ly
tragic conclusion, and on it he grafted the equally distressing tale of
Gloucester and his two sons, which he drew from Sidney's 'Arcadia.'
{241b} Hints for the speeches of Edgar when feigning madness were drawn
from Harsnet's 'Declaration of Popish Impostures,' 1603. In every act of
'Lear' the pity and terror of which tragedy is capable reach their
climax. Only one who has something of the Shakespearean gift of language
could adequately characterise the scenes of agony--'the living
martyrdom'--to which the fiendish ingratitude of his daughters condemns
the abdicated king--'a very foolish, fond old man, fourscore and upward.'
The elemental passions burst forth in his utterances with all the
vehemence of the volcanic tempest which beats about his defenceless head
in the scene on the heath. The brutal blinding of Gloucester by Cornwall
exceeds in horror any other situation that Shakespeare created, if we
assume that he was not responsible for the like scenes of mutilation in
'Titus Andronicus.' At no point in 'Lear' is there any loosening of the
tragic tension. The faithful half-witted lad who serves the king as his
fool plays the jesting chorus on his master's fortunes in penetrating
earnest and deepens the desolating pathos.

'Timon of Athens.'

Although Shakespeare's powers showed no sign of exhaustion, he reverted
in the year following the colossal effort of 'Lear' (1607) to his earlier
habit of collaboration, and with another's aid composed two
dramas--'Timon of Athens' and 'Pericles.' An extant play on the subject
of 'Timon of Athens' was composed in 1600, {242} but there is nothing to
show that Shakespeare and his coadjutor were acquainted with it. They
doubtless derived a part of their story from Painter's 'Palace of
Pleasure,' and from a short digression in Plutarch's 'Life of Marc
Antony,' where Antony is described as emulating the life and example of
'Timon Misanthropos the Athenian.' The dramatists may, too, have known a
dialogue of Lucian entitled 'Timon,' which Boiardo had previously
converted into a comedy under the name of 'Il Timone.' Internal evidence
makes it clear that Shakespeare's colleague was responsible for nearly
the whole of acts III. and V. But the character of Timon himself and all
the scenes which he dominates are from Shakespeare's pen. Timon is cast
in the mould of Lear.

'Pericles.'

There seems some ground for the belief that Shakespeare's coadjutor in
'Tim