The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded by Bacon, Delia, 1811-1859

'No _contraries_ hold more _antipathy_ than I, and such a knave,' he says to Cornwall, by way of explaining his apparently gratuitous attack upon the steward.

No one, indeed, who reads the play with any care, can doubt the poet's intention to incorporate into it, for some reason or other, and to bring out by the strongest conceivable contrasts, his study of loyalty and service, and especially of regal counsel, and his criticism of it, as it stood in his time in its most approved patterns. 'Such smiling rouges as these' ('that _bite_ the _holy cords atwain_').

Such ruses as this would not, of course, be wanting in such a _time_ as that in which this piece was planned, if Edmund's word was, indeed, the true one. 'Know thou this, _men_ are as the time is.'

And even amidst the excitement and rough outrage of that scene--in which Gloster's trial is so summarily conducted, even in that so rude scene--the relation between the _guest_ and his _host_, and the relation of the _slave_ to his _owner_, is delicately and studiously touched, and the human claim in both is boldly advanced, in the face of an absolute authority, and _age_ and _personal dignity_ put in their claims also, and demand, even at such a moment, their full rights of reverence.

Tied to the stake, questioned and cross-questioned, and insulted, finally, beyond even his faculty of endurance, he breaks forth, at last, in strains of indignation that overleap all arbitrary and conventional bounds, that are only the more terrible for having been so long suppressed. Kent himself, when he 'came between the dragon and his wrath,' was not so fierce.

...