one with the address was issued first. All three of them, however, are printed in a very slovenly manner, and furnish divers specimens of most edifying typographical disorder.

As a note-worthy circumstance, we must mention that in the title-pages of the quartos the author's name is made very conspicuous, being placed at the top, and set forth in larger type than any thing else in the page. And the name, "Mr. William Shakespeare," is given with like prominence again at the head of the page on which the play begins. This was probably meant to distinguish the drama from another on the same subject, and to make the purchaser sure that he was getting the genuine work of Shakespeare: it also argues that the publisher found his interest, and perhaps his pride, in having that name prominent on the wares. Mr. Collier mentions it as a peculiarity not found in any other production that he recollects of that period.

There can be little doubt, if any, that the quarto issues of King Lear were unauthorized. The extreme badness of the printing would naturally infer that the publisher had not access to any competent proof-reader. Moreover, none of the other authentic quartos was published by Butter. It is pretty certain, also, as we have before had occasion to observe, that at that time and for several years previous great care was used by the company to keep the Poet's dramas out of print. How Butter got possession of the copy is beyond our means of knowing, and it were vain to conjecture. The fact of three issues in one year shows that the play was highly popular; and this would of course increase the interest both of the publisher to get a copy, and of the company to keep it from him.

After 1608, there was no edition of King Lear, that we know of, till the folio of 1623, where it makes the ninth in the division of Tragedies, is printed with a fair degree of clearness and accuracy, and has the acts and scenes regularly marked throughout. The folio was evidently made up from manuscript, and not from any of the earlier

issues; as it has a few passages that are not in the quartos. On the other hand, the play as there given is considerably abridged, and the omissions are such as to infer that they were made with a view to shorten the time of performance. As showing how much we are indebted to the quartos for the play as it now stands, we may mention that the whole of the third scene in Act IV is wanting in the folio; which scene, though not directly helping forward the action of the play, is one of the finest for reading in the whole compass of the Poet's dramas. Several other passages, of great excellence in themselves, and some of considerable length, are also wanting in the folio. The quartos have, in all, upwards of 220 lines that are not in the later edition; while, on the other hand, the folio has about 50 lines that are wanting in the quartos.

We have seen that King Lear was performed at Court on December 26, 1606. Doubtless it had become favorably known on the public stage before it was called for at Whitehall. On the other side, divers names and allusions used in setting forth the assumed madness of Edgar were taken from Harsnet's Declaration of Popish Impostures, which was published in 1603. Thus much is all the information we have as to the time when the play was written. So that the Poet must have been not far from his fortieth year when this stupendous production came from his hand.

We have already spoken of another drama on the subject of King Lear. This was entered at the Stationers' as early as May 14, 1594, and again on May 8, 1605, and published the latter year by Simon Stafford and John Wright, with the following title: "The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his three Daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella. As it hath been divers and sundry times lately acted." Malone and some others think the publication of this play was owing to the successful course which Shakespeare's drama was at that time running on the stage. It seems nowise improbable that such may have been the case. Whether there was any carlier

edition of the old play, is unknown: it is quite likely, at all events, that Shakespeare was acquainted with it; though the resemblances are such as need infer no knowledge of it but what might have been gained by seeing it on the stage. Probably he took from that source some hints for the part of Kent. Perhaps it should be remarked that his most judicious departures from the history, such as the madness of Lear and the death of Lear and Cordelia at the close, were entirely original with him; the older play adhering, in these points, to the story as told by the chroniclers.

Campbell the poet has worked out a very pleasant comparison of the two dramas, which we probably cannot do better than subjoin. "The elder tragedy," says he, "is simple and touching. There is one entire scene in it,the meeting of Cordelia with her father, in a lonely forest, which, with Shakespeare's Lear in my memory and heart, I could scarcely read with dry eyes. The Lear antecedent to our Poet's Lear is a pleasing tragedy; yet the former, though it precedes the latter, is not its prototype, and its mild merits only show us the wide expanse of difference between respectable talent and commanding inspiration. The two Lears have nothing in common but their aged weakness, their general goodness of heart, their royal rank, and their misfortunes. The ante-Shakespearean Lear is a patient, simple old man; who bears his sorrows very meekly, till Cordelia arrives with her husband the King of France, and his victorious army, and restores her father to the throne of Britain. Shakespeare's Lear presents the most awful picture that was ever conceived of the weakness of senility, contrasted with the strength of despair. In the old play, Lear has a friend Perillus, who moves our interest, though not so deeply as Kent. But, independently of Shakespeare's having created a new Lear, he has sublimated the old tragedy into a new one, by an entire originality in the spiritual portraiture of its personages."

The story of King Lear and his three daughters is one

it

me

re

nis

ear

m;

m

do

"is

at of those old legends with which medieval romance peopled it; "the dark backward and abysm of time," where fact and wl fancy appear all of the same color and texture. Milton, discoursing of ante-historical Britain, finely compares the gradual emerging of authentic history from the shadows of fable and legend, to the course of one who, "having set out on his way by night, and traveled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet him with a clear dawn, old representing to his view, though at a far distance, true colors and shapes." In Shakespeare's day, the legendary tale which forms the main plot of this drama was largely interwoven with the popular literature of Europe. It is met with in various forms and under various names, as in that old repository of popular fiction, the Gesta Romanorum, in the Romance of Perceforest, in The Mirror for Magistrates, in Spenser's Faerie Queene, in Camden's Remains, and in Warner's Albion's England. The oldest extant version of the tale in connection with British to history is in Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welch monk of the twelfth century, who translated it from the ancient British ing tongue into Latin. From thence it was abridged by the but Poet's favorite old chronicler, Holinshed. This abridgment is copied at length in the editions of Knight and ke Verplanck: for variety's sake, we subjoin the legend his mostly in the words of Milton, as given in his History of England.

or.

and

ear

yet

nse

eir

us

and

re's

on.

as

Lear, the son of Bladud, became ruler over the Britons in the year of the world 3105, at which time Joas reigned in Judea. Lear was a prince of noble demcanor, governed laudably, and had three daughters, but no son. At end last, failing through age, he determines to bestow his daughters in marriage, and to divide his kingdom among them. But first, to try which of them loved him best, he resolves to ask them solemnly in order; and which should ait profess largest, her to believe. Gonorill the eldest, apprehending too well her father's weakness, makes answer, invoking Heaven, "That she loved him above her soul."

re

one

"Therefore," quoth the old man, "since thou so honorest my declining age, to thee and the husband whom thou shalt choose I give the third part of my realm.” So fair a speeding for a few words soon uttered was to Regan, the second, ample instruction what to say. She, on the same demand, spares no protesting; and the gods must witness, "That she loved him above all creatures": so she receives an equal reward with her sister. But Cordella the youngest, though hitherto best loved, and now having before her eyes the rich hire of a little easy soothing, and the loss likely to betide plain dealing, yet moves not from the solid purpose of a sincere and virtuous answer. "Father," saith she, "my love towards you is as my duty bids: what should a father seek, what can a child promise more?" When the old man, sorry to hear this, and wishing her to recall those words, persisted asking; with a loyal sadness at her father's infirmity, but something harsh, and rather glancing at her sisters than speaking her own mind, she made answer, "Look, how much you have, so much is your value, and so much I love you." "Then hear thou," quoth Lear, now all in passion, “what thy ingratitude hath gained thee: because thou hast not reverenced thy aged father equal to thy sisters, part of my kingdom, or what else is mine, reckon to have none." And, without delay, he gives his other daughters in marriage, Goronill to Maglanus, Duke of Albania, Regan to Henninus, Duke of Cornwall; with them in present half his kingdom; the rest to follow at his death.

Meanwhile, fame was not sparing to divulge the wisdom and other graces of Cordella, insomuch that Aganippus, a great king in Gaul, seeks her to wife; and, nothing altered at the loss of her dowry, receives her gladly in such manner as she was sent him. After this, King Lear, more and more drooping with years, became an easy prey to his daughters and their husbands; who now, by daily encroachment, had seized the whole kingdom into their hands; and the old king is put to sojourn with his eldest daughter, attended only by threescore knights.

ar