Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms Tom! That's something yet; Edgar I nothing am. [Exit. They had been such as had been in Bedlam, and come to some degree of sobernesse; and when they were licenced to goe out, they had on their left arme an armilla of tinne printed, of about three inches breadth, which was sodered on.'-H. Ellis. Randle Holme, in his Academy of Arms and Blazon, b. iii. c. 3, gives the following description of a class of vagabonds feigning themselves mad:-' The Bedlam is in the same garb, with a long staff, and a cow or ox-horn by his side; but his cloathing is more fantastick and ridiculous; for being a madman, he is madly decked and dressed all over with rubins, feathers, cuttings of cloth, and what not; to make him seem a mad-man, or one distracted, when he is no other than a dissembling knave.' In The Bell-Man of London, by Decker, 5th edit. 1640, is another account of one of these characters, under the title of Abraham Man:-' He sweares he hath been in Bedlam, and will talke frantickely of purpose: you see pinnes stuck in sundry places of his naked flesh, especially in his armes, which paine he gladly puts himselfe to, only to make you believe he is out of his wits. He calls himselfe by the name of Poore Tom, and, coming near any body, cries out, Poor Tom is a-cold. Of these Abrahammen some be exceeding merry, and doe nothing but sing songs fashioned out of their own braines: some will dance, others will doe nothing but either laugh or weepe: others are dogged, and so sullen both in looke and speech, that spying but a small company in a house they boldly and bluntly enter, compelling the servants through feare to give them what they demand.' It is propable, as Steevens remarks, that to sham Abraham, a cant term still in use among sailors and the vulgar, may have this origin. 3 i. e. skewers: the euonymus, or spindle tree, of which the best skewers are made, is called prick-wood. 4 Paltry. Vide vol. ii. p. 238, note 4. 5 Curses. 6 Turlygood, an English corruption of turluru, Ital.; or turelureau, Fr.; both, among other things, signifying a fool or madman. It would perhaps be difficult to decide with certainty SCENE IV. Before Gloster's Castle1. Enter LEAR, Fool, and Gentleman. Lear. "Tis strange, that they should so depart Mak'st thou this shame thy pastime? Kent. No, my lord. Fool. Ha, ha; look! he wears cruel garters! Horses are tied by the heads; dogs, and bears, by the neck; monkeys by the loins, and men by the legs when a man is over-lusty at legs, then he wears wooden nether-stocks 3. Lear. What's he, that hath so much thy place mistook To set thee here? whether those words are corruptions of turlupino and turlupin ; but at least it seems probable. The Turlupins were a fanatical sect, which overran the continent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, calling themselves Beghards or Beghins. Their manners and appearance exhibited the strongest indications of lunacy and distraction; and their popular name, Turlupins, was probably derived from the wolfish howlings they made in their fits of religious raving. Genebrard thus describes them:-' Turlupin cynicorum sectam suscitantes, de nuditate pudendorum, et publico coitu.' It has not been remarked that Cotgrave interprets Mon Turelureau, My PILLICOCK, my pretty knave.' 1 See note 1, Act i. Sc. v. p. 418, ante. 2 A quibble on crewell, i. e. worsted. So in The Two Angry Women of Abingdon : I'll warrant you, he'll have His cruell garters cross about the knee.' 3 The old word for stockings. Kent. It is both he and she, Your son and daughter. Lear. No. Kent. Yes. Lear. No, I say. Kent. I say, yea. Lear. No, no; they would not. Kent. Yes, they have. Lear. By Jupiter, I swear, no. Lear. They durst not do't; They could not, would not do't; 'tis worse than murder, To do, upon respect, such violent outrage 5: Resolve me, with all modest haste, which way Thou might'st deserve, or they impose, this usage, Coming from us. Kent. My lord, when at their home I did commend your highness' letters to them, Ere I was risen from the place that show'd My duty kneeling, came there a reeking post, Stew'd in his haste, half breathless, panting forth, From Goneril his mistress, salutations: 4 This dialogue being taken partly from the folio and partly from the quarto, is left without any metrical division, as it was not probably all intended to be preserved. 5 To do, upon respect, such violent outrage,' I think, means to do such violent outrage deliberately, or upon consideration.' Respect is frequently used for consideration by Shakspeare. Cordelia says, in the first scene: 'Since that respects of fortune are his love, There's the respect That makes calamity of so long life.' I cannot think that respect here means a respected person, as Johnson supposed; or that it is intended for a personification, as Malone asserts. Deliver❜d letters, spite of intermission6, Which presently they read; on whose contents, They summon'd up their meiny7, straight took horse; Commanded me to follow, and attend The leisure of their answer; gave me cold looks: And meeting here the other messenger, Whose welcome, I perceiv'd, had poison'd mine (Being the very fellow that of late Display'd so saucily against your highness), Fool. Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way9. Fathers, that wear rags, Do make their children blind; Shall see their children kind. Fortune, that arrant whore, Ne'er turns the key to the poor.— But, for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours 10 for thy daughters, as thou can'st tell in a year. 6 i. e. spite of leaving me unanswered for a time.' Goneril's messenger delivered letters, which they read notwithstanding Lear's messenger was yet kneeling unanswered. 7 Meiny, signifying a family, household, or retinue of servants, is certainly from the French meinie, or, as it was anciently written, mesnie; which word is regarded by Du Cange as equivalent with mesonie, or maisonie, from maison; in modern French, menage. It does not appear that the Saxons used many for a family or household. 8 The personal pronoun, which is found in the preceding line, is understood before the word having, or before drew. The same licence is taken by Shakspeare in other places. See vol. ix. p. 112, note 1. 9If this be their behaviour, the king's troubles are not yet at an end.' This speech is omitted in the quartos. 10 A quibble between dolours and dollars. Lear. O, how this mother heart! 11 swells up toward my Hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow, Thy element's below!-Where is this daughter? Kent. With the earl, sir, here within. How chance the king comes with so small a train? Fool. An thou hadst been set i' the stocks for that question, thou hadst well deserved it. Kent. Why, fool? Fool. We'll set thee to school to an ant1o, 12 to 11 Lear affects to pass off the swelling of his heart, ready to burst with grief and indignation for the disease called the mother, or hysterica passio, which, in the poet's time, was not thought peculiar to women only. It is probable that Shakspeare had this suggested to him by a passage in Harsnet's Declaration of Popish Impostures, which he may have consulted in order to furnish out his character of Tom of Bedlam with demoniacal gibberish. Ma. Maynie had a spice of the hysterica passio, as seems, from his youth; he himself termes it the moother.' p. 25. It seems the priests persuaded him it was from the possession of the devil. The disease I spake of was a spice of the mother, wherewith I had been troubled before my going into Fraunce: whether I doe rightly term it the mother or no, I knowe not. A Scotish Doctor of Physick, then in Paris, called it, as I remember, virgitinem capitis. It riseth of a winde in the bottome of the belly, and proceeding with a great swelling, causeth a very painful collicke in the stomack, and an extraordinary giddines in the head,' p. 263. 12 Go to the ant, thou sluggard (says Solomon), learn her ways, and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in harvest.' If, says the fool, you had been schooled by the ant, you would have known that the king's train, like that sagacious insect, prefer the summer of prosperity to the colder season of adversity, from which no profit can be derived; and desert him whose mellow-hangings' have been all shaken down, and who by 'one winter's brush' has been left open and bare for every storm that blows.' |