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HEAVENS THEMSELVES, when in his reproaches to them for conniving at
the injustice of his children, he reminds them that "they themselves
are old!" What gesture shall we appropriate to this? What has the
voice or the eye to do with such things? But the play is beyond all
art, as the tamperings with it show: it is too hard and stony; it
must have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is not enough that
Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as a lover too. Tate has put
his hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his
followers, the showmen of the scene, to draw it about more easily. A
happy ending!--as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone
through,--the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair
dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If
he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world's
burden after, why all this pudder and preparation--why torment us
with all this unnecessary sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of
getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over
again his misused station--as if at his years and with his
experience anything was left but to die.' [Footnote: See an article,
called 'Theatralia', in the second volume of the Reflector, by
Charles Lamb.]
Four things have struck us in reading LEAR:
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That poetry is an interesting study, for this reason, that it
relates to whatever is most interesting in human life. Whoever
therefore has a contempt for poetry, has a contempt for himself and
humanity.
-
That the language of poetry is superior to the language of
painting; because the strongest of our recollections relate to
feelings, not to faces.
-
That the greatest strength of genius is shown in describing the
strongest passions: for the power of the imagination, in works of
invention, must be in proportion to the force of the natural
impressions, which are the subject of them.
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That the circumstance which balances the pleasure against the
pain in tragedy is, that in proportion to the greatness of the evil,
is our sense and desire of the opposite good excited; and that our
sympathy with actual suffering is lost in the strong impulse given
to our natural affections, and carried away with the swell-ing tide
of passion, that gushes from and relieves the heart.
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