cry'd, Down, wantons, down: 'Twas her brother, that, in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay. Enter CORNWALL, REGAN, GLOSTER, and Servants. LEAR. Good morrow to you both. CORN. Hail to your grace! [KENT is set at Liberty. REG. I am glad to see your highness. LEAR. Regan, I think you are; I know what reason I have to think so: if thou should'st not be glad, I would divorce me from thy mother's tomb, Sepúlch'ring an adultress.-O, are you free? 1 [TO KENT. Some other time for that.-Beloved Regan, Thy sister's naught: O Regan, she hath tied Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here 2, [Foints to his Heart. I can scarce speak to thee; thou'lt not believe, Of how deprav'd a quality 3-O Regan! 3 REG. I pray you, sir, take patience; I have hope, You less know how to value her desert, Than she to scant her duty *. Rapp'd must be the true reading, as the only sense of the verb -to knap, is to snap, or break asunder. STEEVENS. 1 Sepúlch'ring -] This word is accented in the same manner by Fairfax and Milton: 2 "As if his work should his sepulcher be." C. i. st. 25. she hath tied Milton on Shakspeare, line 15. Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here,] Alluding to the fable of Prometheus. WARBURTON. 3 Or how deprav'd a quality-] Thus the quarto. The folio reads: "With how deprav'd a quality—." JOHNSON. 4 Than she to SCANT her duty.] The word scant is directly contrary to the sense intended. The quarto reads: LEAR. Say, how is that? REG. I cannot think, my sister in the least which is no better. May we not change it thus: "You less know how to value her desert, To scan may be to measure or proportion. Yet our author uses his negatives with such licentiousness, that it is hardly safe to make any alteration Scant may mean to adapt, to fit, to proportion; which sense seems still to be retained in the mechanical term scantling. JOHNSON. Sir Thomas Hanmer had proposed this change of scant into scan; but surely no alteration is necessary. The other readingslack, would answer as well. "You less know how to value her desert, than she (knows) to scant her duty," i. e. than she can be capable of being wanting in her duty. I have at least given the intended meaning of the passage. STEEVENS. 66 Shakspeare, without doubt, intended to make Regan say—“ I have hope that the fact will rather turn out, that you know not how to appreciate her merit, than that she knows how to scant, or be deficient in, her duty." But that he has expressed this sentiment inaccurately, will, I think, clearly appear from inverting the sentence, without changing a word. I have hope (says Regan) that she knows more [or better] how to scant her duty, than you know how to value her desert: i. e. I have hope, that she is more perfect, more an adept, (if the expression may be allowed,) in the non-performance of her duty, than you are perfect, or accurate, in the estimation of her merit. In The Winter's Tale we meet with an inaccuracy of the same kind: I ne'er heard yet, "That any of these bolder vices wanted "Less impudence to gainsay what they did, where, as Dr. Johnson has justly observed, "wanted should be had, or less should be more." Again, in Cymbeline: " be it but to fortify her judgment, which else an easy battery might lay flat, for taking a beggar without less quality." Here also less should certainly be more. Again, in Macbeth : "Who cannot want the thought how monstrous "It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain "To kill the gracious Duncan?" Here unquestionably for cannot the poet should have written can. See Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Sc. XII. If Lear is less knowing in the valuation of Goneril's desert, than Would fail her obligation: If, sir, perchance, LEAR. My curses on her! REG. O, sir, you are old; Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confíne: you should be rul'd, and led By some discretion, that discerns your state Better than you yourself: Therefore, I pray you, That to our sister you do make return; Say, you have wrong'd her, sir3. LEAR. Do you Ask her forgiveness? but mark how this becomes the house? she is in her scanting of her duty, then she knows better how to scant or be deficient in her duty, than he knows how to appreciate her desert. Will any one maintain, that Regan meant to express a hope that this would prove the case? Shakspeare perplexed himself by placing the word less before know; for if he had written, I have hope that you rather know how to make her desert less than it is, (to under-rate it in your estimation) than that she at all knows how to scant her duty," all would have been clear; but, by placing less before know, this meaning is destroyed. Those who imagine that this passage is accurately expressed as it now stands, deceive themselves by this fallacy: in paraphrasing it, they always take the word less out of its place, and connect it, or some other synonymous word, with the word desert. MALONE. 5 Say, &c.] This, as well as the following speech, is omitted in the quartos. STEEVENS. Do you but mark how this becomes THE HOUSE?] The order of families, duties of relation. WARBURTon. In The Tempest we have again nearly the same sentiment: "But O how oddly will it sound that I 66 "Must ask my child forgiveness?" MALONE. Dr. Warburton's explanation may be supported by the following passage in Milton on Divorce, b. ii. ch. xii. : the restraint whereof, who is not too thick sighted, may see how hurtful, how destructive, it is to the house, the church, and commonwealth!" TOLLET. The old reading may likewise receive additional support from Dear daughter, I confess that I am old; Age is unnecessary: on my knees I beg, [Kneeling. That you'll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food. REG. Good sir, no more; these are unsightly tricks : Return you to my sister. Lear. Never, Regan: She hath abated me of half my train; Look'd black upon me; struck me with her tongue, 46 the following passage in The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, 1598 : Come up to supper; it will become the house wonderfull well." Mr. Tollet has since furnished me with the following extract from Sir Thomas Smith's Commonwealth of England, 4to. 1601, chap. ii. which has much the same expression, and explains it, "They two together [man and wife] ruleth the house. The house I call here, the man, the woman, their children, their servants, bond and free," &c. STEEVENS. Again, in Painter's Palace of Pleasure :- "The gentleman's wife one day could not refraine (beholding a stagges head set up in the gentleman's house) from breaking into a laughter before his face, saying how that head became the house very well." HENDERSON. 7 Age is UNNECESSARY :] i. e. Old age has few wants. JOHNSON. This usage of the word unnecessary is quite without example; and I believe my learned coadjutor has rather improved than explained the meaning of his author, who seems to have designed to say no more than that it seems unnecessary to children that the lives of their parents should be prolonged. Age is unnecessary," may mean, old people are useless. So, in The Old Law, by Massinger : 66 66 your laws extend not to desert, "But to unnecessary years; and, my lord, "His are not such." STEEVENS. Unnecessary in Lear's speech, I believe, means-in want of necessaries, unable to procure them. TYRWHITT. LOOK'D BLACK upon me ;] To look black, may easily be explain'd to look cloudy or gloomy. See Milton: "So frown'd the mighty combatants, that hell "Grew darker at their frown." JOHNSON. So, Holinshed, vol. iii. p. 1157: repined, and looked black." TOLLET. 66 the bishops thereat Most serpent-like, upon the very heart :- On her ingrateful top! Strike her young bones, CORN. Fye, fye, fye! LEAR. You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty, You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful sun, REG. 9 TO FALL and blast her pride!] Thus the quarto: the folio reads not so well, to fall and blister. JOHNSON. Fall is, I think, used here as an active verb, signifying to humble or pull down. Ye fen-suck'd fogs, drawn from the earth by the powerful action of the sun, infect her beauty, so as to fall and blast, i. e. humble and destroy her pride." Shakspeare in other places uses fall in an active sense. So, in Othello: "Each drop she falls will prove a crocodile." Again, in Troilus and Cressida : 66 make him fall "His crest, that prouder than blue Iris bends." In the old play of King Leir our poet found "I ever thought that pride would have a fall." MALONE. I see no occasion for supposing with Malone, that the word fall is to be considered in an active sense, as signifying to humble or pull down; it appears to me to be used in this passage in its common acceptation; and that the plain meaning is this, “You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn up by the sun in order to fall down again and blast her pride." M. MASON. I once proposed the same explanation to Dr. Johnson, but he would not receive it. STEEVENS. I when the rash mood's on.] Thus the folio. The quartos read only," when the rash mood"- perhaps leaving the sentence purposely unfinished, as indeed I should wish it to be left, rather than countenance the admission of a line so inharmonious as that in the text. STEEVENS. It should be observed that the line objected to for its want of harmony, is rendered inharmonious by an alteration introduced by Mr. Steevens, who reads mood's on, instead of mood is on, as it stands in the folio, and is printed in the text. BoS WELL. |