But a high end may be gained in this world, and the vision into the
world beyond so justified, as in King Lear. The passionate, impulsive,
unreasoning old king certainly must have given his wicked daughters
occasion enough of making the charges to which their avarice urged them.
He had learned very little by his life of kingship. He was but a boy
with grey hair. He had had no inner experiences. And so all the
development of manhood and age has to be crowded into the few remaining
weeks of his life. His own folly and blindness supply the occasion. And
before the few weeks are gone, he has passed through all the stages of a
fever of indignation and wrath, ending in a madness from which love
redeems him; he has learned that a king is nothing if the man is
nothing; that a king ought to care for those who cannot help themselves;
that love has not its origin or grounds in favours flowing from royal
resource and munificence, and yet that love is the one thing worth
living for, which gained, it is time to die. And now that he has the
experience that life can give, has become a child in simplicity of heart
and judgment, he cannot lose his daughter again; who, likewise, has
learned the one thing she needed, as far as her father was concerned, a
little more excusing tenderness.
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