ページの画像
PDF
ePub

We know not how Hermione, how Imogen would have stood this; but Desdemona, on waking from her half-sleep, says to Emilia

"Pr'ythee, to night Lay on my bed my wedding-sheets-re

member!"

She knew that she was to be murdered-yet in her the love of life at last was strong-and piteously does she plead to the roaring sea-but not so strong as her love of her own innocence-both together less than her love of Othello!

"Des. A guiltless death I die! Emil. O who hath done this deed? Des. Nobody; I myself; farewell! Commend me to my kind lord; O, farewell! [Dies."

The lady who has best of all spoken of Desdemona, supplies us with a farewell. "She is a victim consecrated from the first"-" an offering without blemish"-alone worthy of the grand final sacrifice; all harmony, all grace, all purity, all tenderness, all truth, all forgiveness!

CORDELIA! how happened it in nature that thou wert own sister to Goneril and Regan? You were all three brought up together-saw the same sights-heard the same sounds -danced over the same swardslept under the same roof-were bred in the same faith. And yet, lo! a Seraph and two Fiends!

O Lear! foolish must thou have been, even before old age came upon thee, never once to have suspected aught of evil in the daughters who afterwards drove thee mad! Noit shewed thee of a noble nature. Their beauty made thee glad;" and a father's love, boundless and bright as a cloudless heaven, in its embracement, believed that beauty to be virtue.

The old king-we may well suppose-had no doubts of the equal filial affection of all the three. 'Twas but a fond scheme for meting out among them his dominions in equal measure. He expected to hear from their lips but various expression of the same superlative love. Viewed in this light, there is nothing to find fault with-nothing absurd-in the father's fond conceit. And how beautifully do they all three speak!

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CCIV.

[blocks in formation]

I find, she names my very deed of love; Only she comes too short,-that I profess Myself an enemy to all other joys, Which the most precious square of sense possesses;

And find, I am alone felicitate

In your dear highness' love.

Cor. Then poor Cordelia ! [Aside. And yet not so; since, I am sure, my love's

More richer than my tongue.

Lear. To thee, and thine, hereditary ever, Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom;

No less in space, validity, and pleasure, Than that confirm'd on Goneril.-Now, our joy, Although the last, not least; to whose young love

The vines of France, and milk of Bur gundy,

Strive to be interess'd; what can you say, to draw

L

A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.

Cor. Nothing, my lord.
Lear. Nothing?
Cor. Nothing.
Lear. Nothing can come of nothing;
speak again.

Cor. Unhappy that I am, I cannot

heave

My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond; nor more, nor

less.

Lear. How, how, Cordelia? mend your speech a little,

Lest it may mar your fortunes.

1

Cor. Good my lord, You have begot me, bred me, lov'd me: Return those duties back as are right fit, Obey you, love you, and most honour you. Why have my sisters husbands, if they say They love you, all? Haply, when I shall wed,

That lord, whose hand must take my plight, shall carry

Half my love with him, half my care, and duty:

Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters,
To love my father all.

Lear. But goes this with thy heart?
Cor.
Ay, good my lord.
Lear. So young, and so untender?
Cor. So young, my lord, and true.
Lear. Let it be so,-Thy truth then
be thy dower:

For, by the sacred radiance of the sun;
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;
By all the operations of the orbs,
From whom we do exist, and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee, from this, for ever. The bar-
barous Scythian,

Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and re-
liev'd,

As thou, my sometime daughter."

It was necessary that Cordelia should speak, so as to waken the wrath of Lear, and we confess we do not wonder that her answer should have had that effect. After the ardent protestations of her sisters, it must have been felt unnaturally cold; and her father, all unsuspicious of their hypocritical exaggerations, must have been expecting the climax from his Cordelia. "Now, our Joy! although the last, not least." Had she been questioned first, she would have given warmer utterance to her love.

"Obey you, love you, and most honour you,"

is a noble epitome of filial duties, and might satisfy any father. But its simplicity seemed tame to Lear's heated brain, with the sound of Regan's and Goneril's magniloquence in his ears; and had not her repugnance to their false and hollow rhetoric been so strong in her truthful heart, Cordelia would not have been slow to soothe her old, almost doting father's impatience, by giving a warmer glow and a brighter colouring than was her wont to her silver speech.

The Disinherited undergoes_the indignity of rejection from Burgundy, whom we know at that moment she did not love; but France, who had exchanged hearts with her, her," most best, most dearest, reasays, that to believe aught wrong of son without miracle could never plant in me." We see a crown already on her head. How beautifully is her character now evolved!

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

"Knight. Since my young lady's going into France, sir, the fool hath much pined away.

Lear. No more of that; I have noted it well."

When his heart is cut-cleft by Goneril-he piteously cries

"O most small fault,

How ugly didst thou in Cordelia shew! Which, like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature

From its fix'd place; drew from my heart all love,

And added to the gall!"

Yet, except on these two occasions, Lear never alludes to Cordelia. In his insanity he has forgotten her utterly-she is to him as if she had never been born. "Our Joy! though last, not least," has dropt away into oblivion. O worst bereavement! when loss of reason is loss of love! But his Cordelia comes flying towards him now, like a dove with healing under her wings. She has heard all-she has shook "The holy water from her heavenly eyes,"

and crossed the sea to his rescue. "Cor. Alack, 'tis he; why, he was

met even now

As mad as the vex'd sea; singing aloud; Crown'd with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds,

With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckooflowers,

Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn.-A century send

forth; Search every acre in the high-grown field, And bring him to our eye.

(Exit an OFFICER.)What can man's wisdom do, In the restoring his bereaved sense? He, that helps him, take all my outward

worth.

Phy. There is means, madam;
Our foster-nurse of nature is repose,
The which he lacks; that to provoke in
him,

Will close the eye of anguish.
Are many simples operative, whose power

Cor.
All bless'd secrets,
All you unpublish'd virtues of the earth,
Spring with my tears! be aidant, and re-
mediate,

In the good man's distress!-Seek, seek for him;

Lest his ungovern'd rage dissolve the life That wants the means to lead it.

[blocks in formation]

My mourning, and important tears, hath pitied.

No blown ambition doth our arms incite, But love, dear love, and our aged father's right: may

Soon

I hear and see him!

[Exeunt." The same still, serene, heavenly being, as when she first meekly bore her father's curse! Even now the passion of pity in her soul is profound rather than disturbed - it dwells on the image of her father's person, as it had been described to her, crowned with that rueful diadem. Calmly she gives her orders "to search every acre in the highgrown fields"-and calmly she promises" all her outward worth to those who shall help " in the restoring of his bereaved sense." Calmly she listens to the Physician, who holds out the hope of the restorative power of sleep; and calmly, but how devoutly, she prays—

33

"All bless'd secrets, All you unpublish'd virtues of the earth, Spring with my tears! be aidant, and remediate, In the good man's distress !”

What love, grief, pity, forgiveness, in that one word "good!" No-not forgiveness. For she had neverat no time-felt any sense of injury towards her father. Least of allnow!

"Cor. O thou good Kent, how shall I live, and work,

To match thy goodness? My life will be too short,

And every measure fail me.

Kent. To be acknowledg'd, madam, is o'erpaid.

All my reports go with the modest truth;

Nor more, nor clipp'd, but so.

My boon I make it, that you know me

not,

Till time and I think meet.

Cor. Be better suited:

These weeds are memories of those worser hours;

I pr'ythee, put them off.

Kent. Pardon me, dear madam; Yet to be known, shortens my made in

tent:

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

To make him even o'er the time he has

lost.

[blocks in formation]

Kent had been telling her the whole woful story while his Lord the King was sleeping. Implicitly as a child she delivers up her hopeful and trustful soul to the Physician. "Very well!"

While music is playing that it may kisses, with words holy as themcompose his sleep, she lets fall her selves-and the touch awakens an agony of passion. Cordelia is calm no longer, and breaks out into vehement questionings of pity, wonder, and indignation-but prevalent is still the pity-her sisters are soon forgotten-all his most abject and rueful sufferings crowd upon her,till-" he wakes,"-and then, with her high characteristic calmness and composure, commanding down the gush of tenderness that must at that moment have been choking her utterance, she merely says to the Physician-" speak to him!" But idle indeed all commentaries on such revelations.

Cordelia is a conqueror. Disease and madness sink before her power. In the spiritual kingdom she is But in the war mighty to save. fought with weapons of clay, the Merciful cannot cope with the Cruel. Hate and Sin triumph over Love and Piety; and Lear, half-restored to his poor wits and wholly to his right affections, and his ministering angel, are prisoners" to these daughters and these sisters," and that ambitious

Desire him to go in; trouble him no

more,

Till further settling.

Cor. Will't please your highness walk? Bastard, their savage paramour.

« 前へ次へ »