Kent seeks to turn the trend of conversation by a remark in compliment of Edinund's personal appearance. Gloucester, however, making his own unrefined nature even more evident, recalls the lewd pleasure of his relations with his paramour as ground for acknowledging his son; and, with this apology, introduces him to Kent.

Edmund is a bastard; and, being a child of passion, is perhaps the more emotionally sensitive to these wanton insults. The nature of the insults shows what he must have had to suffer through all the years of his youth. A child of lawless passion, he has inherited tendencies to rebellion against authority and moral, that is, social, Jaw which have been deepened within him by the experiences of his nurture. His beauty is physical; and, as an animal, he is superb. Edmund has been abroad nine years and shall again. Of personal acquaintance between father and son there is none. Gloucester's lawful son also is no dearer in his account; and in these words Gloucester confesses to that lack of personal knowledge which makes possible the later gross misunderstanding of his sons' characters.

Sennet. Enter one bearing a coronet, King Lear,*

Cornwall, Albany, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia,

and Attendants

Lear. Attend the lords of France and Burgundy,

40

In three our kingdom; and 't is our fast intent

To shake al' cares and business from our age,

Conferring them cn younger strengths, while we
Unburthen'd crawl toward death.

* Sennet a signal upon a trumpet or cornet.

56, Attend: escort them bither.

Burgundy: pronounce Burgogne. (Walker.)

37. shall: the response of assurance given a superior. 38, darker: as yet unpublished and hence secret.

40. fast intent: fixed determination (see 45).

The play is filled with anachronisms. Lear was a king of Britain in pre-Christian times, long before influences from the classic regions of the Mediterranean Sea had reached the British Isles. France and Burgundy were separate kingdoms in the period following Charlemagne. Thus by inference Lear is placed much later than in actual history; but these errors in unessential detail only serve to make the essential value of the drama, in its faithfulness to the universal truth of human nature, the more clearly evident.

Our son of Cornwall,

And you, our no less loving son of Albany,

We have this hour a constant will to publish

Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife

May be prevented now. The princes, France and Burgundy,

Great rivals in our youngest daughter's love,

Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,

And here are to be answer'd.

45

Tell me, my daughters, 50

Since now we will divest us both of rule,

Interest of territory, cares of state,

Which of you shall we say doth love us most?

That we our largest bounty may extend

Where nature doth with merit challenge.—

Our eldest-born, speak first.

44. loving: filial.

Goneril, 55

51. both by Shakespeare not infrequently used with more than

Lear is an impulsive Celt whose every passion, whether of love or hate, expresses itself violently. Violent in the expression of his own emotion, he demands a similar violence in the emotions of others. There is no reasoned purpose in this test of affection. The division has already been determined upon; but, before the suitors for his third daughter arrive, there is a pause which the old man, upon the impulse of the moment, fills with an appeal for the flattery of affection, offering the promise of larger gifts as a bribe.