Ripeness is all."
Shakespeare speaks through Lear in the last acts as plainly as through
Edgar. In the third scene of the fifth act Lear talks to Cordelia in the
very words Shakespeare gave to the saint Henry VI. at the beginning of
his career. Compare the extracts on pages 118-9 with the following
passage, and you will see the similarity and the astounding growth in
his art.
"... Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; ..."
More characteristic still of Shakespeare is the fact that when Lear is
at his bitterest in the fourth act, he shows the erotic mania which is
the source of all Shakespeare's bitterness and misery; but which is
utterly out of place in Lear. The reader will mark how "adultery" is
dragged in:
"... Ay, every inch a king:
When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.
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