"
That play has every quality which does reflect the soul of the community
in which and for which it was written. Note a few in their order.
First, it is not designed to its end; at least it is not designed
accurately to its end; it is written as a play and it is meant to be
acted as a play, and it is the uniform opinion of those versed in plays
and in acting that in its full form it could hardly be presented, while
in any form it is the hardest even of Shakespeare's plays to perform.
Here you have a parallel with a thousand mighty English things to which
you can turn. Is there not institution after institution to decide on,
so lacking a complete fitness to its end, larger in a way than the end
it is to serve, and having, as it were, a life of its own which proceeds
apart from its effect? This quality which makes so many English things
growths rather than instruments is most evident in the great play.
Again, it has that quality which Voltaire noted, which he thought
abnormal in Shakespeare, but which is the most national characteristic
in him, that a sort of formlessness, if it mars the framework of the
thing and spoils it, yet also permits the exercise of an immeasurable
vitality. When a man has read "King Lear" and lays down the book he is
like one who has been out in one of those empty English uplands in a
storm by night. It is written as though the pen bred thoughts.
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