elming, decidedly
inferior as a whole to _Hamlet_, _Othello_ and _Macbeth_. When I am
feeling that it is greater than any of these, and the fullest revelation
of Shakespeare's power, I find I am not regarding it simply as a drama,
but am grouping it in my mind with works like the _Prometheus Vinctus_
and the _Divine Comedy_, and even with the greatest symphonies of
Beethoven and the statues in the Medici Chapel.

This two-fold character of the play is to some extent illustrated by the
affinities and the probable chronological position of _King Lear_. It is
allied with two tragedies, _Othello_ and _Timon of Athens_; and these
two tragedies are utterly unlike.[123] _Othello_ was probably composed
about 1604, and _King Lear_ about 1605; and though there is a somewhat
marked change in style and versification, there are obvious resemblances
between the two. The most important have been touched on already: these
are the most painful and the most pathetic of the four tragedies, those
in which evil appears in its coldest and most inhuman forms, and those
which exclude the supernatural from the action. But there is also in
_King Lear_ a good deal which sounds like an echo of _Othello_,--a fact
which should not surprise us, since there are other instances where the
matter of a play seems to go on working in Shakespeare's mind and
re-appears, generally in a weaker form, in his next play. So, in _King
Lear_, the conception of Edmund is not so fresh as that of Goneril.
Goneril has no predecessor; but Edmund, though of course essentially
distinguished from Iago, often reminds us of him, and the soliloquy,
'This is the excellent foppery of the world,' is in the very tone of
Iago's discourse on the sovereignty of the will. The gulling of Gloster,
again, recalls the gulling of Othello. Even Edmund's idea (not carried
out) of making his father witness, without over-hearing, his
conversation with Edgar, reproduces the idea of the passage where
Othello watches Iago and Cassio talking about Bianca; and the conclusion
of the temptation, where Gloster says to Edmund:

and of my land,
Loyal and natural boy, I'll work the means
To make thee capable,

reminds us of Othello's last words in the scene of temptation, 'Now art
thou my lieutenant.' This list might be extended; and the appearance of
certain unusual words and phrases in both the plays increases the
likelihood that the composition of the one fol