Not to mention the pompous, characterless
language of King Lear, the same in which all
Shakespeare's Kings speak, the reader, or
spectator, can not conceive that a King, how
ever old and stupid he may be, could believe
the words of the vicious daughters, with whom
he had passed his whole life, and not believe
his favorite daughter, but curse and banish
her; and therefore the spectator, or reader, cannot share the feelings of the persons participating in this unnatural scene.
The second scene opens with Edmund,
Gloucester's illegitimate son, soliloquizing an
the injustice of men, who concede rights and
respect to the legitimate son, but deprive the
illegitimate son of them, and he determines to
ruin Edgar, and to usurp his place. For this
purpose, he forges a letter to himself as from
Edgar, in which the latter expresses a desire
to murder his father. Awaiting his father's
approach, Edmund, as if against his will,
shows him this letter, and the father immediately believes that his son Edgar, whom he
tenderly loves, desires to kill him. The father
goes away, Edgar enters and Edmund persuades him that his father for some reason
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TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE