When nobles are their tailors' tutors; No squire in debt, nor no poor knight; Come to great confusion: Then comes the time, who lives to see 't, This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time. [Ex SCENE III.-A Room in Gloucester's Castle. Enter GLOUCESTER 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, nort 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; 't is 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 strange things toward, Edmund; pray you, be careful. EDM. This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke Instantly know; and of that letter too: [Exit. 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 [Storm continues. (*) First folio omits, their. (†) First folio, or. (+) First folio, looke. Wilt break my heart? LEAR. 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 roaring sea, Thou 'dst meet the bear i' the mouth. When the mind's free, KENT. Good my lord, enter here. : [Fool goes in. " That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, 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,t a Hum! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee. (*) First folio, they. (†) First folio, blow the windes. ■ - go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.] The commentators, with admirable unani LEAR. Hast thou given all to thy two daughters? And art thou need come to this? EDG. Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, through ford* and whirlpool, o'er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow,(1) 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.-There could I have him now,-and there,—and there again, and there. [Storm continues. LEAR. What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give 'em all? ‡ FOOL. Nay, he reserved a blanket, else we had been all shamed. Hang fated o'er men's faults, 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 EDG. Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill; Halloo, halloo, loo, loo! 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 sweet heart on proud array. Tom's a-cold. LEAR. What hast thou been? EDG. A serving man, proud in heart and mind; that curled my hair; wore gloves in my cap, (2) served the lust of my mistress' 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: First folio, Sword. First folio, Wouldst. (+) First folio, Ha's his Daughters. () First folio, deerely. mity, persist in declaring this line to be a ridicule on one in "The Spanish Trajedy," Act II. "What outcries pluck me from my naked bed!" But to an audience of Shakespeare's age there was nothing risible in either line. The phrase to go to a cold bed meant only to go cold to bed; to rise from a naked bed signified to get up naked from bed, and to say one lay on a sick bed (a form of expression far from uncommon even now) implied merely that he was lying sick a-bed. It is to be observed that the folio, probably by accident, as it gives the line correctly in "The Taming of the Shrew," omits the word "cold." Hast thou given all to thy two daughters ?] So the quarto; the folio reads, “Did st thou give all to thy daughters?" btaking!] See note (*), p. 39. VOL. V. E 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 woman: keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lender's books, and defy the foul fiend. Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind: Dolphin my boy, my boy, sessa; let him trot by. [Storm continues 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 on's are sophisticated!-Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no mòre but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.-Off, off, you lendings!-come, unbutton here. [Tearing off his clothes. FOOL. Pr'ythee, nuncle, be contented; 't is a 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 on 's body cold. Look, here comes a walking fire. EDG. This is the foul fiendt Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the § first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth. Bid her alight, And her troth plight, And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee! KENT. How fares your grace? Enter GLOUCESTER, 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 his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old rat, and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing pool; First folio omits, Why. (+) First folio, a. - Flibbertigibbet:] See quotation from Harsnet, in the Illustrative Comments to this Act. b the web and the pin,-] The cataract. One of the meanings to Cataratta in Florio's Dictionary is, "A dimnesse of sight occasioned by humores hardned in the eies called a Cataract or a pin and a web." Saint Withold footed thrice the wold;] The oid copies have Swithold for "Saint Withold," and old at the end of the line instead of "wold." Withold was the Saint popularly invoked against the nightmare. who is whipped from tything to tything, and stocked, punished, and imprisoned; who hath had three suits to his back, six shirts to his body, horse to ride, and weapon to wear,— But mice and rats, and such small deer, Have been Tom's food for seven long year. Beware my follower.-Peace, Smulkin; peace, thou fiend! Modo he 's call'd, and Mahu. (3) 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 KENT. Good my lord, take his offer; go into the house. EDG. How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin. KENT. Impórtune him once more to go, my lord, His wits begin to unsettle. GLO. Now outlaw'd from my blood; he sought my life, No father his son dearer: true to tell thee, [Storm continues. The grief hath craz'd my wits.-What a night's this!- LEAR. O, cry you mercy, sir.— Noble philosopher, your company. EDG. Tom's a-cold. GLO. In, fellow, there, into the hovel: keep thee warm. (First folio omits, had. But mice and rats, and such small deer, Have been Tom's food for seven long year.] This distich, Percy pointed out as part of the description in the old metrical romance of "Sir Bevis of Hamptoun," of the privation endured by that doughty champion during his seven years' imprisonment, "Rattes and myce and such smal dere Was his meate that seven yere." Sig. F. iij. |