Page 50 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

INTRODUCTION xlv
vitally important study of the matter is contained in
Professor Danby's book Shakespeare's Doctrine of
Nature: a Study of ''King Lear' (1949). Relating the
play to the philosophical thought of the time, Professor
Danby speaks of 'The Benignant Nature of Bacon,
o
Hooker, and Lear', and f'The Malignant Nature of
Hobbes, Edmund, and the Wicked Daughters'. The
conception of benignant Nature, briefly described
above, agrees with and is part of the traditional 'world
picture' which Dr Tillyard, the late Theodore Spencer,
1
and others have described.
Shakespeare lived at a time which saw new concep-
tions attacking traditional conceptions, and which saw
the latter fighting back. This conflict is mirrored in
King Lear, and in other Shakespeare plays as well. In
the course of the lecture to which I have referred,
Dr Edwin Muir spoke of the Dissolution of the Mona-
steries, which was completed in 1539, and of the'
execution of Charles I, which took place in 1649. And
he spoke of how, in the interval, 'the medieval world
with its communal tradition was slowly dying, and the
modern individualist world was bringing itself to
birth'. ' Shakespeare,' he went on, 'lived in that violent
period of transition. The old world still echoed in his
ears; he was aware of the new as we are aware of the
future....' Edmund is 'the mouthpiece of the new
generation'.* Professor Danby likewise emphasizes this
antithesis in King Lear between the old values and those
of the 'new man'. He has no doubt that Shakespeare
intends us to take Edmund to be a villain. But, while
stressing this, he appears to be greatly impressed by
the sureness, the conviction, with which Shakespeare
draws Edmund, and to be impressed also by certain
1
Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (1943)}
Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (1943).
a
Op. cit. pp. 7, 12.