somewhat different approach from merely sampling the 
sensibility of a great play of the critical period.

     King Lear  is a kind of medieval sermon-exemplum or 
inductive reasoning to display the madness and misery of the 
new Renaissance life of action. Shakespeare explains minutely 
that the very principle of action  is the splitting up of social 
operations and of the private sense life into specialized 
segments. The resulting frenzy to discover a new over-all 
interplay of forces ensures a furious activation of all 
components and persons affected by the new stress.

     Cervantes had a similar awareness, and his Don Quixote  is 
galvanized by the new form of the book as much as Machiavelli 
had been hypnotized by the special segment of experience that 
he had chosen to step up to the highest intensity of