Glo. He, that will think to live till he be old, Give me some help:-0 cruel! O ye gods! Reg. One side will mock another; the other too. Serv. Hold your hand, my lord: I have serv'd you ever since I was a child; But better service have I never done you, Than now to bid you hold. Reg. How now, you dog? Serv. If you did wear a beard upon your chin, I'd shake it on this quarrel; What do you mean? Corn. My villain13 ! [Draws, and runs at him. Serv. Nay, then come on, and take the chance of anger. [Draws. They fight. CORN. is wounded. Reg. Give me thy sword.-[To another Serv.] A peasant stand up thus! [Snatches a Sword, comes behind him, and stabs him. Serv. O, I am slain!-My lord, you have one eye left To see some mischief on him :-0! [Dies. Corn. Lest it see more, prevent it:-Out, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now? [Tears out GLOSTER's other eye, and throws it on the ground. Glo. All dark and comfortless.-Where's my son Edmund ? Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature, To quit14 this horrid act. Reg. Out, treacherous villain! Thou call'st on him that hates thee: it was he 13 Villain is perhaps here used in its original sense, of one in servitude. 14 Requite. 15 Overture here means an opening, a discovery. It was he who first laid thy treasons open to us.' Glo. Then Edgar was abus'd. O my follies! Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him! Reg. Go, thrust him out at gates, and let him smell His way to Dover.-How is't, my lord? How look you? Corn. I have receiv'd a hurt :-Follow me, lady.Turn out that eyeless villain;-throw this slave Upon the dunghill.-Regan, I bleed apace: Untimely comes this hurt: Give me your arm. [Exit CORNWALL, led by REGAN;-Servants unbind GLOSTER, and lead him out. 1 Serv. I'll never care what wickedness I do16, If this man comes to good. 2 Serv. If she live long, And, in the end, meet the old course of death1, Women will all turn monsters. 1 Serv. Let's follow the old earl, and get the Bedlam To lead him where he would; his roguish madness Allows itself to any thing. 2 Serv. Go thou; I'll fetch some flax, and whites of eggs18, To apply to his bleeding face. Now, heaven help him!] [Exeunt severally. 16 This short dialogue is only found in the quartos. It is, as Theobald observes, full of nature. Servants could hardly see such barbarity committed without pity; and the vengeance that they presume must overtake the actors of it, is a sentiment and doctrine well worthy of the stage and of the great moral poet. 17 i. e. die a natural death. 18 Steevens asserted that this passage was ridiculed by Ben Jonson in The Case is Altered. Mr. Gifford has shown the folly and falsehood of the assertion; and that it was only a common allusion to a method of stanching blood practised in the poet's time by every barber-surgeon and old woman in the kingdom. ACT IV. SCENE I. The Heath. Enter EDGAR. Edg. Yet better thus, and known to be contemn'd, Than still contemn'd and flatter'd1 To be worst, The lowest, and most dejected thing of fortune, Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear: The lamentable change is from the best; The worst returns to laughter. Welcome then2, Thou unsubstantial air, that I embrace! The wretch, that thou hast blown unto the worst, Owes nothing to thy blasts. But who comes here? Enter GLOSTER, led by an old Man. My father, poorly led?- World, world, O world! But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee, Life would not yield to age3. Old. Man. O my good lord, I have been your tenant, and your father's tenant, these fourscore years. It is better to be thus and openly contemned, than to be flattered and secretly contemned.' The expression in this speech, 'owes nothing to thy blasts,' might seem to be copied from Virgil, En. xi. 51: 'Nos juvenem exanimum, et nil jam cœlestibus ullis The meaning of Edgar's speech seems to be this: Yet it is better to be thus in this fixed and acknowledged contemptible state, than living in affluence, to be flattered and despised at the same time. He who is placed in the worst and lowest state, has this advantage, he lives in hope, and not in fear, of a reverse of fortune. The lamentable change is from affluence to beggary. He laughs at the idea of changing for the worse, who is already as low as possible.'Sir J. Reynolds. 2 The next two lines and a half are not in the quartos. 30 world! if reverses of fortune and changes such as I now see and feel, from ease and affluence to poverty and misery, did not show us the little value of life, we should never submit with any kind of resignation to death, the necessary consequences of old age; we should cling to life more strongly than we do.' Glo. Away, get thee away; good friend, be gone: Thy comforts can do me no good at all, Thee they may hurt, Old. Man. Alack, sir, you cannot see your way. Our means secures us1, and our mere defects Old Man. How now? Who's there? Edg. [Aside.] O gods! Who is't can say, I am at the worst? I am worse than e'er I was. Old Man. 'Tis poor mad Tom. Edg. [Aside.] And worse I may be yet; The worst is not, So long as we can say, This is the worst. Old Man. Fellow, where goest? Glo. Glo. He has some reason, else he could not beg. Was then scarce friends with him: I have heard As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; 4 Mean is here put for our moderate or mean conditions. It was sometimes the practice of the poet's age to use a plural, when the subject spoken of related to more persons than one. To avoid the equivoque Pope changed the reading of the old copy to our mean secures us, which is certainly more intelligible, and may have been the reading intended, as meane being spelled with a final e might easily be mistaken for means, which is the reading of the old copy. 5 So in another scene, I see it feelingly.' 6i. e. while we live; for while we yet continue to have a sense of feeling, something worse than the present may still happen. He recalls his former rash conclusion. 7 'Dii nos quasi pilas homines habent.' Plaut. Captiv. Prol. i. 22. Edg. How should this be?— Bad is the trade must play the fool to sorrow, Ang'ring itself and others. [Aside.]-Bless thee, master! Glo. Is that the naked fellow? Old Man. Ay, my lord. A Glo. Then, 'pr'ythee, get thee gone: If, for my sake, Thou wilt o'ertake us, hence a mile or twain, l'the way to Dover, do it for ancient love; And bring some covering for this naked soul, Whom I'll entreat to lead me. Old Man. Alack, sir, he's mad. Glo. 'Tis the time's plague, when madmen lead the blind. Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure; Old Man. I'll bring him the best 'parel that I have, Come on't what will. Glo. Sirrah, naked fellow. [Exit. Edg. Poor Tom's a-cold.-I cannot daub8 it further. Glo. Come hither, fellow. [Aside. Edg. [Aside.] And yet I must.-Bless they sweet eyes, they bleed. Glo. Know'st thou the way to Dover? Edg. Both stile and gate, horse-way, and footpath. Poor Tom hath been scared out of his good wits: Bless the good man from the foul fiend! [Five fiends9 have been in poor Tom at once; of Balles to the starres,' &c. 8 i. e. disguise it. So smooth he daub'd his vice with show of virtue.' King Richard 111. 9 The devil in Ma Mainy confessed his name to be Modu, and that he had besides himself seven other spirits, and all of them captaines and of great fame. Then Edmundes (the exorcist) began againe with great earnestness, and all the company cried out, &c.so as both that wicked prince Modu and his company might be cast out.-Harsnet, p. 163. This passage will account for five fiends having been in poor Tom at once.' |