world of jobs. This is a process of stripping and denudation 
which does not occur instantly except in artistic vision. But 
Shakespeare saw that it had happened in his time. He was not 
talking about the future. However, the older world of roles had 
lingered on as a ghost just as after a century of electricity the 
West still feels the presence of the older values of literacy and 
privacy and separateness.

     Kent, Edgar, and Cordelia are “out of phase” in the 
language of W. B. Yeats. They are “feudal” in their total loyalty 
which they consider merely natural to their roles . In role they 
exercise no delegated authority or powers. They are 
autonomous centres. As Georges Poulet in his Studies in  
Human Time  points out (p. 7): “For the man of the Middle Ages, 
then, there was not one duration only. There were durations , 
ranked one above another, and not only in the universality of