Influence
Theatre.

testifies everywhere to the readiness and greatness of Shakespeare's invention.

In composing the various incidents of these stories into a play, Shakespeare was bound to meet the require. ments of his actors, his audience, and his theatre. That theatre with its bare stage, without scenery, without women actors, and without a front curtain, had been for a generation the scene of remarkable dramatic activity. The plays of many dramatists had established traditions and standards to which actors and audiences had become accustomed. Tragedies, for example, were

limited to certain matters. They dealt genelizabethan erally with persons of royal blood or high

rank; they related the overthrow of kingdoms, the downfall of princes; they told of great and bloody crimes committed by villains of the deepest dye; and they always ended with many deaths. In some respects these tragic traditions hampered rather than assisted Shakespeare. He kept a battle-scene, because battle-scenes were customary; he made Edmund and Edgar reveal their inmost thoughts and intentions in long speeches, because the convention of soliloquizing was then an established one; he presented on the stage the plucking out of Gloucester's eyes, because physical horrors were the invariable accompaniment of tragedies. But, in the main, the dramatic traditions of his theatre were distinguished not for their limitations but for their freedom. They permitted the presentation of almost anything on the stage; they delighted in rapid contrasts between the tragic and the comic; they stimulated a daring study of human nature of all sorts, good and evil, violent and reflective, grotesque and

ideal. No other theatre would have encouraged a dramatist to accompany his heart-broken king with a jesting fool, to place side by side grotesque assumed madness and the most pitiful insanity, to mingle exhibitions of monstrous villainy and purest virtue.

The Elizabethan theatre also encouraged freedom in dramatic structure. The division into five acts was of little moment; and that into scenes was of hardly more, for it was entirely convenient to change the place at any time, no scenery being used. The audience came to the theatre for a story, and demanded one full of action. Apart from the necessity of telling the whole of a story clearly and interestingly, the dramatist was bound by almost no rules as to his construction. Shakespeare naturally supplied a complicated plot and an abundance of action in order to satisfy his public, but he was left free to subordinate these to the logic of dramatic characterization. Given persons with these characters in this situation, what would they do? And what effects would their actions have? It was in answer to such questions as these that the plot was built up in Shakespeare's mind. The play thus became not merely incidents and stories, but the logical tracing out of the results of the conflicts of persons and passions.

The plot of King Lear is indeed extraordinarily complicated. The number of important actors is large, and they are grouped in a series of remarkable contrasts. Lear has two bad daughters, Goneril and Regan, and one good daughter, Cordelia. Gloucester has two sons, the villain Edmund and the good Edgar. Cornwall, husband of Regan, is bad; Albany, husband of

The
Dramatic
Action.

Goneril, proves noble. Cordelia has two suitors, one unworthy, the other worthy. Lear has two faithful companions, the Fool and Kent; and Kent is balanced by Oswald, a faithful steward of the wicked Goneril. The incidents of the action, most numerous and varied, are also linked together, with an eye to balance and contrast. But we may note, first, the essential unity which was given to the play as a whole.

The dramatic action presents the stories of

the two fathers and their good and evil children. It begins with the disinheritance of the good children by their fathers, who foolishly repose their trust in the evil daughters and son. It then proceeds with the sufferings of the parents due to the inhuman ingratitude of the evil children, culminating in the madness of Lear and the blindness of Gloucester. This much of the action includes the first three acts. The fourth act presents the reconciliation of the two fathers with Edgar and Cordelia, but also the continued enmity of Goneril and Regan and Edmund, who are now allied. The last act tells of the victory in battle of the bad, and the ruin and death brought upon nearly all the persons of the play -- good or bad, old or young. But everywhere the good and the evil stand clearly distinguished. The suffering has its chastening and remedial power upon the good, and their deaths render their lives the more appealing to our sympathy and affection. Stripped of all the accessories of madness and bloodshed, of court and battlefield, the dramatic action tells of the pathos and tragedy that often interfere in the relations of father and child; of the mistakes of parents, of the wicked

ness of ingratitude, of the loveliness of filial devotion. Shakespeare has re-created the old legends into a story of men's lives and souls that is forever potent in the imaginations of all who have ever had a child, or a father.

We may now examine in detail the structure by acts and scenes, keeping in mind not only the main course of the dramatic action, but also the influence of Elizabethan theatrical conditions.

Act I. Lear proposes to divide the kingdom among his three daughters in accordance with evidences received of their affection. Goneril and Regan make extravagant avowals, but Cordelia refuses to rival them. Lear in a frenzy repudiates her and offers her dowerless to her two suitors. Burgundy refuses the offer, but the King of France accepts her. Lear confers all power on the wicked sisters, and banishes Kent, who protests against his folly. Goneril at once incites her steward to slight Lear, and she makes a quarrel with the King over the conduct of his retinue. In a great passion he curses her and plans to journey to Regan. Kent, disguised as a serving-man, and the Fool, who strives to amuse and at the same time to chide his master, are the King's most loyal attendants. In the secondary plot, the bastard Edmund plots to prejudice his father Gloucester against his brother Edgar.

Scene i. A long scene with much action, introducing the chief characters and the main plot - the love test and Cordelia's disinheritance,

Scene ii. Edmund soliloquizes and proceeds to persuade Gloucester by means of a forged letter that his life is in danger from Edgar. This introduces the secondary plot.

Scene iii. Goneril consults with her steward, Oswald, planning to irritate Lear. This is a brief explanatory scene, such as was possible on a stage without scenery. Often, as here, such scenes imply the passage of some time.

Scene iv. A long scene with much action, carrying on the main plot. Kent disguised enters Lear's service and encounters Oswald. The Fool enters and exhibits both his loyalty and his poignant wit. Goneril and Lear quarrel, and he prepares to leave her house. Her husband, Albany, protests feebly.

Scene v. A continuation of the preceding. The Fool realizes better than Lear the probable outcome of his journey to Regan, but Lear now repents of the wrong to Cordelia and begins to fear madness.

old man,

Act II. Regan and Cornwall, warned by Goneril of Lear's visit, move from their castle to Gloucester's. Kent, Lear's messenger, follows them thither, quarrels with Goneril's messenger, Oswald, and is put in the stocks as a punishment. There Leår finds him, and on reproaching Regan is treated coldly and then harshly, Goneril now arrives and both daughters refuse to receive Lear's knights, and the

bewildered and broken, is turned out into the night in the midst of a rising storm. Meanwhile Edmund's tricks have succeeded. Gloucester believes that Edgar seeks to murder him; and Edgar, forced to fly, decides to take the disguise of a Bedlam beggar.

Scene i. This carries on the secondary plot - Edmund tricks both his father and brother — and prepares for the union of the two plots by bringing Regan and Cornwall from their home to Gloucester's castle.

Scene ii. Oswald and Kent encounter. Kent beats Oswald and is put in the stocks by Regan, where he attempts to read a letter announcing the expedition of Cordelia with an army from France to England.

Scene iii. Really there is no change of scene. While Kent is sleeping in the stocks, Edgar appears and, soliloquizing, announces his intention of disguising himself as a Bedlam beggar.

Scene iv. Lear and the Fool discover Kent in the stocks. Lear encounters first Regan and Cornwall and after a while Goneril. The long quarrel ends with his departure into the storm.

All the scenes of Act II are before Gloucester's castle, and their action is nearly continuous; supposedly extending over two days and the intervening night.

Act III. This act presents the culmination of the sufferings of the two fathers through the wicked children. Lear in the storm with Kent and the Fool meets the Bedlam Edgar, and his reason breaks. They are all taken to a farmhouse by Gloucester, and there the pretended madness of Edgar continues to contrast with the real madness of Lear. Lear and Kent depart to Dover, where Cordelia and her army have landed. Gloucester is betrayed by Edmund to Regan and Cornwall; and, on account of his service to Lear, his eyes are torn out.

Scene i. Another expository scene, like I, iii. Kent and a gentleman talk of Cordelia's arrival at Dover.

Scene ii. Lear, the Fool, and Kent in the storm.

Scene iii. In the castle. Gloucester tells Edmund of his intent to aid Lear.

Scene iv. In the storm. Edgar is discovered. Lear goes mad and finds a strange kinship with the Bedlam. Gloucester takes them all to shelter.

Scene v. In the castle. Edmund betrays Gloucester to Cornwall.