Reg. Why not, my Lord? if then they chanc'd to flack ye, We could controul them. If you'll come to me, For now I fpy a danger, I intreat you To bring but five and twenty; to no more Lear. I gave you all Reg. And in good time you gave it. Lear. Made you my Guardians, my depofitaries; But kept a refervation to be follow'd With fuch a number; muft I come to you With five and twenty? Regan, faid you fo? Reg. And fpeak't again, my Lord, no more with me.. Lear. Thofe wicked creatures yet do look wellfavour'd, When 5 Thofe WICKED creatures yet Lear confiders the unnatural bedo icok well-favour'd, When others are more WICKED.] As a little before, in the text [like flatterers] the editors had made a fimilitude where the author intended none; fo here, where he did, they are not in the humour to give it us, becaufe not introduced with the formulary word, like. Lear's fecond daughter proving still more unkind than the firft, he begins to entertain a better opinion of this from the other's greater degree of inhumanity; and expreffes it by a fimilitude taken from the deformities which old age brings on. Thofe WRINKLED creatures yet LED: For fo, instead of wicked, it fhould be read in both places: which correction the word wellfavour'd might have led to. haviour of his daughters under this idea, both in and out of his fenfes. So again, fpeaking of them, in his distraction, he fays, And here's another whofe WARPT looks proclaim what store her heart is made of. Shakespear has the character of a very incorrect writer, and fo, inded, he is. But this character being received, as well as given, in the lump, has made him thought an unfit fubject for critical conjecture: which perhaps may be true, with regard to thofe who know no more of his genius than a general cha. racter of it conveys to them. But we fhould diftinguish. Incorrectness of file may be divid ed into two parts: an inconfiftency of the terms employed with one another; and an incongruity in the conftruction of them. In the first cafe he is rarely faulty; in the fecond, negligent enough. And this could hardly When others are more wicked. Not being worst, Stands in fome rank of praife. I'll go with thee; [To Gonerill. Thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty; hardly be otherwife. For his ideas being the cleareft, and his penetration in difcovering their agreement, difagreement, and relation to each other, the deepeft that ever was in any Poet, his terms of course must be well put together: Nothing occafioning the jumbling of difcordant terms, from broken metaphors, but the cloudiness of the underftanding, and the confequent obfcurity of the ideas: Terms being nothing but the painting of ideas, which he, who fees clearly, will never employ in a dif cordant colouring. On the contrary, a congruity in the conftruction of thefe terms (which anfwers to drawing, as the use of the term does to colouring) is another thing. And ShakeSpear, who owed all to nature, and was hurried on by a warm attention to his ideas, was much lefs exact in the conftruction and grammatical arrangement of his words. The conclufion is, that where we find grofs inaccuracies, in the relation of terms to one another, there we may be confident, the text has been corrupted by his editors: and, on the contrary, that the offences against fyntax are generally his own. Had the Oxford Editor attended to this distinction, he would not perhaps have made it the principal object in his reflared Shakespear, to make his author always fpeak in strict grammar and measure. But it is much cafier to reform fuch flips as never obfcure the fenfe, and are fet right by a grammar-rule or a finger-end, than to reduce a depraved expreffion, which makes nonfenfe of a whole sentence, and whose reformation requires you to enter into the author's way of thinking. WARBURTON. I have given this long note, because the editor feems to think his correction of great importance. I was unwilling to deny my reader any opportunity of conviction which I have had myfelf, and which perhaps may operate upon him, though it has been ineffectual to me, who, having read this elaborate and oftentatious remark, ftill think the old reading beft. The commentator's only objection to the lines as they now ftand, is the difcrepancy of the metaphor, the want of oppofition between wicked and well-favoured. But he might have remembered what he says in his own preface concerning mixed modes. Shakespeare, whofe mind was more intent upon notions than words, had in his thoughts the pulchritude of virtue, and the deformity of wickedness; and though he had mentioned wickednejs made the correlative answer to deformity. Gon. Gon, Hear me, my Lord; What need you five and twenty, ten, or five, Reg. What needs one? Lear. O, reafon not the need; our baseft beggars Are in the poorest thing fuperfluous. Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beafts'. Thou art a lady; Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st, 6 You heav'ns, give me that patience which I need! That all the world fhall-I will do fuch things, The quarto has, poor, old fellow. 7-touch me with noble anger.] It would puzzle one at first to find the fenfe, the drift, and the coherence of this petition. For if the Gods fent this evil for his punishment, how could he expect that they should defeat their own defign, and affift him to revenge his injuries? The folu. tion is, that Shakespeare here makes his fpeaker allude to what the ancient poets tell us of the misfortunes of particular famiLies: Namely, that when the No, I'll not weep. I have full caufe of weeping. Or ere I weep. O fool, I fhall go mad. [Exeunt Lear, Glo'fter, Kent and Fool. Corn. Let us withdraw, 'twill be a storm. [Storm and tempeft. Reg. This houfe is little; the old man and his people Cannot be well beftow'd. Gon. 'Tis his own blame hath put himself from reft, And muft needs tafte his folly. Reg. For his particular, I'll receive him gladly; But not one follower. Gon. So am I purpos'd. Where is my Lord of Glofter? Enter Glo'fter. Corn. Follow'd the old man forth. He is return'd. Glo. The King is in high rage, and will I know not whither. Corn. 'Tis best to give him way, he leads himself. Gon. My Lord, intreat him by no means to stay. Glo. Alack, the night comes on, and the high winds Do forely ruffle, for many miles about There's fcarce a bufh. Reg. O Sir, to wilful men, The injuries, that they themselves procure, Must be their school-mafters. Shut up your doors; And what they may incense him to, being apt Corn. Shut up your doors, my Lord, 'tis a wild night. My Regan counfels well. Come out o'th' ftorm. [Exeunt. ACT III. SCENE I. A HEATH. Aftorm is beard, with thunder and lightning. Enter Kent, and a Gentleman, feverally. KENT. 'HO's there, befides foul weather? Gent. One minded like the weather, most unquietly. Kent. I know you. Where's the King? Gent. Contending with the fretful elements; Bids the wind blow the earth into the fea; Or fwell the curled waters 'bove the main, 8 That things might change, or cease, tears his white hair Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch, Keep their furr dry, unbonneted he runs, And bids what will, take all. 8 Kent. But who is with him? -tears his white hair ;] The fix following verfes were omitted in all the late Editions: I have replaced them from the firft, for they are certainly Shake Spear's. POPE. The first folio ends the fpeech at change, or ceafe, and begins again with Kent's queflion, but who is with bin? The whole fpeech is forcible, but too long for the occafion, and properly retrenched. 9 This night wherein the Cubdrawn bear would couch.] Cubdrawn has been explained to fignify drawn by nature to its young: whereas it means, wh fe dugs are drawn dry by its young. For no animals leave their dens by night but for prey. So that the meaning is, that even hunger, and "the fupport of its young, "would not force the bear to "leave his den in fuch a night." WARBURTON. |