O fool, I shall go mad!" (Lear II.iv, 283-286). Gloucester, speaking of the injustice in the world, after he has been betrayed and blinded by Regan and Goneril, remarks, "As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, They kill us for their sport." (Lear, IV.i, 36-37). This remark makes the audience aware that the characters know that the events in the play seem both capricious and unjust. Finally, Lear addresses the injustice of the world and the specific injustice done to Gloucester, by asking, "What, art mad? / a man may see how this world goes with no eyes." (Lear, IV.vi, 150-151). Taken together, these three statements demonstrate that the play demonstrates tremendous loss, but also shows that man can triumph over that loss. Hazlitt's "King Lear: An Analysis of the Play by William Shakespeare."

Hazlitt believes that this earnestness is demonstrated in Shakespeare's portrayal of Lear as a passionate man alternating between lucidity and madness. He also find's Shakespeare's portrayal of Cordelia as a daughter who loves her father so well that she will not overstate her love in order to gain her affections to be an earnest portrayal of human emotions. In fact, Hazlitt believes that Lear may be too earnest to be acted. He states that, "the greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension, but in intellectual; the explosions of his passions are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that rich sea, his mind, with