and most inhuman forms; and those which exclude the supernatural from the action. But there is also in King Lear a good deal which sounds like an echo of Othello,—a fact which should not surprise us, since there are other instances where the matter of a play seems to go on working in Shakespeare’s mind and re-appears, generally in a weaker form, in his next play. So, in King Lear, the conception of Edmund is not so fresh as that of Goneril. Goneril has no predecessor; but Edmund, though of course essentially distinguished from Iago, often reminds us of him, and the soliloquy, ‘This is the excellent foppery of the world,’ is in the very tone of Iago’s discourse on the sovereignty of the will. The gulling of Gloster, again, recalls the gulling of Othello. Even Edmund’s idea (not carried out) of making his father witness, without over-hearing, his conversation with Edgar, reproduces the idea of the passage where Othello watches Iago and Cassio talking about Bianca; and the conclusion of the temptation, where Gloster says to Edmund:
Loyal and natural boy, I’ll work the means
To make thee capable,
reminds us of Othello’s last words in the scene of temptation, ‘Now art thou my lieutenant.’ This list might be extended; and the appearance of certain unusual words and phrases in both the plays increases the likelihood that the composition of the one followed at no great distance on that of the other.[1]
When we turn from Othello to Timon of Athens we find a play of quite another kind. Othello is dramatically the most perfect of the tragedies. Timon, on the contrary, is weak, ill-constructed and confused; and, though care might have made it clear, no mere care could make it really dramatic.
