[188] E.g. in King Lear the servants, and the old man who succours Gloster and brings to the naked beggar 'the best 'parel that he has, come on't what will,' i.e. whatever vengeance Regan can inflict. Cf. the Steward and the Servants in Timon. Cf. there also (v. i. 23), 'Promising is the very air o' the time ... performance is ever the duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying [performance of promises] is quite out of use.' Shakespeare's feeling on this subject, though apparently specially keen at this time of his life, is much the same throughout (cf. Adam in As You Like It). He has no respect for the plainer and simpler kind of people as politicians, but a great respect and regard for their hearts.
[189] 'I stumbled when I saw,' says Gloster.
[190] Our advantages give us a blind confidence in our security. Cf. Timon, iv. iii. 76,
| Alc. | I have heard in some sort of thy miseries. |
| Tim. | Thou saw'st them when I had prosperity. |
[191] Biblical ideas seem to have been floating in Shakespeare's mind. Cf. the words of Kent, when Lear enters with Cordelia's body, 'Is this the promised end?' and Edgar's answer, 'Or image of that horror?' The 'promised end' is certainly the end of the world (cf. with 'image' 'the great doom's image,' Macbeth, ii. iii. 83); and the next words, Albany's 'Fall and cease,' may be addressed to the heavens or stars, not to Lear. It seems probable that in writing Gloster's speech about the predicted horrors to follow 'these late eclipses' Shakespeare had a vague recollection of the passage in Matthew xxiv., or of that in Mark xiii., about the tribulations which were to be the sign of 'the end of the world.' (I do not mean, of course, that the 'prediction' of i. ii. 119 is the prediction to be found in one of these passages.)
[192] Cf. Hamlet, iii. i. 181:
This something-settled matter in his heart,
Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
From fashion of himself.
[193] I believe the criticism of King Lear which has influenced me most is that in Prof. Dowden's Shakspere, his Mind and Art (though, when I wrote my lectures, I had not read that criticism for many years); and I am glad that this acknowledgment gives me the opportunity of repeating in print an opinion which I have often expressed to students, that anyone entering on the study of Shakespeare, and unable or unwilling to read much criticism, would do best to take Prof. Dowden for his guide.