NOTE V.
SUSPECTED INTERPOLATIONS IN KING LEAR.
There are three passages in King Lear which have been held to be additions made by 'the players.'
The first consists of the two lines of indecent doggerel spoken by the Fool at the end of Act i.; the second, of the Fool's prophecy in rhyme at the end of iii. ii.; the third, of Edgar's soliloquy at the end of iii. vi.
It is suspicious (1) that all three passages occur at the ends of scenes, the place where an addition is most easily made; and (2) that in each case the speaker remains behind alone to utter the words after the other persons have gone off.
I postpone discussion of the several passages until I have called attention to the fact that, if these passages are genuine, the number of scenes which end with a soliloquy is larger in King Lear than in any other undoubted tragedy. Thus, taking the tragedies in their probable chronological order (and ignoring the very short scenes into which a battle is sometimes divided),[270] I find that there are in Romeo and Juliet four such scenes, in Julius Cæsar two, in Hamlet six, in Othello four,[271] in King Lear seven,[272] in Macbeth two,[273] in Antony and Cleopatra three, in Coriolanus one. The difference between King Lear and the plays that come nearest to it is really much greater than it appears from this list, for in Hamlet four of the six soliloquies, and in Othello three of the four, are long speeches, while most of those in King Lear are quite short.
Of course I do not attach any great importance to the fact just noticed, but it should not be left entirely out of account in forming an opinion as to the genuineness of the three doubted passages.
(a) The first of these, i. v. 54-5, I decidedly believe to be spurious. (1) The scene ends quite in Shakespeare's manner without it. (2) It does not seem likely that at the end of the scene Shakespeare would have introduced anything violently incongruous with the immediately preceding words,
Oh let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!
(3) Even if he had done so, it is very unlikely that the incongruous words would have been grossly indecent. (4) Even if they had been, surely they would not have been irrelevantly indecent and evidently addressed to the audience, two faults which are not in Shakespeare's way. (5) The lines are doggerel. Doggerel is not uncommon in the earliest plays; there are a few lines even in the Merchant of Venice, a line and a half, perhaps, in As You Like It; but I do not think it occurs later, not even where, in an early play, it would certainly have been found, e.g. in the mouth of the Clown in All's Well. The best that can be said for these lines is that they appear in the Quartos, i.e. in reports, however vile, of the play as performed within two or three years of its composition.