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RV 272 (Rh) Gloster:

Edgar:

Here we have four distinct theories of the nature of the ruling power. And besides this, in such of the characters as have any belief in gods who love good and hate evil, the spectacle of triumphant injustice or cruelty provokes questionings like those of Job, or else the thought, often repeated, of divine retribution. To Lear at one moment the storm seems the messenger of heaven:

At another moment those habitual miseries of the poor, of which he has taken too little account, seem to him to accuse the gods of injustice:

and Gloster has almost the same thought ( i. 67 ff.). Gloster again, thinking of the cruelty of Lear’s daughters, breaks out,

The servants who have witnessed the blinding of Gloster by Cornwall and Regan, cannot believe that cruelty so atrocious will pass unpunished. One cries,

and another,