his own deed.

Yet it is essential that Lear's contribution to the action of the drama
should be remembered; not at all in order that we may feel that he
'deserved' what he suffered, but because otherwise his fate would appear
to us at best pathetic, at worst shocking, but certainly not tragic. And
when we were reading the earlier scenes of the play we recognised this
contribution clearly enough. At the very beginning, it is true, we are
inclined to feel merely pity and misgivings. The first lines tell us
that Lear's mind is beginning to fail with age.[158] Formerly he had
perceived how different were the characters of Albany and Cornwall, but
now he seems either to have lost this perception or to be unwisely
ignoring it. The rashness of his division of the kingdom troubles us,
and we cannot but see with concern that its motive is mainly selfish.
The absurdity of the pretence of making the division depend on
protestations of love from his daughters, his complete blindness to the
hypocrisy which is patent to us at a glance, his piteous delight in
these protestations, the openness of his expressions of preference for
his youngest daughter--all make us smile, but all pain us. But pity
begins to give way to another feeling when we witness the precipitance,
the despotism, the uncontrolled anger of his injustice to Cordelia and
Kent, and the 'hideous rashness' of his persistence in dividing the
kingdom after the rejection of his one dutiful child. We feel now the
presence of force, as well as weakness, but we feel also the presence of
the tragic [Greek: hubris]. Lear, we see, is generous and unsuspicious,
of an open and free nature, like Hamlet and Othello and indeed most of
Shakespeare's heroes, who in this, according to Ben Jonson, resemble the
poet who made them. Lear, we see, is also choleric by temperament--the
first of Shakespeare's heroes who is so. And a long life of absolute
power, in which he has been flattered to the top of his bent, has
produced in him that blindness to human limitations, and that
presumptuous self-will, which in Greek tragedy we have so often seen
stumbling against the altar of Nemesis. Our consciousness that the decay
of old age contributes to this condition deepens our pity and our sense
of human infirmity, but certainly does not lead us to regard the old
King as irresponsible, and so to sever the tragic _nexus_ which binds
together his error and his calamities.

The magnitude of this first e