The tragedy does not culminate till Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms. After a wild outburst of grief, he asks for a looking-glass to see if she still breathes, and in the pause that ensues Kent says:—
"Is this the promised end?"
And Edgar:—
"Or image of that horror?"
Lear is given a feather. He utters a cry of joy—it moves—she is alive! Then he sees that he has been mistaken. Curses follow, and after them this exquisite touch of characterisation:—
"Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman."
Then the disguised Kent makes himself known, and Lear learns that the two criminal daughters are dead. But his capacity for receiving new impressions is almost gone. He can feel nothing but Cordelia's death: "And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!" He faints and dies.
"Kent Vex not his ghost: O let him pass! He hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer."
That this old man should lose his youngest daughter—this is the catastrophe which Shakespeare has made so great that it is with reason Kent asks: "Is this the promised end? Is this the end of the world?" In the loss of this daughter he loses all; and the abyss that opens seems wide enough and deep enough to engulph a world.
The loss of a Cordelia—that is the great catastrophe. We all lose, or live under the dread of losing, our Cordelia. The loss of the dearest and the best, of that which alone makes life worth living—that is the tragedy of life. Hence the question: Is this the end of the world? Yes it is. Each of us has only his world and lives with the threat of its destruction hanging over him. And in the year 1606 Shakespeare was in no mood to write other than dramas on the doom of worlds.