What have looks, or tones, to do with that sublime identification of his age with that of the _heavens themselves_, when, in his reproaches to them for conniving at the injustice of his children, he reminds them that "they themselves are old ?" What gesture shall we appropriate to this?
What has the voice or the eye to do with such things?
But the play is beyond all art, as the tamperings with it show; it is too hard and stony; it must have love-scenes, and a happy ending.

It is not enough that Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as a lover too.

Tate has put his hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his followers, the showmen of the scene, to draw the mighty beast about more easily.

A happy ending!--as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone through,--the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him.

If he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world's burden after, why all this pudder and preparation,--why torment us with all this unnecessary sympathy?
As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over again his misused station,--as if, at his years and with his experience, anything was left but to die.
Lear is essentially impossible to be represented on a stage.