256 



THE IMPORTANCE OF SHAKSPEARE'S WRI- 

 TINGS CONSIDERED AS TO THEIR INFLUENCE 

 ON THE MORALS OF MEN. 



Continued from page 219. 



To illustrate what has been said with respect to 

 Shakspeare's power of creating, as it were, the actual 

 man, I shall, in the first place, refer to the characters 

 of King Lear and Othello. 



If the range of Shakspeare's tragedy be consid- 

 ered as including two great departments — the one 

 simply natural, and the other nature romanticizedy 

 we must assijrn to King Lear a lofty place in the 

 first, and to Othello a distinguished situation in the 

 second. As the work of a writer who had conceived 

 a Falstaff, and who died at the age of fifty-two, the 

 character of King Lear must be regarded with in- 

 creased astonishment. We can more readily estimate 

 the extent of the genius which depicts the effects of 

 jealousy, revenge, or love, than that which enables 

 its possessor to assume, in his prime of life, " the 

 very age and body " of a silver-haired monarch, de- 



E rived of his regal superjicies by those to whom he 

 ad bequeathed his substance. We can more readily 

 place ourselves in the situation of the Moor (who is 

 mfluenced by feelings with which most of us can 

 sympathize) than to imagine ourselves pregnant with 

 such misery as can alone exist in the womb of age : 

 and an ordinary poet, in treating this subject, would 

 be more likely to effect the ridiculous than the sub- 

 lime — to arouse our pity for the author rather than 

 the hero. But, I am now speaking of the effect 

 produced on our minds by a perusal of the silent 

 page. Obtuse, indeed must be his feeling who could 

 witness unmoved the ravings of a real Lear : nay — 

 on the stage of actual life, they would very likely 

 excite more lively sensations than the woes of an 

 Othello. We may, it is true, with greater facility, 

 embody in ourselves the character of an abused hus- 

 band : but there is a vast difference between the 



