Part 43 (1/2)
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 pa.s.sage, 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 subst.i.tuted 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 ant.i.thetic lines in a gnomic pa.s.sage is quite in Shakespeare's manner, _more_ in his manner than, for example, the rhymed pa.s.sages in I. i. 183-190, 257-269, 281-4, which n.o.body 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sumes 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 pa.s.sage 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.