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Some that will thank you, making just report
Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow
The king hath cause to plain.

I am a gentleman of blood and breeding;

And, from some knowledge and assurance, offer
This office to you.]

Gent. I will talk further with you.

Kent.

No, do not.
For confirmation that I am much more
Than my out wall, open this purse, and take
What it contains: If you shall see Cordelia,
(As fear not but you shall) show her this ring;
And she will tell you who your fellow is

That yet you do not know. Fy on this storm!
I will go seek the king.

Gent. Give me your hand: Have you no more to say? Kent. Few words, but, to effect, more than all yet; That, when we have found the king, (in which your pain That way, I'll this;) he that first lights on him,

Holla the other.

SCENE II.

[Exeunt severally.

Another Part of the Heath. Storm continues.

Enter LEAR and Fool.

Lear. Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks !9 rage! blow! You cataracts, and hurricanoes, spout

7 (As fear not but you shall)] Thus quarto B and the folio. Quarto A-As doubt not but you shall. Malone.

8 the king, (in which your pain,

That way; I'll this;) he that first &c.] Thus the folio. The late reading:

66 for which you take

"That way, I this,”.

was not genuine. The quartos read:

"That when we have found the king,

"Ile this way, you that, he that first lights

"On him, hollow the other." Steevens.

9 Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks!] Thus the quartos. The folio has-winds. The poet, as Mr. M. Mason has observed in a note on The Tempest, was here thinking of the common representation of the winds, which he might have found in many books of his own time. So again, as the same gentleman has observed, in Troilus and Cressida:

Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt couriers to oak-cleaving thunder-bolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flats the thick rotundity o' the world!.
Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,*
That make ingrateful man!

Fool. O nuncle, court holy-water5 in a dry house is bet

"Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek
"Outswell the cholick of puff'd Aquilon."

We find the same allusion in Kempe's Nine Daies Wonder, &c. quarto, 1600: "he swells presently, like one of the four winds."

1

Malone.

thought-executing-] Doing execution with rapidity equal

to thought. Johnson.

2 Vaunt couriers-] Avant couriers, Fr. This phrase is not unfamiliar to other writers of Shakspeare's time. It originally meant the foremost scouts of an army. So, in Jarvis Markham's English Arcadia, 1607:

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as soon as the first vancurrer encountered him face to face."

Again, in The Tragedy of Mariam, 1613:

"Might to my death, but the vaunt-currier prove."

Again, in Darius, 1603:

"Th' avant-corours, that came for to examine." Steevens. In The Tempest "Jove's lightnings" are termed more familiarly— the precursors

66

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ter than this rain-water out o' door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters blessing; here's a night pities neither wise men nor fools.

Lear. Rumble thy bellyfull! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness,
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription; why then let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man :—
But yet I call you servile ministers,

That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high-engender'd battles, 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul !7

Fool. He that has a house to put his head in, has a good head-piece.

The cod-piece that will house,

Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse ;-
So beggars marry many.8

The man that makes his toe

What he his heart should make,

Shall of a corn cry woe,9

And turn his sleep to wake.

-for there never was yet fair woman, but she made mouths in a glass.

Enter KENT.

Lear. No, I will be the pattern of all patience,

Cotgrave in his Dict. 1611, defines Eau benite de cour," court holie water; compliments, faire words, flattering speeches," &c. See also Florio's Italian Dict. 1598: "Mantellizare, To flatter, to claw,-te give one court holie-water." Malone.

6 You owe me no subscription;] Subscription for obedience.

See

7

p. 155, n. 4.

Malone.

Warburton.

'tis foul!] Shameful; dishonourable. Johnson.

So beggars marry many.] i. e. A beggar marries a wife and lice.

Johnson. Rather, "So many beggars marry;" meaning that they marry in the manner he has described, before they have houses to put their heads in. M. Mason.

9

cry woe,] i. e. be grieved, or pained. So, in K. Richard III: "You live, that shall cry woe for this hereafter." Malone.

I will say nothing.1

Kent Who's there?

Fool. Marry, here's grace, and a cod-piece; that's a wise man, and a fool.2

Kent. Alas, sir, are you here?3 things that love night, Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,4

And make them keep their caves: Since I was man, Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never Remember to have heard: man's nature cannot carry The affliction, nor the fear.5

Lear.

Let the great gods,
That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,

Unwhipp'd of justice: Hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjur'd, and thou simular man of virtue
That art incestuous: Caitiff, to pieces shake,

1 No, I will be the pattern of all patience,

I will say nothing.] So Perillus, in the old anonymous play, speaking of Leir:

"But he, the myrrour of mild patience,

"Puts up all wrongs, and never gives reply." Steevens.

2 grace, and a cod-piece; that's a wise man, and a fool.] In Shakspeare's time," the king's grace" was the usual expression. In the latter phrase, the speaker perhaps alludes to an old notion concerning fools. Malone.

Alluding perhaps to the saying of a contemporary wit; that there is no discretion below the girdle. Steevens.

3 are you here?] The quartos read-sit you here? Steevens. 4 Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,] So, in Venus and Adonis: 66 'stonish'd as night-wanderers are." Malone. Gallow, a west-country word, signifies to scare or frighten.

Warburton. So, the Somersetshire proverb: "The dunder do gally the beans." Beans are vulgarly supposed to shoot up faster after thunder-storm.

5

Steevens.

-fear.] So the folio: the latter editions read, with the quarto, force for fear, less elegantly. Johnson.

6

keep this dreadful pother-] Thus one of the quartos and the folio. The other quarto reads thund'ring.

The reading of the text, however, is an expression common to others. So, in The Scornful Lady of Beaumont and Fletcher:

faln out with their meat, and kept a pudder." Steevens.

That under covert and convenient seeming
Hast practis'd on man's life!-Close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry

These dreadful summoners grace.—I am a man1,
More sinn'd against, than sinning.

Kent.

Alack, bare-headed!2

Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;

Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest;

7 That under covert and convenient seeming -] Convenient needs not be understood in any other than its usual and proper sense; accommodate to the present purpose; suitable to a design. Convenient seeming is appearance such as may promote his purpose to destroy.

8

Johnson. concealing continents,] Continent stands for that which contains or incloses. Johnson.

Thus, in Antony and Cleopatra:

"Heart, once be stronger than thy continent !"

Again, in Chapman's translation of the twelfth Book of Homer's

Odyssey:

"I told our pilot that past other men

"He most must bear firm spirits, since he sway'd
"The continent that all our spirits convey'd," &c.

The quartos read, concealed centers. Steevens.

9- and cry

These dreadful summoners grace.] Summoners are here the offcers that summon offenders before a proper tribunal. See Chaucer's Sompnour's Tale, v.625–670. Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. Vol. I. Steevens.

I find the same expression in a treatise published long before this play was written: " they seem to brag most of the strange events which follow for the most part after blazing starres, as if they were the summoners of God to call princes to the seat of judgment." Defensative against the Poison of supposed Prophecies, 1581. Malone. 1 I am a man,] Oedipus, in Sophocles, represents himself in the same light. Oedip. Colon. v. 258:

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τα έργα με

σε Πεπονθότ' εςι μαλλον η δεδρακοτα.” Tyrwhitt.

2 Alack, bare-headed!] Kent's faithful attendance on the old king, as well as that of Perillus, in the old play which preceded Shakspeare's, is founded on an historical fact. Lear, says Geoffrey of Monmouth, "when he betook himself to his youngest daughter in Gaul, waited before the city where she resided, while he sent a messenger to inform her of the misery he was fallen into, and to desire her relief to a father that suffered both hunger and nakedness. Cordeilla was startled at the news, and wept bitterly, and with tears ask. ed him, how many men her father had with him. The messenger answered he had none but one man, who had been his armour-bearer, and was staying with him without the town." Malone.

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