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Love, Life & Work - Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning - How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the - Least Possible Harm to Others by Elbert Hubbard
page 83 of 103 (80%)
that the writer of _Ivan_ had felt the incompleteness of _Lear_, and had
seen the absurdity of making a melodramatic bid for sympathy in behalf
of this old man thrust out by his daughters.

Lear, the troublesome, Lear to whose limber tongue there was constantly
leaping words unprintable and names of tar, deserves no soft pity at our
hands. All his life he had been training his three daughters for exactly
the treatment he was to receive. All his life Lear had been lubricating
the chute that was to give him a quick ride out into that black
midnight storm.

"Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless
child," he cries.

There is something quite as bad as a thankless child, and that is a
thankless parent--an irate, irascible parent who possesses an
underground vocabulary and a disposition to use it.

The false note in _Lear_ lies in giving to him a daughter like
_Cordelia_. Tolstoy and Mansfield ring true, and _Ivan the Terrible_ is
what he is without apology, excuse or explanation. Take it or leave
it--if you do not like plays of this kind, go to see Vaudeville.

Mansfield's _Ivan_ is terrible. The Czar is not old in years--not over
seventy--but you can see that Death is sniffing close upon his track.
_Ivan_ has lost the power of repose. He cannot listen, weigh and
decide--he has no thought or consideration for any man or thing--this is
his habit of life. His bony hands are never still--the fingers open and
shut, and pick at things eternally. He fumbles the cross on his breast,
adjusts his jewels, scratches his cosmos, plays the devil's tattoo, gets
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