ter's after
sufferings,--at least, of rendering them somewhat less unendurable--(for I
will not disguise my conviction, that in this one point the tragic in this
play has been urged beyond the outermost mark and _ne plus ultra_ of the
dramatic);--Shakespeare has precluded all excuse and palliation of the
guilt incurred by both the parents of the base-born Edmund, by Gloster's
confession that he was at the time a married man, and already blest with a
lawful heir of his fortunes. The mournful alienation of brotherly love,
occasioned by the law of primogeniture in noble families, or rather by the
unnecessary distinctions engrafted thereon, and this in children of the
same stock, is still almost proverbial on the continent,--especially, as I
know from my own observation, in the south of Europe,--and appears to have
been scarcely less common in our own island before the Revolution of 1688,
if we may judge from the characters and sentiments so frequent in our
elder comedies. There is the younger brother, for instance, in Beaumont
and Fletcher's play of the _Scornful Lady_, on the one side, and Oliver in
Shakespeare's _As You Like It_, on the other. Need it be said how heavy an
aggravation, in such a case, the stain of bastardy must have been, were it
only that the younger brother was liable to hear his own dishonour and his
mother's infamy related by his father with an excusing shrug of the
shoulders, and in a tone betwixt waggery and shame!

By the circumstances here enumerated as so many predisposing causes,
Edmund's character might well be deemed already sufficiently explained;
and our minds prepared for it. But in this tragedy the story or fable
constrained Shakespeare to introduce wickedness in an outrageous form in
the persons of Regan and Goneril. He had read nature too heedfully not to
know that courage, intellect, and strength of character are the most
impressive forms of power, and that to power in itself, without reference
to any moral end, an inevitable admiration and complacency appertains,
whether it be displayed in the conquests of a Buonaparte or Tamerlane, or
in the foam and the thunder of a cataract. But in the exhibition of such a
character it was of the highest importance to prevent the guilt from
passing into utter monstrosity,--which again depends on the presence or
absence of causes and temptations sufficient to account for the
wickedness, without the necessity of recurring to a thorough fiendishness
of