First and Last by Hilaire Belloc
page 198 of 229 (86%)
page 198 of 229 (86%)
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The play is national, again, in that permanent curiosity upon knowable things--nay, that mysterious half-knowledge of unknowable things--which, in its last forms, produced the mystic, and which is throughout history so plainly characteristic of these Northern Atlantic islands. Every play of Shakespeare builds with that material, and no writer, even of the English turn, has sent out points further into the region of what is not known than Shakespeare has in sudden flashes of phrase. But "King Lear," though it contains a lesser number of lines of this mystical and half-religious effect than, say, "Hamlet," yet as a general impression is the more mystical of the two plays. The element of madness, which in "Hamlet" hangs in the background like a storm-cloud ready to break, in "King Lear" rages; and it is the use of this which lends its amazing psychical power to the play. It has been said (with no great profundity of criticism) that English fiction is chiefly remarkable for its power of particularization of character, and that where French work, for instance, will present ideas, English will present persons. The judgment is grossly insufficient, and therefore false, but it is based upon a proof which is very salient in English letters, which is that, say, in quite short and modern work the sense of complete unity deadens the English mind. The same nerve which revolts at a straight road and at a code of law revolts against one tone of thought, and the sharp contrast of emotional character, not the dual contrast which is common to all literatures, but the multiple contrast, runs through "King Lear" and gives the work such a tone that one seems as one reads it to be moving in a cloud. The conclusion is perhaps Shakespearean rather than English, and in a fashion escapes from any national labelling. But the note of silence which Shakespeare suddenly brings in upon the turmoil, and with which he |
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