See note (b), p. 75, Vol. I.

c-simular-] That is, simulator, counterfeit.

LEAR. True, 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;
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 :

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.

a Come, bring us to this hovel.] The remainder of the scene is only found in the folio.

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, 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 strange things 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.

In, boy; go first.-[To the Fool.] You houseless

poverty,

Nay, 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 ;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst 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
Tom.

poor

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,*

Hum! 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 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.

c

[Storm continues. LEAR. What, have his daughters brought him to this pass ?

(*) First folio, blow the windes.

(4) First folio, Sword. (1) First folio, Ha's his Daughters.

- go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.] The commentators, with admirable unanimity, 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

Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give 'em all?

FOOL. Nay, he reserved a blanket, else we had been all shamed.

LEAR. Now, all the plagues that in the pen

dulous air

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
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?
Judicious punishment! 'twas this flesh begot
Those pelican daughters.

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 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 lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend.

Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind: Says suum, mun, ha no nonny.

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.—Ïs man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk,

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."

b Hast thou given all to thy two daughters?] So the quarto; the folio reads, "Did'st thou give all to thy daughters?" C- taking!] See note (b), p. 80.

the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfame.-Ha! here's three on's are sophisticated! -Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more 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.

a

EDG. This is the foul fiend* 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.

Saint Withold footed thrice the wold;

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 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; 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.a Beware my follower.-Peace, Smulkin; peace,

thou fiend!

GLO. What, hath your grace no better company? EDG. The prince of darkness is a gentleman; 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.

(*) First folio omits. fiend.

(†) First folio, walkes at. (1) First folio omits, had. Flibbertigibbet:] See quotation from Harsnet, in the Illustrative Comments to this Act.

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."

e Saint Withold footed thrice the wold;] The old copies have Swithold for "Saint Withold," and old at the end of the line

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 seek you out, And bring you where both fire and food is ready.

LEAR. 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. Impórtune him once more to go, my lord.

His wits begin to unsettle.
GLO.

Canst thou blame him? His daughters seek his death:-ah, that good Kent!

He said it would be thus,-poor banish'd man
!-
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!