me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found them, there I smelt them out. Go to, they are not men o'their words: they told me I was every thing: 'tis a lie; I am not ague-proof. Glo. The trick 22 of that voice I do well remember: Is't not the king? Lear. Ay, every inch a king: Thou shalt not die; Die for adultery! No: Let copulation thrive, for Gloster's bastard son To't luxury 23, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.- Whose face between her forks presageth snow 24; The fitchew, nor the soiled horse 26, goes to't 22 Trick is a word used for the air, or peculiarity in a face, voice, or gesture, which distinguishes it from others. We still say he has a trick of winking with his eyes, &c. See vol. iv. p. 335, note 7. 23 i. e. incontinence. See vol. vii. p. 438, note 4. 24 The construction is, 'Whose face presageth snow between her forks.' So in Timon of Athens, Act iv. Sc. 3:'Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow That lies on Dian's lap.' See Cotgrave's Dict. in v. Fourcheure. See 25 i. e. puts on an outward affected seeming of virtue. Cotgrave in v. Mineux-se. He also explains it under Faire la sadinette, to mince it, nicefie it, be very squeamish, backward, or coy.' 26 The fitchew is the polecat. A soiled horse is a horse that has been fed with hay and corn during the winter, and is turned out in the spring to take the first flush of grass, or has it cut and With a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, But 27 to the girdle do the gods inherit 28, Beneath is all the fiends'; there's hell, there's darkness, There is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption;-Fye, fye, fye! pah; pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination there's money for thee. : Glo. O, let me kiss that hand! Lear. Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality. Glo. O ruin'd piece of nature! This great world Shall so wear out to nought.-Dost thou know me? Lear. I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me? No, do thy worst, blind Cupid? I'll not love. Read thou this challenge; mark but the penning of it. Glo. Were all the letters suns, I could not see one. Edg. I would not take this from report ;—it is, And my heart breaks at it. Lear. Read. Glo. What, with the case of eyes? Lear. O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light: Yet you see how this world goes. Glo. I see it feelingly. Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes, with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yon' justice rails upon yon' simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: Change places; and, handycarried to him. This at once cleanses the animal and fills him with blood. In the old copies the preceding as well as the latter part of Lear's speech is printed as prose. It is doubtful whether any part of it was intended for metre. 28 Possess. 27 But in its exceptive sense. See vol. i. p. 17. dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? Glo. Ay, sir. Lear. And the creature run from the cur? There thou might'st behold the great image of authority: a dog's obey'd in office. Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand: Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes, and furr'd gowns, hide all 29. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks: Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it. None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em 30 Take that of me, my friend, who have the power To seal the accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes; And, like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not.-Now, now, now, now: Pull off my boots:-harder, harder; so. Edg. O, matter and impertinency 31 mix'd! Reason in madness! Lear. If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes. I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloster: 29 From hide all' to accuser's lips' is wanting in the quartos. 30 i. e. support or uphold them. So Chapman in the Widow's Tears, 1612: 'Admitted! ay, into her heart, and I'll able it.' Again, in his version of the twenty-third Iliad :— I'll able this For five revolved years.' 31 Impertinency here is used in its old legitimate sense of something not belonging to the subject. Thou must be patient; we came crying hither. Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air, We wawl,and cry32:-I will preach to thee; mark me. Glo. Alack, alack the day! Lear. When we are born, we cry, that we are come To this great stage of fools;This a good block 33? It were a delicate stratagem, to shoe A troop of horse with felt: I'll put it in proof; 32The childe feeles that, the man that feeling knowes, Which cries first borne, the presage of his life,' &c. Sidney's Arcadia, lib. ii. The passage is, however, evidently taken from Pliny, as translated by Philemon Holland, Proeme to b. vii. :- Man alone, poor wretch [nature] hath laid all naked upon the bare earth, even on his birthday to cry and wrawle presently from the very first houre that he is borne into this world.'-Douce. 33 Upon the king's saying I will preach to thee,' the poet seems to have meant him to pull off his hat, and keep turning it and feeling it, in the attitude of one of the preachers of those times (whom I have seen represented in ancient prints) till the idea of felt, which the good hat or block was made of, raises the stratagem in his brain of shoeing a troop of horse with the [same substance] which he held and moulded between his hands. So in Decker's Gull's Hornbook, 1609:- That cannot observe the tune of his hatband, nor know what fashioned block is most kin to his head for in my opinion the brain cannot chuse his felt well.' Again, in Run and a Great Cast, no date, Epigram 46, in Sextinum : A pretty blocke Sextinus names his hat, So much the fitter for his head by that.' This delicate stratagem is mentioned by Ariosto:fece nel cadar strepito quanto Avesse avuto sotto i piediil feltro.' So in Fenton's Tragical Discourses, 4to. blk. 1. 1567: He attyreth himself for the purpose in a night-gowne girt to hym, with a payre of shoes of felte, leaste the noyse of his feete might discover his goinge,' p. 58. It had, however been actually put in practice about fifty years before Shakspeare was born, at a tournament held at Lisle before Henry VIII. [Oct. 13, 1513], where the horses, to prevent their sliding on a black stone pavement, were shod with felt or flocks (feltro sive tomento). See Lord Herbert's Life of King Henry VIII. p. 41, And when I have stolen upon these sons-in-law, Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill 34. Enter a Gentleman, with Attendants. Gent. O, here he is, lay hand upon him.-Sir, Your most dear daughter Lear. No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even The natural fool of fortune 35.-Use me well; You shall have ransome. I am cut to the brains. Gent. Let me have a surgeon, You shall have any thing. Lear. No seconds? All myself? 36 Why, this would make a man, a man of salt 36, Ay, and for laying autumn's dust. Gent. Good sir, Lear. I will die bravely, like a bridegroom: What? I will be jovial; come, come; I am a king, My masters, know you that! Gent. You are a royal one, and we obey you. Lear. Then there's life in it 37. it, you shall get it by running. Nay, an you get Sa, sa, sa, sa s [Exit, running; Attendants follow. 34 This was the cry formerly in the English army when an onset was made on the enemy. So in Venus and Adonis :'Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny, And in a peaceful hour doth cry, Kill, kill.' 35 So in Romeo and Juliet:-' O, I am fortune's fool. 36 A man of salt' is a man of tears. In All's Well that Ends Well, we meet with 'Your salt tears head.' And in Troilus and Cressida,' the salt of broken tears.' Again, in Coriolanus : He has betray'd your business, and given up, For certain drops of salt, your city Rome.' 37 The case is not yet desperate. So in Antony and Cleopatra: There's sap in't yet.' 38 Mr. Boswell thinks that this passage seems to prove that sessa means the very reverse of cessez. See p. 468, and p. 479, note 14, ante. |