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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 bot tome 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 gathereth 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 prosperity to the colder season of adversity, from which no profit can be derived; and desert him, whose "mellow hangings" have been VOL. XIV.

U

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.

"open

shaken down, and who by "one winter's brush" has been left " 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 fol low 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 moral 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.

But I will tarry; the fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly:

The knave turns fool, that runs away;
The fool no knave, perdy.

Kent. Where learn'd you this, fool?

Fool. Not i' the stocks, fool.

Re-enter LEAR, with GLOSTER.

Lear. Deny to speak with me? They are sick? they are weary?

They have travell'd hard to-night? Mere fetches ;3
The images of revolt and flying off!

Fetch me a better answer.

Glo.

My dear lord,

You know the fiery quality of the duke;
How unremoveable and fix'd he is

In his own course.

Lear. Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!→→→ Fiery? what quality? Why, Gloster, Gloster, I'd speak with the duke of Cornwall, and his wife. Glo. Well, my good lord, I have inform'd them so. Lear. Inform'd them! Dost thou understand me, man? Glo. Ay, my good lord.

Lear. The king would speak with Cornwall; the dear

father

Would with his daughter speak, commands her service: Are they inform❜d of this?5- -My breath and blood!Fiery? the fiery duke?-Tell the hot duke, that

2 But I will tarry; the fool will stay,

And let &c.] I think this passage erroneous, though both the copies concur. The sense will be mended if we read:

But I will tarry; the fool will stay,

And let the wise man fly;

The fool turns knave, that runs away;
The knave no fool,

That I stay with the king is a proof that I am a fool; the wise men are deserting him. There is knavery in this desertion, but there is no folly. Johnson.

3 Mere fetches;] Though this line is now defective, perhaps it originally stood thus:

Mere fetches all ; —.

Steevens.

4 Glo. Well, &c.] This, with the following speech, is omitted in the quartos. Steevens.

5 Are they inform'd of this?] This line is not in the quartos.

Malone.

No, but not yet:-may be, he is not well:
Infirmity doth still neglect all office,

Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves,
When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind
To suffer with the body: I'll forbear;

And am fallen out with my more headier will,

To take the indispos'd and sickly fit

For the sound man.-Death on my state! wherefore
[Looking on KENT.
Should he sit here? This act persuades me,7
That this remotions of the duke and her

Is practice only.9 Give me my servant forth:

Go, tell the duke and his wife, I'd speak with them,
Now, presently: bid them come forth and hear me,
Or at their chamber door I 'll beat the drum,
Till it cry-Sleep to death.1

Glo. I'd have all well betwixt you.

[Exit.

Lear. O me, my heart, my rising heart!-but, down. Fool. Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney2 did to the eels,

Tell the hot duke, that ] The quartos read-Tell the hot duke, that Lear

7

Steevens.

This act persuades me,] As the measure is here defective, perhaps our author wrote:

8

This act almost persuades me,

Steevens.

this remotion] From their own house to that of the Earl of Gloster.

Malone.

9 Is practice only.] Practice is, in Shakspeare, and other old writers, used commonly in an ill sense for unlawful artifice. Johnson.

1 Till it cry-Sleep to death.] This, as it stands, appears to be a mere nonsensical rhapsody. Perhaps we should read-Death to sleep, instead of Sleep to death. M. Mason.

The meaning of this passage seems to be-I'll beat the drum till it cries out-Let them awake no more;-Let their present sleep be their

last.

Somewhat similar occurs in Troilus and Cressida :

66

the death tokens of it

"Cry-No recovery.”

The sentiment of Lear does not therefore, in my opinion, deserve the censure bestowed on it by Mr. M. Mason, but is, to the full, as defensible as many other bursts of dramatick passion. Steevens.

2

the cockney-] It is not easy to determine the exact power of this term of contempt, which, as the editor of The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer observes, might have been originally borrowed from the kitchen. From the ancient ballad of The Turnament of Tottenham, published by Dr. Percy in his second volume of Ancient Poetry, p. 24, it should seem to signify a cook:

when she put them i' the paste3 alive; she rapp'd 'em1 o' the coxcombs with a stick, and cry'd, Down, wantons, down: 'Twas her brother, that, in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.

Enter CORNWALL, REGAN, GLOSTER, and Servants.
Lear. Good morrow to you both.

"At that feast were they served in rich array;
"Every five and five had a cokeney."

ì. e. a cook, or scullion, to attend them.

Shakspeare, however, in Twelfth Night, makes his Clown say"I am afraid this great lubber the world, will prove a cockney." In this place it seems to have a signification not unlike that which it bears at present; and, indeed, Chaucer, in his Reve's Tale, ver. 4205, appears to employ it with such a meaning:

"And when this jape is tald another day,

"I shall be halden a daffe or a cokenay.”

Meres, likewise, in the Second Part of his Wit's Commonwealth, 1598, observes, that "many cockney and wanton women are often sick, but in faith they cannot tell where." Deckar, also, in his Newes from Hell, &c. 1606, has the following passage: ""Tis not their fault, but our mother's, our cockering mothers, who for their labour made us to be called cockneys." See the notes on The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, Vol. IV, p. 253, where the reader will meet with more information on this subject. Steevens.

Cockenay, as Dr. Percy imagines, cannot be a cook or scullion, but is some dish which I am unable to ascertain. My authority is the following epigram from Davies:

"He that comes every day, shall have a cock-nay,

"And he that comes but now and then, shall have a fat hen." Epigram on English Proverbs, 179. Whalley. Mr. Malone expresses his doubt whether cockney means a scullion, &c. in The Turnament of Tottenham; and to the lines already quoted from J. Davies's Scourge of Folly, adds the two next:

"But cocks that to hens come but now and then,
"Shall have a cock-nay, not the fat hen."

I have been lately informed, by an old lady, that, during her childhood, she remembers having eaten a kind of sugar pellets called at that time cockneys.

3

Steevens.

the eels, when she put them i' the paste-] Hinting that the eel and Lear are in the same danger. Johnson.

The Fool does not compare Lear himself to the eels, but his rising choler. M. Mason.

This reference is not sufficiently explained. The paste, or crust of a pie, in Shakspeare's time, was called a coffin.

4

Henley.

she rapp'd 'em -] So the quartos. The folio reads-she knapt 'em. Malone.

Rapp'd must be the true reading, as the only sense of the verb-to knap, is to snap, or break asunder. Steevens.

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