If the trilogy is
considered as a unit, it answers not to _Hamlet_ but to _Cymbeline_. If
the part is considered as a whole, it answers to _Hamlet_, but may then
be open to serious criticism. Shakespeare never made a tragedy end with
the complete triumph of the worse side: the _Agamemnon_ and
_Prometheus_, if wrongly taken as wholes, would do this, and would so
far, I must think, be bad tragedies. [It can scarcely be necessary to
remind the reader that, in point of 'self-containedness,' there is a
difference of degree between the pure tragedies of Shakespeare and some
of the historical.]]

[Footnote 157: I leave it to better authorities to say how far these
remarks apply also to Greek Tragedy, however much the language of
'justice' may be used there.]

LECTURE VIII

KING LEAR

We have now to look at the characters in _King Lear_; and I propose to
consider them to some extent from the point of view indicated at the
close of the last lecture, partly because we have so far been regarding
the tragedy mainly from an opposite point of view, and partly because
these characters are so numerous that it would not be possible within
our limits to examine them fully.

1

The position of the hero in this tragedy is in one important respect
peculiar. The reader of _Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _Macbeth_, is in no
danger of forgetting, when the catastrophe is reached, the part played
by the hero in bringing it on. His fatal weakness, error, wrong-doing,
continues almost to the end. It is otherwise with _King Lear_. When the
conclusion arrives, the old King has for a long while been passive. We
have long regarded him not only as 'a man more sinned against than
sinning,' but almost wholly as a sufferer, hardly at all as an agent.
His sufferings too have been so cruel, and our indignation against those
who inflicted them has been so intense, that recollection of the wrong
he did to Cordelia, to Kent, and to his realm, has been well-nigh
effaced. Lastly, for nearly four Acts he has inspired in us, together
with this pity, much admiration and affection. The force of his passion
has made us feel that his nature was great; and his frankness and
generosity, his heroic efforts to be patient, the depth of his shame and
repentance, and the ecstasy of his re-union with Cordelia, have melted
our very hearts. Naturally, therefore, at the close we are in some
danger of forgetting that the storm which has overwhelmed him was
liberated by