The dark and vicious place where thee he got,

Cost him his eyes.

Edm. Thou hast spoken right, 'tis true; The wheel is come full circle; I am here. Alb. Methought, thy very gait did prophesy A royal nobleness:-I must embrace thee; sorrow split my heart, if ever I Did hate thee, or thy father!

Let

Edg.

Worthy prince, I know't. Alb. Where have you hid yourself?

How have you known the miseries of your father? Edg. By nursing them, my lord.—List a brief

tale:

And, when 'tis told, O, that my heart would burst!
The bloody proclamation to escape,

That follow'd me so near (O our lives' sweetness!
That we the pain of death would hourly die 32,
Rather than die at once!) taught me to shift
Into a madman's rags; to assume a semblance
That very dogs disdain'd: and in this habit
Met I my father with his bleeding rings,
Their precious stones new lost 33; became his guide,
Led him, begg'd for him, sav'd him from despair;
Never (O fault!) reveal'd myself unto him,
Until some half hour past, when I was arm'd,
Not sure, though hoping, of this good success,
I ask'd his blessing, and from first to last
Told him my pilgrimage: But his flaw'd heart
(Alack, too weak the conflict to support!)
"Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,
Burst smilingly.

32 To die hourly the pains of death,' is a periphrasis for 'to suffer hourly the pains of death.' The quartos read :

That with the pain of death would hourly die.'

33 So in Pericles :

'Her eyelids, cases to those heavenly jewels
Which Pericles hath lost.'

Edm.

This speech of yours hath mov'd me, And shall, perchance, do good: but speak you on; You look as you had something more to say.

Alb. If there be more, more woful, hold it in; For I am almost ready to dissolve,

Hearing of this.

34 [Edg. This would have seem'd a period To such as love not sorrow, but another,

To amplify too much, would make much more,
And top extremity 55.

Whilst I was big in clamour, came there a man,
Who having seen me in my worst estate,
Shunn'd my abhorr'd society; but then, finding
Who 'twas that so endur'd, with his strong arms
He fasten'd on my neck, and bellow'd out
As he'd burst heaven: threw him 36
on my father;
Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him,
That ever ear receiv'd: which in recounting

34 The lines within crotches are not in the folio.

35 Of this difficult passage, which is probably corrupt, Steevens gives the following explanation:- This would have seemed a period to such as love not sorrow, but-another, i. e. but I must add another, i. e. another period, another kind of conclusion to my story, such as will increase the horrors of what has been already told.' It will be necessary, if we admit this interpretation, to point the passage thus:—

but another:

:

(To amplify too much, would make much more,
And top extremity,)

Whilst I was big,' &c.

Malone's explanation is:- This would have seemed the utmost completion of woe, to such as do not delight in sorrow, but another, of a different disposition, to amplify misery "would give more strength to that which hath too much." Referring to the Bastard's desiring to hear more, and to Albany's thinking that enough had been said.

36 The quartos read threw me on my father.' Steevens thus defends the present reading: There is a tragick propriety in Kent's throwing himself on the body of a deceased friend; but this propriety is lost in the act of clumsily tumbling a son over the lifeless remains of his father.'

His grief grew puissant, and the strings of life Began to crack: Twice then the trumpet sounded, And there I left him tranc'd.

Alb.

But who was this?

Edg. Kent, sir, the banish'd Kent; who in dis

guise

Follow'd his enemy king, and did him service
Improper for a slave.]

Enter a Gentleman hastily, with a bloody Knife.

Gent. Help! help! O help!

Edg.

What kind of help?

Edg. What means that bloody knife?

Alb.

Speak, man.

'Tis hot, it smokes ;

Gent.

It came even from the heart of

Alb. Who, man? speak. Gent. Your lady, sir, your lady: and her sister By her is poison'd; she hath confess'd it 37.

Edm. I was contracted to them both; all three Now marry in an instant.

Alb. Produce their bodies, be they alive or dead!This judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble, Touches us not with pity 38.

[Exit Gentleman.

Enter KENT.

Edg.

Here comes Kent, sir.

Alb. O it is he.

The time will not allow the compliment,

Which very manners urges.

Kent.

I am come

37 Thus the quarto. The folio reads she confesses it.'

38 If Shakspeare had studied Aristotle all his life, he would not, perhaps, have been able to mark with more precision the distinct operations of terror and pity.'-Tyrwhitt.

To bid my king and master aye good night;
Is he not here?

Alb.

Great thing of us forgot!—

Speak, Edmund, where's the king? and where's Cordelia ?

Seest thou this object, Kent?

[The Bodies of GONERIL and REGAN are brought in.

Kent. Alack, why thus?

Edm.

Yet Edmund was belov'd:

The one the other poison'd for my sake,

And after slew herself.

Alb. Even so.-Cover their faces.

Edm. I pant for life :-Some good I mean to do, Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send,—

Be brief in it, to the castle, for my writ

Is on the life of Lear, and on Cordelia :-
Nay, send in time.

Alb.

Run, run, O run

Edg. To who, my lord?-Who has the office? send

Thy token of reprieve.

Edm. Well thought on; take my sword, Give it the captain.

Alb.

Haste thee, for thy life. [Exit EDGAR.

Edm. He hath commission from thy wife and me To hang Cordelia in the prison, and

To lay the blame upon her own despair,

That she fordid 39 herself.

Alb. The gods defend her! Bear him hence

awhile.

[EDMUND is borne off.

39 To fordo signifies to destroy. It is used again in Hamlet, Act v.:

did, with desperate hand, Fordo its own life.'

Enter LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his Arms 40; EDGAR, Officer, and Others.

Lear. Howl, howl, howl, howl!-0, you are men of stones;

Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so That heaven's vault should crack :-O, she is gone

for ever!

I know when one is dead, and when one lives; She's dead as earth :-Lend me a looking glass; If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, Why, then she lives.

Kent.

Is this the promis'd end 11? Edg. Or image of that horror?

40 The old historians say that Cordelia retired with victory from the battle, which she conducted in her father's cause, and thereby replaced him on the throne: but in a subsequent one fought against her (after the death of the old king) by the sons of Regan and Goneril, she was taken, and died miserably in prison (Geoffrey of Monmouth, the original relater of the story, says that she killed herself). The dramatick writers of Shakspeare's age suffered as small a number of their heroes and heroines to escape as possible; nor could the filial piety of this lady, any more than the innocence of Ophelia, prevail on the poet to extend her life beyond her misfortunes.-Steevens.

41 Kent, in contemplating the unexampled scene of exquisite affection which was then before him, and the unnatural attempt of Goneril and Regan against their father's life, recollects those passages of St. Mark's Gospel in which Christ foretells to his disciples the end of the world, and hence is question, 'Is this the promised end of all things, which has been foretold to us?' To which Edgar adds, or only a representation or resemblance of that horror? So Macbeth, when he calls upon Banquo, Malcolm, &c. to view Duncan murdered, says :

The great doom's image! Malcolm! Banquo!

As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites,
To countenance this horror.'

There is an allusion to the same passage of Scripture in a speech of Gloster's, in the second scene of the first act.-Mason.