
he argues about his having stumbled when he _saw_, and about defects
often proving commodities. "Ah! dear son Edgar," he adds, "might I but
live to _see_ thee in my touch, I'd say I had _eyes_ again." Edgar
naked, and in the character of a lunatic, hearing this, still does not
disclose himself to his father. He takes the place of the aged guide and
talks with his father, who does not recognize his voice, but regards him
as a wandering madman. Gloucester avails himself of the opportunity to
deliver himself of a witticism: "'Tis the times' plague when madmen lead
the blind," and he insists on dismissing the old man, obviously not from
motives which might be natural to Gloucester at that moment, but merely
in order, when left alone with Edgar, to enact the later scene of the
imaginary leaping from the cliff.
Notwithstanding Edgar has just seen his blinded father, and has learnt
that his father repents of having banished him, he puts in utterly
unnecessary interjections which Shakespeare might know, having read them
in Haronet's book, but which Edgar had no means of becoming acquainted
with, and above all, which it was quite unnatural for him to repeat in
his present position. He says, "Five friends have been in poor Tom at
once: of lust, as Obidient; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of
stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who
since possesses chambermaids and waiting women."
Hearing these words, Gloucester makes a present of his purse to Edgar,
saying:
"That I am so wretched
Makes thee the happier; heavens, deal so still,
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly.
So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough."
Having pronounced these strange words, the blind Gloucester requests
Edgar to lead him to a certain cliff overhanging the sea, and they
depart.
The second scene of the fourth act takes place before the Duke of
Albany's palace. Goneril is not only cruel, but also depraved. She
despises her husband and discloses her love to the villain Edmund, who
has inherited the title of his father Gloucester. Edmund leaves, and a
conversation takes place between Goneril and her husband. The Duke of
Albany, the only figure with human feelings, who had already previously
been dissatisfied with his wife's treatment of her father, now
resolutely takes Lear's side, but expresses his emotion in such words as
to shake one's confidence in his feeling. He says that a bear would lick
Lear's reverence, that if the heavens do not send their visible spirits
to tame these vile offenses, humanity must prey on itself like monsters,
etc.
Goneril does not listen to him, and then he begins to abuse her:
"See thyself, devil!
Proper deformity seems not in the fiend
So horrid as in woman."
"O vain fool," says Goneril. "Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for
shame," continues the Duke:
"Be-monster not thy feature. Were't my fitness
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
Thy flesh and bones; howe'er thou art a fiend,
A woman's shape doth shield thee."
After this a messenger enters, and announces that the Duke of Cornwall,
wounded by his servant whilst plucking out Gloucester's eyes, had died.
Goneril is glad but already anticipates with fear that Regan, now a
widow, will deprive her of Edmund. Here the second scene ends.
The third scene of the fourth act represents the French camp. From a
conversation between Kent and a gentleman, the reader or spectator
learns that the King of France is not in the camp and that Cordelia has
received a letter from Kent and is greatly grieved by what she has
learned about her father. The gentleman says that her face reminded one
of sunshine and rain.
"Her smiles and tears
Were like a better day; those happy smiles
That play'd on her ripe lip seem'd not to know
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd."
And so forth.
The gentleman says that Cordelia desires to see her father, but Kent
says that Lear is ashamed of seeing this daughter whom he has treated so
unkindly.
In the fourth scene, Cordelia, talking with a physician, tells him that
Lear has been seen, that he is quite mad, wearing on his head a wreath
of various weeds, that he is roaming about and that she has sent
soldiers in search of him, adding that she desires all secret remedies
to spring with her tears, and the like.
She is informed that the forces of the Dukes are approaching, but she is
concerned only about her father and departs.
The fifth scene of the fourth act lies in Gloucester's castle. Regan is
talking with Oswald, Goneril's steward, who is carrying a letter from
Goneril to Edmund, and she announces to him that she also loves Edmund
and that, being a widow, it is better for her to marry him than for
Goneril to do so, and she begs him to persuade her sister of this.
Further she tells him that it was very unreasonable to blind Gloucester
and yet leave him alive, and therefore advises Oswald, should he meet
Gloucester, to kill him, promising him a great reward if he does this.
In the sixth scene, Gloucester again appears with his still unrecognized
son Edgar, who (now in the guise of a peasant) pretends to lead his
father to the cliff. Gloucester is walking along on level land but Edgar
persuades him that they are with difficulty ascending a steep hill.
Gloucester believes this. Edgar tells his father that the noise of the
sea is heard; Gloucester believes this also. Edgar stops on a level
place and persuades his father that he has ascended the cliff and that
in front of him lies a dreadful abyss, and leaves him alone. Gloucester,
addressing the gods, says that he shakes off his affliction as he can
bear it no longer, and that he does not condemn them--the gods. Having
said this, he leaps on the level ground and falls, imagining that he has
jumped off the cliff. On this occasion, Edgar, soliloquizing, gives vent
to a yet more entangled utterance:
"I know not how conceit may rob
The treasury of life when life itself
Yields to the theft; had he been where he thought,
By this had thought been past."
He approaches Gloucester, in the character of yet a different person,
and expressing astonishment at the latter not being hurt by his fall
from such a dreadful height. Gloucester believes that he has fallen and
prepares to die, but he feels that he is alive and begins to doubt that
he has fallen from such a height. Then Edgar persuades him that he has
indeed jumped from the dreadful height and tells him that the
individual who had been with him at the top was the devil, as he had
eyes like two full moons and a thousand noses and wavy horns. Gloucester
believes this, and is persuaded that his despair was the work of the
devil, and therefore decides that he will henceforth despair no more,
but will quietly await death. Hereupon enters Lear, for some reason
covered with wild-flowers. He has lost his senses and says things wilder
than before. He speaks about coining, about the moon, gives some one a
yard--then he cries that he sees a mouse, which he wishes to entice by a
piece of cheese. Then he suddenly demands the password from Edgar, and
Edgar immediately answers him with the words "Sweet marjoram." Lear
says, "Pass," and the blind Gloucester, who has not recognized either
his son or Kent, recognizes the King's voice.
Then the King, after his disconnected utterances, suddenly begins to
speak ironically about flatterers, who agreed to all he said, "Ay, and
no, too, was no good divinity," but, when he got into a storm without
shelter, he saw all this was not true; and then goes on to say that as
all creation addicts itself to adultery, and Gloucester's bastard son
had treated his father more kindly than his daughters had treated him
(altho Lear, according to the development of the drama, could not know
how Edmund had treated Gloucester), therefore, let dissoluteness
prosper, the more so as, being a King, he needs soldiers. He here
addresses an imaginary hypocritically virtuous lady who acts the prude,
whereas
"The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't
With a more riotous appetite.
All women inherit the gods only to the girdle
Beneath is all the fiend's"--
and, saying this, Lear screams and spits from horror. This monolog is
evidently meant to be addressed by the actor to the audience, and
probably produces an effect on the stage, but it is utterly uncalled for
in the mouth of Lear, equally with his words: "It smells of mortality,"
uttered while wiping his hand, as Gloucester expresses a desire to kiss
it. Then Gloucester's blindness is referred to, which gives occasion for
a play of words on _eyes_, about blind Cupid, at which Lear says to
Gloucester, "No _eyes_ in your head, nor no money in your _purse_? Your
_eyes_ are in a _heavy_ case, your purse in a _light_." Then Lear
declaims a monolog on the unfairness of legal judgment, which is quite
out of place in the mouth of the insane Lear. After this, enter a
gentleman with attendants sent by Cordelia to fetch her father. Lear
continues to act as a madman and runs away. The gentleman sent to fetch
Lear, does not run after him, but lengthily describes to Edgar the
position of the French and British armies. Oswald enters, and seeing
Gloucester, and desiring to receive the reward promised by Regan,
attacks him, but Edgar with his club kills Oswald, who, in dying,
transmits to his murderer, Edgar, Goneril's letter to Edmund, the
delivery of which would insure reward. In this letter Goneril promises
to kill her husband and marry Edmund. Edgar drags out Oswald's body by
the legs and then returns and leads his father away.
The seventh scene of the fourth act takes place in a tent in the French
camp. Lear is asleep on a bed. Enter Cordelia and Kent, still in
disguise. Lear is awakened by the music, and, seeing Cordelia, does not
believe she is a living being, thinks she is an apparition, does not
believe that he himself is alive. Cordelia assures him that she is his
daughter, and begs him to bless her. He falls on his knees before her,
begs her pardon, acknowledges that he is as old and foolish, says he is
ready to take poison, which he thinks she has probably prepared for him,
as he is persuaded she must hate him. ("For your sisters," he says,
"have done me wrong: you have some cause, they have not.") Then he
gradually comes to his senses and ceases to rave. His daughter suggests
that he should take a walk. He consents and says: "You must bear with
me. Pray you now forget and forgive: I am old and foolish." They depart.
The gentleman and Kent, remaining on the scene, hold a conversation
which explains to the spectator that Edmund is at the head of the troops
and that a battle must soon begin between Lear's defenders and his
enemies. So the fourth act closes.
In this fourth act, the scene between Lear and his daughter might have
been touching if it had not been preceded in the course of the earlier
acts by the tediously drawn out, monotonous ravings of Lear, and if,
moreover, this expression of his feelings constituted the last scene.
But the scene is not the last.
In the fifth act, the former coldly pompous, artificial ravings of Lear
go on again, destroying the impression which the previous scene might
have produced.
The first scene of the fifth act at first represents Edmund and Regan;
the latter is jealous of her sister and makes an offer. Then come
Goneril, her husband, and some soldiers. The Duke of Albany, altho
pitying Lear, regards it as his duty to fight with the French who have
invaded his country, and so he prepares for battle.
Then Edgar enters, still disguised, and hands to the Duke of Albany the
letter he had received from Goneril's dying steward, and tells him if he
gains the victory to sound the trumpet, saying that he can produce a
champion who will confirm the contents of the letter.
In the second scene, Edgar enters leading his father Gloucester, seats
him by a tree, and goes away himself. The noise of battle is heard,
Edgar runs back and says that the battle is lost and Lear and Cordelia
are prisoners. Gloucester again falls into despair. Edgar, still
without disclosing himself to his father, counsels endurance, and
Gloucester immediately agrees with him.
The third scene opens with a triumphal progress of the victor Edmund.
Lear and Cordelia are prisoners. Lear, altho no longer insane, continues
to utter the same senseless, inappropriate words, as, for example, that
in prison he will sing with Cordelia, she will ask his blessing, and he
will kneel down (this process of kneeling down is repeated three times)
and will ask her forgiveness. And he further says that, while they are
living in prison, they will wear out "packs and sects of great ones";
that he and Cordelia are sacrifices upon which the gods will throw
incense, and that he that parts them "shall bring a brand from heaven
and fire them like foxes; that he will not weep, and that the plague
shall sooner devour his eyes, flesh and fell, than they shall make them
weep."
Edmund orders Lear and his daughter to be led away to prison, and,
having called the officer to do this, says he requires another duty and
asks him whether he'll do it? The captain says he can not draw a cart
nor eat dried oats, but if it be men's work he can do it. Enter the Duke
of Albany, Goneril, and Regan. The Duke of Albany wishes to champion
Lear, but Edmund does not allow it. The daughters take part in the
dialog and begin to abuse each other, being jealous of Edmund. Here
everything becomes so confused that it is difficult to follow the
action. The Duke of Albany wishes to arrest Edmund, and tells Regan that
Edmund has long ago entered into guilty relations with his wife, and
that, therefore, Regan must give up her claims on Edmund, and if she
wishes to marry, should marry him, the Duke of Albany.
Having said this, the Duke of Albany calls Edmund, orders the trumpet to
be sounded, saying that, if no one appears, he will fight him himself.
Here Regan, whom Goneril has evidently poisoned, falls deadly sick.
Trumpets are sounded and Edgar enters with a vizor concealing his face,
and, without giving his name, challenges Edmund. Edgar abuses Edmund;
Edmund throws all the abuses back on Edgar's head. They fight and Edmund
falls. Goneril is in despair. The Duke of Albany shows Goneril her
letter. Goneril departs.
The dying Edmund discovers that his opponent was his brother. Edgar
raises his vizor and pronounces a moral lesson to the effect that,
having begotten his illegitimate son Edmund, the father has paid for it
with his eyesight. After this Edgar tells the Duke of Albany his
adventures and how he has only just now, before entering on the recent
combat, disclosed everything to his father, and the father could not
bear it and died from emotion. Edmund is not yet dead, and wants to know
all that has taken place.
Then Edgar relates that, while he was sitting over his father's body, a
man came and closely embraced him, and, shouting as loudly as if he
wished to burst heaven, threw himself on the body of Edgar's father, and
told the most piteous tale about Lear and himself, and that while
relating this the strings of life began to crack, but at this moment the
trumpet sounded twice and Edgar left him "tranced"--and this was Kent.
Edgar has hardly finished this narrative when a gentleman rushes in with
a bloody knife, shouting "Help!" In answer to the question, "Who is
killed?" the gentleman says that Goneril has been killed, having
poisoned her sister, she has confessed it.
Enters Kent, and at this moment the corpses of Goneril and Regan are
brought in. Edmund here says that the sisters evidently loved him, as
one has poisoned the other for his sake, and then slain herself. At the
same time he confesses that he had given orders to kill Lear and to hang
Cordelia in prison, and pretend that she had taken her own life; but now
he wishes to prevent these deeds, and having said this he dies, and is
carried away.
After this enters Lear with the dead Cordelia in his arms, altho he is
more than eighty years old and ill. Again begins Lear's awful ravings,
at which one feels ashamed as at unsuccessful jokes. Lear demands that
all should howl, and, alternately, believes that Cordelia is dead and
that she is alive.
"Had I your tongues and eyes," he says "I'd use them so that heaven's
vault should crack."
Then he says that he killed the slave who hanged Cordelia. Next he says
that his eyes see badly, but at the same time he recognizes Kent whom
all along he had not recognized.
The Duke of Albany says that he will resign during the life of Lear and
that he will reward Edgar and Kent and all who have been faithful to
him. At this moment the news is brought that Edmund is dead, and Lear,
continuing his ravings, begs that they will undo one of his buttons--the
same request which he had made when roaming about the heath. He
expresses his thanks for this, tells everyone to look at something, and
thereupon dies.
In conclusion, the Duke of Albany, having survived the others, says:
"The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long."
All depart to the music of a dead march. Thus ends the fifth act and the
drama.
III
Such is this celebrated drama. However absurd it may appear in my
rendering (which I have endeavored to make as impartial as possible), I
may confidently say that in the original it is yet more absurd. For any
man of our time--if he were not under the hypnotic suggestion that this
drama is the height of perfection--it would be enough to read it to its
end (were he to have sufficient patience for this) to be convinced that
far from being the height of perfection, it is a very bad, carelessly
composed production, which, if it could have been of interest to a
certain public at a certain time, can not evoke among us anything but
aversion and weariness. Every reader of our time, who is free from the
influence of suggestion, will also receive exactly the same impression
from all the other extolled dramas of Shakespeare, not to mention the
senseless, dramatized tales, "Pericles," "Twelfth Night," "The
Tempest," "Cymbeline," "Troilus and Cressida."
But such free-minded individuals, not inoculated with
Shakespeare-worship, are no longer to be found in our Christian society.
Every man of our society and time, from the first period of his
conscious life, has been inoculated with the idea that Shakespeare is a
genius, a poet, and a dramatist, and that all his writings are the
height of perfection. Yet, however hopeless it may seem, I will endeavor
to demonstrate in the selected drama--"King Lear"--all those faults
equally characteristic also of all the other tragedies and comedies of
Shakespeare, on account of which he not only is not representing a model
of dramatic art, but does not satisfy the most elementary demands of art
recognized by all.
