That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Unwhipp'd of justice: Hide thee, thou bloody hand; am a man, Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel ; Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest ; Repose you there: while I to this hard house (More hard than is the stone whereof 'tis rais'd; Which even but now, demanding after you, Denied me to come in,) return, and force Their scanted courtesy. Lear. My wits begin to turn.— Come on, my boy: How dost, my boy? Art cold? That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel, Fool. He that has a little tiny wit,— With heigh, ho, the wind and the rain,- Lear. True, my good boy.-Come, bring us to this hovel. [Exe. LEAR and KENT. Fool. This is a brave night to cool a courtezan.—I'll speak a prophecy ere I go : When priests are more in word than matter; [4] Convenient needs not be understood in any other than its usual and proper sense; accommodate to the present purpose; suitable to a design. Convenient seeming is appearance, such as may promote his purpose to destroy. JOHNSON. [5] Continent-stands for that which contains or incloses. JOHNSON. [6] Summoners are here the officers that summon offenders before a proper tribunal. STEEVENS. When nobles are their tailors' tutors ;7 No squire in debt, nor no poor knight; Come to great confusion. Then comes the time, who lives to see't, This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time. SCENE III. [Exit. A Room in GLOSTER's Castle. Enter GLOSTER and EDMUND. Glo. Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing: When I desired their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house; charged me, on pain of their perpetual displeasure, neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain him. Edm. Most savage, and unnatural ! Glo. Go to; say you nothing: There is division between the dukes; and a worse matter than that I have received a letter this night;-'tis dangerous to be spoken ;-I have locked the letter in my closet: these injuries the king now bears will be revenged home; there is part of a power already footed; we must incline to the king. I will seek him, and privily relieve him : go you, and maintain talk with the duke, that my charity be not of him perceived: If he ask for me, I am ill, and gone to bed. If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king my old master must be relieved. There is 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. [7] Invent fashions for them. WARBURTON. [Exit. [8] The disease to which wenches' suitors are particularly exposed, was called in Shakspeare's time, the brenning or burning. JOHNSON. So, in Isaiah iii. 24. and burning instead of beauty? STEEVENS. SCENE IV. A Part of the Heath, with a Hovel. Enter LEAR, KENT, and Fool. 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. Wilt break my heart? [Storm still. 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, The lesser is scarce felt. Thou'dst shun a bear; But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea, free, When the mind's The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind Kent. Good my lord, enter here. Lear. Pr'ythee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease; This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more.-But I'll go in : In, boy; go first. [To the Fool.] You houseless poverty,Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep. [Fool goes in. Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel; That thou may'st shake the superflux to them, 6 VOL. VIII. And show the heavens more just. Edg. [Within.] Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom! [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. Ken.Whatart 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 flame, through ford and whirlpool,over bog and quagmire ; that hath laid knives under his pillow,2 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! Tom's a-cold.—O, do de, do de, do de.— Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking!3 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!- Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give them all? Fool. Nay, he reserved a blanket, else we had been all shamed. Lear. Now, all the plagues that in the pendulous air Hang fated o'er men's faults, light on thy daughters! Kent. He hath no daughters, sir. Lea. Death,traitor! nothing could have subdu'd nature [1] Alluding to the ignus fatuus, supposed to be lights kindled by mis chievous beings to lead travellers into destruction. JOHNSON. [2] He recounts the temptations by which he was prompted to suicide; the opportunities of destroying himself, which often occurred to him in his melancholy moods. JOHNSON.Shakspeare found this charge against the fiend, with many others of the same nature, in Harsnet's Declaration, and has used the very words of it. The book was printed in 1603. STEEVENS. [3] To Take-is to blast, or strike with malignant influence. "strike her young bones, "Ye taking airs, with lameness !" JOHNSON. To such a lowness, but his unkind daughters.— Edg. Pillicock 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 sweet heart 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; wore gloves in my cap, served the lust of my mistress's heart, and did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven one, that slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it: Wine loved I deeply; dice dearly; and in woman, out-paramoured the Turk: False of heart, light of ear, 3 bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to women: Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend.-Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind: Says suum, mun, ha no nonny, dolphin, my boy, my boy, sessa; let him trot by. [Storm still continues. Lear. Why, thou were better in thy grave, than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than this? Consider him well: Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the [1] The young pelican is fabled to suck the mother's blood. JOHNSON. [2] It was the custom to wear gloves in the hat on three distinct occasions, viz. as the favour of a mistress, the memorial of a friend, and as a mark to be challenged by an enemy. STEEVENS. [3] Credulous of evil, ready to receive malicious reports, JOHNSON, [4] The Jesuits pretended to cast the seven deadly sins out of Mainy in the shape of those animals that represented them; and before each was cast out, Mainy by gestures acted that particular sin; curling his hair to show pride, vomiting for gluttony, gaping and snoring for sloth, &c.-Harsnet's book, p. 279. To this probably our author alludes. STEEVENS. [5] Hey no nonny-is the burthen of a song in The Two Noble Kinsmen, said to be written by Shakspeare in coujunction with Fletcher. STEEV. |