That of
King Lear, which is one of Shakespeare's great romantic
historical plays, is, for instance, to be found in Geoffrey of
Monmouth, in Wace's Brut, and in Layamon's Brut. But it was from
none of these that Shakespeare took the story, but from the
chronicle of a man named Holinshed who lived and wrote in the
time of Queen Elizabeth, he in his turn having taken it from some
one of the earlier sources.
For, after all, in spite of the thousands of books that have been
written since the world began, there are only a certain number of
stories which great writers have told again and again in varying
ways. One instance of this we saw when in the beginning of this
book we followed the story of Arthur.
But although Shakespeare borrowed his plots from others, when he
had borrowed them he made them all his own. He made his people
so vivid and so true that he makes us forget that they are not
real people. We can hardly realize that they never lived, that
they never walked and talked, and cried and laughed, loved and
hated, in this world just as we do.
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