Observe that the tranquillity which follows the first stunning of the blow permits Lear to reason.
Act iii. sc. 4. O, what a world's convention of agonies is here! All external nature in a storm, all moral nature convulsed,—the real madness of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool, the desperate fidelity of Kent—surely such a scene was never conceived before or since! Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more terrific than any which a Michael Angelo, inspired by a Dante, could have conceived, and which none but a Michael Angelo could have executed. Or let it have been uttered to the blind, the howlings of nature would seem converted into the voice of conscious humanity. This scene ends with the first symptoms of positive derangement; and the intervention of the fifth scene is particularly judicious,—the interruption allowing an interval for Lear to appear in full madness in the sixth scene.
Ib. sc. 7. Gloster's blinding.
What can I say of this scene?—There is my reluctance to think Shakespeare wrong, and yet—
Act iv. sc. 6. Lear's speech:—
“Ha! Goneril!—with a white beard!—They flattered me like a dog; and told me, I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones were there. To say Ay and No to every thing I said!—Ay and No too was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once,” &c.
The thunder recurs, but still at a greater distance from our feelings.
Ib. sc. 7. Lear's speech:—
“Where have I been? Where am I?—Fair daylight?—
I am mightily abused.—I should even die with pity