My learned friend Mr. Warton, who has in the _Adventurer_ very minutely
criticised this play, remarks, that the instances of cruelty are too
savage and shocking, and that the intervention of Edmund destroys the
simplicity of the story. These objections may, I think, be answered, by
repeating, that the cruelty of the daughters is an historical fact, to
which the poet has added little, having only drawn it into a series by
dialogue and action. But I am not able to apologize with equal
plausibility for the extrusion of Glo'ster's eyes, which seems an act
too horrid to be endured in dramatic exhibition, and such as must always
compel the mind to relieve its distress by incredulity. Yet let it be
remembered that our author well knew what would please the audience for
which he wrote.
The injury done by Edmund to the simplicity of the action is abundantly
recompensed by the addition of variety, by the art with which he is made
to co-operate with the chief design, and the opportunity which he gives
the poet of combining perfidy with perfidy, and connecting the wicked
son with the wicked daughters, to impress this important moral, that
villainy is never at a stop, that crimes lead to crimes, and at last
terminate in ruin.
But though this moral be incidentally enforced, Shakespeare has suffered
the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the
natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and, what is yet
more strange, to the faith of chronicles.
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