ABSTRACT
Fine and subtle touches could not be absent from a work of Shakespeare’s maturity; but, with the possible exception of Lear himself, no one of the characters strikes people as psychologically a wonderful creation, like Hamlet or Iago or even Macbeth; one or two seem even to be somewhat faint and thin. The influence of all this on imagination as people read King Lear is very great; and it combines with other influences to convey to people, not in the form of distinct ideas but in the manner proper to poetry, the wider or universal significance of the spectacle presented to the inward eye. But the effect of theatrical exhibition is precisely the reverse. At the very beginning, it is true, people are inclined to feel merely pity and misgivings. Lear regards the beggar therefore with reverence and delight, as a person who is in the secret of things, and he longs to question him about their causes.
