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:
1. 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.
2. That the language of poetry is superior to the language of
painting; because the strongest of our recollections relate to
feelings, not to faces.
3. 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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