Goneril, Regan and Gloster seem ‘but trifles here’; and anything short of the incomparable pathos of the close would leave him cold.  There is something almost ludicrous in the insignificance of this battle, when it is compared with the corresponding battles in Julius Caesar and Macbeth; and though there may have been further reasons for its insignificance, the main one is simply that there was no room to give it its due effect among such a host of competing interests.[133]

A comparison of the last two Acts of Othello with the last two Acts of King Lear would show how unfavourable to dramatic clearness is a multiplicity of figures.  But that this multiplicity is not in itself a fatal obstacle is evident from the last two Acts of Hamlet, and especially from the final scene.  This is in all respects one of Shakespeare’s triumphs, yet the stage is crowded with characters.  Only they are not leading characters.  The plot is single; Hamlet and the King are the ‘mighty opposites’; and Ophelia, the only other person in whom we are obliged to take a vivid interest, has already disappeared.  It is therefore natural and right that the deaths of Laertes and the Queen should affect us comparatively little.  But in King Lear, because the plot is double, we have present in the last scene no less than five persons who are technically of the first importance—­Lear, his three daughters and Edmund; not to speak of Kent and Edgar, of whom the latter at any rate is technically quite as important as Laertes.  And again, owing to the pressure of persons and events, and owing to the concentration of our anxiety on Lear and Cordelia, the combat of Edgar and Edmund, which occupies so considerable a space, fails to excite a tithe of the interest of the fencing-match in Hamlet.  The truth is that all through these Acts Shakespeare has too vast a material to use with complete dramatic effectiveness, however essential this very vastness was for effects of another kind.

Added to these defects there are others, which suggest that in King Lear Shakespeare was less concerned than usual with dramatic fitness:  improbabilities, inconsistencies, sayings and doings which suggest questions only to be answered by conjecture.  The improbabilities in King Lear surely far surpass those of the other great tragedies in number and in grossness.  And they are particularly noticeable in the secondary plot.  For example, no sort of reason is given why Edgar, who lives in the same house with Edmund, should write a letter to him instead of speaking; and this is a letter absolutely damning to his character.  Gloster was very foolish, but surely not so foolish as to pass unnoticed this improbability; or, if so foolish, what need for Edmund to forge a letter rather than a conversation, especially as Gloster appears to be unacquainted with his son’s handwriting?[134] Is it in character that Edgar should be persuaded