DID SHAKESPEARE SHORTEN KING LEAR?
I have remarked in the text (pp. 256 ff.) on the unusual number of
improbabilities, inconsistencies, etc., in King Lear. The list of
examples given might easily be lengthened. Thus (a) in IV. iii. Kent
refers to a letter which he confided to the Gentleman for Cordelia; but
in III. i. he had given to the Gentleman not a letter but a message.
(b) In III. i. again he says Cordelia will inform the Gentleman who
the sender of the message was; but from IV. iii. it is evident that she
has done no such thing, nor does the Gentleman show any curiosity on the
subject. (c) In the same scene (III. i.) Kent and the Gentleman
arrange that whichever finds the King first shall halloo to the other;
but when Kent finds the King he does not halloo. These are all examples
of mere carelessness as to matters which would escape attention in the
theatre,--matters introduced not because they are essential to the plot,
but in order to give an air of verisimilitude to the conversation. And
here is perhaps another instance. When Lear determines to leave Goneril
and go to Regan he says, 'call my train together' (I. iv. 275). When he
arrives at Gloster's house Kent asks why he comes with so small a train,
and the Fool gives a reply which intimates that the rest have deserted
him (II. iv. 63 ff.). He and his daughters, however, seem unaware of any
diminution; and, when Lear 'calls to horse' and leaves Gloster's house,
the doors are shut against him partly on the excuse that he is 'attended
with a desperate train' (308). Nevertheless in the storm he has no
knights with him, and in III. vii. 15 ff. we hear that 'some five or six
and thirty of his knights'[269] are 'hot questrists after him,' as
though the real reason of his leaving Goneril with so small a train was
that he had hurried away so quickly that many of his knights were
unaware of his departure.
This prevalence of vagueness or inconsistency is probably due to carelessness; but it may possibly be due to another cause. There are, it has sometimes struck me, slight indications that the details of the plot were originally more full and more clearly imagined than one would suppose from the play as we have it; and some of the defects to which I have drawn attention might have arisen if Shakespeare, finding his matter too bulky, had (a) omitted to write some things originally intended, and (b), after finishing his play, had reduced it by excision, and had not, in these omissions and excisions, taken sufficient pains to remove the obscurities and inconsistencies occasioned by them.
Thus, to take examples of (b), Lear's 'What, fifty of my followers at a clap!' (I. iv. 315) is very easily explained if we suppose that in the preceding conversation, as originally written, Goneril had mentioned the number. Again the curious absence of any indication why Burgundy should have the first choice of Cordelia's hand might easily be due to the same cause. So might the ignorance in which we are left as to the fate of the Fool, and several more of the defects noticed in the text.
To illustrate the other point (a), that Shakespeare may have omitted to write some things which he had originally intended, the play would obviously gain something if it appeared that, at a time shortly before that of the action, Gloster had encouraged the King in his idea of dividing the kingdom, while Kent had tried to dissuade him. And there are one or two passages which suggest that this is what Shakespeare imagined. If it were so, there would be additional point in the Fool's reference to the lord who counselled Lear to give away his land (I. iv. 154), and in Gloster's reflection (III. iv. 168),
His daughters seek his death: ah, that good Kent! He said it would be thus:
('said,' of course, not to the King but to Gloster and perhaps others of the council). Thus too the plots would be still more closely joined. Then also we should at once understand the opening of the play. To Kent's words, 'I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall,' Gloster answers, 'It did always seem so to us.' Who are the 'us' from whom Kent is excluded? I do not know, for there is no sign that Kent has been absent. But if Kent, in consequence of his opposition, had fallen out of favour and absented himself from the council, it would be clear. So, besides, would be the strange suddenness with which, after Gloster's answer, Kent changes the subject; he would be avoiding, in presence of Gloster's son, any further reference to a subject on which he and Gloster had differed. That Kent, I may add, had already the strongest opinion about Goneril and Regan is clear from his extremely bold words (I. i. 165),
Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon thy foul disease.
Did Lear remember this phrase when he called Goneril 'a disease that's in my flesh' (II. iv. 225)?
Again, the observant reader may have noticed that Goneril is not only represented as the fiercer and more determined of the two sisters but also strikes one as the more sensual. And with this may be connected one or two somewhat curious points: Kent's comparison of Goneril to the figure of Vanity in the Morality plays (II. ii. 38); the Fool's apparently quite irrelevant remark (though his remarks are scarcely ever so), 'For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass'
Perhaps Shakespeare had conceived Goneril as a woman who before her marriage had shown signs of sensual vice; but the distinct indications of this idea were crowded out of his exposition when he came to write it, or, being inserted, were afterwards excised. I will not go on to hint that Edgar had Oswald in his mind when (III. iv. 87) he described the serving-man who 'served the lust of his mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her'; and still less that Lear can have had Goneril in his mind in the declamation against lechery referred to in Note S.
I do not mean to imply, by writing this note, that I believe in the hypotheses suggested in it. On the contrary I think it more probable that the defects referred to arose from carelessness and other causes. But this is not, to me, certain; and the reader who rejects the hypotheses may be glad to have his attention called to the points which suggested them.