Do sorely ruthle; for many miles about
There's scarce a bush.

Reg.
O, sir, to wilful men,
The injuries that they themselves procure,
Must be their schoolmasters: Shut up your doors;
He is attended with a desperate train:
And what they may incense? him to, being apt
To have his ear abus'd, wisdom bids fear.
Corn. Shut up your doors, my lord: 'tis a wild
night;

My Regan counsels well; come out o' the storm.
[Exeunt.

ACT III.
SCENE I. A Heath. A Storm is heard, with
Thunder and Lightning. Enter KENT, and a
Gentleman, meeting.

Kent. Who's here, beside foul weather?

Gent. One minded like the weather, most un- That vet you do not know. Fie on this storm

Kent. I know you; Where's the king?
Gent. Contending with the fretful element:

Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,
Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main,3
That things might change, or cease:4 tears his

Which the impetuous blasts, with eveless rage,
Catch in their fury, and make nothing of:
Strives in his little world of man to out-scorns
The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.

This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would
couch,

The lion and the belly-pinched wolf
Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs,
And bids what will take all."

it is, &c. to the end of the speech, are not in the folio. For the force of the word spill, see Genesis, xxxviii. 9.

Fool. O, nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house | Denied me to come in,) return, and force
is better than this rain-water out o' door. Good Their scanted courtesy.
nuncle, in, and ask thy daughter's blessing! Here's
Lear.
a night pities neither wise men nor fools.
Lear. Rumble thy bellyful! 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;2 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!

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,

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.

The man that makes his toe

What he his heart should make,

Shall of a corn cry wo,

And turn his sleep to wake.

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

Enter KENT.

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

I will say nothing.

Kent. Who's there?

Fool. Marry, here's grace, and a cod-piece ;3

that's a wise man, and a fool.

Kent. Alas, sir, are you here? things that love
night,

Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,
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.

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,
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."
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;
Which even but now, demanding after you,

I am a man,

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

Fool. He that has a little tiny wit

With a heigh, ho, the wind and the rain,—
Must make content with his fortunes fit;
For the rain it raineth every day.10

Lear. True, my good boy.-Come, bring us to
this hovel. [Exeunt LEAR and KEST.
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 tailor's tutors;
No heretics burn'd, but wenches' suitors:
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.12

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.

[Eril.

SCENE III. A Room in Gloster's Castle. Enter

GLOSTER and EDMUND.

natural dealing: When I desired their leave that Glo. Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unI might pity him, they took from me the use để petual displeasure, neither to speak of him, entreat mine own house; charged me, on pain of their perfor him, nor any way sustain him.

Edm. Most savage, and unnatural!

between the dukes; and a worse matter than that:
Glo. Go to; say you nothing: There is division
I have received a letter this night;-'tis dangerous
to be spoken:-I have locked the letter in my clo
set: these injuries the king now bears will be re-
venged at home; there is part of a power already
footed:13 we must incline to the king. I will seek
him, and privily relieve him: go you, and maintais
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.
[Ent.

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

8 Summoners are officers that summon offenders be

1 Court holy-water is fair words and flattering speech-fore a proper tribunal. See Chaucer's Sompnour's es. Gonfiare alcuno, (says Florio,) to sooth or flatter Tale, v. 625-670. Thus in Howard's Defensalive one, to set one agogge, or with fair words bring him into against the Poison of supposed Prophecies, 1581a foole's paradise; to fill one with hopes, or court holie-They seem to brag most of the strange events which water. It appears to have been borrowed from the follow for the most part after blazing starres, as if they French, who have their Eau benite de la cour in the were the summoners of God, to call princes to the seat of judgment."

same sense.

2 i. e. submission, obedience.

3 Meaning the king and himself. The king's grace was the usual expression in Shakspeare's time: perhaps the latter phrase alludes to the saying of a contem porary wit, that there is no discretion below the girdle. 4 To gallow, is to frighten, to scare.

5 Thus the folio and one of the quartos; the other quarto reads thund'ring.

6 i. e. counterfeit; from simulo, Lat.

· -My practices so prevail'd,
That I return'd with simular proof enough
To make the noble Leonatus mad.'

Cymbeline, Act v. Sc. 5.

7 Continent for that which contains or encloses. Thus in Antony and Cleopatra :

'Heart, once be stronger than thy continent. The quartos read,-concealed centers.

9 The quartos read, "That sorrows yet for thee.' 10 Part of the Clown's song at the end of Twelfth Night.

11 This speech is not in the quartos.

12 These Imes are taken from what is commonly called Chaucer's Prophecy; but which is much older than his time in its original form. It is thus quoted by Puttenham, in his Art of Poetry, 1589:-

"When faith fails in priestes saws,
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.'

See the Works of Chaucer, in Whittingham's edit. val.
v. p. 179.

13 The quartos read, landed.

Kent. Good my lord, enter here.
Lear.

Wilt break my heart?1
Kent. I'd rather break mine own: Good my lord,

enter.

Lear. Thou think'st 'tis much, that this contentious

storm

nvades us to the skin: so 'tis to thee;
But where the greater malady is fix'd,
The lesser is scarce felt. Thou'dst shun a bear:
But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,
Thou'dst meet the bear i' the mouth. When the
mind's free,

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel;
That thou may'st shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
Edg. [Within.] Fathom and half, fathom and
half! Poor Tom!"

[The Fool runs out from the Hovel. Fool. Come not in here, nuncle, here's a spirit. Help me, help me!

Kent. Give me thy hand.-Who's there?
Fool. A spirit, a spirit; he says his name's poor
Tom.

Kent. What art thou that dost grumble there
i' the straw?

Come forth.

Enter EDGAR, disguised as a Madman.
Edg. Away! the foul fiend follows me :-
Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind.--
Humph! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.

Lear. Hast thou given all to thy two daughters?
And art thou come to this?

Edg. Who gives any thing to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, over bog and quagmire, that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor :-Bless thy five wits!! Tom's a-cold.-O, do de, do de, do de.-Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking !!! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes : all-There could I have him now,-and there,-and there, and there again, and there. [Storm continues. Lear. What, have his daughters brought him to

The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else,
Save what beats there.-Filial ingratitude!
Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand,
For lifting food to't ?-But I will punish home :-
No, I will weep no more.-In such a night
To shut me out!-Pour on ; I will endure:3-
In such a night as this! O, Regan, Goneril!—
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave you
O, that way madness hies; let me shun that;
No more of that,

Kent.

Good my lord, enter here. Lear. 'Pr'ythee, go in thyself; seek thine own

ease;

This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more.-But I'll go in:
In, boy go first.-[To the Fool.] You houseless1
poverty,-

Nav, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.--
[Fool goes in.
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this; Take physic, pomp ;

1 Steevens thought that Lear does not address this

this pass?

Could'st thou save nothing? Did'st thou give them

all?

Fool. Nay, he reserved a blanket, else we had been all ashamed.

Lear. Now, all the plagues that in the pendulous

air

Hang fated o'er men's faults,12 light on thy daughters!
Kent. He hath no daughters, sir.

Lear. Death, traitor! nothing could have subdu'd

nature

To such a lowness, but his unkind daughters.-
Is it the fashion that discarded fathers
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?
Judicious punishment! 'twas this flesh begot
Those pelican daughters.11

question to Kent, but to his own bosom; and would Sly says, Go to thy cold bed and warm thee; which 8 So in the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew, point the passage thus :

Wilt break, my heart?' "Taking the words of Lear by themselves (says Mr Pye), the sense and punctuation proposed by Steevens is very judicious; but is confuted by what Kent answers, who must know how Lear spoke it; and there seems no sort of reason why, as is suggested, he should affect to misunderstand him. Nothing is more natural than for a person absorbed in the contemplation of his own misery, to answer offers of assistance that interrupt him, with petulance.'

2 That of two concomitant pains, the greater obscures to relieves the less, is an aphorism of Hippocrates. See Disquisitions Metaphysical and Literary, by F Sayers, M.D. 1793, p. 68.

'He lesser pangs can bear who hath endur'd the chief.'
Faerie Queene, b. i. c. 6.
3 This line is omitted in the quartos.
4 This and the next line are only in the folio. They
are very judiciously intended to represent that humility,
or tenderness, or neglect of forms which affliction forces
on the mind.

5 Loop'd and window'd is full of holes and apertures: the allusion is to loop-holes, such as are found in ancient castles, and designed for the admission of light, where windows would have been incommodious.

6 A kindred thought occurs in Pericles :---
O, let those cities that of Plenty's cup
And her prosperities so largely taste,
With their superfluous riots,-hear these tears ;
The misery of Tharsus may be theirs.'

7 This speech of Edgar's is omitted in the quartos.-He gives the sign used by those who are sounding the depth at sea.

is supposed to be in ridicule of The Spanish Tragedy, or some play equally absurd. The word cold is omitted in the folio."

9 Alluding to the ignis fatuus, supposed to be lights kindled by mischievous beings to lead travellers into destruction. He afterwards recounts the temptations by which he was prompted to suicide; the opportunities of destroying himself, which often occurred to him in his melancholy moods. Infernal spirits are always represented as urging the wretched to self-destruction. So in Dr. Faustus, 1604 :---

Swords, poisons, halters, and envenom'd steel,
Are laid before me to despatch myself."
Shakspeare found this charge against the fiend in Hars-
net's Declaration, 1603, before cited.

10 It has been before observed, that the wits seem to have been reckoned fire by analogy to the five senses. They were sometimes confounded by old writers, as in the instance cited by Percy and Steevens; Shakspeare, however, in his 141st Sonnet, considers them as distinct.

But my fire wits nor my fire senses can Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee.' 11 To take is to blast, or strike with malignant in. fluence. See a former passage:

strike her young bones, Ye taking airs, with lameness.'

12 So in Timon of Athens:

Be as a planetary plague, when Jove

Will o'er some high view'd city hang his poison
In the sick air.'

13 The young pelican is fabled to suck the mother's blood. The allusions to this fable are very numerous in old writers.

414

Edg. Pillicock' sat on pillicock's-hill Halloo, halloo, loo, loo!

KING LEAR.

Fool. This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.

Edg. Take heed o' the foul fiend: Obey thy parents; keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse; set not thy sweetheart on proud array; Tom's a-cold.

Lear. What hast thou been?

Edg. A serving-mau, proud in heart and mind that curled my hair; wore gloves in my cap; served the lust of my mistress's heart, and did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven one, that slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it: Wine loved I deeply; dice dearly; and in woman, out-paramoured the Turk : False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; Hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to women. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend.-Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind: Says suum, mun, ha no nonny, dorphin my boy, my boy, sessa let [Storm still continues. him trot by. Lear. Why, thou were better in thy grave, than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.-Is man no more than this? Consider him well: Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume :-Ha! here's three of us are sophisticated !--Thou

1 It should be observed that Killico is one of the devils mentioned in Harsnet's book. The inquisitive reader may find a further explanation of this word in a note to the translation of Rabelais, edit. 1750, vol. i. p. 191. In Minsheu's Dictionary, art. 9299; and Chalmers's Works of Sir David Lindsay, Glossary, v. pillok.

2 Then Ma. Mainy, by the instigation of the first of the seven, [spirits,] began to set his hands unto his side, curled his hair, and used such gestures as Ma. Edmunds [the exorcist] presently affirmed that that spirit was Pride. Here with he began to curse and banne, saying, What a poxe do I here? I will stay no longer among a company of rascal priests, but go to the court, and brave it amongst my fellows, the noblemen there assembled. Shortly after they [the seven spirits] were all cast forth, and in such manner as Ma. Edmunds directed them, which was, that every devil should depart in some certaine forme, representing either a beast or some other creature that had the resemblance of that sinne whereof he was the chief author: whereupon the spirit of Pride departed in the forme of a peacock; the spirit of Sloth in the likeness of an asse; the spirit of Envie in the similitude of a dog; the spirit of Gluttony in the form of a wolfe; and the other devils had also in their departure their particular likenesses agreeable to their natures.'-Harsnet's Declaration, &c. 1603. Before each sin was cast out, Mainy, by gestures acted that particular sin-curling his hair, to show pride, &c. &c.

3 It was anciently the custom to wear gloves in the hat on three distinct occasions, viz. as the favour of a mistress, the memorial of a friend, and as a mark to be challenged by an enemy. Prince Henry boasts that he will pluck a glove from the commonest creature and wear it in his helmet. And Tucca says to Sir Quintilian, in Decker's Satiromastix:- Thou shalt wear her glove in thy worshipful hat, like to a leather brooch.' And Pandora in Lyly's Woman in the Moon, 1597:

he that first presents me with his head
Shall wear my glove in favour of the dead."
Portia, in her assumed character, asks Bassanio for his
glores, which she says she will wear for his sake; and
King Henry V. gives the pretended glove of Alençon to
Fluellen, which afterwards occasions his quarrel with
the English soldier.

4 Credulous of evil, ready to receive malicious re-
ports.

5 When spendthrifts, &c. resorted to usurers or tradesmen for the purpose of raising money by means of shop goods, or brown paper commodities, they usually entered their promissory notes, or other similar obligations, in books kept for that purpose. In Lodge's Look. ing Glasse for England, 1598, 4to. a usurer says to a gentleman, I have thy hand set to my book, that thou received'st forty pounds of me in monie.' To which

art the thing itself:-unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou Tearing of his Clothes. art.-Off, off, you lendings :-Come; unbutton

here."

;

this is

Fool. 'Pr'ythee, nuncle, be contented naughty night to swim in.-Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher's heart; a small spark, all the rest of his body cold.-Look, here comes a walking fire.

Edg. This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; be gives the web and the pin,1° squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.

Saint Withold footed thrice the wold ;'1
He met the night-mare, and her nine-fold;
Bid her alight,

And her troth plight,

And, Aroint thee, witch, aroint thee !!
Kent. How fares your grace?

Enter GLOSTER, with a Torch.

Lear. What's he?

Kent. Who's there? What is't you seek? Glo. What are you there? Your names? Edg. Poor Tom; that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water; that in the fury of the heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old the other answers, It was your device to colour the statute, but your conscience knows what I had.

6

If I but write my name in mercers' books,
I am as sure to have at six months end
A rascal at my elbow with his mace,' &c.
All Fools, by Chapman, 1605
'Dolphin my boy, my boy,

It

Cease, let him trot by;
seemeth not that such a foe

From me or you would fly. This is a stanza from a very old ballad, written on some battle fought in France; during which the king, unwil ling to put the suspected valour of his son the Dauphin to the trial, therefore, as different champions cross the field, the king always discovers some objection to his attacking each of them, and repeats the two first lines as every fresh personage is introduced; and at last assists in propping up a dead body against a tree for him to try his manhood upon. Steevens had this account from an old gentleman, who was only able to report part of the ballad. In Jonson's Bartholomew Hey nonny, nonny' is merely the Fair, Cokes cries out, God's my life! He shall be Dauphin, my boy! burthen of another ballad.

7 The words unbutton here, are only in the folio. The quartos read, Come on, be true.

8 Naughty signifies bad, unfit, improper. This epithet, which, as it stands here, excites a smile, in the age of Shakspeare was employed on serious occasions, The merriment of the Fool depended on his general image, and not on the quaintness of its auxiliary.

9 The name of this fiend, though so grotesque, was not invented by Shakspeare, but by those who wished to impose upon their hearers the belief of his actual esistence: this, and most of the fiends mentioned by Edgar, being to be found in Bishop Harsnet's book, among those which the Jesuits, about the time of the Spanish invasion, pretended to cast out, for the purpose of making converts. The principal scene of this farce was laid in the family of Mr. Edmund Peckham, a Catholic. Hars'Fraterette, Fli net published his account of the detection of the impos ture, by order of the privy council. berdigibet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto, were four devils of the round or morrice.-These four had forty assist= ants under them, as themselves doe confesse. Fiebergibbe is used by Latimer for a sycophant. And Cotgrave explains Čoquette by a Flebergibet or Titill It was an old tradition that spirits were relieved from the confinement in which they were held during the day, at the time of curfew, that is, at the close of the day, and were permitted to wander at large till the first cock. crowing. Hence, in The Tempest, they are said to rejoice to hear the solemn curfew.'

10 The pin and web is a disease of the eyes resem bling the cataract in an imperfect stage. Acerbi, in his Travels, vol. ii. p. 20, has given the Lapland method of cure.

11 About St. Withold we have no certainty. This adventure is not found in the common legends of St. Vita13 i. e. and the water-mewt lis, whom Mr. Tyrwhitt thought was meant. 12 See Macbeth.

Glo. What, hath your grace no better company? Edg. The prince of darkness is a gentleman; Modo he's call'd, and Mahu."

Glo. Our flesh, and blood, my lord, is grown so vile, That it doth hate what gets it.

Edg. Poor Tom's a-cold.

Glo. Go in with me; my duty cannot suffer
To obey in all your daughters' hard commands:
Though their injunction be to bar my doors,
And let this tyrannous night take hold upon you,
Yet have I ventur'd to come to seek you out,
And bring you where both fire and food is ready.
Leur. First let me talk with this philosopher :-
What is the cause of thunder?

Kent. Good my lord, take his offer;

Go into the house.

Lear. I'll talk a word with this same learned
Theban :

What is your study?

Edg. How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin.
Lear. Let me ask you one word in private.
Kent. Importune him once more to go, my lord,
His wits begin to unsettle.3
Glo.
Canst thou blame him?
His daughters seek his death:-Ah, that good
Kent!-

Glo.

Hush.

No words, no words:

Edg. Child Rowland to the dark tower came,
His word was still,-Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man.

[Exeunt. SCENE V. A Room in Gloster's Castle. Enter CORNWALL and EDMUND.

Corn. I will have my revenge, ere I depart this

house.

Edm. How, my lord, I may be censured, that nature thus gives way to loyalty, something fears me to think of.

Corn. I now perceive, it was not altogether your brother's evil disposition made him seek his death; but a provoking merit, set a-work by a reproveable badness in himself.

Edm. How malicious is my fortune, that I must repent to be just! This is the letter he spoke of, which approves him an intelligent party to the advantages of France. O, heavens! that this treason were not, or not I the detector!

Corn. Go with me to the duchess.

Edm. If the matter of this paper be certain, you have mighty business in hand.

Corn. True, or false, it hath made thee earl of
Gloster. Seek out where thy father is, that he may

He said it would be thus:-Poor banish'd man!-be ready for our apprehension.
Thou say'st, the king grows mad; I'll tell thee,

friend,

I am almost mad myself; I had a son,
Now outlaw'd from my blood; he sought my life,
But lately, very late; I lov'd him, friend,-
No father his son dearer: true to tell thee,
[Storm continues.
The grief hath craz'd my wits. What a night's this!
I do beseech your grace,

Lear.

O, cry you mercy,

Noble philosopher, your company.

Edg. Tom's a-cold.

Edm. [Aside.] If I find him comforting the king, it will stuff his suspicion more fully.-I will persevere in my course of loyalty, though the conflict be sore between that and my blood.

Corn. I will lay trust upon thee; and thou shalt find a dearer father in thy love.

[Exeunt. SCENE VI. A Chamber in a Farm-House, adjoining the Castle. Enter GLOSTER, LEAR, KENT, Fool, and EDGAR.

Glo. Here is better than the open air; take it thankfully I will piece out the comfort with what

Glo. In, fellow, there, to the hovel; keep thee addition I can: I will not be long from you.

1 In the metrical Romance of Sir Bevis, who was confined seven years in a dungeon, it is said that

'Rattes and mice, and such smal dere,
Was his meat that seven yere.'

? The names of other punie spirits cast out of Twyford, were these:-Hilco, Smolkin, Hillio,' &c.-Hars net's Detection, &c. p. 49. Again, Maho was the chief devil that had possession of Sarah Williams; but another of the possessed named Richard Mainy, was molested by a still more considerable fiend, called Modu,' p. 268; where the said Richard Mainy deposes :-Furthermore it is pretended, that there remaineth still in mee the prince of devils, whose name should be Modu, And, p. 269:- When the said priests had despatched their business at Hackney, (where they had been exorcising Sarah Williams,) they then returned towards mee, upon pretence to cast the great prince Modu out of mee.'

In the Goblins, by Sir John Suckling, a catch is in-
troduced, which concludes with these two lines:-
The prince of darkness is a gentleman;
Mahu, Mahu is his name.'

This catch may not be the production of Suckling, but
the original referred to by Edgar's speech.

3 Lord Orford has the following remark in the postscript to his Mysterious Mother, which deserves a place here:-When Belvidera talks of lutes, laurels, seas of milk, and ships of amber, she is not mad, but lightheaded. When madness has taken possession of a person, such character ceases to be fit for the stage, or at least should appear there but for a short time; it being the business of the theatre to exhibit passions, not distempers. The finest picture ever drawn of a head discomposed by misfortune is that of King Lear. His

Kent. All the power of his wits has given way to his impatience:-The gods reward your kindness! [Exit GLOSTER.

Edg. Frateretto calls me; and tells me Nero iş thoughts dwell on the ingratitude of his daughters, and every sentence that falls from his wildness excites reflection and pity. Had frenzy entirely seized him, our compassion would abate; we should conclude that he no longer felt unhappiness. Shakspeare wrote as a philosopher, Otway as a poet.'

4 Capel observes that Child Rowland means the Knight Orlando. He would read come, with the quartos absolutely (Orlando being come to the dark tower); and supposes a line to be lost which spoke of some giant, the inhabitant of that tower, and the smeller-out of Child Rowland, who confes to encounter him.' He proposes to fill up the passage thus :

Child Rowland to the dark tower come,
[The giant roar'd, and out he ran ;]
His word was still,' &c.

Part of this is to be found in the second part of Jack and
the Giants, which, if not as old as the time of Shak-
speare, may have been compiled from something that
was so they are uttered by a giant-
Fée, faw, fum,

I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive, or be he dead,

I'll grind his bones to make my bread,'

5 Cornwall seems to mean the merit of Edmund; which, being noticed by Gloster, provoked or instigated Edgar to seek his father's death.

6 See the quotation from Harsnet, in note 2 on the preceding scene. Rabelais says that Nero was a fiddler in hell, and Trajan an angler. The history of Garagantua hed appeared in English before 1375, being mentioned in Laneham's Letter from Killingworth, printed in that year.