3

I turn now to those two strongly contrasted groups of good and evil beings; and to the evil first.  The members of this group are by no means on a level.  Far the most contemptible of them is Oswald, and Kent has fortunately expressed our feelings towards him.  Yet twice we are able to feel sympathy with him.  Regan cannot tempt him to let her open Goneril’s letter to Edmund; and his last thought as he dies is given to the fulfilment of his trust.  It is to a monster that he is faithful, and he is faithful to her in a monstrous design.  Still faithfulness is faithfulness, and he is not wholly worthless.  Dr. Johnson says:  ’I know not well why Shakespeare gives to Oswald, who is a mere factor of wickedness, so much fidelity’; but in any other tragedy this touch, so true to human nature, is only what we should expect.  If it surprises us in King Lear, the reason is that Shakespeare, in dealing with the other members of the group, seems to have been less concerned than usual with such mingling of light with darkness, and intent rather on making the shadows as utterly black as a regard for truth would permit.

Cornwall seems to have been a fit mate for Regan; and what worse can be said of him?  It is a great satisfaction to think that he endured what to him must have seemed the dreadful disgrace of being killed by a servant.  He shows, I believe, no redeeming trait, and he is a coward, as may be seen from the sudden rise in his courage when Goneril arrives at the castle and supports him and Regan against Lear (II. iv. 202).  But as his cruelties are not aimed at a blood-relation, he is not, in this sense, a ‘monster,’ like the remaining three.

Which of these three is the least and which the most detestable there can surely be no question.  For Edmund, not to mention other alleviations, is at any rate not a woman.  And the differences between the sisters, which are distinctly marked and need not be exhibited once more in full, are all in favour of ‘the elder and more terrible.’  That Regan did not commit adultery, did not murder her sister or plot to murder her husband, did not join her name with Edmund’s on the order for the deaths of Cordelia and Lear, and in other respects failed to take quite so active a part as Goneril in atrocious wickedness, is quite true but not in the least to her credit.  It only means that she had much less force, courage and initiative than her sister, and for that reason is less formidable and more loathsome.  Edmund judged right when, caring for neither sister but aiming at the crown, he preferred Goneril, for he could trust her to remove the living impediments to her desires.  The scornful and fearless exclamation, ‘An interlude!’ with which she greets the exposure of her design, was quite beyond Regan.  Her unhesitating suicide was perhaps no less so.  She would not have condescended to the lie which Regan so needlessly tells to Oswald: