ve referred,--a failure which is natural
because the appeal is made not so much to dramatic perception as to a
rarer and more strictly poetic kind of imagination. For this reason,
too, even the best attempts at exposition of _King Lear_ are
disappointing; they remind us of attempts to reduce to prose the
impalpable spirit of the _Tempest_.

I propose to develop some of these ideas by considering, first, the
dramatic defects of the play, and then some of the causes of its
extraordinary imaginative effect.

1

We may begin, however, by referring to two passages which have often
been criticised with injustice. The first is that where the blinded
Gloster, believing that he is going to leap down Dover cliff, does in
fact fall flat on the ground at his feet, and then is persuaded that he
_has_ leaped down Dover cliff but has been miraculously preserved.
Imagine this incident transferred to _Othello_, and you realise how
completely the two tragedies differ in dramatic atmosphere. In _Othello_
it would be a shocking or a ludicrous dissonance, but it is in harmony
with the spirit of _King Lear_. And not only is this so, but, contrary
to expectation, it is not, if properly acted, in the least absurd on the
stage. The imagination and the feelings have been worked upon with such
effect by the description of the cliff, and by the portrayal of the old
man's despair and his son's courageous and loving wisdom, that we are
unconscious of the grotesqueness of the incident for common sense.

The second passage is more important, for it deals with the origin of
the whole conflict. The oft-repeated judgment that the first scene of
_King Lear_ is absurdly improbable, and that no sane man would think of
dividing his kingdom among his daughters in proportion to the strength
of their several protestations of love, is much too harsh and is based
upon a strange misunderstanding. This scene acts effectively, and to
imagination the story is not at all incredible. It is merely strange,
like so many of the stories on which our romantic dramas are based.
Shakespeare, besides, has done a good deal to soften the improbability
of the legend, and he has done much more than the casual reader
perceives. The very first words of the drama, as Coleridge pointed out,
tell us that the division of the kingdom is already settled in all its
details, so that only the public announcement of it remains.[126] Later
we find that the lines of division have already