It has been said that the putting out of Gloucester's eyes is an artistic mistake on Shakespeare's part. I hold that it is a necessary incident in the play, and that the dramatist has shown the reason for it. Cordelia has set foot in the country with her French soldiers, determined to regain the kingdom for her father, and Gloucester, whom Cornwall regards as belonging to his own faction, is conniving with Cordelia. Now had Gloucester been a common soldier, Cornwall could have put him to death as a traitor (Act III., Scene 7); but the offender being an earl, Cornwall dare not do this, so he puts out the old man's eyes to prevent him reading Cordelia's despatches. He is blinded, moreover, in sight of the audience, that Cornwall may be seen receiving his death-wound. And even the fact that Regan and Goneril were capable of acting so inhumanly towards Gloucester makes Lear's plight more desperate, and therefore more pathetic. Yet Shakespeare never makes his characters suffer without giving them compensations, and the meeting and reconciliation between the blind Gloucester and his son is one of the most touching incidents in the play. That this reconciliation was omitted in representation suggests that the ugly incident of putting out Gloucester's eyes was retained merely as a piece of sensationalism, and, if so, it merits severe condemnation. Shakespeare has often been blamed for being intolerant to democracy, and this is in part a well-founded reproach, but it was a fault of the age and not of the man. Still, in "King Lear" the dramatist abundantly proves his sympathy with the hard lot of the poor. For this reason the play preaches no pessimism. Lear, Gloucester, and Edgar are the happier for the troubles they experience. Such hardships as they endure are brought upon themselves by their own shortcomings; but these hardships are mitigated by the gain to their moral natures of a fellow-sympathy for the sufferings of those who have done no wrong, and by an appreciation of the injustice done towards those whose miseries are created through the selfishness of the rich. Lear, who has ruled a country as a despot for half a century, discovers for the first time in his life that-- "Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all." Having exposed himself to feel what wretches feel, he knows, as he has never known before, how the heart of a desolate father can crave for the love of a gentle daughter. To prison he can cheerfully go with her, "To pray and sing and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies," because now he is no longer himself in the wrong, but the one who is wronged. And the blind Gloucester, also, is happy in his misery, because for the first time he can say: "Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man;-- that will not see Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough."