fairs, and market towns:-Poor Tom, thy horn is dry.5 LEAR. Then let them anatomize Regan, see what breeds about her heart: Is there any cause in nature, that makes these hard hearts?—You, sir, I entertain you for one of my hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: you will < There is another line in the character of Edgar which I am very confident I have seen in an old ballad, viz. "Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind." STEEVENS. Dr. Johnson is surely right, in supposing that sessy is a corruption of cessez, be quiet, stop, hold, let alone. It is so used by Christofero Sly, the drunken Tinker, in The Taming of the Shrew, and by Edgar himself in a preceding scene-" Dolphin, my boy, Sessy; let him trot by." But it does not seem equally clear that it has been corrupted into so, so. 5 RITSON. thy horn is dry.] Men that begged under pretence of lunacy used formerly to carry a horn, and blow it through the streets. JOHNSON. So, in Decker's O per se 0, 4to. 1612. He is speaking of beggars. "The second beginnes :—what will you give poor Tom now? one pound of your sheepes feathers to make Poore Tom a blanket, or one cutting of your Sow side &c. to make poore Tom a sharing horne &c.-give poore Tom an old sheete to keepe him from the cold" &c. Sig. M 3. A horn is at this day employed in many places in the country as a cup for drinking, but anciently the use of it was much more general. Thy horn is dry, however, appears to be a proverbial expression, introduced when a man has nothing further to offer, when he has said all he had to say. Such a one's pipe's out, is a phrase current in Ireland on the same occasion. I suppose Edgar to speak these words aside. Being quite weary of his Tom o'Bedlam's part, and finding himself unable to support it any longer, he says privately, "I can no more: all my materials for sustaining the character of Poor Tom are now exhausted; my horn is dry: i. e. has nothing more in it; and accordingly we have no more of his dissembled madness till he meets his father in the next Act, when he resumes it for a speech or two, but not without expressing the same dislike of it that he expresses here, "I cannot daub it further." STEEVENS. say, they are Persian attire; but let them be changed. [TO EDGAR, KENT. Now, good my lord, lie here, and rest awhile. LEAR. Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains: So, so, so: We'll go to supper i' the morning: So, so, so. FOOL. And I'll go to bed at noon. Re-enter GLoster. 8 GLO. Come hither, friend: Where is the king my master? KENT. Here, sir; but trouble him not, his wits are gone. GLO. Good friend, I pr'ythee take him in thy arms; I have o'er-heard a plot of death upon him: And drive towards Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet Both welcome and protection. Take up thy mas ter: If thou should'st dally half an hour, his life, 6 up, 9 -you will say, they are Persian attire ;] Alluding, perhaps, to Clytus refusing the Persian robes offered him by Alexander. STEEVENS. 7 lie here,] i. e. on the cushions to which he points. He had before said "Will you lie down, and rest upon the cushions?" MALONE. • And I'll go to bed at noon. n.] Omitted in the quartos. STEEVENS. 9 Take up, take up;] One of the quartos reads-Take up the king, &c. the other-Take up to keep, &c. STEEVENS. And follow me, that will to some provision [KENT. Stand in hard cure.-Come, help to bear thy master; Thou must not stay behind. 1 GLO. [To the Fool. Come, come, away. [Exeunt KENT, GLOSTER, and the Fool, bearing off the King. Oppress'd nature sleeps:] These two concluding speeches by Kent and Edgar, and which by no means ought to have been cut off, I have restored from the old quarto. The soliloquy of Edgar is extremely fine; and the sentiments of it are drawn equally from nature and the subject. Besides, with regard to the stage, it is absolutely necessary: for as Edgar is not designed, in the constitution of the play, to attend the King to Dover, how absurd would it look for a character of his importance to quit the scene without one word said, or the least intimation what we are to expect from him? THEOBAld. The lines inserted from the quarto are in crotchets. The omission of them in the folio is certainly faulty: yet I believe the folio is printed from Shakspeare's last revision, carelessly and hastily performed, with more thought of shortening the scenes, than of continuing the action. JOHNSON. 2 thy broken senses,] The quarto, from whence this speech is taken, reads, thy broken sinews. Senses is the con jectural emendation of Theobald. STEEVENS. A passage in Macbeth adds support to Theobald's emendation: "the innocent sleep,, "Balm of hurt minds, [The following is from Mr. Malone's Appendix.] I had great doubts concerning the propriety of admitting Theobald's emendation into the text, though it is extremely plausible, and was adopted by all the subsequent editors. The following passage in Twelfth Night sufficiently supports the reading of the old copy: "Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot." MALONE. I cannot reconcile myself to the old reading, as I do not understand how sinews, if broken, could be balmed, in any obvious sense of that word. Broken (i. e. interrupted) senses, like broken slumbers, would admit of a soothing cure. STEEVENS. EDG. When we our betters see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes. 3 Who alone suffers, suffers most i' the mind; He childed, as I father'd!-Tom, away: 3 5 -free things,] States clear from distress. JOHNSON. But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip, When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.] So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece: "And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage.” Again, in Romeo and Juliet: "Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship-." "Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris."-Incert. Auct. MALONE. • Mark the high noises;] Attend to the great events that are approaching, and make thyself known when that false opinion now prevailing against thee shall, in consequence of just proof of thy integrity, revoke its erroneous sentence, and recall thee to honour and reconciliation. JOHNSON. By the high noises, I believe, are meant the loud tumults of the approaching war. Thus Claudian, in his Epist. ad Serenam: "Præliaque altisoni referens Phlegræa mariti." STEEVENS. The high noises are perhaps the calamities and quarrels of those in a higher station than Edgar, of which he has been just speaking. The words, however, may allude to the proclamation which had been made for bringing in Edgar: "I heard myself proclaim'd, "And by the happy hollow of a tree, and thyself bewray,] Bewray, which at present has only a dirty meaning, anciently signified to betray, to discover. In this sense it is used by Spenser; and in Promos and Cassandra, 1578: When false opinion, whose wrong thought defiles thee,7 In thy just proof, repeals, and reconciles thee. What will hap more to-night, safe scape the king! Lurk, lurk.] [Exit. CORN. Post speedily to my lord your husband; show him this letter:-the army of France is landed:-Seek out the villain Gloster. [Exeunt some of the Servants. REG. Hang him instantly. GON. Pluck out his eyes. CORN. Leave him to my displeasure.-Edmund, keep you our sister company; the revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father, are not fit for your beholding. Advise the duke, where you are going, to a most festinate preparation; we "Well, to the king Andrugio now will hye, Again, in The Spanish Tragedy: "With ink bewray what blood began in me.” Again, in Lyly's Endymion, 1591: 66 lest my head break, and so I bewray my brains." STEEVENS. 7-whose wrong thought defiles thee,] The quartos, where alone this speech is found, read-whose wrong thoughts defile thee. The rhyme shows that the correction, which was made by Mr. Theobald, is right. MALONE. a most festinate preparation;] Here we have the same |
