Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

138William Shakespearehave any sanctity in the absence of feeling.” We can, therefore, in somedegree account for Edmund’s bold egoism and inhumanity. Whatobligations should a child feel to the man who, for a moment’s selfishpleasure, had degraded and stained his entire life? In like manner,Gloucester’s sufferings do not appear to us inexplicably mysterious.“The gods are just, and of our pleasant vicesMake instruments to plague us;The dark and vicious place where thee he gotCost him his eyes.”But, having gone to the end of our tether, and explained all that isexplicable, we are met by enigmas which will not be explained. Wewere, perhaps, somewhat too ready to“Take upon us the mystery of thingsAs if we were God’s spies.” 10Now we are baffled, and bow the head in silence. Is it, indeed, the starsthat govern our condition? Upon what theory shall we account for thesisterhood of a Goneril and a Cordelia? And why is it that Gloucester,whose suffering is the retribution for past misdeeds, should be restoredto spiritual calm and light, and should pass away in a rapture ofmingled gladness and grief,“His law’d heart,Alack! too weak the conflict to support,’Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,Burst smilingly;while Lear, a man more sinned against than sinning, should be robbedof the comfort of Cordelia’s love, should be stretched to the lastmoment upon “the rack of this tough world,” and should expire in theclimax of a paroxysm of unproductive anguish?Shakspere does not attempt to answer these questions. The impressionwhich the facts themselves produce, their influence to “free, arouse, dilate,”seems to Shakspere more precious than any proposed explanation of thefacts which cannot be verified. The heart is purified not by dogma, but bypity and terror. But there are other questions which the play suggests. If