soliloquising on the injustice of men who concede rights and respect to a legitimate son but deny them to an illegitimate son, and he determines to ruin Edgar and usurp his place. For this purpose he forges a letter to himself, as from Edgar, in which the latter is made to appear to wish to kill his father. Having waited till Gloucester appears, Edmund, as if against his own desire, shows him this letter, and the father immediately believes that his son Edgar, whom he tenderly loves, wishes to kill him. The father goes away, Edgar enters, and Edmund suggests to him that his father for some reason wishes to kill him. Edgar also at once believes him, and flees from his father.

The relations between Gloucester and his two sons and the feelings of these characters, are as unnatural as Lear’s relation to his daughters, if not more so; and therefore it is even more difficult for the spectator to put himself into the mental condition of Gloucester and his sons and to sympathise with them, than it was in regard to Lear and his daughters.

In Scene IV the banished Kent, disguised, so that Lear does not recognise him, presents himself to the king who is now staying with Goneril. Lear asks who he is, to which Kent, one does not know why, replies in a jocular tone quite inappropriate to his position: “A very honest-hearted fellow and as poor as the King.” “If thou be’st as poor for a subject as he’s for a King, thou art poor enough,” replies Lear. “How old art thou?” “Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor so old as to dote on her for anything,” to which the King replies that if he likes him not worse after dinner, he will let him remain in his service.

This talk fits in neither with Lear’s position nor with Kent’s relation to him, and is evidently put into their mouths only because the author thought it witty and amusing.

Goneril’s steward appears and is rude to Lear, for which Kent trips him up. The King, who still does not recognise Kent, gives him money for this, and takes him into his service. After this the fool appears, and a talk begins between the fool and the King, quite out of accord with the situation, leading to nothing, prolonged, and intended to be amusing. Thus for instance the fool says, “Give me an egg, and I’ll give thee two crowns.” The King asks what crowns they shall be. “Why, after I have cut the egg i’the middle and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou clovest thy crown i’the middle, and gavest away both parts, thou borest thine ass on thy back o’er the dirt; thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gavest thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in this, let him be whipped that first finds it so.”

In this manner prolonged conversations go on, producing in the spectator or reader a sense of wearisome discomfort such as one experiences when listening to dull jokes.

This conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Goneril. She demands that her father should diminish his retinue: instead of a hundred courtiers he should be satisfied with fifty. On hearing this proposal Lear is seized with terrible, unnatural rage, and asks:

Does any here know me? This is not Lear! Does Lear walk thus? Speak thus? Where are his eyes? Either his notion weakens, his discernings Are lethargied. Ha! Waking? ’tis not so, Who is it that can tell me who I am?

and so forth.

Meanwhile the fool unceasingly interpolates his humourless jokes. Goneril’s husband appears and wishes to appease Lear, but Lear curses Goneril, invoking sterility upon her, or the birth of such a child as would repay with ridicule and contempt her maternal cares, and would thereby show her all the horror and suffering caused by a child’s ingratitude.

These words, which express a genuine feeling, might have been touching had only this been said, but they are lost among long high-flown speeches Lear continually utters quite inappropriately. Now he calls down blasts and fogs on his daughter’s head, now desires that curses should “pierce every sense about thee,” or addressing his own eyes, says that if they weep he will pluck them out and cast them, with the waters that they lose, “to temper clay.”

After this, Lear sends Kent, whom he still does not recognise, to his other daughter, and notwithstanding the despair he has just expressed he talks with the fool and incites him to jests. The jests continue to be mirthless, and besides the unpleasant feeling akin to shame that one feels at unsuccessful witticisms, they are so long-drawn-out as to be wearisome. So for instance the fool asks the King, “Canst thou tell why one’s nose stands i’ the middle of one’s face?” Lear says he does not know.

“Why, to keep one’s eyes of either side one’s nose: that what a man cannot smell out he may spy into.”

“Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?” the fool asks.

“No.”

“Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.”

“Why?”

“Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case.”

“Be my horses ready?” asks Lear.

“Thy asses are gone about ’em. The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.”

“Because they are not eight?” says Lear.

“Yes, indeed; thou wouldst make a good fool,” says the fool, and so forth.

After this long scene a gentleman comes and announces that the horses are ready. The fool says:

She that’s a maid now and laughs at my departure, Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter,

and goes off.