The fate of Lear finds a parallel in that of {186} Gloucester in the underplot. Like his king, this nobleman has proved an unwise father, favoring the treacherous child and disowning the true. He also is made to pay a fearful penalty for his mistakes, ending in his death. But he is represented as more justly punished, less excusable through the weaknesses of age; and for this reason his grief appeals to us as an intensifying reflection of Lear's misery rather than as a rival for that in our sympathy. The character of Edmund shows some likeness to that of Richard III; and a comparison of the two will show how Shakespeare has developed in the interval. Both are stern, able, and heartless; but Edmund unites to these more complex feelings known only to the close student of life. Weakness and passion mingle in his love; superstition and some faint, abortive motion of conscience unite to torment him when dying. There is a strangely lyric element about this great tragedy, an element of heart-broken emotion hovering on the edge of passionate song. It is like a great chorus in which the victims of treachery and ingratitude blend their denouncing cries. The tremulous voice of Lear rises terrible above all the others; and to his helpless curses the plaintive satire of the fool answers like a mocking echo in halls of former enjoyment. Thunder and lightning are the fearful accompaniment of the song; and like faint antiphonal responses from the underplot come the voices of the wronged Edgar and the outraged Gloucester. +Date+.--The date of _King Lear_ lies between 1603 and 1606. In 1603 appeared a book (Harsnett's _Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures_) from which Shakespeare afterward drew {187} the names of the devils in the pretended ravings of Edgar, together with similar details. In 1606, as we know from an entry in the Stationers' Register, the play was performed at Whitehall at Christmas. A late edition of the old _King Leir_ (not Shakespeare's) was entered on the Register May 8, 1605; and it is very plausible that Shakespeare's tragedy was then having a successful run and that the old play was revived to take advantage of an occasion when its story was popular. Hence the date usually given for the composition of _King Lear_ is 1604-5. A quarto, with a poor text, and carelessly printed, appeared in 1608; another, (bearing the assumed date of 1608) in 1619. The First Folio text is much the best. Three hundred lines lacking in it are made up for by a hundred lines absent from the quartos.