Madness is only one element that contributes to the overwhelming effect of the play. Its so-called pessimism is the only other on which our meagre survey may dwell. English tragedy had from the beginning concerned itself mainly with heinous crime and sin; and during the years immediately preceding and following "Lear" there was a distinct conception of tragedy as the representation not only of the depths of iniquity but of the moral confusion and blackness that beset us all. In "Hamlet," "Othello," and "Measure for Measure" the sense of evil is ever present. In "Lear" it grips the reader like the rack. As in "Othello," evil, here represented by the two fiendish daughters as well as by an intriguing villain, dominates the action, and carries all that is good along with it to destruction. But evil is only one of the forces that cause suffering and ruin. Lear and Cordelia contend against their own imperfections and against chance and circumstance so hostile that they seem directed by gods who sport with men as with flies and loose the fury of the elements to torment their victims. Where else in tragedy are the forces that make for ruin so appalling and so irresistible; and where else are suffering and ruin so dreadful and so complete? The sufferers are powerless. Suffering does not here arouse a Promethean defiance, but it discovers and purifies human virtue. If evil is dominant over the action, Cordelia, Kent, the Fool, and the chastened and purified Lear are dominant in our reflections. The end is not the fall and cessation of all that is good. Even in our dismay at the convulsion which evil may cause, there remains the memory of the perfection of human devotion and love. The final impression must, however, partake of confusion and horror at the blackness and ruthlessness of a moral order that can sacrifice perfect virtue in an effort to free itself from the hideous enormity of evil. This is the tragedy of life as Shakespeare saw it, and the cry of bewilderment and agony seems to come from the poet's own heart. The language, sometimes crowded and difficult, has hardly a trace of artifice. Rarely as perfectly mastered as in "Hamlet" and "Othello," it surpasses even those plays in the tremendous sincerity of its passion. If passionate despair at things human has a language, it is the speech of Lear.