THE BATTLE IN KING LEAR.
I found my impression of the extraordinary ineffectiveness of this
battle (p. 255) confirmed by a paper of James Spedding (New Shakspere
Society Transactions, 1877, or Furness's King Lear, p. 312 f.); but
his opinion that this is the one technical defect in King Lear seems
certainly incorrect, and his view that this defect is not due to
Shakespeare himself will not, I think, bear scrutiny.
To make Spedding's view quite clear I may remind the reader that in the preceding scene the two British armies, that of Edmund and Regan, and that of Albany and Goneril, have entered with drum and colours, and have departed. Scene ii. is as follows (Globe):
SCENE II.--_A field between the two camps.
Alarum within. Enter, with drum and colours_, LEAR, CORDELIA, and Soldiers, over the stage; and exeunt. Enter EDGAR and GLOSTER.
Edg. Here, father, take the shadow of this tree For your good host; pray that the right may thrive: If ever I return to you again, I'll bring you comfort.
Glo.
Grace go with you, sir!
[Exit Edgar
Alarum and retreat within. Re-enter EDGAR.
Edg. Away, old man; give me thy hand; away! King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en: Give me thy hand; come on.
Glo. No farther, sir; a man may rot even here.
Edg. What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all: come on.
Glo. And that's true too. [Exeunt.
The battle, it will be seen, is represented only by military music within the tiring-house, which formed the back of the stage. 'The scene,' says Spedding, 'does not change; but 'alarums' are heard, and afterwards a 'retreat,' and on the same field over which that great army has this moment passed, fresh and full of hope, re-appears, with tidings that all is lost, the same man who last left the stage to follow and fight in it.[276] That Shakespeare meant the scene to stand thus, no one who has the true faith will believe.'
Spedding's suggestion is that things are here run together which Shakespeare meant to keep apart. Shakespeare, he thinks, continued Act
Apart from the main objection of the entire want of evidence of so great a change having been made, there are other objections to this idea and to the reasoning on which it is based. (1) The pause at the end of the present Fourth Act is far from 'faulty,' as Spedding alleges it to be; that Act ends with the most melting scene Shakespeare ever wrote; and a pause after it, and before the business of the battle, was perfectly right. (2) The Fourth Act is already much longer than the Fifth (about fourteen columns of the Globe edition against about eight and a half), and Spedding's change would give the Fourth nearly sixteen columns, and the Fifth less than seven. (3) Spedding's proposal requires a much greater alteration in the existing text than he supposed. It does not simply shift the division of the two Acts, it requires the disappearance and re-entrance of the blind Gloster. Gloster, as the text stands, is alone on the stage while the battle is being fought at a distance, and the reference to the tree shows that he was on the main or lower stage. The main stage had no front curtain; and therefore, if Act IV. is to end where Spedding wished it to end, Gloster must go off unaided at its close, and come on again unaided for Act V. And this means that the whole arrangement of the present Act V. Sc. ii. must be changed. If Spedding had been aware of this it is not likely that he would have broached his theory.[277]
It is curious that he does not allude to the one circumstance which throws some little suspicion on the existing text. I mean the contradiction between Edgar's statement that, if ever he returns to his father again, he will bring him comfort, and the fact that immediately afterwards he returns to bring him discomfort. It is possible to explain this psychologically, of course, but the passage is not one in which we should expect psychological subtlety.