day, but have changed slightly their sense or their associations.

Shakespeare made full use of this freedom in usage. He invented words freely. He made verbs from nouns, or nouns from adjectives, or he used one part of speech for another, as the occasion demanded. In syntax he was equally daring, and in plays as late as Lear much more zealous for an effective and concise expression of his thought than for a precise logic of grammatical relations. Probably the principal linguistic difficulties in Lear are due, first, to Shakespeare's extraordinary condensation of meaning and, second, to the abundance and intensity of his imagery. In both these respects the style contrasts with that of his early plays, when he was often guilty of diffuseness, and when he always delighted to linger over a metaphor or a description. In Lear perhaps more than in any other play he compresses both his thought and his figures.

Every word is packed with meaning and suggestion. He crowds a sentence or a whole passage Condeninto a single word. Thus Lear offers Cordelia sation. to her suitors in a speech every word of which carries a weight of both thought and feeling:

Unfriended, new-adopted to our hate,
Dower'd with our curse, and stranger'd with our oath,

Take her, or leave her ? Often the overburdened words are less clear than here. The play is full of terse phrases, abbreviated in syntax, sometimes splendidly vivid, sometimes too condensed to be readily understood. Here are a few:in contempt of man (II, iii, 8)=in order to show its contempt for man. he childed as I father'd=he treated cruelly by his children, as I have

been by my father.

spite of intermission=in despite of the intermission which he should have made in deference to me.

ten masts at each ten masts placed one on top of another.

Imagery.

Along with this condensation of meaning goes a crowding of images. Words were to Shakespeare only less alive than his men and women. They came quickly at his bidding, took new forms, and performed new tasks for him. While the language of Lear is often as simple and direct as that of ordinary speech, and while it is rarely rhetorical or decorative, it is crowded with vivid and often unexpected imagery. Even abstract terms, or the names of emotions or states of mind, undergo a kind of personification, and are supplied with the traits of living beings, or at least with visual and concrete accompaniments. We e see this in expressions like "your loop'd and window'd raggedness" (III, iv, 31), where raggedness is imaged as a fort or shelter; or in generalizations on conduct, as

Infirmity doth still neglect all office

Whereto our health is bound. (II, iv, 107, 108.) Or in the ordinary course of speech; as, "our power shall do a courtesy to our wrath" (III, vii, 25), or "force their scanted courtesy" (III, ii, 66). Or in “a sovereign shame so elbows him" (IV, iii, 44), where apparently shame is viewed as a sovereign or ruling figure which stands by Lear's elbow and nudges him to remind him of the past; or again, more vividly, in Edgar's name, "By treason's tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit" (V, iii, 122). One other use of imagery may also be noted, its employment to remove our attention from the immediate circumstance to a more

extensive or universal application. An apparently chance remark connects the event before us with the eternal problems of life and philosophy, and thus gives to the happenings of the play a dignity and universality of appeal. This is sometimes done directly, as in the comment of Gloucester's despair,

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;

They kill us for their sport. (IV, i, 38, 39.) Sometimes it is only an incidental suggestion, as in Edgar's,

Your business of the world hath so an end,

And machination ceases. (V, i, 15, 46.) or in Lear's,

And take upon 's the mystery of things

As if we were God's spies. (V, iii, 16, 17.) Everywhere Shakespeare's imagination is tremendously active. There is hardly a sentence, hardly a word, that does not add directly to the total impressiveness of the play.

We study Shakespeare's language not only to understand it, but also to appreciate and enjoy it. As we search its exact meaning, we are the more quickened to a delight in its richness and multiform impressiveness, in its poetic beauty, in its adaptability to situation or emotion, in its transparent revelation of human character. And this suggests one word more to

The Play the student. In studying word or sentence, as a whole. image or person, he must not lose sight of the play as a whole. One common source of misinterpretation of the characters is the centring of attention on a single part or a single speech. But every sentence, or speech, or part, belongs to the whole play, and it is the appre

ciation and understanding of the whole that we should always have in view. You cannot separate the poetry from the persons who speak it, or the characters of the persons from the actions in which they participate. They were all wrought together by Shakespeare; and perhaps in no play is their union more indissoluble than in King Lear.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DR. FURNESS's New Variorum Edition of King Lear is a storehouse of information invaluable to the teacher. Dowden's Shakspere Primer is the best handbook for the study of Shakespeare. The best biography is by Sidney Lee. Bartlett's Concordance, Schmidt's Lexicon (the third edition has an appendix by G. Sarrazin), and Abbott's Grammar are the standard authorities for linguistic study. Abbott's Grammar is now a little out of date and should be supplemented by Franz's Shakespeare-Grammatik. The Story of King Lear, Palaestra xxxv, by Wilfrid Perrett (Berlin, 1904), is an excellent study of the sources of the play. A. C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy is the most penetrating of recent critical studies. Among recent important books on Shakespeare are Walter Raleigh's William Shakespeare in the English Men of Letters Series and G. P. Baker's Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist. Tragedy, by the present editor (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908), discusses Shakespeare's plays in connection with the history of English Tragedy. The Cambridge edition, by W. A. Neilson, is the best single-volume edition of Shakespeare's works.