ingratitude, and after they have ill-treated and insulted him in the most terrible manner. We are inclined to doubt whether the poet did not intend to represent the grey-headed old king as already no longer in full possession of his mind. The selfish and narrow-minded Duke of Burgundy refuses Cordelia's hand when her father withdraws her ample dowry, and Cordelia takes leave of him with well-merited contempt: "Since that respects of fortune are his love, I shall not be his wife." The high-minded and noble King of France cannot understand:

That she, that even but now was your best object,
The argument of your praise, balm of your age,
Most best, most dearest, should in this trice of time
Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle
So many folds of favour. Sure, her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree,

That monsters it, or your fore-vouch'd affection
Fall'n into taint: which to believe of her,

Must be a faith that reason without miracle

Could never plant in me.-King Lear, act i. scene 1.

These reasonable and sincere words of the King of France are a destructive criticism of Lear's insane proceeding. Cordelia assures him in touching words, which come straight from her heart, that she has done nothing terrible, and begs him to admit, at least, that he does not consider her guilty of crime:

I yet beseech your majesty,

If for I want that glib and oily art,

To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend,
I'll do't before I speak,—that you make known

It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,

No unchaste action, or dishonour'd step,

That hath deprived me of your grace and favour;
But even for want of that for which I am richer,
A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue

As I am glad I have not, though not to have it

Iath lost me in your liking.—King Lear, act i. scene 1.

Now the chivalrous King of France asks for the hand. of this noble young lady, who has just been cast off by

her father, in words which give a splendid testimony to her character:

Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor';
Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon :

Be it lawful, I take up what's cast away.

Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.

Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:
Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy
Can buy this unprized precious maid of me.
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:
Thou losest here, a better where to find.

King Lear, act i. scene 1.

Evidently offended that the King of France should make his disinherited daughter a queen, Lear takes leave of her with the harsh words, "Begone, without our grace, our love, our benison," and departs, showing by his demonstrative graciousness to Burgundy that he is flattered by his refusal of his repudiated child. Cordelia, at her husband's request, bids adieu to her sisters:

The jewels of our father, with wash'd eyes

Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are;
And like a sister am most loath to call

Your faults as they are named. Use well our father;
To your professed bosoms I commit him :

But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,

I would prefer him to a better place.

So farewell to you both.—King Lear, act i. scene 1.

Hardly and bitterly the sisters answer:

Reg. Prescribe not us our duties.
Goil.

Let your study

Be to content your lord, who hath received you
At fortune's alms. You have obedience scanted,
And well are worth the want that you have wanted.

King Lear, act i. scene 1.

The conversation between the sisters which follows Cordelia's departure shows how reasonable were her apprehensions. The wickedness of these hypocrites stands mani

fest, and gives us a foretaste of the old king's melancholy future when he shall be left to these cruel stony-hearted daughters. They remember not the benefits he has conferred, only his weaknesses, and consider precautions necessary to protect themselves against them. Lear soon experiences from Goneril, to whom he goes first with his hundred knights, the saddest disillusions. By order of his ungrateful daughter, his hundred knights, nay, he himself, are treated with coldness and unkindness. Under the excuse that they destroy the household quiet by their wild ways, she requires him to diminish the number of his escort, and treats the old man unmercifully. He now perceives too late that he has retained the demons and banished the angel of his life. Through these sufferings Lear's mind begins to give way, and the curse he invokes upon his ungrateful daughter is so frightful and unmeasured that it seems impossible to exceed it. Then he hastens to Regan, by whom he expects to be kindly and affectionately received in return for his generosity to her. He is bitterly undeceived. He meets instead with deadly insult, finding his disguised servant, Kent, placed in the stocks. He is not admitted, and the most trifling excuses are alleged for this. In the end, when the two sisters meet, they treat him with inhuman cruelty. The old man is shut out of the house, and forced to wander about the desolate moor, in bad weather, in storm and rain. In consequence his already shaken intellect entirely gives way, he becomes a victim to hopeless insanity. It is impossible to glance at the hearts of these women without shuddering. They seem to scoff at natural laws and the behests of duty. The poet may almost be accused of overstepping the limits of psychological possibility. These daughters are in the true sense of the word inhuman; they are created, not in the image of God, but in that of the devil. Unnatural children, they are also unfaithful wives. They do not shrink from the murder of a husband or a sister, to satisfy their sensuality

or their ambition. No ray of light falls into the darkness of these corrupted souls. And now comes the contrast, heaven after hell. The mad old king is brought to Cordelia, who has arrived in England with the French army. Exhaustion, death-like slumber, has followed raving madness. At the first mention of the terrible treatment Lear received from his unnatural daughters, Cordelia shows deep distress. She does not remember the injustice with which she has been treated; she only remembers her love for him, his need of her. Tears, but not of anger, roll down her cheeks; her face looks like rain in sunshine; grief would be sought after as a treasure if it so adorned all.

'Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of ' Father'
Pantingly forth, as if it press'd her heart ;

Cried 'Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies! sisters!

Kent! father! sisters! What, 'i the storm? i' the night?

Let pity not be believed!' There she shook

The holy water from her heavenly eyes,

And clamour moisten'd:. then away she started

To deal with grief alone.-King Lear, act iv. scene 3.

And now she waits in tears in deadly anxiety for his awaking. At last he opens his eyes; the lovely tearbedewed face looks to him like a blessed spirit. When he recognises her he remembers what her sisters have done. "You have some cause," he says, "they have not." The whole angelic character of Cordelia lies in the two words with which she answers him, "No cause, no cause." The true loving child, who has been cast off by her father because she could not flatter him, has forgotten everything, or rather she does not judge her father. He is the sacred object of her love, her faithful care; to him pertains her duty, her affection, her whole being. Selfishness and immorality produce in her sisters characters from which we shrink with horror. In Cordelia Shakespeare shows us a pure, touching picture of an innocent soul, filled with high and tender womanhood, ennobled by filial love in its holiest

expression. We should like to blame the poet for bringing this sweet lovely being to so sad an end. Cordelia and her father are taken prisoners in battle and slain in prison. What poet beside Shakespeare could give expression to a father's grief at the loss of such a child in words like Lear's ?

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones :

Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so

That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!

The old man, who, through the kind offices of his angelic daughter, has recovered his senses and his former strength, so that he killed the slave who killed Cordelia, has, now that his child is gone, lost all sense of what gocs on about him. Life has nothing more to give him. He has endured every sorrow that can afflict humanity. Cordelia appeared to him as an angel of deliverance, who upraised him, purifying and consoling. Through her love, after all his woe, he enjoyed a brief term of happiness. Was it unjustly cruel of the poet to suffer this lovely being to perish? Schlegel has given the right answer to this question. "It is absurd to make a double ending to a tragedy, a sad one for hardhearted spectators, and a happy one for souls of weaker mould." The figure of Cordelia passes away in a manner worthy of her, since she seals her filial love with the highest sacrifice, that of her life. Any attempt to bring about this end within the limits of poetical justice would have been a mistake.

DRAMAS

"" MEASURE FOR MEASURE

Isabella

The drama Measure for Measure was first represented in 1604. It was apparently suggested by an Italian tale in Geraldi Cinthio's "Helnatomiti," which Whetstone translated in his "Heptameron of Civil Discourses." The