greenblatt came today. shakespeare and the ethics of authority.

i find it entirely believable that given lear, shakespeare sort of DIDN'T know where to go in the end. thence the strange and strangely powerful consolation and exhortation that we speak what we feel, not what we ought to say...
as a says, comfort greater than truth.
the play IS astoundingly full of comfortings and very quiet murmurs of kindness. all prevailingly ineffective in causing greater change etc. so that the need for kindness is recurring and constant and growing. gentleness so quiet and so emphatic that one does not know where to look. art cold?