Edg. Ch'ill pick your teeth, zir; Come; no matter vor your foins 47.

[They fight; and EDGAR knocks him down. Stew. Slave, thou hast slain me:-Villain, take

my purse;

If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body;

And give the letters, which thou find'st about me, To Edmund earl of Gloster; seek him out

Upon the British party :

-O, untimely death!

[Dies.

Edg. I know thee well: A serviceable villain; As duteous to the vices of thy mistress,

As badness would desire.

Glo.

Edg. Sit

What, is he dead?

you down, father; rest you.— Let's see his pockets; these letters, that he speaks of, May be my friends.-He's dead: I am only sorry He had no other deathsman.-Let us see:

Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not: To know our enemies' minds, we'd rip their hearts; Their papers, is more lawful 48.

[Reads.] Let our reciprocal vows be remembered. You have many opportunities to cut him off: if your will want not, time and place will be fruitfully ffered. There is nothing done, if he return the conqueror: Then am I the prisoner, and his bed my gaol; from the loathed warmth whereof deliver me, and supply the place for your labour.

Your wife (so I would say), and your affectionate servant,

GONERIL.

O undistinguish'd space of woman's will 49 !—

47 i. e. thrusts. See vol. i. p. 227, note 1.

48 i. e. to rip their papers is more lawful.

49 This seems to me to mean, O how inordinate, how unbounded is the licentious inclination of women.'

VOL. IX.

Y Y

A plot upon her virtuous husband's life;

And the exchange, my brother!-Here, in the sands,
Thee I'll rake up, the post unsanctified 50

Of murderous lechers: and, in the mature time,
With this ungracious paper strike the sight
Of the death-practis'd duke 51: for him 'tis well,
That of thy death and business I can tell.

[Exit EDGAR, dragging out the Body.
Glo. The king is mad: How stiff is my vile sense,
That I stand up, and have ingenious feeling 52
Of my huge sorrows! Better I were distract:
So should my thoughts be sever'd from my griefs;
And woes, by wrong imaginations, lose

The knowledge of themselves.

Edg.

Re-enter EDGAR.

Give me your

hand:

[Exeunt.

Far off, methinks, I hear the beaten drum.

Come, father, I'll bestow you with a friend.

SCENE VII.

A Tent in the French Camp. LEAR on a Bed, asleep: Physician, Gentleman1, and Others attending: Enter CORDELIA and KENT.

Cor. O thou good Kent, how shall I live, and work, To match thy goodness? My life will be too short, And every measure fail me.

50

Thee I'll rake up, the post unsanctified,' &c.

i. e. I'll cover thee. In Staffordshire to rake the fire is to cover it for the night. Unsanctified refers to his want of burial in consecrated ground.

51 That is the Duke of Albany, whose death is machinated by practice or treason.

52 Ingenious feeling.' Bullokar, in his Expositor, interprets ingenious by quick conceited,' i. e. acute. This makes Warburton's paraphrase unnecessary.

1 In the folio the Gentleman and the Physician is one and the same person.

Kent. To be acknowledg'd, madam, is o'erpaid. All my reports go with the modest truth; Nor more, nor clipp'd, but so.

Cor.

Be better suited 2:

These weeds are memories 3 of those worser hours;

I pr'ythee, put them off.

Kent. Pardon me, dear madam ; Yet to be known, shortens my made intent*: My boon I make it, that you know me not, Till time and I think meet.

Cor. Then be it so, my good lord.-How does the king?

Phys. Madam, sleeps still.

Cor. O you kind gods,

[To the Physician.

Cure this great breach in his abused nature!
The untun'd and jarring senses, O, wind up
Of this child-changed father 5!

Phys.
So please your majesty,
That we may wake the king? he hath slept long.
Cor. Be govern'd by your knowledge, and proceed
I'the sway of your own will. Is he array'd?

Gent. Ay, madam; in the heaviness of his sleep, We put fresh garments on him.

Phys. Be by,good madam,when we do awake him; I doubt not of his temperance.

Cor.

Very well.

Phys. Please you, draw near.-Louder the musick there".

2 i. e. be better dressed, put on a better suit of clothes. 3 Memories are memorials. See vol. iii. p. 133, note 1. 4 A MADE intent is an INTENT formed. We say in common language to make a design, and to make a resolution.

5 That is changed by his children; a father whose jarring senses have been untuned by the monstrous ingratitude of his daughters. So care-crazed, crazed by care; woe-wearied, wearied by woe, &c.

6 This and the foregoing speech are not in the folio. It has been already observed that Shakspeare considered soft musick as

Cor. O my dear father! Restoration 7, hang Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss Repair those violent harms, that my two sisters Have in thy reverence made!

Kent.

Kind and dear princess!

Cor. Had you not been their father, these white
flakes

Had challeng'd pity on them. Was this a face
To be expos'd against the warring winds?

[To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder? In the most terrible and nimble stroke

Of quick, cross lightning? to watch (poor perdu!)
With this thin elm 8?] Mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire; And wast thou fain, poor father,

favourable to sleep. Lear, we may suppose, had been thus composed to rest; and now the Physician desires louder musick to be played, for the purpose of waking him. So again in Pericles, Cerimon, to recover Thaisa, who had been thrown into the sea, says:

'The rough and woeful musick that we have,
Cause it to sound, beseech you.'

Again in the Winter's Tale :- Musick, awake her, strike!'
7 Restoration is no more than recovery personified.

8 The lines in crotchets are not in the folio. The allusion is to the forlorn hope of an army, called in French enfans perdus ; amongst other desperate adventures in which they were engaged, the night watches seem to have been a common one. Warburton is wrong in supposing that those ordered on such services were lightly or badly armed, the contrary is clearly the fact, and to such a fact is the allusion of the poet Poor perdu, you are exposed to the most dangerous situation, not with the most proper arms, but with a mere helmet of thin and hoary hair.' The same allusion occurs in Davenant's Love and Honour, 1649:

I have endured

Another night would tire a perdu

More than a wet furrow and a great frost.'

So in Beaumont and Fletcher's Little French Lawyer:'I am set here like a perdu,

To watch a fellow that has wronged my mistress.'

To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn,
In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!
'Tis wonder, that thy life and wits at once

Had not concluded all9.-He wakes; speak to him.
Phys. Madam, do you; 'tis fittest.

Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

Lear. You do me wrong, to take me out o'the

grave:

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound

Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.

Cor.
Sir, do you know me?
Lear. You are a spirit, I know; When did you
Cor. Still, still, far wide!

die?

Phys. He's scarce awake; let him alone awhile. Lear. Where have I been?-Where am I?-Fair

day light?

I am mightily abus'd 1.—I should even die with pity,
To see another thus.-I know not what to say.-
I will not swear, these are my hands:-let's see;
I feel this pin prick. 'Would, I were assur'd
condition.

Of my

Cor.

O, look upon me, sir,
And hold your hands in benediction o'er me;-
No, sir, you must not kneel11.

Lear.

Pray, do not mock me:

9 i. e. had not all ended. So in Timon of Athens :

And dispossess her all.'

10 I am strangely imposed upon by appearances; I am in a strange mist of uncertainty.

11 This circumstance is found in the old play of King Leir, apparently written by another hand, and published before any edition of Shakspeare's play had made its appearance. As it is always difficult to say whether such accidental resemblances proceed from imitation, or a similarity of thinking on the same occasion, I can only point out this to the reader, to whose determination I leave the question.'-Steevens.