With a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, But to the girdle do the gods inherit, Beneath is all the fiends';1 there's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit,2 burning, scalding, stench, consumption;-Fy, fy, fy! pah; pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination : there's money for thee. Glo. Ó, Let me kiss that hand! Lear. Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality. Glo. O ruin'd piece of nature! This great world Shall so wear out to nought.-Dost thou know me? Lear. I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me? No, do thy worst, blind Cupid; I'll not 6 The fitchew,] A polecat. Pope. 7 nor the soiled horse,] Soiled horse is a term used for a horse that has been fed with hay and corn in the stable during the winter, and is turned out in the spring to take the first flush of grass, or has it cut and carried in to him. This at once cleanses the animal, and fills him with blood. Steevens. 8 Down from the waist they are centaurs,] In The Malcontent, is a thought as singular as this: "Tis now about the immodest waist of night." Steevens. 9 But to the girdle &c.] To inherit in Shakspeare is, to possess. See Vol. II, p. 206, n. 7. But is here used for only. Malone. 1 Beneath is all the fiends;] According to Grecian superstition, every limb of us was consigned to the charge of some particular deity. Gower, De Confessione Amantis, enlarges much on it, and concludes by saying: "And Venus through the letcherie "She kept all doune the remenant "Tothilke office appertainant." Collins. In the old copies the preceding as well as the latter part of Lear's speech is printed as prose. I doubt much whether any part of it was intended for metre. Malone. 2 - there is the sulphurous pit, &c.] Perhaps these lines should be regulated as follows: There is the sulphurous pit, stench, burning, scalding, An ounce of civet, &c. Steevens. 3 Dost thou squiny at me?] To squiny is to look asquint. The word is used by our poet's fellow-comedian, Robert Armin, in A Nest of Ninnies, &c. 4to. 1609: "The world-squinies at this, and looks us one scorning." Maiore. love. Read thou this challenge; mark but the penning of it. Glo. Were all the letters suns, I could not see one. Edg. I would not take this from report ;-it is, And my heart breaks at it. Lear. Read. Glo. What, with the case of eyes?4 Lear. O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light: Yet you see how this world goes. Glo. I see it feelingly. Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes, with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yon' justice rails upon yon' simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: Change places; and, handy-dandy,5 which is the justice, which is the thief?—Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? Glo. Ay, sir. Lear. And the creature run from the cur? There thou 4 What, with the case of eyes?] Mr. Rowe changed the into this, but without necessity. I have restored the old reading. The case of eyes is the socket of either eye. Shakspeare has the expression again in The Winter's Tale: " they seemed almost, with staring on one another, to tear the cases of their eyes." Steevens. In Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1609, we have the same expression: her eyes as jewel-like, 66 "And cas'd as richly." Again, ibidem: 66 Her eye-lids, cases to those heavenly jewels "Which Pericles hath lost, "Begin to part their fringes of bright gold." This could not have been the author's word; for "this case of eyes" in the language of his time signified-this pair of eyes, a sense directly opposite to that intended to be conveyed. Malone. 5 Change places; and, handy-dandy,] The words change places, and, are not in the quartos. Handy-dandy is, I believe, a play among children, in which something is shaken between two hands, and then a guess is made in which hand it is retained. See Fiorio's Italian Dictionary, 1598: "Bazzicchiare. To shake between two hands; to play handy-dandy." Coles in his Latin Dictionary, 1679, renders "to play handy-dandy," by digitis micare; and he is followed by Ainsworth; but they appear to have been mistaken; as is Dr. Johnson in his definition in his Dictionary, which seems to have been formed on the passage before us, misunderstood. He says, Handy-dandy is “a play in which children change hands and places." Malone. might'st behold the great image of authority: a dog's obey'd in office. Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand: Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; To see the things thou dost not.-Now, now, now, now: Edg. O, matter and impertinency mix'd! Reason in madness! Lear. If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes. I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloster: Thou must be patient; we came crying hither. Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air, We wawl, and cry :9-I will preach to thee; mark me. 66 6 Robes, and furr'd gowns, hide all.] So, in The Rape of Lucrece Hiding base sin in pleats of majesty." Malone. From hide all to accuser's lips, the whole passage is wanting in the first edition, being added, I suppose, at his revisal. Johnson. 7 Plate sin—] The old copies read-Place sin. Mr. Pope made the correction. Malone. So, in King Richard II: 8 "Thus plated in habiliments of war." Steevens. I'll able 'em:] An old phrase signifying to qualify, or uphold them. So Scogan, contemporary with Chaucer, says: "Set all my life after thyne ordinaunce, "And able me to mercie or thou deme." Warburton. So Chapman, in his comedy of The Widow's Tears, 1612: "Admitted! ay, into her heart, and I 'll able it.” Again, in his version of the 23d Iliad: I'll able this 9 Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air, We wawl, and cry:] "Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut æquum est Glo. Alack, alack the day! Lear. When we are born, we cry, that we are come To this great stage of fools;———————' -This a good block ?1— It were a delicate stratagem, to shoe A troop of horse with felt:2 I'll put it in proof; Thus also, in Sidney's Arcadia, Lib. II: "The child feeles that, the man that feeling knowes, This a good block?] Perhaps, we should read- Steevens. Upon the king's saying, I will preach to thee, the poet seems to have meant him to pull off his hat, and keep turning it and feeling it, in the attitude of one of the preachers of those times, (whom I have seen so represented in ancient prints) till the idea of felt, which the good hat or block was made of, raises the stratagem in his brain of shoeing a troop of horse with a substance soft as that which he held and moulded between his hands. This makes him start from his preachment.-Block anciently signified the head part of the hat, or the thing on which a hat is formed, and sometimes the hat itself.-See Much Ado about Nothing: "He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it changes with the next block." Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit at several Weapons: "I am so haunted with this broad-brim'd hat, "Of the last progress block, with the young hatband.” Again, in The Two Merry Milkmaids, 1620: “—— my haber. dasher has a new block, and will find me and all my generation in beavers," &c. Again, in Decker's Gul's Hornbook, 1609: "— that cannot observe the time of his hatband, nor know what fashioned block is most kin to his head; for in my opinion, the braine that cannot chuse his felt well," &c. 66 Again, in The Seven deadly Sinnes of London, by Decker, 1606: The blocke for his head alters faster than the felt-maker can fitte him." Again, in Run and a great Cast, an ancient collection of Epigrams, 4to. without date, Epigram 46. In Sextinum: "A pretty blocke Sextinus names his hat; "So much the fitter for his head by that." Steevens. 2 It were a delicate stratagem, to shoe A troop of horse with felt:] i e. with flocks kneaded to a mass, a practice I believe sometimes used in former ages, for it is mentioned in Ariosto: 66 fece nel cadar strepito quanto "Avesse avuto sotto i piedi il feltro." Johnson. Shakspeare however might have adopted the stratagem of shoeing a troop of horse with felt, from the following passage in Fenton's Tragicall Discourses, 4to. bl. 1. 1567: "6 — he attyreth himselfe for the purpose in a night-gowne girt to hym, with a paire of And when I have stolen upon these sons-in-law, Enter a Gentleman, with Attendants. Lear. No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even You shall have ransome. Let me have a surgeon, Gent. You shall have any thing. Lear. No seconds? All myself? Why, this would make a man, a man of salt,5 shoes of felte, leaste the noyse of his feete shoulde discover his goinge." P. 58. Again, in Hay any Worke for a Cooper, an ancient pamphlet, no date: "Their adversaries are very eager: the saints in heaven have felt o' their tongues." Steevens This "delicate stratagem" had actually been put in practice about fifty years before Shakspeare was born, as we learn from Lord Herbert's Life of Henry the Eighth, p. 41. " And now,” says that historian, “having feasted the ladies royally for divers dayes, he [Henry] departed from Tournay to Lisle, [Oct. 13, 1513,] whither he was invited by the lady Margaret, who caused there a juste to be held in an extraordinary manner; the place being a fore-room raised high from the ground by many steps, and paved with black square stones like marble; while the horses, to prevent sliding, were shod with felt or flocks (the Latin words are feltro sive tomento): after which the ladies danced all night." Malone. 3 Then, kill, kill, &c.] This was formerly the word given in the English army, when an onset was made on the enemy. So, in Venus and Adonis: "Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny, "And in a peaceful hour doth cry, kill, kill.” Again, in The Mirrour for Magistrates, 1610, p. 315: "For while the Frenchmen fresh assaulted still, "Our Englishmen came boldly forth at night, 66 Crying, St. George, Salisbury, kill, kill, 5 "And offered freshly with their foes to fight." Malone. The natural fool of fortune.] So, in Romeo and Juliet: "O, I am fortune's fool!" Steevens. a man of salt,] A man of salt is a man of tears. In All's Well that Ends Well, we meet with your salt tears' head ;" and in Troilus and Cressida, "the salt of broken tears." Again, in Corio tanus: "He has betray'd your business, and given up Malone. |