Page 57 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

lii KING LEAR

XL D. G. James' View of the Play

In his distinguished book The Dream of Learning, the
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton
adopts a different view from that which I have taken.
Here and there, it is true, a sentence or two does suggest
the theme of regeneration through suffering. 'Lear
becomes mad in all truth,' says Mr James (p. 72); 'but
he comes out of his madness a changed man.' And
again, 'when the struggle in Lear is over and the true
sense of life becomes clear in him, he asks forgiveness of
Cordelia' (p. 74). Such sentences suggest the theme of
regeneration through suffering. Yet Mr James feels that
this is not the main thing. It is the suffering itself that
strikes him most forcibly. ' It is not chiefly the mind of
Lear we observe and study,' he says, 'but the world's
savagery as it overwhelms it' (p. 7 o). ' The ending of the
play is not...an end which looks on to a succeeding
order and condition. Fortinbras succeeds Hamlet,
Malcolm Macbeth: sanity and justice are restored. But
in King Lear we are given little of the feeling of this'
(p. 104). Again: 'The play seems to be designed to
exhibit suffering and helpless virtue, whether it be the
virtue of a Kent, the uncertain virtue of a Lear, or the
transcendent virtue of an Edgar and a Cordelia. None
of them may come to any happiness. Gloucester and
Lear are given, before they die, and by an irony, only a
kind of heartbroken joy. Kent and Edgar indeed sur-
vive; only...Kent speaks of imminent death, Edgar of
death not long delayed. For them also, life may not go
on' (p. 111). 'Shakespeare contrives to allow his
virtuous characters as little influence on the course of
events as possible; he holds them in a kind of silent and
helpless suffering' (p. 114). I quote at length, because
The Dream of Learning is an important book. It will be