ceasse ruled the land of Britaine right worthilie during the space of fiue yeeres, in which meane time her husband died, and then about the end of those fiue yeeres, hir two nephewes Margan and Cunedag, sonnes to hir aforesaid sisters, disdaining to be vnder the gouernment of a woman, leuied warre against hir, and destroied a great part of the land, and finallie tooke hir prisoner, and laid hir fast in ward, wherewith she tooke suche griefe, being a woman of a manlie courage, and despairing to recouer libertie, there she slue hirselfe.'
In the old play, Cornwall is the husband of Goneril, and appears in a somewhat better light than Regan's consort; another reason, it seems to me, why Shakespeare may have taken his tragedy from this source rather than directly from Holinshed. But Shakespeare, as is indicated by the very first line of King Lear, deliberately made Goneril's husband a great and noble character, one of the finest gentlemen to be found among all his dramatis personæ; while Regan's husband has no redeeming features except energy and resolution. The Fool—one of the most remarkable among all Shakespeare's jesters—is another instance, if any were needed, of the dramatist's original creative power. Our respect for Shakespeare's genius is always heightened when we study his 'originals.' In this case, he took a melodramatic story with a 'happy ending,' and transformed it into a poignant tragedy, not merely of Lear, but of old age. It is perhaps the greatest tragedy to be found in any literature.
