Where she, true-hearted noble queen,
Was in the battle slain :

Yet he, good king, in his old days,
Possest his crown again."

It is confidently presumed he would not; while numerous reasons are apparent why Shakspeare, with the ballad before him, would reject these circumstances for the adoption of others more appropriate. It is, therefore assumed, though not solely on these grounds, that the ballad preceded Shakspeare's play, and the ballad was doubtless founded on Holinshed's Chronicle.

To these materials, in the hands of Shakspeare, must be added the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, which will hereafter receive the attention it deserves.

It is an observable singularity that the old dramatist, the ballad, and Shakspeare agree in deviating from Holinshed by making Lear resign the whole of his kingdom and power; the historian only stating that Lear" willed and ordained that his land should be divided, after his death, between the husbands of his daughters; and the one half thereof immediately should be assigned to them in hand;" and it was not till "after that Lear was fallen into age, the two dukes that had married his two eldest daughters,

thinking it long ere the government of the land did come to their hands, arose against him in armour, and reft from him the governance of the land, upon conditions to be continued for term of life: by the which he was put to his portion, that is, to live after a rate assigned to him for the maintainance of his estate, which in process of time was diminished as well by Maglanus as by Hennius."

In reading Shakspeare's play, every one must be struck by the inconsistency of his statements of the king's intentions, in regard to the division of his kingdom,

"Know, that we have divided in three our kingdom,"

and in this partition, Kent declares, “equalities are so weighed, that curiosity in neither can make choice of either's moiety." Yet the question put by Lear to his daughters is,

"Which of you, shall we say, doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend

Where merit doth most challenge it."

A reconciliation of these incongruities is impossible, but a key is, perhaps, to be found to them by reference to Shakspeare's authorities.

The king, in the old play, declares his determination to "resign his crown”

"In equal dowry to his daughters three."

His intention is reiterated:

"No more, nor less, but even all alike."

It is a proposition to the king, in the old drama,

that

"Your majesty knowing well,

What several suters your princely daughters have,
To make them each a jointure more or less,

As is their worth, to them that love profess."

Holinshed, also, makes the disposal of the kingdom entirely a matter of uncertainty till the king had heard the answers of his daughters. "When Leir, therefore, was come to great years, and began to wax unwieldy through age, he thought to understand the affections of his daughters towards him, and prefer her whom he best loved, to the succession over the kingdom."

In Holinshed's implied publicity of Lear's object in the interrogation of his children is, perhaps, to be found the origin of its avowal in Shakspeare's drama. The Leir of the old play is studiously silent, to his daughters, respecting his ultimate intentions, which are, however, betrayed to them by his confidant, Skalliger,

"Not doubting but your wisdoms will foresee
What course will best unto your good agree."

The confining of the knowledge of Leir's scheme to his two eldest daughters marks their combination against Cordella, whose superiority in beauty is strongly stated to have excited their jealously and hatred; a point Shakspeare left untouched.

It would be trifling to dwell on our dramatist's introduction of the elder sisters as already married, whereas, in the old play, they are contracted and wedded after Leir's division of his kingdom; or, on the equally immaterial circumstance, that in the original drama the territorial dowers are disposed of by lot, whereas Shakspeare distinctly specifies the portions of Goneril and Regan, in the first instance, and, after disinheriting Cordelia, directing "Cornwall and Albany," with his "two daughters' dowers," to" digest the third."

It is of more moment to notice that there is a general concurrence between the bard and his authorities on the facts of Lear's interrogation of his daughters, his silly credulity in, and absurd reward of, the sordid flattery of his elder children, and his cruel persecution of the sincere Cordelia. On the subject of his inflexibility there is a particular coincidence between the dramatists:

"Cease, good my lords, and sue not to reverse
Our censure, which is now irrevocable,

Then do not so dishonour me, my lords,
As to make shipwreck of my kingly word."

Shakspeare's king urges the same plea of obstinacy, with the superadded circumstance of his irritation against Kent:

Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow,
(Which we durst never yet,) and, with strain'd pride,
To come betwixt our sentence and our power," &c. †

The following passage, which Shakspeare has thrown into action above all eulogy, will show that the old dramatist was principally his guide in the representation of the king's ill treatment by the ungrateful Goneril.

"The king hath dispossest himself of all,

Those to advance, which scarce will give him thanks:

His youngest daughter he hath turned away,

And no man knows what is become of her.

He sojourns now in Cornwall with the eldest,
Who flatter'd him, until she did obtain
That at his hands, which now she doth possess:
And now she sees he hath no more to give,
It grieves her heart to see her father live,