Act 4, Scene 6

The country near Dover.

[Enter Gloster, and Edgar dressed like a peasant.]
Gloucester
2492 When shall I come to the top of that same hill?
Edgar
2493 You do climb up it now: look, how we labour.
Gloucester
2494 Methinks the ground is even.
Edgar
2495 Horrible steep.
2496 Hark, do you hear the sea?
Gloucester
2497 No, truly.
Edgar
2498 Why, then, your other senses grow imperfect
2499 By your eyes' anguish.
Gloucester
2500 So may it be indeed:
2501 Methinks thy voice is alter'd; and thou speak'st
2502 In better phrase and matter than thou didst.
Edgar
2503 You are much deceiv'd: in nothing am I chang'd
2504 But in my garments.
Gloucester
2505 Methinks you're better spoken.
Edgar
2506 Come on, sir; here's the place:—stand still.—How fearful
2507 And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!
2508 The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
2509 Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
2510 Hangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade!
2511 Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
2512 The fishermen that walk upon the beach
2513 Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
2514 Diminish'd to her cock; her cock a buoy
2515 Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge
2516 That on the unnumber'd idle pebble chafes
2517 Cannot be heard so high.—I'll look no more;
2518 Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
2519 Topple down headlong.
Gloucester
2520 Set me where you stand.
Edgar
2521 Give me your hand:—you are now within a foot
2522 Of th' extreme verge: for all beneath the moon
2523 Would I not leap upright.
Gloucester
2524 Let go my hand.
2525 Here, friend, 's another purse; in it a jewel
2526 Well worth a poor man's taking: fairies and gods
2527 Prosper it with thee! Go thou further off;
2528 Bid me farewell, and let me hear thee going.
Edgar
2529 Now fare ye well, good sir.
[Seems to go.]
Gloucester
2530 With all my heart.
[Aside.]
Edgar
2531 Why I do trifle thus with his despair
2532 Is done to cure it.
Gloucester
2533 O you mighty gods!
2534 This world I do renounce, and, in your sights,
2535 Shake patiently my great affliction off:
2536 If I could bear it longer, and not fall
2537 To quarrel with your great opposeless wills,
2538 My snuff and loathed part of nature should
2539 Burn itself out. If Edgar live, O, bless him!—
2540 Now, fellow, fare thee well.
Edgar
2541 Gone, sir:—farewell.—
[Gloster leaps, and falls along.]
Edgar
2542 And yet I know not how conceit may rob
2543 The treasury of life when life itself
2544 Yields to the theft: had he been where he thought,
2545 By this had thought been past.—Alive or dead?
2546 Ho you, sir! friend! Hear you, sir?—speak!—
2547 Thus might he pass indeed:—yet he revives.—
2548 What are you, sir?
Gloucester
2549 Away, and let me die.
Edgar
2550 Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air,
2551 So many fathom down precipitating,
2552 Thou'dst shiver'd like an egg: but thou dost breathe;
2553 Hast heavy substance; bleed'st not; speak'st; art sound.
2554 Ten masts at each make not the altitude
2555 Which thou hast perpendicularly fell:
2556 Thy life is a miracle.—Speak yet again.
Gloucester
2557 But have I fall'n, or no?
Edgar
2558 From the dread summit of this chalky bourn.
2559 Look up a-height;—the shrill-gorg'd lark so far
2560 Cannot be seen or heard: do but look up.
Gloucester
2561 Alack, I have no eyes.—
2562 Is wretchedness depriv'd that benefit
2563 To end itself by death? 'Twas yet some comfort
2564 When misery could beguile the tyrant's rage
2565 And frustrate his proud will.
Edgar
2566 Give me your arm:
2567 Up:—so.—How is't? Feel you your legs? You stand.
Gloucester
2568 Too well, too well.
Edgar
2569 This is above all strangeness.
2570 Upon the crown o' the cliff what thing was that
2571 Which parted from you?
Gloucester
2572 A poor unfortunate beggar.
Edgar
2573 As I stood here below, methought his eyes
2574 Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses,
2575 Horns whelk'd and wav'd like the enridged sea:
2576 It was some fiend; therefore, thou happy father,
2577 Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours
2578 Of men's impossibility, have preserv'd thee.
Gloucester
2579 I do remember now: henceforth I'll bear
2580 Affliction till it do cry out itself,
2581 'Enough, enough,' and die. That thing you speak of,
2582 I took it for a man; often 'twould say,
2583 'The fiend, the fiend':—he led me to that place.
Edgar
2584 Bear free and patient thoughts.—But who comes here?
[Enter Lear, fantastically dressed up with flowers.]
Edgar
2585 The safer sense will ne'er accommodate
2586 His master thus.
King Lear
2587 No, they cannot touch me for coining;
2588 I am the king himself.
Edgar
2589 O thou side-piercing sight!
King Lear
2590 Nature 's above art in that respect.—There's your press money.
2591 That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper: draw me a
2592 clothier's yard.—Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace;—this piece
2593 of toasted cheese will do't. There's my gauntlet; I'll prove it
2594 on a giant.—Bring up the brown bills. O, well flown, bird!—i'
2595 the clout, i' the clout: hewgh!—Give the word.
Edgar
2596 Sweet marjoram.
King Lear
2597 Pass.
Gloucester
2598 I know that voice.
King Lear
2599 Ha! Goneril with a white beard!—They flattered me like a dog;
2600 and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were
2601 there. To say 'ay' and 'no' to everything I said!—'Ay' and 'no',
2602 too, was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, and
2603 the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at
2604 my bidding; there I found 'em, there I smelt 'em out. Go to, they
2605 are not men o' their words: they told me I was everything; 'tis a
2606 lie—I am not ague-proof.
Gloucester
2607 The trick of that voice I do well remember:
2608 Is't not the king?
King Lear
2609 Ay, every inch a king:
2610 When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.
2611 I pardon that man's life.—What was thy cause?—
2612 Adultery?—
2613 Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No:
2614 The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly
2615 Does lecher in my sight.
2616 Let copulation thrive; for Gloster's bastard son
2617 Was kinder to his father than my daughters
2618 Got 'tween the lawful sheets.
2619 To't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers.—
2620 Behold yond simpering dame,
2621 Whose face between her forks presages snow;
2622 That minces virtue, and does shake the head
2623 To hear of pleasure's name;—
2624 The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't
2625 With a more riotous appetite.
2626 Down from the waist they are centaurs,
2627 Though women all above:
2628 But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
2629 Beneath is all the fiend's; there's hell, there's darkness,
2630 There is the sulphurous pit; burning, scalding, stench,
2631 consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!
2632 Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my
2633 imagination: there's money for thee.
Gloucester
2634 O, let me kiss that hand!
King Lear
2635 Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
Gloucester
2636 O ruin'd piece of nature! This great world
2637 Shall so wear out to naught.—Dost thou know me?
King Lear
2638 I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me?
2639 No, do thy worst, blind Cupid; I'll not love.—Read thou this
2640 challenge; mark but the penning of it.
Gloucester
2641 Were all the letters suns, I could not see one.
Edgar
2642 I would not take this from report;—it is,
2643 And my heart breaks at it.
King Lear
2644 Read.
Gloucester
2645 What, with the case of eyes?
King Lear
2646 O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head, nor no money
2647 in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a
2648 light: yet you see how this world goes.
Gloucester
2649 I see it feelingly.
King Lear
2650 What, art mad? A man may see how the world goes with no eyes.
2651 Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple
2652 thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which
2653 is the justice, which is the thief?—Thou hast seen a farmer's
2654 dog bark at a beggar?
Gloucester
2655 Ay, sir.
King Lear
2656 And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold
2657 the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office.—
2658 Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
2659 Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
2660 Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind
2661 For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.
2662 Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
2663 Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
2664 And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
2665 Arm it in rags, a pygmy's straw does pierce it.
2666 None does offend, none.—I say none; I'll able 'em:
2667 Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
2668 To seal the accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes;
2669 And, like a scurvy politician, seem
2670 To see the things thou dost not.—Now, now, now, now:
2671 Pull off my boots: harder, harder:—so.
Edgar
2672 O, matter and impertinency mix'd!
2673 Reason, in madness!
King Lear
2674 If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.
2675 I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloster:
2676 Thou must be patient; we came crying hither:
2677 Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air
2678 We wawl and cry.—I will preach to thee: mark.
Gloucester
2679 Alack, alack the day!
King Lear
2680 When we are born, we cry that we are come
2681 To this great stage of fools—This' a good block:—
2682 It were a delicate stratagem to shoe
2683 A troop of horse with felt: I'll put't in proof,;
2684 And when I have stol'n upon these sons-in-law,
2685 Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!
[Enter a Gentleman, with Attendants]
King Lear
2686 .
Gentleman
2687 O, here he is: lay hand upon him.—Sir,
2688 Your most dear daughter,—
King Lear
2689 No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even
2690 The natural fool of fortune.—Use me well;
2691 You shall have ransom. Let me have surgeons;
2692 I am cut to the brains.
Gentleman
2693 You shall have anything.
King Lear
2694 No seconds? all myself?
2695 Why, this would make a man a man of salt,
2696 To use his eyes for garden water-pots,
2697 Ay, and for laying Autumn's dust.
Gentleman
2698 Good sir,—
King Lear
2699 I will die bravely, like a smug bridegroom. What!
2700 I will be jovial: come, come, I am a king,
2701 My masters, know you that.
Gentleman
2702 You are a royal one, and we obey you.
King Lear
2703 Then there's life in't. Nay, an you get it, you shall get it
2704 by running. Sa, sa, sa, sa!
[Exit running. Attendants follow.]
Gentleman
2705 A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch,
2706 Past speaking of in a king!—Thou hast one daughter
2707 Who redeems nature from the general curse
2708 Which twain have brought her to.
Edgar
2709 Hail, gentle sir.
Gentleman
2710 Sir, speed you. What's your will?
Edgar
2711 Do you hear aught, sir, of a battle toward?
Gentleman
2712 Most sure and vulgar: every one hears that
2713 Which can distinguish sound.
Edgar
2714 But, by your favour,
2715 How near's the other army?
Gentleman
2716 Near and on speedy foot; the main descry
2717 Stands on the hourly thought.
Edgar
2718 I thank you sir: that's all.
Gentleman
2719 Though that the queen on special cause is here,
2720 Her army is mov'd on.
Edgar
2721 I thank you, sir.
[Exit Gentleman.]
Gloucester
2722 You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me;
2723 Let not my worser spirit tempt me again
2724 To die before you please!
Edgar
2725 Well pray you, father.
Gloucester
2726 Now, good sir, what are you?
Edgar
2727 A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows;
2728 Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows,
2729 Am pregnant to good pity. Give me your hand,
2730 I'll lead you to some biding.
Gloucester
2731 Hearty thanks:
2732 The bounty and the benison of heaven
2733 To boot, and boot!
[Enter Oswald.]
Oswald
2734 A proclaim'd prize! Most happy!
2735 That eyeless head of thine was first fram'd flesh
2736 To raise my fortunes.—Thou old unhappy traitor,
2737 Briefly thyself remember:—the sword is out
2738 That must destroy thee.
Gloucester
2739 Now let thy friendly hand
2740 Put strength enough to it.
[Edgar interposes.]
Oswald
2741 Wherefore, bold peasant,
2742 Dar'st thou support a publish'd traitor? Hence;
2743 Lest that the infection of his fortune take
2744 Like hold on thee. Let go his arm.
Edgar
2745 Chill not let go, zir, without vurther 'casion.
Oswald
2746 Let go, slave, or thou diest!
Edgar
2747 Good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor voke pass. An chud
2748 ha' bin zwaggered out of my life, 'twould not ha' bin zo long as
2749 'tis by a vortnight. Nay, come not near the old man; keep out,
2750 che vore ye, or ise try whether your costard or my bat be the
2751 harder: chill be plain with you.
Oswald
2752 Out, dunghill!
Edgar
2753 Chill pick your teeth, zir. Come! No matter vor your foins.
[They fight, and Edgar knocks him down.]
Oswald
2754 Slave, thou hast slain me:—villain, take my purse:
2755 If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body;
2756 And give the letters which thou find'st about me
2757 To Edmund Earl of Gloster; seek him out
2758 Upon the British party: O, untimely death!
[Dies.]
Edgar
2759 I know thee well: a serviceable villain;
2760 As duteous to the vices of thy mistress
2761 As badness would desire.
Gloucester
2762 What, is he dead?
Edgar
2763 Sit you down, father; rest you.—
2764 Let's see these pockets; the letters that he speaks of
2765 May be my friends.—He's dead; I am only sorry
2766 He had no other death's-man. Let us see:—
2767 Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not:
2768 To know our enemies' minds, we'd rip their hearts;
2769 Their papers is more lawful.
[Reads.]
Edgar
2770 'Let our reciprocal vows be remembered. You have many
2771 opportunities to cut him off: if your will want not, time and
2772 place will be fruitfully offered. There is nothing done if he
2773 return the conqueror: then am I the prisoner, and his bed my
2774 gaol; from the loathed warmth whereof deliver me, and supply the
2775 place for your labour.
2776 'Your (wife, so I would say) affectionate servant,
2777 'Goneril.'
2778 O indistinguish'd space of woman's will!
2779 A plot upon her virtuous husband's life;
2780 And the exchange my brother!—Here in the sands
2781 Thee I'll rake up, the post unsanctified
2782 Of murderous lechers: and in the mature time
2783 With this ungracious paper strike the sight
2784 Of the death-practis'd duke: for him 'tis well
2785 That of thy death and business I can tell.
[Exit Edgar, dragging out the body.]
Gloucester
2786 The king is mad: how stiff is my vile sense,
2787 That I stand up, and have ingenious feeling
2788 Of my huge sorrows! Better I were distract:
2789 So should my thoughts be sever'd from my griefs,
2790 And woes by wrong imaginations lose
2791 The knowledge of themselves.
Edgar
2792 Give me your hand:
[A drum afar off.]
Edgar
2793 Far off methinks I hear the beaten drum:
2794 Come, father, I'll bestow you with a friend.
[Exeunt.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 2508archaic vocab
“crows and choughs that wing the midway air”
A 'chough' (pronounced 'chuff') is a glossy black, red-billed bird of the crow family (Pyrrhocorax), common on sea-cliffs in England. 'Midway air' means the mid-point between the cliff top and the sea below. Edgar is fabricating an awe-inspiring vertical distance so extreme that birds flying at the halfway point look no bigger than beetles.
TLN 2510historical topical
“gathers samphire—dreadful trade!”
Samphire (rock samphire, Crithmum maritimum) was a salt-flavored herb gathered from cliff faces for pickling and use as a condiment; the trade was proverbially dangerous because gatherers had to be lowered on ropes down sea cliffs. Edgar uses the detail to authenticate the vertiginous height he is describing to the blind Gloucester.
TLN 2513archaic vocab
“yond tall anchoring bark, Diminish'd to her cock”
A 'bark' is a sailing ship; a 'cock' (or cock-boat) is the small rowing dinghy towed behind it. Edgar is saying that from the imagined cliff-top, the anchored ship looks as small as its own little dinghy, and the dinghy itself has nearly vanished from sight. The descending scale — ship, boat, buoy — builds the sense of impossible height.
historical Dover and the cliff
TLN 2526cultural context
“fairies and gods Prosper it with thee”
Gloucester asks the fairy folk and gods to make the gift prosperous — to bless it and cause it to grow. The invocation of both 'fairies' and 'gods' marks the play's pagan, pre-Christian ancient Britain setting, where supernatural powers are neither named nor given Christian identities. Throughout the play characters swear by gods (plural) and invoke nature spirits rather than one God.
historical King Leir and legendary Britain
TLN 2531rhetorical device
“I do trifle thus with his despair Is done to cure it”
Edgar explains his deception in an aside: he is playing with Gloucester's despair in order to cure it. 'Trifle' here means to handle lightly, to mock — he has staged a fake suicide leap from a fake cliff. The logic is that the shock of 'surviving' will break the suicidal resolve; the deception is therapeutic rather than cruel. This is the play's most explicit statement of the 'cruel to be kind' strategy.
TLN 2538archaic vocab
“My snuff and loathed part of nature should Burn itself out”
'Snuff' means the burnt-down, guttering end of a candle-wick — the dim, smouldering remnant. Gloucester is saying that if he could endure longer, the last smouldering piece of his life would simply burn itself out on its own. The image compares his remaining life to the last unwanted stub of a candle that nobody has bothered to snuff out.
TLN 2542archaic vocab
“conceit may rob The treasury of life when life itself Yields to the theft”
'Conceit' here means imagination, or the power of a mental idea. Edgar wonders aloud whether the force of imagination alone — believing one has fallen from a fatal height — can kill a man whose body is willing to die. The thought is medically serious: Shakespeare and his contemporaries held that intense imagination could cause physical death. Gloucester's survival proves that the 'treasury of life' (the stock of life remaining in him) has not yet yielded to that theft.
TLN 2573stage direction note
“his eyes Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses, Horns whelk'd and wav'd like the enridged sea”
Edgar is improvising a description of the 'fiend' that supposedly accompanied Gloucester to the cliff edge — a creature with enormous glowing eyes, grotesque many-folded ('whelk'd') horns, and a corrugated body like a stormy sea. 'Whelk'd' means ridged or coiled like a whelk shell. The purpose is to persuade Gloucester that a demon led him to his near-death, so that Gloucester will interpret his survival as divine mercy rather than random accident.
historical Harsnett's Declaration and Poor Tom's devils
TLN 2577archaic vocab
“clearest gods, who make them honours Of men's impossibility”
'Clearest' means most pure or most just. The phrase 'make them honours of men's impossibility' means: the gods earn their glory and worship precisely by doing what is impossible for men — here, miraculously preserving someone from an unsurvivable fall. Edgar is giving Gloucester a reason to go on living: what you thought was random survival is the gods' deliberate act, their way of showing their power.
TLN 2585archaic vocab
“The safer sense will ne'er accommodate His master thus”
'Safer sense' means a sane mind. 'Accommodate' means to dress or equip. Edgar's aside comments that a man in his right mind would never dress himself as Lear has dressed himself — crowned with weeds and wild flowers — confirming to the audience that what they are witnessing is genuine madness, not performance. Where Edgar is acting mad, Lear is actually mad.
TLN 2587historical topical
“they cannot touch me for coining; I am the king himself”
Counterfeiting the king's coin ('coining') was a capital offence — high treason in Elizabethan England. Lear's madness seizes on a specific royal privilege: the monarch cannot be prosecuted for coining because the coin carries his own image and derives its authority from him. The fragment reveals a mind darting between real legal knowledge (kings are the source of currency's validity) and complete confusion about where he is and why.
TLN 2590historical topical
“There's your press money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper”
'Press money' is the small advance payment given to a man when he is conscripted ('pressed') into the king's service. A 'crow-keeper' is a scarecrow, or a boy employed to scare away crows from crops — hence someone with a bow who looks entirely incompetent. Lear has slipped into a military fantasy, reviewing troops and finding them useless.
TLN 2599archaic vocab
“They flattered me like a dog; and told me I had white hairs in my beard”
Lear accuses his courtiers of fawning on him as dogs fawn on their masters. 'White hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there' means they told him he was wise before he had lived long enough to earn wisdom — flattery about his judgment that was false from the start. The grievance is central to the play: Lear was told what he wanted to hear ('ay and no to everything') rather than the truth.
TLN 2601biblical allusion
“'Ay' and 'no', too, was no good divinity”
Lear refers to the biblical injunction that a man's word should simply be yes or no — any more than this 'cometh of evil' (Matthew 5:37, Geneva 1599). His courtiers' empty agreement to everything was 'no good divinity' — bad theology, false to the standard of plain honest speech that scripture requires. The sycophants who said 'ay and no' to whatever he said were sinning against the biblical requirement of honest speech.
TLN 2614archaic vocab
“The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight”
'Goes to't' and 'lecher' both mean to copulate. Lear is arguing, in bitter irony, that nature itself is full of sexual activity at every scale — even wrens and flies do it openly — so the law against adultery is absurd. He has twisted from horror at his daughters' ingratitude to a general rage against human hypocrisy about sex.
TLN 2624archaic vocab
“The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't With a more riotous appetite”
A 'fitchew' is a polecat, a notoriously musky, aggressive small carnivore — a byword for lechery and bad smell. A 'soiled horse' is a horse recently brought in from open pasture and given rich feed ('soiling') to put it in heat; the phrase meant a horse in an exceptionally high state of sexual drive. Lear is saying that women who pretend to virtue are in reality more ravenous in their appetite than these famously lustful animals.
TLN 2626classical allusion
“Down from the waist they are centaurs, Though women all above”
Centaurs were Greek mythological creatures: human above the waist, horse below — symbols of brute appetite and lust. Lear's image divides women at the waist: their upper halves are human and social, but their lower halves are animal, bestial, and belong to the devil. The speech is extreme, a madman's rage, but it marks a distinctive moment in the play where Lear's misery has turned into a general assault on female sexuality.
TLN 2632historical topical
“Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination”
Civet is a musky perfume secreted by the civet cat and used in small quantities to sweeten the smell of heavier perfumes. An 'apothecary' was a pharmacist-and-perfumer; civet was one of the most expensive scents available. Lear is asking for perfume to neutralize the disgusting mental image his own tirade has produced — a sudden, pathetic lurch from vicious invective to a desire for sweetness.
TLN 2639classical allusion
“Do thy worst, blind Cupid; I'll not love”
Cupid, the god of love, was conventionally depicted blindfolded to show that love strikes without reason or sight. 'Blind Cupid' was also the painted sign hung over brothels. Lear, seeing Gloucester's blinded face, makes a dark joke: those empty sockets will not move him to love, any more than the brothel sign would. The cruelty of the joke is part of his madness.
TLN 2652cultural context
“change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief”
'Handy-dandy' was a children's game in which an object was secretly shifted between two closed fists and the other player had to guess which hand held it. Lear applies it to justice: swap the judge and the criminal and you cannot tell them apart — authority is a game of concealment and chance, not moral substance. The image strips law of its legitimacy by reducing it to a child's trick.
TLN 2657rhetorical device
“the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office”
Lear argues that authority is not personal virtue but institutional position: a dog with official power will be obeyed, whatever its actual worth. The dog barks at the beggar and the beggar flees — not because the dog is just, but because the dog holds authority (it guards the farmer's property). This is one of the play's central radical insights: rank and office are arbitrary, not moral.
TLN 2661historical topical
“The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all”
A 'usurer' is a moneylender who charges illegal interest rates — a crime. A 'cozener' is a petty cheat or swindler. Lear's point: the great criminal (the usurer) has the power and clothing to have the small criminal (the cozener) hanged, because wealth and official dress ('furred gowns' — the robes of judges) protect the powerful from the same law they apply to the poor. 'Plate sin with gold' means armour a sin with wealth.
TLN 2666archaic vocab
“None does offend, none.—I say none; I'll able 'em”
'I'll able 'em' means 'I will authorize them' or 'I will give them licence' — Lear, claiming his royal power, says he will pardon everyone, making their offences lawful by royal fiat. The claim is simultaneously the logic of absolute kingship (the king's word makes law) and a symptom of his madness: a dethroned king pronouncing universal pardons has no power to do so.
TLN 2672archaic vocab
“O, matter and impertinency mix'd! Reason, in madness!”
'Matter' means sense or substance. 'Impertinency' means nonsense, irrelevance — material that does not pertain to any rational purpose. Edgar's aside captures the paradox: Lear's ravings contain genuine insight (the attack on corrupt justice is true) tangled with genuine madness (the imaginary troops, the boots). The phrase 'reason in madness' is the scene's keynote — and is the play's own comment on where wisdom sometimes hides.
TLN 2676cultural context
“Thou must be patient; we came crying hither: Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air We wawl and cry”
'Wawl' means to cry and wail loudly (like a cat or a newborn). Lear draws the parallel between Gloucester's current weeping and the first breath drawn by every newborn — we arrive crying, as if already protesting the suffering ahead. The thought is a sustained mediation on birth as grief, not joy, that becomes the famous 'stage of fools' speech in the next line.
TLN 2680rhetorical device
“we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools”
Lear compares the world to a theatre stage — and a stage where the players are all fools. The image draws on the commonplace 'all the world's a stage' (compare Jaques in As You Like It 2.7) but darkens it: this stage does not merely hold players of various ages and roles but fools, people making a spectacle of themselves in ignorance. The thought that we cry at birth because we already sense this prepares the army of felt-shod horses and the sudden descent into military fantasy that follows.
TLN 2689cultural context
“I am even The natural fool of fortune”
A 'natural fool' was a person born with a mental disability — the term distinguished those born simple from those who merely played the fool professionally. Lear means that Fortune has made him a fool by his very nature or birth — he was destined to be her butt, her plaything. The phrase works as a dark pun: he is both a fool by nature (foolish in his decisions from the start) and fortune's particular toy.
classical Fortune and her wheelhistorical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)
TLN 2706biblical allusion
“Thou hast one daughter Who redeems nature from the general curse Which twain have brought her to”
The Gentleman tells Edgar that Lear has one daughter (Cordelia) who redeems nature from 'the general curse' that Goneril and Regan have inflicted. 'The general curse' evokes the Fall of Man — the curse that entered the world through the first act of human disobedience in Eden, and which all human sin re-enacts. Cordelia is cast in redemptive terms: her love and loyalty are what can restore what cruelty has destroyed.
TLN 2712archaic vocab
“Most sure and vulgar: every one hears that Which can distinguish sound”
'Vulgar' here means common knowledge, publicly known — from Latin vulgus, the common people. The Gentleman is saying the battle is public news, not a secret: it is so generally known that anyone who can tell one sound from another has heard of it. The word has not yet acquired its modern meaning of 'coarse or crude.'
TLN 2723cultural context
“Let not my worser spirit tempt me again To die before you please!”
Gloucester distinguishes between a 'worser spirit' (the impulse toward despair and suicide) and some higher part of himself. The language is drawn from the theological tradition of the two spirits or angels attending each person — a good angel and an evil one. After the staged fall at the cliff, Gloucester has given up the will to force his own death and submits to waiting on divine timing: 'before you please' addresses the gods directly.
TLN 2734historical topical
“A proclaim'd prize! Most happy!”
Oswald recognizes Gloucester, who has been officially proclaimed a traitor with a price on his head — a 'proclaimed prize' means a person declared outlaw whose captor or killer will be rewarded. 'Most happy!' expresses Oswald's delight at the windfall: killing or capturing Gloucester will make his fortune. The language is that of bounty-hunting; proclamations of outlawry and reward were a real instrument of Elizabethan justice.
TLN 2745historical topical
“Chill not let go, zir, without vurther 'casion”
Edgar drops into broad West Country dialect — the speech of rural Somerset or Devon — to pass as a peasant and prevent Oswald recognizing him. 'Chill' = 'I will' (using the archaic first-person form 'ich' + will); 'zir' = 'sir'; 'vurther 'casion' = 'further occasion'; 'zwaggered' = 'swaggered'; 'voke' = 'folk'; 'che vore ye' = 'I warn you'; 'costard' = 'head' (literally a large apple); 'bat' = 'cudgel'; 'foins' = 'thrusts' (in fencing). The dialect is Shakespeare's phonetic rendering of what London ears heard as rustic south-western speech.
TLN 2767historical topical
“Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not: To know our enemies' minds, we'd rip their hearts; Their papers is more lawful”
Letters were sealed with wax and a personal seal; to open someone else's letter was to break the wax seal ('leave, gentle wax' — he apologizes to the wax as if it were a person). Edgar acknowledges the impropriety of reading another's private letters but justifies it: if he needed to know an enemy's mind, he could tear out their heart, so reading their papers is comparatively lawful. The letter he is about to read contains Goneril's order to Edmund to murder Albany.
TLN 2778archaic vocab
“O indistinguish'd space of woman's will!”
'Indistinguish'd' means without limit or boundary, boundless. 'Will' means sexual appetite or desire. Edgar's horrified aside after reading Goneril's letter — asking Edmund to kill her husband and take his bed — means: 'What a boundless, limitless space women's sexual will occupies!' The exclamation is a compressed version of the misogyny Lear expressed more extensively in his earlier tirade, but here triggered by specific evidence of murderous adultery.
TLN 2783archaic vocab
“strike the sight Of the death-practis'd duke: for him 'tis well That of thy death and business I can tell”
'Death-practis'd' means 'whose death is plotted or practiced against him' — someone against whom a murder plot has been set in motion. Edgar means to show the letter to Albany (the duke whose death Goneril has schemed), who has so far been unaware of his wife's conspiracy. The phrase signals the letter's central intelligence value: it proves Goneril's treachery against her own husband.
TLN 2786archaic vocab
“how stiff is my vile sense, That I stand up, and have ingenious feeling Of my huge sorrows!”
'Ingenious' here means acutely conscious, possessed of full understanding — the sense comes from Latin ingenium, natural capacity or intellect. Gloucester laments that his mind is 'stiff' (unyielding, stubbornly intact) and still fully conscious of his losses. He envies Lear's madness: a disordered mind would be separated from grief by its own confusion. To feel sorrow with full 'ingenious feeling' is a kind of torture from which madness would be mercy.