An admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of
a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tale,
and my nativity was under Ursa Major: so that it follows, I am rough
and lecherous. I should have been what I am, had the maidenliest
star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.'--The whole
character, its careless, light-hearted villany, contrasted with the
sullen, rancorous malignity of Regan and Gonerill, its connexion
with the conduct of the under-plot, in which Gloster's persecution
of one of his sons and the ingratitude of another, form a
counterpart to the mistakes and misfortunes of Lear--his double
amour with the two sisters, and the share which he has in bringing
about the fatal catastrophe, are all managed with an uncommon degree
of skill and power.
It has been said, and we think justly, that the third act of
OTHELLO, and the three first acts of LEAR, are Shakespeare's great
masterpieces in the logic of passion: that they contain the highest
examples not only of the force of individual passion, but of its
dramatic vicissitudes and striking effects arising from the
different circumstances and characters of the persons speaking. We
see the ebb and flow of the feeling, its pauses and feverish starts,
its impatience of opposition, its accumulating force when it has
time to recollect itself, the manner in which it avails itself of
every passing word or gesture, its haste to repel insinuation, the
alternate contraction and dilatation of the soul, and all 'the
dazzling fence of controversy' in this mortal combat with poisoned
weapons, aimed at the heart, where each wound is fatal.
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