DR. sucx.fam, ON SHAKESPEARE. *

pacown warms.]

THE misconception of the character of Lear, under which the best critics have hitherto laboured, signally exemplifies the need that existed for such a book as Dr. Bucknill's. The great error of his critical predecessors has been their failure to perceive that from the outset of the play, Lear is not in his perfect mind. They have been led astray by the common opinion, which has until recently been entertained even by physlinans, and which is still maintained in courts of law, that insanity consists essen- tially in aberration of the intellect. Now we may take Dr. Buck-. Airs word for it, that this is a false theory ; that no state of the reasoning faculty can, by itself, be the cause or condition of madness, congenital idiocy and acquired de mentia being alone excepted ; that in the period during which the disease is developing, the emotions are always perverted whilst the reason remains intact ; that disorders of the intellectual faculties are in no cases primary and essential, but always secondary; and that, in fine, emotional disturbance is the cause and condition of insanity. The course of the disease, from tempestuous passion to its fatal termination in acute mania, is seen in the Lady Con- stance. Her end is told in one short line- " The Lady Constance in a frenzy died"— and all through the play it is foretokened to the psychologist by the concentrated fury of her passions. Combined passions are weak or strong according to this mutual discord or unison, their diversity or singleness of purpose, and in Constance intense pride, fierce desire of power and place, selfishness, and maternal love, all

• The Psychology of Shakespeare. By John Charles Bucknill, Editor of " The Journal of Mental Science," and joint Author of the " Manual of Psych logical Medicine." Published by Longman. and Co.

unite in one destructive hurricane of emotion, which, even before it has overthrown her reason, is already incipient insanity. In reply to one of her outbursts of extatic rage, ,Pandolph tells her plainly she is mad, and rouses that e I , went defence of her rea-

son, in which she repeats the test of ,, ss which Lear applies to himself, the recognition of personal identity, a test as fallacious as that relied on by Cassio to prove that he is sober.

" Do not think, gentlemen, I am drunk : this is my Ancient; this is my right hand and this is my left."

Angrily as Constance rejects the idea of madness, yet she is mad ; the very type of acute reasoning mania." And this being understood, we All be the better able to discern the true state of ]Gear's mind at the time when we have been told to regard him as nothing more than a headstrong, peevish imbecile.

" Essayists upon this drama have followed each other in giving an ac- count of the development of Lear's character and madness, which we cannot but regard as derogatory to the one and erroneous in relation to the other. They have described Lear as an old man, who determines upon abdication, and the partition of his kingdom, while he is of sane mind, and fully ca- pable of appreciating the nature of the act. Thence it becomes necessary to view the original character of Lear as that of a vain weak old man ; thence it becomes necessary to discuss the point when the faculties first give way ; thence it becomes necessary to -view the first acts of the drama as a gross improbability. ' Lear is the only serious performance of Shakspeare,' says Coleridge, the interest and situations of which are derived from the as- sumption of a gross improbability.' Such undoubtedly they would be, if they were the acts of a sane mind • but if, on the contrary, it be accepted, that the mind of the old king has, from the first, entered upon the actual domain of unsoundness, the gross improbability at once vanishes, and the whole structure of the drama is seen to be founded, not more upon an old story rooted in the popular faith,' than upon the verisimilitude of nature. The accepted explanation of Lear's mental history, that he is at first a man of sound mind, but of extreme vanity and feeble power of judgment, and that under the stimulus of subsequent insanity, this weak and shallow mind develops into the fierce Titan of passion, with clear insight into the heart of man, with vast stores of life science, with large grasp of morals and polity, with terrible eloquence making known as with the voice of inspiration the heights and depths of human nature • that all this, under the spur of disease, should be developed from the sterile mind of a weak and vain old man ; this, indeed, is a gross improbability, in which we see no clue to ex- planation."

" Gross improbabilities of circumstance are not so rare in Shakespeare. The weird sisters in Macbeth and the Ghost in Hamkt are certainly not more probable as events than the partition of Lear's kingdom. But there is one kind of improbability which is not to be found in Shakespeare—the systematic development of goodness from badness, of strength from weak- nesstho union of that which, either in the region of feeling or of intellect, is antagonistic and incompatible. " Neither in nature, that is in the works of God, nor in high art, that is in truthful imitation of nature, is any such monster to be found as a vain and weak old man developing into the strength and grandeur of a prophet ; the voice of Isaiah in the mouth of an imbecile.

" Hallam expresses unreservedly the opinion that Lear's wondrous intel- lectual vigour and eloquence are the result of his madness, and that the foupdktion of his character is that of a mere headstrong, feeble, and selfish ��"iiIf this great and sound critic had possessed any practical knowledge of mental pathology he could not have taken this view of the development of the character. Intellectual energy may indeed sometimes be seen to grow stronger under the greatest trials of life, but never when the result of these trials is mental disease. So far as eloquence is the result of passion, excite- ment of passion may stimulate its display ; and it is remarkable that so long as Lear retains the least control over his passion his imagination remains comparatively dull, his eloquence tame. It is only when emotional expres- sion is unbridled that the majestic flow of burning words finds vent. It is only when all the barriers of conventional restraint are broken down that the native and naked force of the soul displays itself. The display arises from the absence of restraint, and not from the stimulus of disease."

In the very first scene of the play Lear is a madman, and the cause of his malady may easily be surmised. Absolute monarchs arepeouliarly prone to insanity, and for eighty years and more Lear has been a prince and a king, despotic in disposition as well as in authority, rash and headstrong in temper, and gifted with vivid poetic imagination ; what wonder then if he has acquired habi- tudes of mind to which the slightest opposition will appear un- natural and monstrous as if the laws of nature were reversed, a prodigy to be met only with astonishment and unbounded rage ? Such habitudes intensified by extreme age, which in some men is the occasion of stronger passion and hotter temper lead straightway to insanity.

"It is worthy of remark that Lear's age is physically strong and vigor- ous; he has been a warrior as well as a king. ' I've seen the day with my good biting falchion I would have made them skip.'

"Even at the last he has vigour enough to kill the slave who was hanging Cordelia. He is a keen hardy huntsman, and he rides from the house of one daughter to that of another with such speed, that his strong willing mes- senger can scarcely arrive before him by riding night and day. Physically, therefore, he is a strong, hale, vigorous man ; and the desire he expresses to confer his cares on younger strengths, that he may unburdened crawl to- wards death,' is either a specious reason for his abdication, or one which has sole reference to the consciousness of that failing judgment which is obvious to others, and probably not unfelt by himself ; and which his daughter so cruelly insinuates when he claims her gratitude. . . . "Coleridge justly observes, that it was not without forethought, nor is it without its due significance, that the division of Lear's kingdom is in the first six lines of the play, stated as a thing determined in all its particulars previously to the trial of professions, as the relative rewards of which the daughters were to be made to consider their several portions." They let us know that the trial is a silly trick, and that the grossness of the old king's is in part the result of a silly trick suddenly and most unexpectedly ed and disappointed.' " That the trial is a mere trick is unquestionable ; but is not the significance of this fact greater than Coleridge suspected ? Does it not lead us to conclude, that from the first the king's mind is off its balance ; that the partition of his kingdom, involving inevitable feuds and wars, is the first act of his de- veloping insanity; and that the manner of its partition, the mock-trial of his daughters' affections, and its tragical denouement, is the second, and but the second act of his madness ? The great mind, so vigorous in its mad ra-

vings, with such clear insight into the heart of man that all the petty cover- ings of pretence are stripped off in its wild eloquence, not only is unable to distinguish between the most forced and fulsome flattery and the genuine ness of deep and silent love ; it cannot even see the folly of assuming to ap- portion the three exact and predetermined thirds of the kingdom according to the professions made in answer to the silly trick ; ' cannot even see that after giving away two thirds, the remainder is a fixed quantity, and cannot be more or less according to the warmth of the professions of his youngest and favourite daughter ; a confusion not unlike the account he subsequently gives of his own age—' four score and upwards; not an hour more or less." " With what courtly smoothness of pretence goes on the mocking scene, until Cordelia's real love, and obstinate temper, and disgust at her sister's hypocrisy, and repugnance perhaps at the trick she may see through, inter- rupt the old king's complacent vanity the and then the astonishment, the re- tained breath, the short sentences, the silence before the storm ! and then the outbreak of unbridled rage, in that terrible curse in which he makes his darling daughter—her whom he loved beat, whom he looked to as the nurse of his age—for ever a stranger to his heart ! It is madness or it is nothing. Not, indeed, raving, incoherent, formed mania, as it subsequently displays itself; but exaggerated passion, perverted affection, enfeebled jud

combining to form a state of mental disease—incipient indeed, but disease—in which man, though he may be paying for past errors, is for the present irresponsible."

The passages we have quoted give the key to the whole import of this wonderful drama. Our space will not permit us to pursue the inquiry through its subsequent stages ; but if we have in some degree justified to our readers the conviction we feel, that Dr. Bucknill has succeeded in vindicating one of the grandest pro- ductions of geniusfrom the imputationof silliness and inconsistency, we have done enough. No one who venerates the name of Shake- speare will leave Dr. Bucknill's book unread, when once he has been apprised of its value.