painful; for the relations of others to him, of wondrous fidelity and of
frightful ingratitude, alone sufficiently distinguish him. Thus Lear
becomes the open and ample play-room of nature's passions.

_Ib._--

"_Knight._ Since my young lady's going into France, Sir; the
fool hath much pined away."

The Fool is no comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh,--no forced
condescension of Shakespeare's genius to the taste of his audience.
Accordingly the poet prepares for his introduction, which he never does
with any of his common clowns and fools, by bringing him into living
connection with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful a creation as
Caliban;--his wild babblings, and inspired idiocy, articulate and gauge the
horrors of the scene.

The monster Goneril prepares what is necessary, while the character of
Albany renders a still more maddening grievance possible--namely, Regan and
Cornwall in perfect sympathy of monstrosity. Not a sentiment, not an
image, which can give pleasure on its own account is admitted; whenever
these creatures are introduced, and they are brought forward as little as
possible, pure horror reigns throughout. In this scene and in all the
early speeches of Lear, the one general sentiment of filial ingratitude
prevails as the main-spring of the feelings;--in this early stage the
outward object causing the pressure on the mind, which is not yet
sufficiently familiarised with the anguish for the imagination to work
upon it.

_Ib._--

"_Gon._ Do you mark that, my lord?

_Alb._ I cannot be so partial, Goneril,
To the great love I bear you.

_Gon._ Pray you content," &c.

Observe the baffled endeavour of Goneril to act on the fears of Albany,
and yet his passiveness, his _inertia_; he is not convinced, and yet he is
afraid of looking into the thing. Such characters always yield to those
who will take the trouble of governing them, or for them. Perhaps the
influence of a princess, whose choice of him had royalised his state, may
be some little excuse for Albany's weakness.

_Ib._ sc. 5.--

"_Lear._ O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
Keep me in temper! I would not be mad!"

The mind's own anticipation of madness! The deepest tragic notes are often
struck by a half sense of an impending blow. The Fool's conclusion of this
act by a grotesque prattling seems to indicate the dislocation of feeling
that has begun and is to be continued.

Act ii. sc. 1. Edmund's speech:--