And clamour moisten'd: then away she started
To deal with grief alone.

Cordelia comes with the army of France to deliver her father from his foes, and restore him to his throne. At first Lear is so overcome by 'a sovereign shame,' that he refuses to meet his daughter. But before the battle father and daughter meet, and by her healing touch, and gentle words, and loving glance, the old king is restored to reason. What divine pitifulness there is in that scene where the old man wakes from sleep, sees the face of Cordelia bending over him, and believes she is a saint in bliss looking down on him out of heaven! He thinks he is dead and his soul bound upon a wheel of fire; out of his agony he looks up and sees the face of Cordelia as the face of an angel. It is all a dream to him; he is bewildered, until Cordelia's tears drop down upon him, and then he knows that all is real :

:

Be your tears wet? yes, 'faith. I pray, weep not.

'Verily, man walketh in a vain show;' but love is real, devotion true, and tears are wet! Happy old man! to find himself blest by the love he cast away, and roused to real life by a rain, of sacred tears. As he rises and leaves the camp, leaning on his daughter's arm, he looks up again into her face to assure himself, and pleads :

You must bear with me:

Pray you now, forget and forgive: I am old and foolish.

In reference to this scene, Victor Hugo asks us to remark the beautiful 'maternity of the daughter over the father.'

Then comes the battle, the struggle of the army of light against the army of darkness. If you had not been told

the issue, you would feel certain, now, that victory must decide for this brave and faithful daughter. But, no! Goneril and Regan win the battle, and the old king dies of a broken heart with the body of the murdered Cordelia in his arms.

When Lear and Cordelia are taken prisoners, they are led away together; and this scene tells us how they bear the catastrophe :

Who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst.
For thee, oppressed king, I am cast down;
Myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown.
Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?
Lear. No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison :
We too alone will sing like birds i' the cage :
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,

As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,

The gods themselves throw incense.

Have I caught thee?

He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,
And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes;

Ere they shall make us weep, we'll see them starve first.

The most rending passage in the play is that which describes the entrance of the old king with the dead Cordelia in his arms, after he has slain the man who hanged her in prison. He cannot believe that she is dead; he holds a

feather to her dear lips, and when he thinks her breath

moves it, cries :

This feather stirs ; she lives! if it be so,

It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.

Then he fancies he hears her whisper to him :—

What is't thou say'st? Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.

When all hope of life is gone, the old man sinks into despair :

No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!

Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.

Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,

Look there, look there!

What concentrated pathos there is in that line which tells of the bursting heart

Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.

We are thankful that at last he is at peace, and with a sigh of relief we say with Kent :

Vex not his ghost: oh, let him pass! he hates him much
That would upon the rack of this tough world

Stretch him out longer.

The army of light is conquered by the forces of darkness; and yet, in the very hour of victory, the two sisters pass away in violent deaths,-Regan poisoned by Goneril, and

Goneril choosing suicide to the exposure of her vice and treachery. Sin appears to be self-destructive; and we feel sure that a happier time is come for the distracted land now that the rulers of darkness are swept away from their thrones.

Shakspere frequently displays a wonderful audacity of genius; but I sometimes marvel how he dared to end this play with such an awful catastrophe as the murder of Cordelia. What did he mean by Lear's broken heart, and Cordelia's sacrificial death? He meant what Providence means, when its events refuse to let us measure the worth of goodness by any outward triumph or earthly happiness; he meant to teach us that it was well for Cordelia to die a blessed martyr rather than have proved treacherous to her own pure heart; that it was better for Lear to pass through that purgatory of suffering and madness, and find again the love he once outraged, than reign in royal state to the end of his days; better to die of a broken heart clasping his dead daughter to his breast, than go through life with that violent self-will which blinded his eyes and petrified his feelings. We need not too much mourn over such a death as this,— a death in which we have the conquest of pride and passion in love and penitence, and against the darkness of which a blessed saint shines in glorious martyrdom. The play ends, indeed, in a heart-rending tragedy; but it also ends in the redemption of man through the supreme triumph of woman's love.

III.

OTHELLO.

To understand is to pardon.'-GEORGE SAND.

The

[The date of this play is doubtful, and it can only be conjectured as about 1604; it belongs to Shakspere's third period. plot was suggested by a story in the Hecatomithi of Cinthio; and it is interesting to notice that in 1570 the Turks attacked Cyprus as they threaten to do in this play.]

L

I. THE SECRET MARRIAGE.

IKE King Lear, Othello is a tragedy of domestic life. King Lear deals with the relation of father and children, Othello with the relation of husband and wife. This is the story of a mistake, a dreadful delusion, a fatal misunderstanding. The secret of the play is not an unsuitable marriage or a jealous husband, but the malice and cruelty of a bad man called Iago. Here, as in King Lear, there is no element of supernaturalism or enchantment. The whole plot is contained within the limits of human nature; and the elements of the story are so familiar that our personal interest is sustained throughout. There is nothing strained or improbable in the narrative. Brabantio's home, the Venetian senate-chamber, the news of war, the hurried farewells, the bustling scenes at Cyprus, the midnight brawl, the lady's bedroom where she undresses to the song of The Willow, the cruel awakening, the sudden