As the ancient balance of his life is destroyed,- as
his pride is smitten with a mortal wound, faith and
hope die out, natural affection is blasted and his
will racked, we see his rational power developing,
until at last he becomes, as it were, a naked intellect,
functioning at random, without the restraints of
purpose. So dominant becomes this disillusioned
mentality that he ceases even to be subject to bodily
conditions, and grows proof against the assaults of
the elements. He is torn between condemnation of
the monstrous children whose poisonous ingratitude
he bewails, and yet sterner condemnation of the
folly in himself which had exposed him to their
merciless mercy. This makes him willing to bow
his head before the blind forces of the world; for
they have not wronged him, save in so far as they
are the unconscious accessories of his man-like but
more inhuman foes:-

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' th' world!

Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children;
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak and despis'd old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high-engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. Oh! oh! 'tis foul!

His own insensitiveness to the storm does not blind him, however, to the needs of others; nay, it reveals them to him. He is infinitely gentle to his Fool, and to the disguised Kent and Edgar. With perfect rationality he explains to Kent his indifference to the tempest:

Thou think'st 'tis much that this contentious storm
Invades us to the skin: so 'tis to thee;

But where the greater malady is fix'd,

The lesser is scarce felt. Thou'ldst shun a bear;

But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,

Thou'ldst meet the bear i' th' mouth. When the mind's

free,

The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there.

III iv 6 ff.

Lear is "insane" only

as regards (1) Sense

The problem of insanity, as we are now learning, is far subtler than the world formerly imagined. That Lear is insane is not for a moment to be doubted; but in what sense is he insane? Chiefly in this, that the testimony of his senses regarding the outer world no longer tallies with the common perception experience; he sees what other men do not see, and cannot see what is present to them. His will, too, is and (2) disorganized, because all the valuations of his life will. have been destroyed, and the impulsions that from of old had actuated him are turned awry. But his emotions remain normal and sound; nay, they are His emoclarified and purified by that greater strenuousness of intellection which we have noted as the strangest and most characteristic symptom of the change he has undergone. He praises and dispraises what the disinterested judgment of universal humanity approves and disapproves. His sense of justice is keener than ever. For the first time in his life he

tions be

come saner,

III iv 28 ff.

and his reasoning power is enhanced. IV vi 169.

IV vi 96 ff.

realizes the lot of the houseless outcasts, to whom
the rain and the storm-wind are old companions:-

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? Oh, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp!
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just!

As for the intensification of his intellectual power, what could be truer than Edgar's characterization of one of his greatest outbursts: "O matter with impertinency mix'd! reason in madness!" Never before had he been aware, as now he is, of the difference between appearance and reality. Hitherto the excellent foppery of the world has befooled him; he has seen only what seems, not what is. He had taken himself to be a little god, because they called him so:

They flattered me like a dog; . . . To say ay and no to everything that I said ay and no to was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found 'em, there I smelt 'em out. Go to, they are not men o' their words: they told me I was everything; 'tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.

Alas, where shall wisdom be found? What is the sanity that could hide these palpable truths of human littleness from the gilded folly that mistakes itself for majesty? Only now has Lear learned the alphabet of life. He has indeed been "mightily abus'd"—but far more by the parents and courtiers, who had told him that he was a god, than even

by the inhuman daughters and the relentless elements which have shown him that he is only a man. There is reason reinforced in the wild words with which, imitating Tom o' Bedlam, he tears his garments from him. Never before had he experienced the utter helplessness and dependence of humanity:

Is man no more than this? Consider him well. III iv 96 ff. Thou ow'st the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on 's are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come, unbutton here!

[Tearing off his clothes.

unlearns the insanity taught to kings.

Though this be madness, yet there's reason in it. How he At this price must the abused idol learn what stern reality teaches to common men from their childhood. But the lesson, once begun, drives itself deeper into Lear's soul than into other men's, by reason of the shock through which it comes. He not only loses the illusions peculiar to a king, but cuts through many that befool other men to the end. And in the deepest utterance of his new perception of reality, he is won to that all-pardoning mercy which is godlike:—.

Lear: What, art mad? A man may see how this IV vi 147 ff. world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?

Gloucester: Ay, sir.

Lear: And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightest behold the great image of authority: a dog's obey'd in office.

The usurer hangs the cozener.

Lear's re turn to

sanity.

IV vii 52 ff.

Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em:
Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
To seal the accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes;
And, like a scurvy politician, seem

To see the thing thou dost not.

There are some few perfections of human achievement before which the voice of praise is dumb; and one of them is that scene in which Lear is won back to sanity by Cordelia's love. No words that we can use but would be too beggarly to characterize it. One may, however, be permitted to point out how, by means of his inspiration, Shakespeare seized upon a truth which our most modern specialists in mental science are now discovering: the truth, namely, that one of the first conditions for the restoration of an alienated mind is that the sufferer shall be brought to admit that he has been insane. Lear, awaking from his dream of torment, makes this acknowledgment; and by grace of that confession comes the recognition of his daughter and of the common world that is present to other minds:

Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight?
I am mightily abus'd. I should e'en die with pity,
To see another thus. I know not what to say.

I will not swear these are my hands: let's see;
I feel this pin prick. Would I were assur'd
Of my condition!

Pray, do not mock me:

I am a very foolish fond old man,

Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you, and know this man;