His countenance for the battle; which being done, SCENE II.. A Field between the two Camps. Alarum within. Enter, with Drum and Colours, LEAR, CORDELIA, and their Forces; and exeunt. Enter EDGAR and GLOSTER". EDG. Here, father, take the shadow of this tree * For your good host; pray that the right may thrive: If ever I return to you again, I'll bring you comfort. GLO. * Quartos, bush. 8 66 FOR my state Stands on me, &c.] I do not think that for stands, in this place, as a word of inference or causality. The meaning is, rather- Such is my determination concerning Lear; as for my state it requires now, not deliberation, but defence and support." JOHNSON. 9 Enter Edgar, &c.] Those who are curious to know how far Shakspeare was here indebted to the Arcadia, will find a chapter from it entitled,- "The pitifull State and Storie of the Paphlagonian unkinde King, and his kinde Sonne; first related by the Sonne, then by the blind Father." P. 141, edit. 1590, quarto, annexed to the conclusion of this play. STEEVENS. Alarums; afterwards a Retreat. Re-enter EDGAR. EDG. Away, old man, give me thy hand, away; King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en: Give me thy hand, come on. GLO. No further, sir; a man may rot even here EDG. What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all1: Come on. GLO. And that's true too 2. [Exeunt. SCENE III. The British Camp near Dover. Enter, in Conquest, with Drum and Colours, EdMUND; LEAR and CORDELIA, as Prisoners; Officers, Soldiers, &c. EDM. Some officers take them away: good guard; Until their greater pleasures first be known COR. - if 1 Ripeness is all:] i. e. To be ready, prepared, is all. The same sentiment occurs in Hamlet, scene the last : it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all." STEEvens. 2 And that's true too.] Omitted in the quarto. STEEVENS. to CENSURE them.] i. e. to pass sentence or judgment on So, in Othello : 3 them. 66 -To you, lord governor, "Remains the censure of this hellish villain." STEEVENS. 4 Who, with best meaning, have incurr'd THE WORST.] i. e. the worst that fortune can inflict. MALONE. Shall we not see these daughters, and these sisters? LEAR. No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to pri son: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: 6 As if we were God's spies 5: And we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon. EDM. Take them away. LEAR. Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, The gods themselves throw incense'. Have I caught thee? He, that parts us, shall bring a brand from heaven, And fire us hence, like foxes. Wipe thine eyes; 5 And take upon us the mystery of things, conse As if we were God's spies :] As if we were angels commissioned to survey and report the lives of men, and were quently endowed with the power of prying into the original motives of action and the mysteries of conduct. JOHNSON. 6 packs and sects -] Packs is used for combinations or collections, as is a pack of cards. For sects, I think sets might be more commodiously read. So we say, "affairs are now managed by a new set." Sects, however, may well stand. JOHNSON. 7 Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, The gods themselves throw incense.] The thought is extremely noble, and expressed in a sublime of imagery that Seneca fell short of on the like occasion. "Ecce spectaculum dignum ad quod respiciat intentus operi suo deus: ecce par deo dignum, vir fortis cum malâ fortuna compositus." WARBURton. 8 Have I caught thee?] "Have I caught my heavenly jewel," is a line of one of Sir Philip Sidney's songs, which Shakspeare has put into Falstaff's mouth in The Merry Wives of Windsor. MALONE. See vol. viii. p. 119, n. 3. STEEVENS. The goujeers shall devour them1, flesh and fell2, Ere they shall make us weep: we'll see them starve Come. first. [Exeunt LEAR and CORDELIA, guarded. 9 And fire us hence, like foxes.] I have been informed that it is usual to smoke foxes out of their holes. So, in Harrington's translation of Ariosto, b. xxvii. stan. 17: "Bolts out, and through the smoke and fire he flieth Again, Every Man out of his Humour: 66 • Till my STEEVENS. The same allusion occurs in our author's 44th Sonnet: 66 Advance your standard, Edward, in the field, "And march to fire them from their starting holes." Mr. Upton, however, is of opinion that "the allusion is to the scriptural account of Samson's tying foxes, two and two together by the tail, and fastening a fire-brand to the cord; then letting them loose among the standing corn of the Philistines." Judges XV. 4. 66 The words-" shall bring a brand from heaven," seem to favour Mr. Upton's conjecture. If it be right, the construction must be 'they shall bring a brand from heaven, and, like foxes, fire us hence" referring foxes, not to Lear and Cordelia, but to those who should separate them. Malone. The brands employed by Samson were not brought from heaven. I therefore prefer the common and more obvious explanation of the passage before us. STEEVENS. The GOUJEERS shall devour them,] The goujeres, i. e. Morbus Gallicus. Gouge, Fr. signifies one of the common women attending a camp; and as that disease was first dispersed over Europe by the French army, and the women who followed it, the first name it obtained among us was the gougeries; i. e. the disease of the gouges. HANMER. The resolute John Florio has sadly mistaken these goujeers. He writes" 'With a good yeare to thee!" and gives it in Italian, "Il mal' anno che dio ti dia." FARMER. Golding, in his version of the third book of Ovid's Metamorphosis, has fallen into the same error, or rather, the same mis-spelling.-Juno is the speaker: EDM. Come hither, captain; hark. Take thou this note; [Giving a paper.] go, follow them to prison: One step I have advanc'd thee; if thou dost Does not become a sword:-Thy great employ ment Will not bear question *; either say, thou'lt do't, Or thrive by other means. Perfeci quid enim toties per jurgia? dixit. which is thus anglicized, p. 35: "And what a good yeare have I wonne by scolding erst? she sed." STEEVENS. The old copies have good yeares, the common corruption in Shakspeare's time of the other word. Sir T. Hanmer made the correction. MALONE. Neither flesh nor fell." Chaucer uses fell and bones for skin and bones: "And said that he and all his kinne at ones, "Were worthy to be brent with fell and bones." Troilus and Cresseide. GREY. In The Dyar's Play, among the Chester Collection of Mysteries, in the Museum, Antichrist says: “I made thee, man, of flesh and fell.” Again, in The Contention betwyxte Churchyeard and Camell, &c. 1560: "This lesson heether to I kept, and shall here after kepe, "Tylle I to earthe retorne again where fleshe and fell must sleepe." STEEvens. 3 Take thou THIS NOTE ;] This was a warrant, signed by the Bastard and Goneril, for the execution of Lear and Cordelia. In a subsequent scene Edmund says— 66 quickly send, "Be brief in't,-to the castle: for my writ "Is on the life of Lear, and of Cordelia :- |