(f) The Fool.-The last character worthy of comment is by no means the least in importance; it is that of the Fool. In Elizabethan times the Court Jester still flourished, the "Wamba" of Ivanhoe had his descendants in John Heywood, Jester to Henry VIII. and Queen Mary, and the celebrated Archie Armstrong, the favourite of James I. It was therefore a masterly touch on the part of the dramatist to introduce such a popular character as the Fool of Lear would be sure to be.

In this case the Fool is one only in name, for his remarks are full of tact and are inspired with the good intention of preventing his master from foolish actions by reiterating their almost certain consequence. He earns our respect not only by this but by his fidelity to his ruined master; in fact, like the famous Touchstone of As You Like It, he is " a rare fellow".

Shakespeare's art is never more manifest than in this introduction of the Fool, who, while by his "inspired babbling" he relieves our feelings from being overwrought by the pathos of the story, at the same time intensifies the tragedy by revealing what will be the direful consequence of Lear's distraught conduct.

Date of the Play. With regard to the exact time of the publication of King Lear there is no doubt. Entered on the register of the Stationers' Company in November of the year 1607, the first edition of the play was published by Nathaniel Butter in Paul's Churchyard in 1608. The title was as follows: "Mr. William Shakespeare his True Chronicle History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his three Daughters. With the unfortunate life of Edgar, Sonne and Heire to the Earl of Gloucester, and his sullen and assumed humour of Tom of Bedlam. As it was plaid before the King's Majesty at White-Hall, upon St. Stephen's Night in Christmas Hollidaies."

There is, however, some divergence of opinion as to the year in which Shakespeare wrote his tragedy.

One view assigns the time of writing to the end of 1604 or the early spring (Malone, the principal supporter of this theory, mentions the month of April) of 1605, while other Shakespearean authorities declare the correct date to have been the latter months of 1605 or the early ones of 1606.

Advocates of the former of these two opinions put forward the following theory: The old play entitled "King Leir and his Three Daughters" (previously mentioned on p. xv. of this Introduction) was originally entered on the Stationers' Register in 1594, but we find it re-entered in the month of May, 1605, and published in the same year.

It has been maintained that Shakespeare's King Lear had been acted before the last-mentioned date, and that the publisher of the old "King Leir and his Three Daughters " was endeavouring to palm off this ancient production upon his customers as the recently acted play of Shakespeare, which must, according to Malone and his followers, have been written either at the end of 1604 or very early in 1605.

But this theory, besides appearing somewhat far-fetched, certainly cannot boast the substantial basis of the opposing view which would put the date of writing at late in 1605 or early in 1606. Firstly, there is the external proof supplied by the entry on the register of the Stationers' Company already referred to, which by fixing the date of production as 20th December, 1606, makes it impossible for the play to have been written after 1606.

Secondly, there is the internal evidence which, while it conclusively proves that the play cannot have been written before 1603 (the "fiends" referred to by Edgar in Act iii. Sc. 4 were named after those mentioned in Bishop Harsnet's Discovery of Popish Impostures, published in 1603), affords also strong reasons for supposing the time of writing to have been the winter or late autumn of 1605.

In the second scene of Act i. 1. 76 we find the words "These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good

to us".

Now there was an eclipse of the moon in September, 1605, and of the sun in October of the same year, both of which had excited lively apprehension in the minds of English people, and to which no doubt Shakespeare intended the line quoted to be a topical allusion.

Again, in the same scene Gloucester says, Machinations, hollowness, treachery and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves"; it seems only reasonable to assume that these lines were written after and suggested by the Gunpowder Plot of 5th November, 1605. Further, in support of this second theory it may be urged that the style (of both language and metre) and general tone of the play point to it having been one of the later though not one of the latest works of Shakespeare.

The sombre character of the tragedy and the deplorable fortunes of the principal movers were perfectly in harmony with the intense personal suffering which depressed the writer during the years 1603 to 1608, in which third period of his career he " 'sounded," to quote the words of Boas, "the lowest abysses of our mortal lot ".

ELIZABETHAN LANGUAGE.

While commerce, wealth and the betterment of social condition progressed with giant strides under the rule of Elizabeth there was a corresponding "Renascence in the domain of literature. Where the affected euphuism of John Lyly, whom Shakespeare afterwards pitilessly quizzed, failed, the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney succeeded, and "with the stately periods of Hooker English prose entered on a new stage”.

The influence of the wonderful discoveries of the buccaneers in the New World, the knowledge thus acquired of new people, new laws and new customs, made the study of human nature and character a fascinating and engrossing pursuit, opening up new realms for exploration to the poet and dramatist,

With renewed popularity of their art came also more vigorous and more polished diction on the part of writers. The effects of the Renaissance upon our language were very great; words and phrases were borrowed freely from the now eagerly studied classics and Spanish or Italian authors, and used in their literal meaning originally, but gradually they acquired the transformed signification which they bear in our own times.

Language in the time of Greene, Marlowe and Shakespeare was in a transition stage between the ancient and uncouth “Middle English" style of Chaucer and the more refined and classically modelled type which obtained after 1650, and which found its first great exponent in John Milton.

Thus it is that we find surviving in the language of the Elizabethans words now considered either obsolete or archaic, and words which at the present day convey to us quite a different meaning to that of Elizabethan times. We can tabulate them thus :

1. Examples of obsolete words found in King Lear are:Queasy, difficult to handle, risky (ii. 1, 17).

Alarumed, thoroughly aroused (ii. 1, 54).

Gasted, aghast (ii. 1, 56).

Pight, fixed or determined (ii. 1, 66).

Cullionly, base, wretched (ii. 2, 26).

Meiny, ménage, retinue (ii. 4, 34).
Sizes, allowance (ii. 4, 170).

To gallow, to terrify (iii. 2, 39).

Mopping and mowing, grimacing and pouting (iv. 1, 64).

To squiny, to squint at (iv. 6, 119).

2. Some of the archaic words are:-
An or and, if (i. 4, 168).

Good-morrow, good-morning (ii. 2, 148).
A fetch, a device or pretext (ii. 4, 83).

Or ere, before (ii. 4, 281).

Child, young knight (iii. 4, 166).

Marry, indeed, to be sure (iv. 2, 70).

'Em, him (Middle Eng. hem) (iv. 6, 145).

3. The following are some examples of words used in the play with a different meaning from that which they now possess:

Pelting, meaning paltry (ii. 3, 18).

Cockney, meaning an affected woman (ii. 4, 116).

Embossed, meaning swollen, protuberant (ii. 4, 219).
Packings, meaning plottings (iii. 1, 26).

Entertain, meaning take into one's service (iii. 6, 76).
Repeal, meaning call back (in literal sense) (iii. 6, 111).
Secure, meaning make careless (as in Latin) (iv. 1, 21).

4. We find the following examples in King Lear of words. borrowed directly from other languages and differing very slightly, if at all, in inflexion:

Alarum (Italian all' arme, to arms).

Duello (Italian).

Carbonado (used by Shakespeare in King Lear as a verb, but really a Spanish substantive, meaning a slice of meat for broiling).

Felicitate (Latin past participle felicitatus).

Influence (in the late Latin sense of influentia, a flowing in upon).
Interlude (Latin inter ludere).

Oeillades (borrowed unchanged from the French).

Minikin (the Dutch minniken).

In addition to employing a peculiarly rich and extensive vocabulary, the Elizabethans from an intense desire to attain dramatic terseness and brevity used wherever it was possible a very elliptical style of language.

In Richard II. (v. 5, 26, 27) for instance, we find the following ellipse :

Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame,

That many have and others must sit there.

Here the full sentence would be: "refuge their shame" (i.e., console themselves by thinking that) "many have sat there".