SOURCE: A review of King Lear's Wife and Other Plays, in The Yale Review, Vol. XI, No. 2, January, 1922, pp. 426-27.

In the following excerpt, Jameson discusses strengths and weaknesses in King Lear's Wife.

Mr. Gordon Bottomley is … a poet. King Lear's Wife is a poem, arranged in the form of dramatic dialogue. The verse has a sombre beauty. In the song of Goneril over her dying mother, it has a sharp edge. In such moments as Goneril's scorn of Regan it flashes, suddenly and briefly:

Does Regan worship anywhere at dawn? The sweaty, half-clad cookmaids render lard Out in the scullery, after pig-killing, And Regan sidles among their greasy skirts, Smeary and hot as they, for chaps to suck. 

The speech of all the characters is overburdened with adjectives. They are like the touches of an artist's brush. They are not the natural gestures of the speaker's thoughts...