details, so that only the public announcement of it remains.[126] Later we find that the lines of division have already been drawn on the map of Britain (l. 38), and again that Cordelia’s share, which is her dowry, is perfectly well known to Burgundy, if not to France (ll. 197, 245).  That then which is censured as absurd, the dependence of the division on the speeches of the daughters, was in Lear’s intention a mere form, devised as a childish scheme to gratify his love of absolute power and his hunger for assurances of devotion.  And this scheme is perfectly in character.  We may even say that the main cause of its failure was not that Goneril and Regan were exceptionally hypocritical, but that Cordelia was exceptionally sincere and unbending.  And it is essential to observe that its failure, and the consequent necessity of publicly reversing his whole well-known intention, is one source of Lear’s extreme anger.  He loved Cordelia most and knew that she loved him best, and the supreme moment to which he looked forward was that in which she should outdo her sisters in expressions of affection, and should be rewarded by that ‘third’ of the kingdom which was the most ‘opulent.’  And then—­so it naturally seemed to him—­she put him to open shame.

There is a further point, which seems to have escaped the attention of Coleridge and others.  Part of the absurdity of Lear’s plan is taken to be his idea of living with his three daughters in turn.  But he never meant to do this.  He meant to live with Cordelia, and with her alone.[127] The scheme of his alternate monthly stay with Goneril and Regan is forced on him at the moment by what he thinks the undutifulness of his favourite child.  In fact his whole original plan, though foolish and rash, was not a ’hideous rashness’[128] or incredible folly.  If carried out it would have had no such consequences as followed its alteration.  It would probably have led quickly to war,[129] but not to the agony which culminated in the storm upon the heath.  The first scene, therefore, is not absurd, though it must be pronounced dramatically faulty in so far as it discloses the true position of affairs only to an attention more alert than can be expected in a theatrical audience or has been found in many critics of the play.

Let us turn next to two passages of another kind, the two which are mainly responsible for the accusation of excessive painfulness, and so for the distaste of many readers and the long theatrical eclipse of King Lear.  The first of these is much the less important; it is the scene of the blinding of Gloster.  The blinding of Gloster on the stage has been condemned almost universally; and surely with justice, because the mere physical horror of such a spectacle would in the theatre be a sensation so violent as to overpower the purely tragic emotions, and therefore the spectacle would seem revolting or shocking.  But it is otherwise in reading.  For mere imagination the physical horror, though not lost, is so far deadened that it can do its duty as a stimulus to pity, and to that appalled dismay at the extremity of human cruelty which it is of the essence of the tragedy to excite.  Thus the blinding of Gloster belongs rightly to King Lear in its proper world of imagination; it is a blot upon King Lear as a stage-play.