Hình ảnh trang
PDF
ePub

These dreadful summoners grace.-I am a man," More sinn'd against, than sinning.

KENT. Alack, bare-headed! Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel; Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest; Repose you there: while I to this hard house, (More hard than is the stone whereof 'tis rais'd;

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

6

"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.
STEEVENS.

The quartos read, concealed centers.

-and cry

These dreadful summoners grace.] Summoners are here the officers 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.

7 I am a man,] Oedipus, in Sophocles, represents himself in the same light. Oedip. Colon. v. 258.

[ocr errors]

τα έργα με

6 Πεπονθότ' ετι μαλλον η δεδρακοτα.” TYRWHITT.

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 suf fered both hunger and nakedness. Cordeilla was startled at the news, and wept bitterly, and with tears asked 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.

Which even but now, demanding after you,
Denied me to come in,) return, and force
Their scanted courtesy.

LEAR.
My wits begin to turn.-
Come on, my boy: How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
The art of our necessities is strange,

That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel,

Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart" That's sorry yet for thee.1

Fool. He that has a little tiny wit,—

With heigh, ho, the wind and the rain,2— Must make content with his fortunes fit; For the rain it raineth every day.

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;
When brewers mar their malt with water;
When nobles are their tailors' tutors; :4
No hereticks burn'd, but wenches' suitors:5

one part in my heart-] Some editions read:

thing in

my

heart-.

from which Hanmer, and Dr. Warburton after him, have made string, very unnecessarily; but the copies have part. JOHNSON. 1 That's sorry yet &c.] The old quartos read: That sorrows yet for thee. STEEvens.

-a little tiny wit,

With heigh, ho, &c.] See song in Vol. V. p. 418.

STEEVENS.

3 This is a brave night &c.] This speech is not in the quartos.

STEEVENS.

When every case in law is right;
No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;
When slanders do not live in tongues;
Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;
When usurers tell their gold i' the field;
And bawds and whores do churches build ;-
Then shall the realm of Albion

Come to great confusion."

Then comes the time," who lives to see't,
That going shall be us'd with feet.

This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.

[Exit.

+ When nobles are their tailors' tutors;] i. e. invent fashions for them.

WARBURTON.

5 No hereticks burn'd, but wenches' suitors:] The disease to which wenches' suitors are particularly exposed, was called, in Shakspeare's time, the brenning or burning. JOHNSON.

So, in Isaiah, iii, 24: “—and burning instead of beauty." STEEVENS.

" Then shall the realm of Albion

Come to great confusion.] These lines are taken from Chaucer, Puttenham, in his Art of Poetry, 1589, quotes them as follows; "When faith fails in priestes saws,

66

"And lords hests are holden for laws,
"And robbery is tane for purchase,
"And letchery for solace,
"Then shall the realm of Albion
"Be brought to great confusion."

STEEVENS.

7 Then comes the time, &c.] This couplet Dr. Warburton transposed, and placed after the fourth line of this prophecy. The four lines," When priests," &c. according to his notion, are a satirical description of the present manners, as future;" and the six lines from "When every case-to churches build," a satirical description of future manners, which the corruption of the present would prevent from ever happening." His conception of the first four lines is, I think, just; but, instead of his far-fetched conceit relative to the other six lines, I should rather call them an ironical, as the preceding are a satirical, description of the time in which our poet lived. The transposition recommended by this critick, and adopted in the late editions, is, in my opinion, as unnecessary as it is unwarrantable.

MALONE.

SCENE III.

A Room in Gloster's Castle.

Enter GLOSTER and EDMund.

GLO. 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!

GLO. 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 locked 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. If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king my old master must be relieved. There is some strange thing toward, Edmund; pray you, be careful. [Exit.

EDM. This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke Instantly know; and of that letter too :

This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me That which my father loses; no less than all : The younger rises, when the old doth fall. [Exit.

SCENE IV.

A Part of the Heath, with a Hovel.

Enter LEAR, KENT, and Fool.

KENT. Here is the place, my lord; good my lord, enter:

The tyranny of the open night's too rough

For nature to endure.

LEAR.

[Storm still.

Let me alone.

Wilt break my heart?"

KENT, Good my lord, enter here.

LEAR.

KENT. I'd rather break mine own: Good my

lord, enter.

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,

9

;

The lesser is scarce felt. Thou'dst shun a bear:

• Wilt break my heart?] I believe that Lear does not address this question to Kent, but to his own bosom. Perhaps, therefore, we should point the passage thus:

Wilt break,

my

heart?

The tenderness of Kent indeed induces him to reply, as to an interrogation that seemed to reflect on his own humanity. STEEVENS.

9 But where the greater malady is fix'd,

The lesser is scarce felt.] That of two concomitant pains, the greater obscures or relieves the less, is an aphorism of Hippocrates. See Disquisitions, metaphysical and literary, by F. Sayers, M. D. 1793, p. 68.

So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. I. c. vi:

"He lesser pangs can bear who hath endur'd the chief.”

STEEVENS.

« TrướcTiếp tục »