the sense of a strict requital or such an adjustment of merit and prosperity as our moral sense is said to demand; and there never was vainer labour than that of critics who try to make out that the persons in these dramas meet with ‘justice’ or their ’deserts.’[157] But, on the other hand, man is not represented in these tragedies as the mere plaything of a blind or capricious power, suffering woes which have no relation to his character and actions; nor is the world represented as given over to darkness.  And in these respects King Lear, though the most terrible of these works, does not differ in essence from the rest.  Its keynote is surely to be heard neither in the words wrung from Gloster in his anguish, nor in Edgar’s words ‘the gods are just.’  Its final and total result is one in which pity and terror, carried perhaps to the extreme limits of art, are so blended with a sense of law and beauty that we feel at last, not depression and much less despair, but a consciousness of greatness in pain, and of solemnity in the mystery we cannot fathom.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 123:  I leave undiscussed the position of King Lear in relation to the ‘comedies’ of Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida and All’s Well.]

[Footnote 124:  See Note R.]

[Footnote 125:  On some of the points mentioned in this paragraph see Note S.]

[Footnote 126: 

     ’Kent. I thought the king had more affected the Duke of
                Albany than Cornwall.

      Glos. It did always seem so to us:  but now, in the division
                of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes
                he values most.’

For (Gloster goes on to say) their shares are exactly equal in value.  And if the shares of the two elder daughters are fixed, obviously that of the third is so too.]

[Footnote 127: 

     I loved her most, and thought to set my rest
     On her kind nursery.]

[Footnote 128:  It is to Lear’s altered plan that Kent applies these words.]

[Footnote 129:  There is talk of a war between Goneril and Regan within a fortnight of the division of the kingdom (II. i. 11 f.).]

[Footnote 130:  I mean that no sufficiently clear reason is supplied for Edmund’s delay in attempting to save Cordelia and Lear.  The matter stands thus.  Edmund, after the defeat of the opposing army, sends Lear and Cordelia to prison.  Then, in accordance with a plan agreed on between himself and Goneril, he despatches a captain with secret orders to put them both to death instantly (V. iii. 26-37, 244, 252).  He then has to fight with the disguised Edgar.  He is mortally wounded, and, as he lies dying, he says to Edgar (at line 162, more than a hundred lines after he gave that commission to the captain): 

     What you have charged me with, that have I done;
     And more, much more; the time will bring it out;
     ’Tis past, and so am I.