Fool. No; he's a yeoman, that has a gentleman to his son; for he's a mad yeoman, that sees his son a gentleman before him. Lear. To have a thousand with red burning spits Come hissing in upon them : Edg. The foul fiend bites my back." Fool. He's mad, that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's heels, a boy's love, or a whore's oath. Lear. It shall be done, I will arraign them straight: Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer : [To EDGAR. Thou, sapient sir, sit here. [To the Fool.]-Now, you she foxes! Edg. Look, where he stands and glares!Wantest thou eyes at trial, madam ? Come o'er the bourn, Bessy to me :Fool. Her boat hath a leak. And she must not speak Why she dares not come over to thee. Edg. The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale. Hopdance cries in Tom's belly for two white herrings. Croak not, black angel; I have no food for thee. Kent. How do you, sir? Stand you not so amazed: Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions? Lear. I'll see their trial first:-Bring in the evidence Thou robed man of justice, take thy place; [To EDGAR. And thou, his yoke-fellow of equity, [To the Fool. Bench by his side:-You are of the commission, Sit you too. [To KENT. 1 Perhaps he is here addressing the Fool. Fools were anciently termed innocents. So in All's Well that Ends Well, Act iv. Sc. 3:-The sheriff's fool-a dumb innocent, that could not say him nay.' 2 The old copies have hizzing, which Malone changed to whizzing. One of the quartos spells the word hiszing, which indicates that the reading of the present text is right. 3 This and the next thirteen speeches are only in the quartos. 4 The old copies read, a horse's health;' but heels was certainly meant. Trust not a horse's heels, nor a dog's tooth, is a proverb in Ray's Collection; which may be traced at least as far back as the time of our Edward II. Et ideo Babio in comediis insinuat dicens:-In fide, dente, pede, mulieris, equi canis est fraus. Hoc sic vulgariter est dici : 'Till horsis fote thou never traist, Till hondis toth, ne woman's faith.' Forduni Scotichronicon, 1. xiv. c. 32. The proverb in the text is probably from the Italian. 5 Justicer from Justiciarus, was the old term, as we learn from Lambard's Eirenarcha: And of this it commeth that M. Fitzherbert, (in his Treatise of the Justices of Peace,) calleth them justicers (contractly for justiciars,) and not justices, as we commonly and not altogether improperly doe name them.' 6 When Edgar says, 'Look, where he stands and glares! he seems to be speaking in the character of a madman, who thinks he sees the fiend. Wantest thou eyes at a trial, madam? is a question addressed to some visionary spectator, and may mean no more than Do you want eyes when you should use them most? that you cannot see this spectre.' Edg. Let us deal justly. Sleepest, or wakest thou, jolly shepherd? And for one blast of thy minikin3 mouth, Pur! the cat is gray. 1 here Lear. Arraign her first; 'tis Goneril. take my oath before this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor king her father. Fool. Come hither, mistress; Is your name Goneril ? Lear. She cannot deny it. Fool. Cry you mercy, I took you for a jointstool.1" What store her heart is made of.-Stop her there! 7 A bourn is a brook or rivulet. At the beginning of A Very Merry and Pythie Comedie, called The Longer Thou Livest The More Fool Thou Art, &c. blk. let. no date: Entreth Moros, counterfaiting a vain gesture and foolish countenance, synging the foote of many songs, as fooles were wont ;' and among them is this passage: Com over the boorne Bessé, Come over the bourne, Bessé, to me." The old copies read, 'o'er the broome; and Johnson suggested, as there was no connexion between a boat and a broom, that it was an error. Steevens made the correction, and adduced this illustration. There is peculiar propriety in this address: Bessy and poor Tom usually travelled together, as appears by a passage cited Edg. Bless thy five wits! Kent. O, pity-Sir, where is the patience now, That you so oft have boasted to retain ? Edg. My tears begin to take his part so much, They'll mar my counterfeiting. Lear. The little dogs and all, [Anide. Tray, Blanch, and Sweet-heart, see, they bark at me. Edg. Tom will throw his head at them :— Avaunt, you curs! Be thy mouth or black or white, Tooth that poisons if it bite; Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim, Hound, or spaniel, brach, or lym;11 Or bobtail tike, 12 or trundle-tail; Tom will make them weep and wail: For, with throwing thus my head, Dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled. Do de, de de. Sessa.13 Come, march to wakes and fairs, and market towns :-Poor Tom, thy hera is dry,14 14 from Dick Whipper's Sessions, 1607, by Malone. Mad women, who travel about the country, are called in Shropshire Cousin Betties, and elsewhere Mad Bessies. 8 Much of this may have been suggested by Harsuet's book. Sarah Williams deposeth, That if at any time she did belch, as often times she did by reason that shee was troubled with a wind in her stomacke, the priests would say at such times, that then the spirit began to rise in her....and that the wind was the devil.' And, (as she saith,) if they heard any croaking in her belly.... then they would make a wonderful matter of tha Hoberdidance is mentioned in a former note. • One time shee remembereth that, shee having the said croaking in her belly, they said it was the devil that was about the bed, that spake with the voice of a toad,” p. 194, 195, &c. 9 Minikin was anciently a term of endearment.-Baret, in his Alvearie, interprets feat by proper, well fashioned, minikin, handsome.' 10 This proverbial expression occurs likewise in Lyly's Mother Bombie, 1594. 11 I suspect that brach signifies a greyhound. A lym or lyme was a blood-hound, (see Minsheu's Dict. in voce ;) sometimes also called a limmer or leamer; from the leam or leash, in which he was held till he was let slip. In the book of Ancient Tenures, by T. B. 1679, the words 'canes domini regis lesos,' are translated leash hounds, such as draw after hurt deer in a leash or leyam. So Drayton, in The Muses Elysium:- "My doghook at my belt, to which my lyam's ty'd.' 12 Tijk is the Runic word for a little worthless dog. Trindletails are mentioned in the Booke of Huntyng, &c. blk. let. no date; and in the old comedy of A Woman Kill'd with Kindness. 13 Sessa; this word occurs before in the fourth Scene of this Act. It is spelled Sessey in both places in the old copy. The same word occurs in the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew, where it is spelled sessa: it ap pears to have been a corruption of cessez, stop or hold, be quiet, have done. 14 A horn was usually carried about by every Tom of Bedlam, to receive such drink as the charitable might afford him, with whatever scraps of food they might give him. When, therefore, Edgar says his horn is dry or empty, he merely means, in the language of the character he assumes, to supplicate that it might be filled with drink. See A Pleasant Dispute between a Coach and a Sedan, 4to. 1636-I have observed when a coach is appendant but two or three hundred pounda Lear. Then let them anatomize Regan, see what breeds about her heart: Is there any cause in nature, that makes these hard hearts?-You, sir, I entertain you for one of my hundred; only I do not like the fashion of your garments; you will say, they are Persian attire! but let them be changed." [To EDGAR. Kent. Now, good my lord, lie here, and rest a while.' Lear. Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains: So, so, so: We'll go to supper i' the morning: So, so, so. Fool. And I'll go to bed at noon. Re-enter GLOSTER. Glo. Come hither, friend: Where is the king my master? Kent. Here, sir; but trouble him not, his wits are gone. Glo. Good friend, I pr'ythee take him in thy arms; I have o'erheard a plot of death upon him: meet Both welcome and protection. Take up thy master: Glo. Edg. When we our betters see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes. Who alone suffers, suffers most i' the mind; Leaving free things, and happy shows, behind: But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip, When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship. How light and portable my pain seems now, When that, which makes me bend, makes the king bow; 4 He childed, as I father'd!-Tom, away: In thy just proof, repeals, and reconciles thee. [Exit. SCENE VII. A Room in Gloster's Castle. Enter CORNWALL, REGAN, GONERIL, EDMUND, and Servants. Corn. Post speedily to my lord your husband; show him this letter;-the army of France is landed:-Seek out the villain Gloster. [Exeunt some of the Servants. Reg. Hang him instantly. a yeere, marke it, the dogges are as leane as rakes; you may tell all their ribbes lying be the fire; and Tom a Bedium may sooner eate his horne than get it filled with small drinke, and for his old almes of bacon there is no hope in the world.' 1 i. e. on the cushions to which he points. 2 One of the quartos reads, "Take up the king;' the other, Take up to keep,' &c. 3 These two concluding speeches, by Kent and Edgar, are restored from the quarto. The soliloquy of Edgar is extremely fine; and the sentiments of it are drawn equally from nature and the subject. Besides, with regard to the stage, it is absolutely necessary; for as Edgar is not designed, in the constitution of the play, to attend the king to Dover, how absurd would it look for a character of his importance to quit the scene without one word said, or the least intimation what we are to expect from him.'-Theobald. 4 The great events that are approaching, the loud tumult of approaching war. 3 Betray, discover. Gon. Pluck out his eyes. Corn. Leave him to my displeasure.-Edmund, keep you our sister company; the revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father, are not fit for your beholding. Advise the duke, where you are going, to a most festinate preparation; we are bound to the like. Our post shall be swift, and intelligent betwixt us. Farewell, dear sister;farewell, my lord of Gloster." Enter Steward. How now? Where's the king? Stew. My lord of Gloster hath convey'd him hence. Some five or six and thirty of his knights, Hot questrists' after him, met him at gate; Who, with some other of the lord's dependants, Are gone with him towards Dover; where they boast To have well armed friends. Corn. Get horses for your mistress. Gon. Farewell, sweet lord, and sister. [Exeunt GONERIL and EDMUND. Corn. Edmund, farewell.-Go, seek the traitor Gloster, Pinion him like a thief, bring him before us. Though well we may not pass upon his life Re-enter Servants, with GLOSTER. Reg. Ingrateful fox! 'tis he. Glo. What mean your graces ?-Good my friends, consider 6 Meaning Edmund, invested with his father's titles. The Steward, speaking immediately after, mentions the old earl by the same title. 7 A questrist is one who goes in quest or search of another. 8 Do a courtesy to our wrath,' simply means bend to our wrath, as a courtesy is made by bending the body. To pass on any one may be traced from Magna Charta:-Neque super eum ibimus, nisi per legale judicuum parium suorum.' It is common to most of our early writers- A jury of devils impanneled and deeply sworne to pass on all villains in hell.'-If this be not a Good Play the Devil is in it, 1612. 9 i. e. dry, wither'd, husky arms. This epithet was perhaps borrowed from Harsnet:-It would pose all the cunning exorcists that are this day to be found, to teach an old corkie woman to writhe, tumble, curvet, and fetch her morice gambols as Martha Bressier did. 10 i. e. quicken into life. 11 Favours mean the same as features; that is, the different parts of which a face is composed. Corn. Where hast thou sent the king? To Dover. Glo. To Dover? Wast thou not charg'd at peril- Glo. I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the Reg. Wherefore to Dover? Glo. Because I would not see thy cruel nails If wolves had at thy gate howl'd that stern time, Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot. [GLOSTER is held down in his Chair, while Glo. He, that will think to live till he be old, Reg. How now, you dog? Serv. If you did wear a beard upon your chin, I'd shake it on this quarrel; What do you mean? Corn. My villain ! [Draws, and runs at him. Serv. Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger. [Draws. They fight. CORN. is wounded. Reg. Give me thy sword.-[To another Serv.] A peasant stand up thus! [Snatches a Sword, comes behind him, Serv. O, I am slain !-My lord, you have one To see some mischief on him :-0! [Dies. Corn. Lest it see more, prevent it:-Out, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now? [Tears out GLOSTER's other Eye, and Glo. All dark and comfortless.-Where's my son Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature, Reg. 1 So in Macbeth : Out, treacherous villain! Of night and danger.' 5 i. e. yielded, submitted to the necessity of the occasion. 6 This horrible exhibition is not more sanguinary than that of some contemporary dramas. In Selimus, Emperor of the Turks, one of the sons of Bajazet, pulls out the eyes of an Aga on the stage, and says: Yes, thou shalt live, but never see that day, Wanting the tapers that should give thee light. [Pulls out his eyes.' Immediately after his hands are cut off on the stage. In Marston's Antonio's Revenge, 1602, Piero's tongue is torn out on the stage. 7 Villain is perhaps here used in its original sense, of one in servitude. 8 Requite. Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him! His way to Dover.-How is't, my lord? How look Corn. I have receiv'd a hurt :-Follow me, lady. Turn out that eyeless villain;-throw this slave Upon the dunghill.-Regan, I bleed apace: Untimely comes this hurt: Give me your arm. [Exit CORNWALL, led by REGAN ;— Servants unbind GLOSTER, and lead him out. 1 Serv. I'll never care what wickedness I do,** If this man comes to good. If she live long, 2 Serv. And, in the end, meet the old course of death,11 Women will all turn monsters. 1 Serv. Let's follow the old earl, and get the To lead him where he would; his roguish madness 12 2 Serv. Go thou; I'll fetch some flax, and whites of eggs, To apply to his bleeding face. him! ACT IV. SCENE I. The Heath. Now, Heaven help [Exeunt severally. Enter EDGAR. Edg. Yet better thus, and know to be contemn'd, Old Man. O, my good lord, I have been your tenant, and your father's tenant, these fourscore years. Glo. Away, get thee away; good friend, be gone : Old Man. Álack, sir, you cannot see your way. 9 Overture here means an opening, a discovery. 'k was he who first laid thy treasons open to us.' 10 This short dialogue is only found in the quartos. It is, as Theobald observes, full of nature. Servants could hardly see such barbarity committed without pity; and the vengeance that they presume must overtake the actors of it, is a sentiment and doctrine well worthy of the stage and of the great moral poet : 11 i. e. die a natural death. 12 Steevens asserted that this passage was ridiculed by Ben Jonson, in The Case is Altered. Mr. Gifford has shown the folly and falsehood of the assertion; and that it was only a common allusion to a method of stanching blood practised in the poet's time by every barber-surgeon and old woman in the kingdom. 13 It is better to be thus openly contemned, than to be flattered and secretly contemned. The expression in this speech, owes nothing to thy blasts,' might seem to be copied from Virgil, Æn. xi. 51 : 'Nos juvenem exanimum, et nil jam cœlestibus ullis Debentem, vano mesti comitamur honore.' 14 The next two lines and a half are not in the quartos. 15 O world! if reverses of fortune and changes such as I now see and feel, from ease and affluence to poverty and misery, did not show us the little value of life, we should never submit with any kind of resignation to death, the necessary consequences of old age; wu should cling to life more strongly than we do.' Our mean secures us,' and our mere defects Old Man. I am worse than e'er I was. Old Man. "Tis poor mad Tom. Edg. [Aside.] And worse I may be yet; The worst is not, So long as we can say, This is the worst." Old Man. Fellow, where goest? Is it a beggar man? As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; Glo. Is that the naked fellow? Old Man. Ay, my lord. Glo. Then, 'pr'ythee, get thee gone: If, for my sake, Thou wilt o'ertake me, hence a mile or twain, Old Man. Alack, sir, he's mad. Glo. 'Tis the time's plague, when madmen lead the blind. Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure: Old Man. I'll bring him the best 'parel that I Come on't what will. Glo. Sirrah, naked fellow. [Exit. Edg. Poor Tom's a-cold.-I cannot daubs it [Aside. further. Glo. Come hither, fellow. Glo. Know'st thou the way to Dover? 1 Mean is here put for our moderate or mean conditions. It was sometimes the practice of the poet's age to use the plural, when the subject spoken of related to more persons than one. To avoid the equivoque, Pope changed the reading of the old copy to our mean secures us,' which is certainly more intelligible, and may have been the reading intended, as meane being spelled with a final e might easily be mistaken for means, which is the reading of the old copy. 2 So in another scene, I see it feelingly.' 3 i. e. while we live; for while we yet continue to have a sense of feeling, something worse than the present may still happen. He recalls his former rash conclusion. So smooth he daub'd his vice with show of virtue," 6 The devil in Ma. Mainy confessed his name to be This pas [Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once; of fust, as Obidicut; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; and Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since possesses chambermaids and waitingwomen." So, bless thee, master!] Glo. Here, take this purse, thou whom the hea- Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched, And each man have enough.-Dost thou know Stew. Madam, within; but never man so chang'd: Then shall you go no further. 7 If she have a little helpe of the mother, epilepsie, or cramp, to teach her role her eyes, wrie her mouth, gnash her teeth, starte with her body, hold her armes and handes stiffe, make antike faces, grinec, mow and mop, like an ape, then no doubt the young girl is owle. blasted, and possessed.'-Harsnet, p. 136. The five devils here mentioned are the names of five of those who were made to act in this farce, three chambermaids or waiting women, in Mr. Edmund Peckham's family. The reader will now perceive why a coquette is called flihergibbit or titifill by Cotgrave. See Act iii. Sc. 4. The passage in crotchets is omitted in the folio. 8 Lear has before uttered the same sentiment, which indeed cannot be too strongly impressed, though it may be too often repeated.'-Johnson. To slave an ordinance is to treat it as a slave, to make it subject to us, instead of acting in obedience to it. So in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613: Could slave him like the Lydian Omphale." Again, in A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Massinger-that slaves me to his will. The quartos read, That stands your ordinance,' which may be right, says Malone, and means withstands or abides. 9 In is here put for on, as in other places of these plays. 10 It must be remembered that Albany, the husband of Goneril, disliked the scheme of oppression and ingratitude at the end of the first act. 11 The wishes which we expressed to each other on the way hither, may be completed, may take effect,' perhaps alluding to the destruction of her husband Gon. I have been worth the whistle." Gon. No more; the text is foolish. you Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform'd? If that the heavens do not their visible spirits Humanity must perforce prey on itself, Gon. Milk-liver'd man! 1 She bids him decline his head, that she might give him a kiss, (the steward being present,) and that might appear only to him as a whisper. 6 Mess. Come with my lady hither. Alb. Mess. Ay, my good lord; 'twas he inform'd against him; And quit the house on purpose, that their punish ment Might have the freer course. This line is not in the folio. 2 Quarto A reads 'my foot usurp my body." Quarto 9 The rest of this speech is also omitted in the folia. B, my foot usurps my head.' Quarto C, a fool usurps 10 Goneril means to say that none but fools would be my bed. The folio reads, my fool usurps my body.' excited to commiserate those who are prevented from 3 Alluding to the proverb, It is a poor dog that is not executing their malicious designs, and punished for worth the whistling. Goneril's meaning seems to be, their evil intention.' Malone doubts whether Goneril "There was a time when you would have thought me alludes to her father, but surely there cannot be a doubt worth the calling to you,' reproaching him for not hav that she does, and to the pity for his sufferings exing summoned her to consult with on the present occa-pressed by Albany, whom she means indirectly to call sion. Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse.' a fool for expressing it. 11 That is, Diabolic qualities appear not so horrid in the devil, to whom they belong, as in woman, who unnaturally assumes them." 12 The meaning appears to be thou that hast hid the woman under the fiend; thou that hast disguised nature by wickedness.' Steevens thinks that there may be aa allusion to the coverings which insects furnish to them labours till it clouds itself all o'er? 6 She who breaks the bonds of filial duty, and be-selves, like the silkworm, thatcomes wholly alienated from her father, must wither and perish, like a branch separated from that trunk or body which supplied it with sap. There is a peculiar propriety in the use of the word material: materia, La signifying the trunk or body of the tree. 7 Alluding to the use that witches and enchanters are said to make of withered branches in their charms. A fine insinuation in the speaker, that she was ready for the most unnatural mischief, and a preparative of the poet to her plotting with the bastard against her husband's life. Warburton. Dr. Warburton might have adduced the passage from Macbeth above quoted in support of his ingenious interpretation. |