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Lear. What's he, that hath so much thy place mistook To set thee here?

Kent.

It is both he and she,

Your son and daughter.

Lear. No.

Kent. Yes.

Lear. No, I say.

Kent. I say, yea.

Lear? No, no; they would not.

Kent. Yes, they have.

Lear. By Jupiter, I swear, no.

Kent. By Juno, I swear, ay.8

Lear. They durst not do 't;

They could not, would not do 't; 'tis worse than murder,

To do upon respect such violent outrage:9

Resolve me, with all modest haste, which way

Thou might'st deserve, or they impose, this usage,
Coming from us.

Kent.

My lord, when at their home

Map of Mock Beggar Hall, &c. an ancient ballad, that the stockings were formerly sewed to the breeches:

"Their fathers went in homely frees,
"And good plain broad-cloth breeches;
"Their stockings with the same agrees,
"Sew'd on with good strong stitches."

Stubbs, in his Anatomie of Abuses, has a whole chapter on The Diversitie of Nether-Stockes worne in England, 1595. Heywood among his Epigrams, 1562, has the following:

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Thy upper-stocks, be they stuft with silke or flocks,

"Never become thee like a nether paire of stocks." Steevens. 7 Lear.] This and the next speech are omitted in the folio.-I have left the rest as I found them, without any attempt at metrical division; being well convinced that, as they are collected from discordant copies, they were not all designed to be preserved, and therefore cannot, in our usual method, be arranged. Steevens.

8 By Juno, I swear, ay.] Omitted in the quartos. Steevens. 9 To do upon respect such violent outrage:] To violate the publick and venerable character of a messenger from the king. Johnson.

To do an outrage upon respect, does not, I believe, primarily mean, to behave outrageously to persons of a respectable character, (though that in substance is the sense of the words) but rather to be grossly deficient in respect to those who are entitled to it, considering respect as personified. So before in this scene:

"You shall do small respect, show too bold malice
"Against the grace and person of my master,
"Stocking his messenger." Malone.

I did commend your highness' letters to them,
Ere I was risen from the place that show'd
My duty kneeling, came there a reeking post,
Stew'd in his haste, half breathless, panting forth
From Goneril his misress, salutations;
Deliver❜d letters, spite of intermission,1

Which presently they read: on whose contents,
They summon'd up their meiny, straight took horse;
Commanded me to follow, and attend

1 Deliver'd letters, spite of intermission,] Intermission, for another message, which they had then before them, to consider of; called intermission, because it came between their leisure and the Steward's message. Warburton.

Spite of intermission is without pause, without suffering time to intervene. So, in Macbeth:

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"Cut short all intermission," &c. Steevens.

Spite of intermission, perhaps means in spite of, or without regarding, that message which intervened, and which was entitled to prece

dent attention.

Spite of intermission, however, may mean, in spite of being obliged to pause and take breath, after having panted forth the salutation from his mistress. In Cawdrey's Alphabetical Table of hard Words, 1604, intermission is defined, "foreslowing, a pawsing or breaking off" Malone.

2 They summon'd up their meiny,] Meiny, i. e. people. Pope. Mesne, a house. Mesnie, a family, Fr. So, in Monsieur D'Olive, 1606:

661 if she, or her sad meiny,

"Be towards sleep, I'll wake them."

Again, in the bl. 1. romance of Syr Eglamoure of Artoys, no date : "Of the emperoure took he leave ywys,

Again:

"And of all the meiny that was there."

"Here cometh the king of Israel,

"With a fayre meinye." Steevens.

So, in Lambard's Archeion, 1635, p. 2: "

whilest all the world

consisted of a few householders, the elder (or father of the family) exercised authoritie over his meyney.'

"" Reed.

Though the word meiny be now obsolete, the word menial, which is derived from it, is still in use. On whose contents, means the contents of which. M. Mason.

Menial is by some derived from servants being intra mania, or domesticks. An etymology favoured by the Roman termination of the word. Many, in Kent's sense, for train or retinue, was used so late as Dryden's time:

"The many rend the skies with loud applause."

Ode on Alexander's Feast. H. White.

The leisure of their answer; gave me cold looks:
And meeting here the other messenger,

Whose welcome, I perceiv'd, had poison'd mine,
(Being the very fellow that of late

Display'd so saucily against your highness,)
Having more man than wit about me, drew;3
He rais'd the house with loud and coward cries:
Your son and daughter found this trespass worth
The shame which here it suffers.

Fool. Winter 's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that

way.

Fathers, that wear rags,

Do make their children blind;
But fathers, that bear bags,

Shall see their children kind.

Fortune, that arrant whore,

Ne'er turns the key to the poor.—

" But, for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours5 for thy daughters, as thou can'st tell in a year.

Lear. O, how this mother" swells up toward my heart!

3 Having more man than wit about me, drew;] The personal pronoun, which is found in the preceding line, is understood before the word having. The same licence is taken by our poet in other places. See Act IV, sc. ii: “— and amongst them fell'd him dead;" where they is understood. So, in Vol. XI, p. 224:

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which if granted,

"As he made semblance of his duty, would
"Have put his knife into him."

where he is understood before would. See also Hamlet, Act II, sc. ii: "- - whereat griev'd,-sends out arrests."-The modern editors, following Sir Thomas Hanmer, read--I drew. Malone.

4 Winter 's not gone yet, &c.] If this be their behaviour, the king's troubles are not yet at an end. Johnson.

This speech is omitted in the quartos. Steevens.

5

dolours ] Quibble intended between dolours and dollars.

Hanmer.

The same quibble had occurred in The Tempest, and in Measure for Measure. Steevens.

6

for thy daughters,] i. e. on account of thy daughters' ingratitude. In the first part of the sentence dolours is understood in its true sense; in the latter part it is taken for dollars. The modern editors have adopted an alteration made by Mr. Theobald, from instead of for; and following the second folio, read-thy dear daughters.

Malone.

70, how this mother &c.] Lear here affects to pass off the swelling of his heart ready to burst with grief and indignation, for the disBut for all this, it follows.

Then shalt have as many

For thy daughters dear

Dolones

as then can't sell in a year.

Hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element 's below!-Where is this daughter?
Kent. With the earl, sir, here within.

Lear.

Stay here.

Follow me not;

[Exit. Gent. Made you no more offence than what you speak of?

Kent. None.

How chance the king comes with so small a train?

Fool. An thou hadst been set i' the stocks for that question, thou hadst well deserved it.

Kent. Why, fool?

Fool. We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee

ease called the Mother, or Hysterica Passio, which, in our author's time, was not thought peculiar to women only. In Harsnet's Declaration of Popish Impostures, Richard Mainy, Gent. one of the pretended demoniacks, deposes, p. 263, that the first night that he came to Denham, the seat of Mr. Peckham, where these impostures were managed, he was somewhat evill at ease, and he grew worse and worse with an old disease that he had, and which the priests persuaded him was from the possession of the devil, viz. "The disease, I spake of was a spice of the Mother, wherewith I had bene troubled

before my going into Fraunce: whether I doe rightly term it the Mother or no, I knowe not... When I was sicke of this disease in Fraunce, a Scottish doctor of physick then in Paris, called it, as I remember, Vertiginem Capitis. It riseth. ... of a winde in the bottome of the belly, and proceeding with a great swelling, causeth a very painfull collicke in the stomack, and an extraordinary giddiness

in the head."

It is at least very probable, that Shakspeare would not have thought of making Lear affect to have the Hysterick Passion, or Mother, if this passage in Harsnet's pamphlet had not suggested it to him, when he was selecting the other particulars from it, in order to furnish out his character of Tom of Bedlam, to whom this demoniacal gibberish is admirably adapted. Percy.

In p. 25 of the above pamphlet it is said "Ma: Maynie had a spice of the Hysterica passio, as seems, from his youth, he himselfe termes it the Moother." Ritson.

8 We'll set thee to school to an ant, &c.] "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, (says Solomon) learn her ways, and be wise; which having no guide, over-seer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and ga thereth her food in the harvest."

By this allusion more is meant than is expressed. If, says the Fool, you had been schooled by the ant, you would have known that the king's train, like that sagacious animal, prefer the summer of pros perity to the colder season of adversity, from which no profit can be derived; and desert him, whose "mellow hangings" have been

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there's no labouring in the winter. All that follow their noses are led by their eyes, but blind men; and there's not a nose among twenty, but can smell him that's stinking. Let go thy hold, when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it; but the great one that goes up the hill, let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee1 better counsel, give me mine again: I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it.

That, sir, which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,

Will pack, when it begins to rain,

And leave thee in the storm.

shaken down, and who by "one winter's brush" has been left "open and bare for every storm that blows." Malone.

9 All that follow their noses are led by their eyes, but blind men; and there's not a nose among twenty, but can smell him that 's stinking.] The word twenty refers to the noses of the blind men, and not to the men in general. Steevens.

Mr. M. Mason supposes we should read sinking. What the Fool, says he, wants to describe is, the sagacity of mankind, in finding out the man whose fortunes are declining. Reed.

Stinking is the true reading. See a passage from All's Well that Ends Well, which I had quoted, before I was aware that it had likewise been selected by Mr. Malone, for the same purpose of illustration, in the following note. Mr. M. Mason's conjecture, however, may be countenanced by a passage in Antony and Cleopatra:

"Our fortune on the sea is out of breath,

"And sinks most lamentably."

Steevens.

Mankind, says the Fool, may be divided into those who can see and those who are blind. All men, but blind men, though they follow their noses, are led by their eyes; and this class of mankind, seeing the king ruined, have all deserted him. with respect to the other class, the blind, who have nothing but their noses to guide them, they also fly equally from a king whose fortunes are declining; for of the noses of twenty blind men there is not one but can smell him, who "heing muddy'd in fortune's mood, smells somewhat strongly of her displeasure." You need not therefore be surprized at Lear's coming with so small a train.

The quartos read-among a hundred. Malone.

1 When a wise man gives thee &c.] One cannot too much commend the caution which our mora! poet uses, on all occasions to prevent his sentiment from being perversely taken. So here, having given an ironical precept in commendation of perfidy and base desertion of the unfortunate, for fear it should be understood seriously, though delivered by his buffoon or jester, he has the precaution to add this beautiful corrective, full of fine sense-"I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it." Warburton.

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