ight even were she to condemn him to death. "If, however," he says,
"she will receive me with love, it will be God's and her work, but not
my merit." To this Cordelia says: "Oh, I know for certain that thy
daughter will lovingly receive thee."--"How canst thou know this without
knowing her?" says Leir. "I know," says Cordelia, "because not far from
here, I had a father who acted toward me as badly as thou hast acted
toward her, yet, if I were only to see his white head, I would creep to
meet him on my knees."--"No, this can not be," says Leir, "for there are
no children in the world so cruel as mine."--"Do not condemn all for the
sins of some," says Cordelia, and falls on her knees. "Look here, dear
father," she says, "look on me: I am thy loving daughter." The father
recognizes her and says: "It is not for thee, but for me, to beg thy
pardon on my knees for all my sins toward thee."

Is there anything approaching this exquisite scene in Shakespeare's
drama?

However strange this opinion may seem to worshipers of Shakespeare, yet
the whole of this old drama is incomparably and in every respect
superior to Shakespeare's adaptation. It is so, first, because it has
not got the utterly superfluous characters of the villain Edmund and
unlifelike Gloucester and Edgar, who only distract one's attention;
secondly because it has not got the completely false "effects" of Lear
running about the heath, his conversations with the fool, and all these
impossible disguises, failures to recognize, and accumulated deaths;
and, above all, because in this drama there is the simple, natural, and
deeply touching character of Leir and the yet more touching and clearly
defined character of Cordelia, both absent in Shakespeare. Therefore,
there is in the older drama, instead of Shakespeare's long-drawn scene
of Lear's interview with Cordelia and of Cordelia's unnecessary murder,
the exquisite scene of the interview between Leir and Cordelia,
unequaled by any in all Shakespeare's dramas.

The old drama also terminates more naturally and more in accordance with
the moral demands of the spectator than does Shakespeare's, namely, by
the King of the Gauls conquering the husbands of the elder sisters, and
Cordelia, instead of being killed, restoring Leir to his former
position.

Thus it is in the drama we are examining, which Shakespeare has borrowed
from the drama "King Leir." So it is also with Othello, taken from an
Italian romance, the same a