care of the King, his light-hearted indifference to fortune or fate.[1] We lose also some of the naturalness and pathos of his feeling that his task is nearly done. Even at the end of the Fourth Act we find him saying,
Or well or ill, as this day’s battle’s fought.
His heart is ready to break when he falls with his strong arms about Edgar’s neck; bellows out as he’d burst heaven (how like him!);
Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him
That ever ear received; which in recounting
His grief grew puissant, and the strings of life
Began to crack. Twice then the trumpet sounded,
And there I left him tranced;
and a little after, when he enters, we hear the sound of death in his voice:
To bid my king and master aye goodnight.
This desire possesses him wholly. When the bodies of Goneril and Regan are brought in he asks merely, ‘Alack, why thus?’ How can he care? He is waiting for one thing alone. He cannot but yearn for recognition, cannot but beg for it even when Lear is bending over the body of Cordelia; and even in that scene of unmatched pathos we feel a sharp pang at his failure to receive it. It is of himself he is speaking, perhaps, when he murmurs, as his master dies, ‘Break, heart, I prithee, break!’ He puts aside Albany’s invitation to take part in the government; his task is over:
My master calls me; I must not say no.
Kent in his devotion, his self-effacement, his cheerful stoicism, his desire to follow his dead lord,
- ↑ See II. ii. 162 to end. The light-heartedness disappears, of course, as Lear’s misfortunes thicken.
