Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/155

140 devoted loyalty and self-sacrifice, shews the impression which this conduct makes upon the best and boldest mind present: “Be Kent unmannerly When Lear is mad.”

“With better judgment check This hideous rashness.”

“Kill thy physician and thy fee bestow Upon the foul disease.” Lear's treatment of Kent; his ready threat in reply to Kent's deferential address, which, in the words of true devo

tion, only looks like the announcement of an expostulation ; his passionate interruptions and reproaches; his attempted violence, checked by Albany and Cornwall; and finally the cruel sentence of banishment, cruelly expressed; all these are the acts of a man in whom passion has become disease. In the interview with France and Burgundy the seething passion is with difficulty suppressed by the rules of decorum and kingly courtesy. To Cordelia's entreaty that Lear would let the King of France know the simple truth of his displeasure, only the savage reply is given— “Better thou

Hadst not been born than not have pleased me better;” and he casts out his once loved daughter—the darling of his heart, the hope of his age—without his grace, his love, his benison.

All this is exaggerated passion, perverted affection, weak ened judgment; all the elements, in fact, of madness, except incoherence, and delusion. These are added later, but they are not essential to madness; and as we read the play, the mind of Lear is, from the first, in a state of actual

unsoundness, or, to speak more precisely, of disease. The conference between Regan and Goneril, which ends the

scene, seems to prove this view correct; for, although they attribute their father's outrageous conduct to the infir