Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

King Lear 139it be the stars that govern our conditions; if that be, indeed, a possibilitywhich Gloucester, in his first shock and confusion of mind, declares,“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;They kill us for their sport;”if, measured by material standards, the innocent and the guilty perishby a like fate—what then? Shall we yield ourselves to the lust forpleasure? Shall we organize our lives upon the principles of a studiousand pitiless egoism?To these questions the answer of Shakspere is clear and emphatic.Shall we stand upon Goneril’s side or upon that of Cordelia? Shall wejoin Edgar or join the traitor? Shakspere opposes the presence and theinfluence of evil not by any transcendental denial of evil, but by thepresence of human virtue, fidelity, and self-sacrificial love. In no play isthere a clearer, an intenser manifestation of loyal manhood, of strong andtender womanhood. The devotion of Kent to his master is a passionate,unsubduable devotion, which might choose for its watchword the sayingof Goethe, “I love you; what is that to you?” Edgar’s nobility of natureis not disguised by the beggar’s rags; he is the skilful resister of evil, thechampion of right to the utterance. And if Goneril and Regan alonewould leave the world unintelligible and desperate, there is“One daughter,Who redeems nature from the general curseWhich twain have brought her to.”We feel throughout the play that evil is abnormal; a curse whichbrings down destruction upon itself; that it is without any long career;that evil-doer is at variance with evil-doer. But good is normal; forit the career is long; and “all honest and good men are disposed tobefriend honest and good men, as such.” 11“Cordelia. O thou good Kent, how shall I live, and work,To match thy goodness! My life will be too short,And every measure fail me.Kent. To be acknowledged, madam, is o’erpaid,All my reports go with the modest truth;Nor more, nor clipped, but so.”