Page 52 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

INTRODUCTION xlvii

which is upheld in all of Shakespeare's plays. At the end,
to be sure, Edmund is allowed a last-minute repentance
which is denied to Goneril and Regan. But any critic
who takes this as suggesting that Shakespeare was rather
fond of Edmund must allow that the repentance indi-
cates that what Edmund had previously thoughtand done
was evil: at the end Shakespeare, through Edmund's
repentance, repudiates what Edmund has thought and
done. In the clash between the old and the new,
Shakespeare is certainly on the side of the old.

IX. Man's Double Nature
In the universal hierarchy which the traditional scheme
envisaged, man is situated between angel and animal.
The best that is in him approximates him to the angelic:
we recall Hamlet's 'how like an angel', and we remem-
ber that Lear, wise after suffering, calls Cordelia 'a soul
in bliss'. The worst that is in man approximates him to
the animal. He has a double nature:
But to the girdle do the gods inherit;
Beneath is all the fiend's. (4. 6. 126-7)
He has free will. He may choose to give the higher part
of his being the leading role in the drama of his life, or
he may choose to give that role to the lower part. Again
and again Shakespeare, thinking in terms of the tradi-
tional scheme, makes his characters apply animal terms
1
to Goneril and Regan. I quote A. C. Bradley:
Goneril is a kite: her ingratitude has a serpent's tooth: she
has struck her father most serpent-like upon the very heart:
her visage is wolvish: she has tied sharp-toothed unkindness
like a vulture on her father's breast: for her husband she is
a gilded serpent: to Gloster her cruelty seems to have the
fangs of a boar. She and Regan are dog-hearted: they are
1
Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), p. 267.