So unhappy and despair riddled is the end of King Lear that for more than a century the play was performed with a revised and happy ending.
Towards the close of the true play, Lear's daughter, Cordelia, is murdered. This against all expectation she will be saved.
Carrying her corpse onto stage, Lear howls:
Howl, howl, howl! Lear “says,” if “say” is the right verb to convey this sound when made by a human
Lear’s next line is this: O, you are men of stones!
Who does Lear mean when he says “you?” You are men of stone. You the people who have conspired to kill his daughter? You who failed to keep her alive? You his sense of himself? Or you, the audience?
It is not true to say stone must exist without soul. In the Drakensberg mountains or the scultpture of Michelangelo or the architecture of Gaudi stone finds life.
Nor is it true men cannot be stone. We watch them on our screens. They bomb cities or justify such bombing.
To put soul and beauty into what is inert is one charge.
Another is to do mote than watch, to hear the howl of others before the beast of us is all there is.