t is single; Hamlet and the
King are the 'mighty opposites'; and Ophelia, the only other person in
whom we are obliged to take a vivid interest, has already disappeared.
It is therefore natural and right that the deaths of Laertes and the
Queen should affect us comparatively little. But in _King Lear_, because
the plot is double, we have present in the last scene no less than five
persons who are technically of the first importance--Lear, his three
daughters and Edmund; not to speak of Kent and Edgar, of whom the latter
at any rate is technically quite as important as Laertes. And again,
owing to the pressure of persons and events, and owing to the
concentration of our anxiety on Lear and Cordelia, the combat of Edgar
and Edmund, which occupies so considerable a space, fails to excite a
tithe of the interest of the fencing-match in _Hamlet_. The truth is
that all through these Acts Shakespeare has too vast a material to use
with complete dramatic effectiveness, however essential this very
vastness was for effects of another kind.

Added to these defects there are others, which suggest that in _King
Lear_ Shakespeare was less concerned than usual with dramatic fitness:
improbabilities, inconsistencies, sayings and doings which suggest
questions only to be answered by conjecture. The improbabilities in
_King Lear_ surely far surpass those of the other great tragedies in
number and in grossness. And they are particularly noticeable in the
secondary plot. For example, no sort of reason is given why Edgar, who
lives in the same house with Edmund, should write a letter to him
instead of speaking; and this is a letter absolutely damning to his
character. Gloster was very foolish, but surely not so foolish as to
pass unnoticed this improbability; or, if so foolish, what need for
Edmund to forge a letter rather than a conversation, especially as
Gloster appears to be unacquainted with his son's handwriting?[134] Is
it in character that Edgar should be persuaded without the slightest
demur to avoid his father instead of confronting him and asking him the
cause of his anger? Why in the world should Gloster, when expelled from
his castle, wander painfully all the way to Dover simply in order to
destroy himself (IV. i. 80)? And is it not extraordinary that, after
Gloster's attempted suicide, Edgar should first talk to him in the
language of a gentleman, then to Oswald in his presence in broad peasant
dialect, then again to Gloster i