An Allegory of King Lear. By Charles Creighton, M.D. (A.
L. Humphreys. 3s. 6d. not.)—Dr. Creighton is apparently dissatisfied with King Lear as it stands, and is driven to search for a symbolic meaning underlying the story. This he has discovered. "The tragedy of Lear and his daughters is an allegory of the Reformation in its peculiarly English form, or of the breach with Rome as it was brought about by Henry VIII.'s assumption of the supremacy in the Church." Again, "I shall show that Burgundy is Erasmus ; that the Earl of Kent in his proper person is Sir Thomas More, and in his disguise the poet Earl of Surrey ; that Oswald, the steward of Goneril's household, is Cardinal Wolsey and that Lear's Fool is the satiric poet John Skelton, who had been tutor to Henry VIII." Anyone who wishes may read an elaborately detailed justification of this amazing theory in Dr. Creighton's pages.
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