KING LEAR. The important editions of 'King Lear' are the first quarto (1607), the second quarto (1608) and the first folio (1623). The various readings of these texts constitute interesting problems of textual criticism. The record in the Stationers' Register, 26 Nov. '1607, indicates that the play was acted before the king at Christmas the preceding year. Certain internal evidence, such as the reference to the "late eclipses") (October 1605) and the Gun powder Plot (5 Nov. 1605), would point to a probable earlier date. The verse, the technique and the high Seriousness of the tragedy all indicate that Shakespeare wrote the play at a time when his genius had reached its highest point of development.
The story upon which the play is based had been current since Geoffrey of Monmouth's (Historia Britannorum,> and Laymon's 'Brut.> Shakespeare was mainly dependent, however, upon Holinshed's 'Chronicles' (1577), Spen ser's version of the second book of the 'Faerie Queene,) and an older play 'The True Chron icle History of King Leir and His Three Daughters' (1594). The story of Gloucester and his two sons was not a part of the original story, but had been set forth in Sidney's 'Ar cadia.' No play illustrates better the drama tist's indebtedness to his sources, and at the same' time the dramatic power with which he changed all the details into a dramatic unity.
"The little more and how much it is, The little less and what worlds away)" 'King Lear> in its complexity of plot, its large number of characters, and its immense physical background, is the best possible illus tration of the difference between the romantic drama and the classic. A detailed comparison with 'Orestes' suggests the difference between a complex and a simple play. The Greek dramatist is enabled by a few simple characters and the simplest of plots to produce a clear and definite impression. The very variety of 'King is bewildering: there is a combination in the play of the fable, the fairy story, the chron icle history and the tragedy of blood. And
yet this varied wealth of character, passion, pathos and high philosophy, all subordinated to one harmonious whole, constitutes the glory of the play.
While many of the details of character and plot deserve consideration, it is well to em phasize the nature of the play as a tragedy. In no other play does Shakespeare represent or interpret so well the tragedy of the universe. All that is evil in man and woman comes to the surface. The animal world in all its ferocity. and nature, red in tooth and claw, are blended with the representation of man at his worst. The serpent, the wolf, the vulture, the wild boar —monsters of the deep that tear each other in their slime—are the counterparts of evil human creatures. Humanity preys upon itself, while the winds and the storms and sheets of fire turn upon human creatures "to complete the ruin they have wrought upon themselves' When the light begins to break toward the end of the play, the storm comes again as Cordelia is hanged and Lear comes upon the stage with his daughter in his arms, crying, °Never, never, never, never, never .° In their importance Gloucester and Lear appeal to the higher powers — the stars, the heavens, the gods —but in vain. One thing alone is evident from the play — namely, that evil comes to definite defeat and that good, though mutilated and sacrificed, is its own reward. Tragic suf fering is the privilege of great souls. But we remain confronted with "the inexplicable fact, or the no less inexplicable appearance, of a world travailing for protection, but bringing to birth, together with glorious good, an evil which it is able to overcome only by self-torture and self-waste. If this is; as Professor Bradley has suggested, the essence of tragedy as Shake speare conceived it, surely 'King Lear' is the supreme expression of the dramatist's genius.