Remarks, Critical, Conjectural, and Explanatory, Upon the Plays of Shakspeare

This is barefaced interpolation: the king's impatience did not want, nor would not wait for, any answer, here.

Fiery! the fiery duke! tell the hot duke, that."

"That" is not wanted.

Am fallen out with my more headier

will,

"To take the indispos'd and sickly fit "For the sound man."

I condemn my rashness that could take the indisposed and sickly fit, &c. The ellipsis is, indeed, harsh and unwarrantable.

This act persuades me."

A syllable here is wanting to the verse, which might be supplied with a word that would enforce the sense:

"Should he sit here? this act alone persuades me."

Mr. Steevens proposes almost, but that cautious qualified term would ill accord with the present temper of the king.

426.

I'll beat the drum, "Till it cry-sleep to death."

The meaning of this passage is not very obvious; "it" does not, perhaps, refer to the drum, but to the general dissolution of the world; doomsday; till the general cry shall be heard, (i. e. according to familiar phraseology, till it cry,) sleep to death, or sleep for ever.

428.

Good morrow to you both."

The metre is deranged here: I would propose, with some of the modern copies :

'O, you are come; good morrow to you both."

Corn. "Hail to your grace!"

Reg. " Lear. "

429.

I am glad to see your highness." Regan, I think you are; I know what

reason

I have to think so; shouldst thou not be glad," &c.

Than she to scant her duty." "Scant her duty" is here, certainly, a mistake, but I fear it is the author's own: it is a-kin to some others before us, such as in the Merchant of Venice:

"You may as well forbid the mountain pines "To wag their high tops and to make no noise.

Which would seem to be, to bid them be clamorous; the very reverse of the intention.

"Than she to scant her duty."

Lear. "

Say, how is that?"

Say" is a stupid interpolation.

Would fail her obligation; if, sir, perchance." And so is "sir.”

And to such wholesome end,

"I must believe, as clears her from all blame."

Some words, like these supplied, have, I suppose, been lost."

432. " To fall and blast her pride."

"To fall," I think, is clearly used in the active sense, though the passage will not admit of Mr.

Malone's construction; "to fall and blast her pride" is only a continuance or amplification of the curse, and the meaning, I believe is :-" Infect her beauty, ye fen-sucked fogs, which I trust will be drawn up by the sun, for the purpose of putting down and blasting her pride."— In this active use of " to fall," Shakspeare has been followed by others, as by Rowe, in a play written professedly in imitation of our poet, Jane Shore, where Gloster says,

"The queen's relations

"Have fall'n their haughty crests.'

433. "Thy tender hefted nature.”

The quartos read, "tender hested nature," neither phrase is very intelligible, but the earliest, I think, is the least exceptionable.—“ Thy tender hested," or "tender behested nature" may mean, thy nature, formed to gentleness, by the original pleasure or command of the creator:"hefted," even admitting such a participle of "to heave," can supply no tolerable sense; but I believe the passage is corrupt, and if we dismiss the unintelligible part of it, we shall at least obtain metre:

Thy tender nature shall not give thee o'er "To harshness; no, her eyes are fierce, but thine "Do comfort," &c.

435.

If your sweet sway

"Allow obedience."

"Allowance" for estimation, approbation, we find in Troilus and Cressida, Act 2, 491.

"A stirring dwarf we do allowance give
"Before a sleeping lion."

Lion," by the way, I suppose should be "giant."

Lear. "Who stock'd my servant? Regan, I have good hope

"Thou didst not know on't."

These words, in the quarto, with only strucke, instead of stock'd are given to Goneril at her en

trance.

436.

All's not offence, that indiscretion finds."

To find," here, though I believe it has nothing to do with the technical sense that Mr. Edwards would annex to it, has, certainly, a stronger meaning than that which Mr. Steevens supposes," to think :" it is to have a fixed persuasion, or mental conviction of.

Conform, by your deportment, to your real condition; and since you are impotent, do not affect to be powerful.

438. "I and my hundred knights.

Not altogether so."

We should read, as doubtless it was written by the author, "not allto so." Allto or alto, for altogether, occurs in other parts of these works, and is also used by Milton:

"Her wings-that-were allto ruffled," &c.