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LEAR'S ABSOLUTISM

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sively love her father, is because it may be her duty to love another as much. Shakespeare alone points out the distinction of duties

"Haply when I shall wed,

That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty-
Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters

To love my father all” (i. 1).

Lear would have all, and those who promise all end by giving none. Regan and Goneril find that in promising all they have promised the impossible.

The religious allusions are few but suggestive. Goneril, whose profession pleased her father, exhibits a true Protestant dislike to the text which teaches that branches lopped off from the vine will wither, and must be burned. When Albany says to her

"She that herself will sliver and disbranch

From her maternal sap, perforce must wither,
And come to deadly use."

She replies, "No more; the text is foolish "; and he answers, "Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile filths savour but themselves " (iv. 2).

Cordelia, as Queen of France, is put in the position of a Catholic, and the terms used of her in the gentleman's description of her bearing,

"She shook

The holy water from her heavenly eyes" (iv. 3),

have a Catholic tone about them-and the motives

which keep Lear from Cordelia are much the same as those which were supposed to keep the English government from reconciling itself with the English Catholics.

"A sovereign shame so elbows him; his own unkindness That stripped her from his benediction, turned her

To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights

To his dog-hearted daughters, these things sting
His mind so venomously, that burning shame
Detains him from Cordelia" (iv. 3).

Lear had already learned that the absolute submission professed by his daughters, and their readiness "To say 'ay' and 'no' to everything I said! Ay and 'no' too, was no good divinity" (iv. 6). The true theology is built on "distinctions" whose fan winnows away the bad and leaves the good.

Lear, on first seeing Cordelia, cries out, as if from Purgatory

"You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave:

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound

Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead" (iv. 7).

And when he had overcome his shame, and had fully reconciled himself to Cordelia, then his joy puts on the solemn utterance of religion, and he gladly makes the sacrifice of life.

"Come, let's away to prison,

We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage.

When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,

SACRIFICIAL CONCLUSION

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things

As if we were God's spies; and we'll wear out,
In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon

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Upon such sacrifice, my Cordelia,

The gods themselves throw incense ” (v. 3).

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The times to which the drama refers are characterised by Gloucester, ""Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind" (iv. 1); and by Albany at the end :

"The weight of this sad time we must obey,

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long" (v. 3).

And the conclusion is like that of Shakespeare's sacrificial tragedies, such as "Romeo and Juliet," where the death of the chief actors has its effect in the conversion of the survivors. Albany is of the faction of Lear's two daughters, he fights against him and Cordelia; yet at the conclusion he is left as the true representative of Lear, whose cause is triumphant, though to secure its triumph he and Cordelia perish.

But an objection to Shakespeare's Catholicism requiring a somewhat detailed examination is commonly found in Edgar's feigned madness; the names he gives to his supposed devil being the same as

those uttered by the possessed persons who were exorcised by Father William Weston, S.J. The exorcisms in question took place chiefly at Sir George Peckham's at Denham, near Uxbridge, and at Lord Vaux's at Hackney, and were made known to the world in Harsnet's "Popish Impostures," in the account there given of the trial of the parties concerned in the Ecclesiastical Court. Harsnet held successively the sees of Chichester, Norwich, and York, and in his capacity first of secretary then of judge in the Ecclesiastical Court, he seems to have accepted any witness, however worthless and false, who would help to obtain the verdict he desired. His book is full of the vilest calumnies. A true account of the possessions was given by Father Weston himself in his autobiography, edited by Father Morris, S.J. Our business, however, is only to inquire into the nature of Shakespeare's belief in good and evil spirits, as set forth in his writings, and to see whether the nomenclature of Edgar's devils is an argument in favour of his Protestantism.

The belief in good and evil spirits forms an essential part of the Christian revelation, and was held by Puritans and Protestants as well as by Catholics in Shakespeare's time. Harsnett in fact prosecuted Darrell the preacher for exorcising seven persons in the Puritan family of Starchie, and Hartley was put to death for exorcising in the same

1 "Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers," chap. vii., 2nd series.

POSSESSED PERSONS

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household. The 72nd canon of the English Church forbidding exorcisms was passed in consequence of the Darrell case. Belief in evil spirits, like every other doctrine of faith, is open to superstitious corruption and to abuse for servile ends. From the days of Simon Magus there have been conjuring quacks, and true exorcists; simulated cases of possession, and real demoniacs. But superstition points to a basis of fact, and it is proper to a sound judgment to be able to distinguish truth from imposture by the character of the evidence adduced. Thus, Blessed Thomas More, as shrewd, learned, and experienced a lawyer as any in the England of the sixteenth century, after recounting the pretended cure of Simcox ("2 Henry IV.," ii. 1) already related, proceeds to say that as false jewels do not disprove the existence of precious stones, but show the necessity of precaution in judging them, and of applying proper tests, so it is with miracles. "You do not," he says, "mistrust St. Peter for Judas;" and he proceeds to relate a case of possession in the person of a daughter of Sir Roger Wentworth, who was cured by Our Lady of Ipswich under circumstances which, in his judgment, attested its reality. "There was," he says, "in this matter no pretext of begging; no possibility of counterfeiting; no simpleness in the seers, her father, and others right honourable and rich, sore abashed at seeing such sad changes in their children. The great number of witnesses, many of

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