And hasten your return. [Exit Oswald.] No, This milky gentleness and course of yours Than praised for harmful mildness. Alb. How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell: Striving to better, oft we mar what's well. 371 Gon. Nay, then Alb. Well, well; the event. [Exeunt. SCENE V Court before the same. Enter Lear, Kent, and Fool. Lear. Go you before to Gloucester with these letters. Acquaint my daughter no further with any thing you know than comes from 368. "attack'd"; in the folio, at task. The word task is frequently used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the sense of tax. So, in the common phrase of our time, "Taken to task."-H. N. H. 373. Observe the baffled endeavor of Goneril to act on the fears of Albany, and yet his passiveness, his inertia: he is not convinced, and yet he is afraid of looking into the thing. Such characters always yield to those who will take the trouble of governing them, or for them. Perhaps the influence of a princess, whose choice of him had royalized his state, may be some little excuse for Albany's weakness (Coleridge).-H. N. H. 1. The word "there" in this speech shows that when the king says, "Go you before to Gloster," he means the town of Gloster, which Shakespeare chose to make the residence of the Duke of Cornwall, to increase the probability of their setting out late from thence on a visit to the Earl of Gloster. The old English earls usually > her demand out of the letter. If your dili- you. Kent. I will not sleep, my lord, till I have de- [Exit. Lear. Aye, boy. Fool. Then, I prithee, be merry; thy wit shall Lear. Ha, ha, ha! Fool. Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee Lear. Why, what canst thou tell, my boy? 10 Fool. She will taste as like this as a crab does to 20 a crab. Thou canst tell why one's nose stands i' the middle on 's face? Lear. No. Fool. Why, to keep one's eyes of either side's Lear. I did her wrong Fool. Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell? resided in the counties from whence they took their titles. Lear, 16. “kindly”; the Fool quibbles, using kindly in two senses; as it means affectionately, and like the rest of her kind.-H. N. II. 27. He is musing on Cordelia.-H. N. H. This and Lear's subsequent ejaculations to himself are in verse; his distracted replies to the Fool in prose.-C. H. H. Fool. Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail 30 has a house. Lear. Why? Fool. Why, to put 's head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case. Lear. I will forget my nature. So kind a father! Be my horses ready? Fool. Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason. Lear. Because they are not eight? Fool. Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool. Lear. To tak 't again perforce! Monster ingratitude! Fool. If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I 'ld have thee beaten for being old before thy time. Lear. How's that? Fool. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise. 40 50 Lear. O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper: I would not be mad! Enter Gentleman. How now! are the horses ready? 46. Lear is meditating on what he has before threatened, namely, to "resume the shape which he has cast off.”—H. N. H. 52. "The mind's own anticipation of madness! The deepest tragic notes are often struck by a half-sense of an impending blow. The Fool's conclusion of this Act by a grotesque prattling seems to indicate the dislocation of feeling that has begun and is to be continued" (Coleridge).-H. N. H. Gent. Ready, my lord. Lear. Come, boy. Fool. She that's a maid now and laughs at my departure Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter. [Exeunt. 57, 58. Some good editors think this closing couplet to have been interpolated by the players. There is certainly strong reason for wishing this opinion to be true. Nor is it unlikely that such lines and phrases, technically called tags, and spoken on making an exit, were at first interpolated on the stage, and afterwards incorporated with the text in the prompter's book. It is with reference to this practice that Hamlet exhorts the players,-"Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them." And the severity with which the custom is there reproved looks as if the Poet had himself suffered in that way.-H. N. H. Imund is a vegitarian ACT SECOND SCENE I {" The Earl of Gloucester's castle. Enter Edmund and Curan, meeting. Edm. Save thee, Curan. Cur. And you, sir. I have been with your You have heard of the news abroad, I mean the whispered ones, Cur. You may do then in time. Fare you well, 10 [Exit. sir. Edm. The duke be here to-night? The better! best! This weaves itself perforce into my business. |