A. C. Bradley - Shakespearean Tragedy

A >> A. C. Bradley >> Shakespearean Tragedy

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39

I know thee well: a serviceable villain;
As duteous to the vices of thy mistress
As badness would desire.

Perhaps Shakespeare had conceived Goneril as a woman who before her
marriage had shown signs of sensual vice; but the distinct indications
of this idea were crowded out of his exposition when he came to write
it, or, being inserted, were afterwards excised. I will not go on to
hint that Edgar had Oswald in his mind when (III. iv. 87) he described
the serving-man who 'served the lust of his mistress' heart, and did the
act of darkness with her'; and still less that Lear can have had Goneril
in his mind in the declamation against lechery referred to in Note S.

I do not mean to imply, by writing this note, that I believe in the
hypotheses suggested in it. On the contrary I think it more probable
that the defects referred to arose from carelessness and other causes.
But this is not, to me, certain; and the reader who rejects the
hypotheses may be glad to have his attention called to the points which
suggested them.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 269: It has been suggested that 'his' means 'Gloster's'; but
'him' all through the speech evidently means Lear.]

NOTE U.

MOVEMENTS OF THE DRAMATIS PERSONAE IN ACT II. OF _KING LEAR_.

I have referred in the text to the obscurity of the play on this
subject, and I will set out the movements here.

When Lear is ill-treated by Goneril his first thought is to seek refuge
with Regan (I. iv. 274 f., 327 f.). Goneril, accordingly, who had
foreseen this, and, even before the quarrel, had determined to write to
Regan (I. iii. 25), now sends Oswald off to her, telling her not to
receive Lear and his hundred knights (I. iv. 354 f.). In consequence of
this letter Regan and Cornwall immediately leave their home and ride by
night to Gloster's house, sending word on that they are coming (II. i. 1
ff., 81, 120 ff.). Lear, on his part, just before leaving Goneril's
house, sends Kent with a letter to Regan, and tells him to be quick, or
Lear will be there before him. And we find that Kent reaches Regan and
delivers his letter before Oswald, Goneril's messenger. Both the
messengers are taken on by Cornwall and Regan to Gloster's house.

In II. iv. Lear arrives at Gloster's house, having, it would seem,
failed to find Regan at her own home. And, later, Goneril arrives at
Gloster's house, in accordance with an intimation which she had sent in
her letter to Regan (II. iv. 186 f.).

Thus all the principal persons except Cordelia and Albany are brought
together; and the crises of the double action--the expulsion of Lear and
the blinding and expulsion of Gloster--are reached in Act III. And this
is what was required.

But it needs the closest attention to follow these movements. And, apart
from this, difficulties remain.

1. Goneril, in despatching Oswald with the letter to Regan, tells him to
hasten his return (I. iv. 363). Lear again is surprised to find that
_his_ messenger has not been sent back (II. iv. 1 f., 36 f.). Yet
apparently both Goneril and Lear themselves start at once, so that their
messengers _could_ not return in time. It may be said that they expected
to meet them coming back, but there is no indication of this in the
text.

2. Lear, in despatching Kent, says (I. v. 1):

Go you before to Gloster with these letters. Acquaint my
daughter no further with anything you know than comes from her
demand out of the letter.

This would seem to imply that Lear knew that Regan and Cornwall were at
Gloster's house, and meant either to go there (so Koppel) or to summon
her back to her own home to receive him. Yet this is clearly not so, for
Kent goes straight to Regan's house (II. i. 124, II. iv. 1, 27 ff., 114
ff.).

Hence it is generally supposed that by 'Gloster,' in the passage just
quoted, Lear means not the Earl but the _place_; that Regan's home was
there; and that Gloster's castle was somewhere not very far off. This is
to some extent confirmed by the fact that Cornwall is the 'arch' or
patron of Gloster (II. i. 60 f., 112 ff.). But Gloster's home or house
must not be imagined quite close to Cornwall's, for it takes a night to
ride from the one to the other, and Gloster's house is in the middle of
a solitary heath with scarce a bush for many miles about (II. iv. 304).

The plural 'these letters' in the passage quoted need give no trouble,
for the plural is often used by Shakespeare for a single letter; and the
natural conjecture that Lear sent one letter to Regan and another to
Gloster is not confirmed by anything in the text.

The only difficulty is that, as Koppel points out, 'Gloster' is nowhere
else used in the play for the place (except in the phrase 'Earl of
Gloster' or 'my lord of Gloster'); and--what is more important--that it
would unquestionably be taken by the audience to stand in this passage
for the Earl, especially as there has been no previous indication that
Cornwall lived at Gloster. One can only suppose that Shakespeare forgot
that he had given no such indication, and so wrote what was sure to be
misunderstood,--unless we suppose that 'Gloster' is a mere slip of the
pen, or even a misprint, for 'Regan.' But, apart from other
considerations, Lear would hardly have spoken to a servant of 'Regan,'
and, if he had, the next words would have run 'Acquaint her,' not
'Acquaint my daughter.'

NOTE V.

SUSPECTED INTERPOLATIONS IN _KING LEAR_.

There are three passages in _King Lear_ which have been held to be
additions made by 'the players.'

The first consists of the two lines of indecent doggerel spoken by the
Fool at the end of Act I.; the second, of the Fool's prophecy in rhyme
at the end of III. ii.; the third, of Edgar's soliloquy at the end of
III. vi.

It is suspicious (1) that all three passages occur at the ends of
scenes, the place where an addition is most easily made; and (2) that in
each case the speaker remains behind alone to utter the words after the
other persons have gone off.

I postpone discussion of the several passages until I have called
attention to the fact that, if these passages are genuine, the number of
scenes which end with a soliloquy is larger in _King Lear_ than in any
other undoubted tragedy. Thus, taking the tragedies in their probable
chronological order (and ignoring the very short scenes into which a
battle is sometimes divided),[270] I find that there are in _Romeo and
Juliet_ four such scenes, in _Julius Caesar_ two, in _Hamlet_ six, in
_Othello_ four,[271] in _King Lear_ seven,[272] in _Macbeth_ two,[273]
in _Antony and Cleopatra_ three, in _Coriolanus_ one. The difference
between _King Lear_ and the plays that come nearest to it is really much
greater than it appears from this list, for in _Hamlet_ four of the six
soliloquies, and in _Othello_ three of the four, are long speeches,
while most of those in _King Lear_ are quite short.

Of course I do not attach any great importance to the fact just noticed,
but it should not be left entirely out of account in forming an opinion
as to the genuineness of the three doubted passages.

(_a_) The first of these, I. v. 54-5, I decidedly believe to be
spurious. (1) The scene ends quite in Shakespeare's manner without it.
(2) It does not seem likely that at the _end_ of the scene Shakespeare
would have introduced anything _violently_ incongruous with the
immediately preceding words,

Oh let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!

(3) Even if he had done so, it is very unlikely that the incongruous
words would have been grossly indecent. (4) Even if they had been,
surely they would not have been _irrelevantly_ indecent and evidently
addressed to the audience, two faults which are not in Shakespeare's
way. (5) The lines are doggerel. Doggerel is not uncommon in the
earliest plays; there are a few lines even in the _Merchant of Venice_,
a line and a half, perhaps, in _As You Like It_; but I do not think it
occurs later, not even where, in an early play, it would certainly have
been found, _e.g._ in the mouth of the Clown in _All's Well_. The best
that can be said for these lines is that they appear in the Quartos,
_i.e._ in reports, however vile, of the play as performed within two or
three years of its composition.

(_b_) I believe, almost as decidedly, that the second passage, III. ii.
79 ff., is spurious. (1) The scene ends characteristically without the
lines. (2) They are addressed directly to the audience. (3) They destroy
the pathetic and beautiful effect of the immediately preceding words of
the Fool, and also of Lear's solicitude for him. (4) They involve the
absurdity that the shivering timid Fool would allow his master and
protector, Lear and Kent, to go away into the storm and darkness,
leaving him alone. (5) It is also somewhat against them that they do not
appear in the Quartos. At the same time I do not think one would
hesitate to accept them if they occurred at any natural place _within_
the dialogue.

(_c_) On the other hand I see no sufficient reason for doubting the
genuineness of Edgar's soliloquy at the end of III. vi. (1) Those who
doubt it appear not to perceive that _some_ words of soliloquy are
wanted; for it is evidently intended that, when Kent and Gloster bear
the King away, they should leave the Bedlam behind. Naturally they do
so. He is only accidentally connected with the King; he was taken to
shelter with him merely to gratify his whim, and as the King is now
asleep there is no occasion to retain the Bedlam; Kent, we know, shrank
from him, 'shunn'd [his] abhorr'd society' (V. iii. 210). So he is left
to return to the hovel where he was first found. When the others depart,
then, he must be left behind, and surely would not go off without a
word. (2) If his speech is spurious, therefore, it has been substituted
for some genuine speech; and surely that is a supposition not to be
entertained except under compulsion. (3) There is no such compulsion in
the speech. It is not very good, no doubt; but the use of rhymed and
somewhat antithetic lines in a gnomic passage is quite in Shakespeare's
manner, _more_ in his manner than, for example, the rhymed passages in
I. i. 183-190, 257-269, 281-4, which nobody doubts; quite like many
places in _All's Well_, or the concluding lines of _King Lear_ itself.
(4) The lines are in spirit of one kind with Edgar's fine lines at the
beginning of Act IV. (5) Some of them, as Delius observes, emphasize the
parallelism between the stories of Lear and Gloster. (6) The fact that
the Folio omits the lines is, of course, nothing against them.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 270: I ignore them partly because they are not significant for
the present purpose, but mainly because it is impossible to accept the
division of battle-scenes in our modern texts, while to depart from it
is to introduce intolerable inconvenience in reference. The only proper
plan in Elizabethan drama is to consider a scene ended as soon as no
person is left on the stage, and to pay no regard to the question of
locality,--a question theatrically insignificant and undetermined in
most scenes of an Elizabethan play, in consequence of the absence of
movable scenery. In dealing with battles the modern editors seem to have
gone on the principle (which they could not possibly apply generally)
that, so long as the place is not changed, you have only one scene.
Hence in _Macbeth_, Act V., they have included in their Scene vii. three
distinct scenes; yet in _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act III., following the
right division for a wrong reason, they have two scenes (viii. and ix.),
each less than four lines long.]

[Footnote 271: One of these (V. i.) is not marked as such, but it is
evident that the last line and a half form a soliloquy of one remaining
character, just as much as some of the soliloquies marked as such in
other plays.]

[Footnote 272: According to modern editions, eight, Act II., scene ii.,
being an instance. But it is quite ridiculous to reckon as three scenes
what are marked as scenes ii., iii., iv. Kent is on the lower stage the
whole time, Edgar in the so-called scene iii. being on the upper stage
or balcony. The editors were misled by their ignorance of the stage
arrangements.]

[Footnote 273: Perhaps three, for V. iii. is perhaps an instance, though
not so marked.]

NOTE W.

THE STAGING OF THE SCENE OF LEAR'S REUNION WITH CORDELIA.

As Koppel has shown, the usual modern stage-directions[274] for this
scene (IV. vii.) are utterly wrong and do what they can to defeat the
poet's purpose.

It is evident from the text that the scene shows the _first_ meeting of
Cordelia and Kent, and _first_ meeting of Cordelia and Lear, since they
parted in I. i. Kent and Cordelia indeed are doubtless supposed to have
exchanged a few words before they come on the stage; but Cordelia has
not seen her father at all until the moment before she begins (line 26),
'O my dear father!' Hence the tone of the first part of the scene, that
between Cordelia and Kent, is kept low, in order that the latter part,
between Cordelia and Lear, may have its full effect.

The modern stage-direction at the beginning of the scene, as found, for
example, in the Cambridge and Globe editions, is as follows:

'SCENE vii.--A tent in the French camp. LEAR
on a bed asleep, soft music playing; _Gentleman_, and others
attending.

Enter CORDELIA, KENT, and _Doctor_.'

At line 25, where the Doctor says 'Please you, draw near,' Cordelia is
supposed to approach the bed, which is imagined by some editors visible
throughout at the back of the stage, by others as behind a curtain at
the back, this curtain being drawn open at line 25.

Now, to pass by the fact that these arrangements are in flat
contradiction with the stage-directions of the Quartos and the Folio,
consider their effect upon the scene. In the first place, the reader at
once assumes that Cordelia has already seen her father; for otherwise it
is inconceivable that she would quietly talk with Kent while he was
within a few yards of her. The edge of the later passage where she
addresses him is therefore blunted. In the second place, through Lear's
presence the reader's interest in Lear and his meeting with Cordelia is
at once excited so strongly that he hardly attends at all to the
conversation of Cordelia and Kent; and so this effect is blunted too.
Thirdly, at line 57, where Cordelia says,

O, look upon me, sir,
And hold your hands in benediction o'er me!
No, sir, you must not kneel,

the poor old King must be supposed either to try to get out of bed, or
actually to do so, or to kneel, or to try to kneel, on the bed.
Fourthly, consider what happens at line 81.

_Doctor._ Desire him to _go in_; trouble him no more
Till further settling.

_Cor._ Will't please your highness _walk?_

_Lear._ You must bear with me;
Pray you now, forget and forgive; I am old and
foolish. [_Exeunt all but Kent and Gentleman_.

If Lear is in a tent containing his bed, why in the world, when the
doctor thinks he can bear no more emotion, is he made to walk out of the
tent? A pretty doctor!

But turn now to the original texts. Of course they say nothing about the
place. The stage-direction at the beginning runs, in the Quartos, 'Enter
Cordelia, Kent, and Doctor;' in the Folio, 'Enter Cordelia, Kent, and
Gentleman.' They differ about the Gentleman and the Doctor, and the
Folio later wrongly gives to the Gentleman the Doctor's speeches as well
as his own. This is a minor matter. But they agree in _making no mention
of Lear_. He is not on the stage at all. Thus Cordelia, and the reader,
can give their whole attention to Kent.

Her conversation with Kent finished, she turns (line 12) to the Doctor
and asks 'How does the King?'[275] The Doctor tells her that Lear is
still asleep, and asks leave to wake him. Cordelia assents and asks if
he is 'arrayed,' which does not mean whether he has a night-gown on, but
whether they have taken away his crown of furrow-weeds, and tended him
duly after his mad wanderings in the fields. The Gentleman says that in
his sleep 'fresh garments' (not a night-gown) have been put on him. The
Doctor then asks Cordelia to be present when her father is waked. She
assents, and the Doctor says, 'Please you, draw near. Louder the music
there.' The next words are Cordelia's, 'O my dear father!'

What has happened? At the words 'is he arrayed?' according to the Folio,
'_Enter Lear in a chair carried by Servants._' The moment of this
entrance, as so often in the original editions, is doubtless too soon.
It should probably come at the words 'Please you, draw near,' which
_may_, as Koppel suggests, be addressed to the bearers. But that the
stage-direction is otherwise right there cannot be a doubt (and that the
Quartos omit it is no argument against it, seeing that, according to
their directions, Lear never enters at all).

This arrangement (1) allows Kent his proper place in the scene, (2)
makes it clear that Cordelia has not seen her father before, (3) makes
her first sight of him a theatrical crisis in the best sense, (4) makes
it quite natural that he should kneel, (5) makes it obvious why he
should leave the stage again when he shows signs of exhaustion, and (6)
is the only arrangement which has the slightest authority, for 'Lear on
a bed asleep' was never heard of till Capell proposed it. The ruinous
change of the staging was probably suggested by the version of that
unhappy Tate.

Of course the chair arrangement is primitive, but the Elizabethans did
not care about such things. What they cared for was dramatic effect.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 274: There are exceptions: _e.g._, in the editions of Delius
and Mr. W.J. Craig.]

[Footnote 275: And it is possible that, as Koppel suggests, the Doctor
should properly enter at this point; for if Kent, as he says, wishes to
remain unknown, it seems strange that he and Cordelia should talk as
they do before a third person. This change however is not necessary, for
the Doctor might naturally stand out of hearing till he was addressed;
and it is better not to go against the stage-direction without
necessity.]

NOTE X.

THE BATTLE IN _KING LEAR_.

I found my impression of the extraordinary ineffectiveness of this
battle (p. 255) confirmed by a paper of James Spedding (_New Shakspere
Society Transactions_, 1877, or Furness's _King Lear_, p. 312 f.); but
his opinion that this is the one technical defect in _King Lear_ seems
certainly incorrect, and his view that this defect is not due to
Shakespeare himself will not, I think, bear scrutiny.

To make Spedding's view quite clear I may remind the reader that in the
preceding scene the two British armies, that of Edmund and Regan, and
that of Albany and Goneril, have entered with drum and colours, and have
departed. Scene ii. is as follows (Globe):

SCENE II.--_A field between the two camps.

Alarum within. Enter, with drum and colours_, LEAR, CORDELIA,
_and_ Soldiers, _over the stage; and exeunt._ _Enter_ EDGAR
_and_ GLOSTER.

_Edg._ Here, father, take the shadow of this tree
For your good host; pray that the right may thrive:
If ever I return to you again,
I'll bring you comfort.

_Glo._ Grace go with you, sir!

[_Exit_ Edgar

_Alarum and retreat within._ _Re-enter_ EDGAR.

_Edg._ Away, old man; give me thy hand; away!
King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en:
Give me thy hand; come on.

_Glo._ No farther, sir; a man may rot even here.

_Edg._ What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither:
Ripeness is all: come on.

_Glo._ And that's true too. [_Exeunt_.

The battle, it will be seen, is represented only by military music
within the tiring-house, which formed the back of the stage. 'The
scene,' says Spedding, 'does not change; but 'alarums' are heard, and
afterwards a 'retreat,' and on the same field over which that great army
has this moment passed, fresh and full of hope, re-appears, with tidings
that all is lost, the same man who last left the stage to follow and
fight in it.[276] That Shakespeare meant the scene to stand thus, no one
who has the true faith will believe.'

Spedding's suggestion is that things are here run together which
Shakespeare meant to keep apart. Shakespeare, he thinks, continued Act
IV. to the '_exit_ Edgar' after l. 4 of the above passage. Thus, just
before the close of the Act, the two British armies and the French army
had passed across the stage, and the interest of the audience in the
battle about to be fought was raised to a high pitch. Then, after a
short interval, Act V. opened with the noise of battle in the distance,
followed by the entrance of Edgar to announce the defeat of Cordelia's
army. The battle, thus, though not fought on the stage, was shown and
felt to be an event of the greatest importance.

Apart from the main objection of the entire want of evidence of so great
a change having been made, there are other objections to this idea and
to the reasoning on which it is based. (1) The pause at the end of the
present Fourth Act is far from 'faulty,' as Spedding alleges it to be;
that Act ends with the most melting scene Shakespeare ever wrote; and a
pause after it, and before the business of the battle, was perfectly
right. (2) The Fourth Act is already much longer than the Fifth (about
fourteen columns of the Globe edition against about eight and a half),
and Spedding's change would give the Fourth nearly sixteen columns, and
the Fifth less than seven. (3) Spedding's proposal requires a much
greater alteration in the existing text than he supposed. It does not
simply shift the division of the two Acts, it requires the disappearance
and re-entrance of the blind Gloster. Gloster, as the text stands, is
alone on the stage while the battle is being fought at a distance, and
the reference to the tree shows that he was on the main or lower stage.
The main stage had no front curtain; and therefore, if Act IV. is to end
where Spedding wished it to end, Gloster must go off unaided at its
close, and come on again unaided for Act V. And this means that the
_whole_ arrangement of the present Act V. Sc. ii. must be changed. If
Spedding had been aware of this it is not likely that he would have
broached his theory.[277]

It is curious that he does not allude to the one circumstance which
throws some little suspicion on the existing text. I mean the
contradiction between Edgar's statement that, if ever he returns to his
father again, he will bring him comfort, and the fact that immediately
afterwards he returns to bring him discomfort. It is possible to explain
this psychologically, of course, but the passage is not one in which we
should expect psychological subtlety.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 276: Where did Spedding find this? I find no trace of it, and
surely Edgar would not have risked his life in the battle, when he had,
in case of defeat, to appear and fight Edmund. He does not appear
'armed,' according to the Folio, till V. iii. 117.]

[Footnote 277: Spedding supposed that there was a front curtain, and
this idea, coming down from Malone and Collier, is still found in
English works of authority. But it may be stated without hesitation that
there is no positive evidence at all for the existence of such a
curtain, and abundant evidence against it.]

NOTE Y.

SOME DIFFICULT PASSAGES IN _KING LEAR_.

The following are notes on some passages where I have not been able to
accept any of the current interpretations, or on which I wish to express
an opinion or represent a little-known view.

1. _Kent's soliloquy at the end of_ II. ii.

(_a_) In this speech the application of the words 'Nothing, almost sees
miracles but misery' seems not to have been understood. The 'misery' is
surely not that of Kent but that of Lear, who has come 'out of heaven's
benediction to the warm sun,' _i.e._ to misery. This, says Kent, is just
the situation where something like miraculous help may be looked for;
and he finds the sign of it in the fact that a letter from Cordelia has
just reached him; for his course since his banishment has been so
obscured that it is only by the rarest good fortune (something like a
miracle) that Cordelia has got intelligence of it. We may suppose that
this intelligence came from one of Albany's or Cornwall's servants, some
of whom are, he says (III. i. 23),

to France the spies and speculations
Intelligent of our state.

(_b_) The words 'and shall find time,' etc., have been much discussed.
Some have thought that they are detached phrases from the letter which
Kent is reading: but Kent has just implied by his address to the sun
that he has no light to read the letter by.[278] It has also been
suggested that the anacoluthon is meant to represent Kent's sleepiness,
which prevents him from finishing the sentence, and induces him to
dismiss his thoughts and yield to his drowsiness. But I remember nothing
like this elsewhere in Shakespeare, and it seems much more probable that
the passage is corrupt, perhaps from the loss of a line containing words
like 'to rescue us' before 'From this enormous state' (with 'state' cf.
'our state' in the lines quoted above).

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39