[180] 'Our last and least' (according to the Folio reading). Lear speaks again of 'this little seeming substance.' He can carry her dead body in his arms.
[181] Perhaps then the 'low sound' is not merely metaphorical in Kent's speech in i. i. 153 f.:
answer my life my judgment,
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least;
Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound
Reverbs no hollowness.
[182] i. i. 80. 'More ponderous' is the reading of the Folios, 'more richer' that of the Quartos. The latter is usually preferred, and Mr. Aldis Wright says 'more ponderous' has the appearance of being a player's correction to avoid a piece of imaginary bad grammar. Does it not sound more like the author's improvement of a phrase that he thought a little flat? And, apart from that, is it not significant that it expresses the same idea of weight that appears in the phrase 'I cannot heave my heart into my mouth'?
[183] Cf. Cornwall's satirical remarks on Kent's 'plainness' in ii. ii. 101 ff.,—a plainness which did no service to Kent's master. (As a matter of fact, Cordelia had said nothing about 'plainness.')
[184] Who, like Kent, hastens on the quarrel with Goneril.
[185] I do not wish to complicate the discussion by examining the differences, in degree or otherwise, in the various cases, or by introducing numerous qualifications; and therefore I do not add the names of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.
[186] It follows from the above that, if this idea were made explicit and accompanied our reading of a tragedy throughout, it would confuse or even destroy the tragic impression. So would the constant presence of Christian beliefs. The reader most attached to these beliefs holds them in temporary suspension while he is immersed in a Shakespearean tragedy. Such tragedy assumes that the world, as it is presented, is the truth, though it also provokes feelings which imply that this world is not the whole truth, and therefore not the truth.
[187] Though Cordelia, of course, does not occupy the position of the hero.