means of expressing character, as in ballets,
this is only a secondary means. Moreover, if the characters speak at
random and in a random way, and all in one and the same diction, as is
the case in Shakespeare's work, then even the action of gesticulation is
wasted. Therefore, whatever the blind panegyrists of Shakespeare may
say, in Shakespeare there is no expression of character. Those
personages who, in his dramas, stand out as characters, are characters
borrowed by him from former works which have served as the foundation of
his dramas, and they are mostly depicted, not by the dramatic method
which consists in making each person speak with his own diction, but in
the epic method of one person describing the features of another.

The perfection with which Shakespeare expresses character is asserted
chiefly on the ground of the characters of Lear, Cordelia, Othello,
Desdemona, Falstaff, and Hamlet. But all these characters, as well as
all the others, instead of belonging to Shakespeare, are taken by him
from dramas, chronicles, and romances anterior to him. All these
characters not only are not rendered more powerful by him, but, in most
cases, they are weakened and spoilt. This is very striking in this drama
of "King Lear," which we are examining, taken by him from the drama
"King Leir," by an unknown author. The characters of this drama, that of
King Lear, and especially of Cordelia, not only were not created by
Shakespeare, but have been strikingly weakened and deprived of force by
him, as compared with their appearance in the older drama.

In the older drama, Leir abdicates because, having become a widower, he
thinks only of saving his soul. He asks his daughters as to their love
for him--that, by means of a certain device he has invented, he may
retain his favorite daughter on his island. The elder daughters are
betrothed, while the youngest does not wish to contract a loveless union
with any of the neighboring suitors whom Leir proposes to her, and he is
afraid that she may marry some distant potentate.

The device which he has invented, as he informs his courtier, Perillus
(Shakespeare's Kent), is this, that when Cordelia tells him that she
loves him more than any one or as much as her elder sisters do, he will
tell her that she must, in proof of her love, marry the prince he will
indicate on his island. All these motives for Lear's conduct are absent
in Shakespeare's play. Then, when, according to the old dr