O undistinguish'd space of woman's will! 42 e; And the exchange my brother! — Here, in the sands, Of murderous lechers; and, in the mature time, Of the death-practised duke: for him 'tis well Glos. The King is mad: how stiff is my vile sense, The knowledge of themselves.45 Edg. Give me your hand: [Drum afar off. [Exeunt. Far off, methinks, I hear the beaten drum : 42 Undistinguish'd for indistinguishable, as, before, unnumber'd for innumerable. The meaning probably is, that woman's will has no distinguishable bounds, or no assignable limits; there is no telling what she will do, or where she will stop. 48 That is, "cover thee up." fire is to cover it for the night. 44 Ingenious is intelligent, lively, acute. Warburton says, "Ingenious feeling signifies a feeling from an understanding not disturbed or disordered, but which, representing things as they are, makes the sense of pain the more exquisite." Singer says that in Staffordshire to rake the 45 As the woes or sufferings of madmen are lost in imaginary felicities. SCENE VII. - A Tent in the French Camp. LEAR on a bed asleep, soft Music playing; Doctor, Gentleman, and others attending. Enter CORDELIA and KENT. Cord. 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. Kent. To be acknowledged, madam, is o'erpaid. All my reports go with the modest truth; Nor more nor clipp'd, but so.1 Cord. Be better suited: These weeds are memories of those worser hours;2 I pr'ythee, put them off. Kent. Pardon, dear madam ; Yet to be known shortens my main intent : 3 My boon I make it, that you know me not Till time and I think meet. Cord. Then be't so, my good lord. - [To the Doctor.] How does the King? Doct. Madam, sleeps still. Cord. O you kind gods, Cure this great breach in his abusèd nature! Th' untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up 1 "My reports are neither exaggerated nor curtailed; neither more nor less than the modest truth." 2" Better suited" is better dressed. The Poet often has memory in the sense of memorial or remembrancer. See vol. v. page 34, note 3. 3 That is, makes or will make me come short of it. Kent's thought is, that the being now known will cause him to fall short, not of his whole purpose, but of what he regards as the more important part of it, namely, a full restoration of things to the state they were in at the opening of the play; and that he can work better to this end by keeping up his disguise awhile longer. See page 62, note 30. Of this child-changed father !4 Doct. So please your Majesty That we may wake the King? he hath slept long. Cord. 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 sleep We put fresh garments on him. Doct. Be by, good madam, when we do awake him: I doubt not of his temperance.5 Cord. Doct. Please you, draw near. Very well. Louder the music there.6 Cord. O my dear father, restoration hang Thy medicine on my lips ;7 and let this kiss Repair those violent harms that my two sisters Have in thy reverence made! Kent. Kind and dear Princess ! Cord. Had you not been their father, these white flakes Had challenged pity of them. Was this a face To be opposed against the warring winds? In the most terrible and nimble stroke Of quick, cross lightning? to watch - poor perdu !— 4 Meaning, of course, changed, made mad, by his children. So we have care-crazed for crazed by care, and woe-wearied for wearied by woe. 5 Temperance in the classical sense of self-government or self-control; calmness. See vol. xi. page 88, note 26. 6 Shakespeare considered soft music as favourable to sleep. Lear had been thus composed to rest; and now the Doctor desires louder music, for the purpose of waking him. See vol. xi. page 248, note 1. 7 In "Thy medicine," Thy may refer either to father or to restoration. I understand it as referring to father: "May restoration hang thy medicine on my lips!" Some understand Cordelia as apostrophizing restoration. 8 This thin helmet of "white flakes," or gray hair. The allusion is to the forlorn hope of an army, called in French enfans perdus; who, among other desperate services, often engage in night-watches. So in Beaumont and Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Had not concluded all,10 He wakes; speak to him. Cord. 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 11 mine own tears Do scald like molten lead. Cord. Sir, do you know me? Lear. You are a spirit, I know; when did you die? Cord. Still, still, far wide! Doct. He's scarce awake: let him alone awhile. Lear. Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight? I'm mightily abused.12 I should e'en die with pity, To see another thus. I know not what to say. I will not swear these are my hands: let's see; Fletcher's Little French Lawyer: "I am set here like a perdu, to watch a fellow that has wronged my mistress." 9 Verplanck tells us that Jarvis, the American painter-artist, used often to quote this passage as accumulating in the shortest compass the greatest causes of dislike, to be overcome by good-natured pity. "It is not merely the personal enemy, for whom there might be human sympathy, that is admitted to the family fireside, but his dog, and that a dog that had inflicted his own share of personal injury, and that, too, upon a gentle being from whom it was not possible that he could have received any provocation." 10 All may here be taken as going with the subject: ""Tis wonder that thy life and wits had not all concluded "-ended" at once." Probably however, all is here put for altogether. Spenser very often has it so. 11 The Poet very often uses that for so that, or insomuch that. 12 To lead astray with illusions is an old meaning of abuse. And hold your hands in benediction o'er me : 13 Lear. Pray, do not mock me : I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less; I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you, and know this man; Remembers not these garments; nor I know not To be my child Cordelia. Cord. And so I am, I am. Lear. Be your tears wet? yes, faith. I pray, weep not: If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me ; for your sisters Doct. Be comforted, good madam: the great rage, You see, is cured in him and yet 'tis danger : To make him even o'er the time he has lost.15 13 A parent's curse was a dreadful thing with our ancestors; and so Cordelia longs first of all to have her father revoke the curse he pronounced upon her in the opening of the play. She had not learned to act as if “a man were author of himself, and knew no other kin." 14 Shakespeare sometimes uses mainly for greatly, strongly, or mightily. See vol. xiv. page 279, note I. 15" 'Even o'er the time" here means try to account for the time, or to |