some strange thing toward, Edmund : pray you, be careful. [Exit. Edm. This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke Instantly know; and of that letter too:This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me That which my father loses; no less than all: The younger rises, when the old doth fall. SCENE IV. A Part of the Heath, with a Hovel. Enter LEAR, KENT, and Fool. [Exit. Kent. Here is the place, my lord; good my lord, enter: The tyranny of the open night's too rough For nature to endure. Lear. Let me alone. Kent. Good my lord, enter here. Lear. [Storm still. Wilt break my heart1? Kent. I'd rather break mine own: Good my lord, enter. Lear. Thou think'st 'tis much, that this contentious storm Invades us to the skin: so 'tis to thee; But where the greater malady is fix'd, 1 Steevens thought that Lear does not address this question to Kent, but to his own bosom; and would point the passage thus: Wilt break, my heart?' "Taking the words of Lear by themselves (says Mr. Pye), the sense and punctuation proposed by Steevens is very judicious; but is confuted by what Kent answers, who must know how Lear spoke it; and there seems no sort of reason why, as is suggested, he should affect to misunderstand him. Nothing is more natural than for a person absorbed in the contemplation of his own misery, to answer offers of assistance that interrupt him with petulance.' The lesser is scarce felt2. Thou'dst shun a bear: The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind all, O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; Good my lord, enter here. Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.- 2 That of two concomitant pains, the greater obscures or relieves the less, is an aphorism of Hippocrates. See Disquisitions Metaphysical and Literary, by F. Sayers, M. D. 1793, p. 68. 'He lesser pangs can bear who hath endur'd the chief.' Faerie Queene, b. i. c. 6. 3 This line is omitted in the quartos. 4 This and the next line are only in the folio. They are very judiciously intended to represent that humility, or tenderness, or neglect of forms which affliction forces on the mind. 5 Loop'd and window'd is full of holes and apertures: the allu From seasons, such as these? O, I have ta'en Edg. [Within.] Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom7! [The Fool runs out from the Hovel. Fool. Come not in here, nuncle, here's a spirit. Help me, help me! Kent. Give me thy hand.-Who's there? Fool. A spirit, a spirit; he says his name's poor Tom. Kent. What art thou that dost grumble there i'the straw? Come forth. Enter EDGAR, disguised as a Madman. Edg. Away! the foul fiend follows me:Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind.Humph! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee. Lear. Hast thou given all to thy two daughters? And art thou come to this? Edg. Who gives any thing to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through sion is to loop-holes, such as are found in ancient castles, and designed for the admission of light, where windows would have been incommodious. 6 A kindred thought occurs in Pericles : O let those cities that of Plenty's cup With their superfluous riots,-hear these tears; 7 This speech of Edgar's is omitted in the quartos. He gives the sign used by those who are sounding the depth at sea. 8 So in the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew, Sly says, Go to thy cold bed and warm thee;' which is supposed to be in ridicule of The Spanish Tragedy, or some play equally absurd. The word cold is omitted in the folio. flame, through ford and whirlpool, over bog and quagmire, that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor:-Bless thy five wits 10! Tom's a-cold.—O, do de, do de, do de.—Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking 11! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes: There could I have him now,—and there,-and there, and there again, and there. [Storm continues. Lear. What, have his daughters brought him to this pass? Could'st thou save nothing? Did'st thou give them all? Fool. Nay, he reserved a blanket, else we had been all ashamed. 9 Alluding to the ignis fatuus, supposed to be lights kindled by mischievous beings to lead travellers into destruction. He afterwards recounts the temptations by which he was prompted to suicide; the opportunities of destroying himself, which often occurred to him in his melancholy moods. Infernal spirits are always represented as urging the wretched to self-destruction. So in Dr. Faustus, 1604 : 'Swords, poisons, halters, and envenom'd steel, Shakspeare found this charge against the fiend in Harsnet's Declaration, 1603, before cited. 10 It has been before observed that the wits seem to have been reckoned five by analogy to the five senses. They were sometimes confounded by old writers, as in the instances cited by Percy and Steevens; Shakspeare, however, in his 141st Sonnet, considers them as distinct. 'But my five wits nor my five senses can Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee.' See vol. ii. p. 120, note 10. vol. i. p. 268, note 2. 11 To take is to blast, or strike with malignant influence. See See also a former passage:strike her young bones, Ye taking airs, with lameness.' Lear. Now, all the plagues that in the pendulous air Hang fated o'er men's faults12, light on thy daughters! Kent. He hath no daughters, sir. Lear. Death, traitor! nothing could have subdu'd nature To such a lowness, but his unkind daughters.- Should have thus little mercy on their flesh? Edg. Pillicock 14 sat on pillicock's-hill ;- Fool. This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen. Edg. Take heed o' the foul fiend: Obey thy parents; keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse; set not thy sweetheart on proud array: Tom's a-cold. Lear. What hast thou been? Edg. A serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that curled my hair 15; wore gloves in my cap 16; 12 So in Timon of Athens : 'Be as a planetary plague, when Jove Will o'er some high-view'd city hang his poison 13 The young pelican is fabled to suck the mother's blood. The allusions to this fable are very numerous in old writers. 14 See Act ii. Sc. 3, note 6, p. 437, ante. It should be observed that Killico is one of the devils mentioned in Harsnet's book. The inquisitive reader may find a further explanation of this word in a note to the translation of Rabelais, edit. 1750, vol. i. p. 184. In Minsheu's Dictionary, art. 9299; and Chalmers's Works of Sir David Lindsay, Glossary, v. pillok. 15 Then Ma. Mainy, by the instigation of the first of the seven [spirits], began to set his hands unto his side, curled his hair, and used such gestures as Ma. Edmunds [the exorcist] presently affirmed that that spirit was Pride. Herewith he began |