his? Look on her, look at her lips,/ Look there, look there (V, iii, 309-310) being deleted. Keeping F allows for the possibility Cordelia is either alive or at least Lear thinks so, making Bradleys thesis at least plausible. Comparing the final words of Romeo and Juliet with Lear may help to resolve this issue. The Prince, absolving the Friar of his part, notes,A glooming peace this morning with it brings.The sun for sorrow will not show his head.Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things(V, iii, 305-307)Albany (or Edgar) says:The weight of this sad time we must obey;Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.(V, iii, 322-323)Both ending suggest further discourse. In Romeo and Juliet, what circumstances bring about the horrors? The Sonnet Prologue speaks of star crossed lovers but in Lear, Edmund dismisses such as superstitious nonsense, and like Iago to Roderigo, believes humans chart their own destiny by making opportunities for themselves.Romeo, according to the Friar, defies his own madness; he is rash and impulsive like Lear whose hideous rashness causes him to banish Kent who warned against. The wheel has come full circle, and Shakespeare has noted such before in, As You Like Its famous Seven ages of man speech by Jacques. Interestingly the first stage (the infant./Mewling and puking) comes full circle in senility to the last stage (second childishness and mere oblivion./ sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything.). (II, vii, 139-166). Romeo has come full circle to Lear.Is this the promised end? asks Kent. The answers that if Kent were to look at Romeos youth, he might have recognized a young Lear, and with characteristic bluntness reminded Lear of his past. Such conduct leads to death and fashioning of a universal horror that defies rational explanation. What ought to be said is in our own day the lesson of the holocaust. Donner said, Shakespeare has deliberately made us feel that justice has not been done, that...
