s that man is only safe when his mind is perfectly just and calm. Any
injustice, trouble or hunger in the mind delivers man to powers who
restore calmness and justice by means violent or gentle according to the
strength of the disturbing obsession. This play begins at the moment
when an established blindness in two men is about to become an
instrument of fate for the violent opening of their eyes. The blindness
in both cases is against the course of nature. It is unnatural that Lear
should give his kingship to women, and that he should curse his youngest
child. It is unnatural that Gloucester should make much of a bastard son
whom he has hardly seen for nine years. It is deeply unnatural that both
Lear and Gloucester should believe evil suddenly of the youngest, best
beloved, and most faithful spirits in the play. As the blindness that
causes the injustice is great and unnatural, so the working of fate to
purge the eyes and restore the balance is violent and unnatural. Every
person important to the action is thrust into an unnatural way of life.
Goneril and Regan rule their father, commit the most ghastly and beastly
cruelty, lust after the same man, and die unnaturally (having betrayed
each other), the one by her sister's hand, the other by her own. Lear is
driven mad. The King of France is forced to war with his wife's sisters.
Edmund betrays his half-brother to ruin and his father to blindness.
Cornwall is stabbed by his servant. Edgar kills his half-brother.
Gloucester, thrust out blind, dies when he finds that his wronged son
loves him. Cordelia, fighting against her own blood, is betrayed to
death by one who claims to love her sisters. The honest mild man,
Albany, and the honest blunt man, Kent, survive the general ruin. Had
Kent been a little milder and Albany a little blunter in the first act,
before the fates were given strength, the ruin would not have been. All
the unnatural treacherous evil comes to pass, because for a few fatal
moments they were true to their natures.

The play is an excessive image of all that was most constant in
Shakespeare's mind. Being an excessive image, it contains matter nowhere
else given. It is all schemed and controlled with a power that he shows
in no other play, not even in _Macbeth_ and _Hamlet_. The ideas of the
play occur in many of the plays. Many images, such as the blasted oak,
water in fury, servants insolent and servile, old honest men and young
girls faithful to death,