With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, Lear. True, my good boy.—Come, bring us to this hovel. [Exeunt 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; *Come to great confusion : *Then comes the time, who lives to see't, *That going shall be used with feet. *This prophecy Merlin shall make ; 20 for I live before his time. 18 Cutpurses were the same as what we call pickpockets. [Exit. 19 To tell, again, in the old sense of to count. See page 66, note 9. 20 Merlin was a famous prophet in the Druidical mythology of ancient Britain, who did divers wonderful things "by his deep science and Helldreaded might." Some of his marvels are sung in The Faerie Queene, iii. 2, 18-21. Part of his prophecy, which the Fool here anticipates, is given in Puttenham's Art of Poetry, 1589. SCENE III. A Room in GLOSTER'S Castle. Enter GLOSTER and EDMUND. Glos. 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 ! Glos. 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 lock'd 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. Though I die for it, as no less is threaten'd me, the King my old master must be relieved. There is some strange thing toward, Edmund; pray you, be careful. Edm. This courtesy, forbid thee ! 2 shall the duke Instantly know; and of that letter too. This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me [Exit. 1 Here, as often, home has the sense of thoroughly, to the utmost. So, again, in the next scene: "But I will punish home." See, also, vol. vii. page 154, note 38. 2 "Forbid thee" I take to mean "A curse upon thee," or like our phrase, "Confound you." So in Macbeth, i. 3, we have "He shall live a man forbid"; that is, shall live under a curse or an interdict; pursued by an evil fate. Mr. Crosby, however, takes forbid in the sense merely of forbidden, and as agreeing with courtesy. In this case, the reference of course would be to the aid and comfort which Gloster resolves to give the old King, notwithstanding the threats of Cornwall and Regan. It may be so: but does not this make the sense too tame? That which my father loses, The younger rises when the old doth fall. no less than all : [Exit. Enter LEAR, KENT, and the Fool.3 Kent. Here is the place, my lord; good my lord, enter : The tyranny of the open night's too rough 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 roaring sea, Thou'dst meet the bear i' the mouth. When the mind's free, 3 O, what a world's convention of agonies is here! All external Nature in a storm, all moral nature convulsed, the real madness of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool, the desperate fidelity of Kent, surely such a scene was never conceived before or since! Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more terrific than any which a Michael Angelo, inspired by a Dante, could have conceived, and which none but a Michael Angelo could have executed. Or let it have been uttered to the blind, the howlings of nature would seem converted into the voice of conscious humanity. — COLERIdge. To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure; In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all, Kent. Good my lord, enter here. Lear. Pr'ythee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease: [The Fool goes in. Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, Poor Tom! Edg. [Within.] Fathom and half, fathom and half! [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. Kent. What art thou that dost grumble there i' the straw? Come forth. Enter EDGAR disguised as a madman. 4 Loop'd and window'd is full of holes and apertures. The allusion is to loop-holes, such as are found in ancient castles, and designed for the admission of light and air. Edg. Away! the foul fiend follows me ! 5 Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind. Hum! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.6 Lear. Didst thou give all to thy 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, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge ;8 made him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inch'd bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five wits !9 Tom's a-cold. O, do de, do de, do de.10 blasting, and taking !11 Bless thee from whirlwinds, starDo poor Tom some charity, whom 5 Edgar's assumed madness serves the great purpose of taking off part of the shock which would otherwise be caused by the true madness of Lear, and further displays the profound difference between the two. In Edgar's ravings Shakespeare all the while lets you see a fixed purpose, a practical end in view; in Lear's, there is only the brooding of the one anguish, an eddy without progression. - Coleridge. 6 This appears to have been a sort of proverbial phrase. Shakespeare has it again in The Taming of the Shrew. Staunton quotes, from The Spanish Tragedy, "What outcries pluck me from my naked bed?" and says, "The phrase to go to a cold bed meant only to go cold to bed; to rise from a naked bed signified to get up naked from bed." 7 Alluding to the ignis fatuus, supposed to be lights kindled by mischievous beings to lead travellers into destruction. 8 Fiends were commonly represented as thus tempting the wretched to suicide. So in Doctor Faustus, 1604: "Swords, poisons, halters, and envenomed steel are laid before me, to dispatch myself." 9 The five senses were sometimes called the five wits. And the mental powers, being supposed to correspond in number to the senses, were called the five wits also. The reference here is, probably, to the latter. 10 These syllables are probably meant to represent the chattering of one who shivers with cold. 11 To take is to strike with malignant influence. So in ii. 4 of this play: "Strike her young bones, you taking airs, with lameness!" |