# King Lear (1917) Yale/Notes

Layout 2
NOTES
I. i. 55. Where nature doth with merit challenge. 'Where inherent goodness vies with moral growth,' i.e., virtue developed by training. If, on the other hand, challenge means demand, then with merit would be an adverbial phrase qualifying challenge, and the whole expression would mean 'Where inherent goodness deservedly demands our largest bounty.' I prefer the former interpretation.
I. i. 76. precious square of sense. 'The most sensitive test by which I can appreciate joy.'
I. i. 151. Reserve thy state. 'Reserve everything, rank, dignity, plenary power.'
I. i. 190. old course. Although old, Kent will begin life again in a new country. Or perhaps shape his old course means 'be his old self.'
I. i. 271. wash'd eyes. I do not think Cordelia is weeping. She means her eyes are clear, and see the truth about her sisters.
I. i. 282. want. 'You well deserve the lack of affection that you have lacked yourself.'
I. ii. 109. wind me into him. Get into his confidence.
I. ii. 145. dragon's tail. Referring to the position of the moon with relation to the constellation Draco.
I. ii. 153. Fa, sol, la, mi. This is mere trolling nonsense, based on the notes of the musical scale.
I. iii. 21. With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abus'd. Abus'd means deceived, and they refers to old men.
I. iv. 18. To eat no fish. This probably refers to the Protestants, who, in order to show their hatred for the Catholics and their support of the English Government, made a parade of eating no fish at all. See Marston's play, The Dutch Courtezan, I. ii. 'I ​trust I am none of the wicked that eate fish a Fridaies.' There was a proverb, 'He's an honest man, and eats no fish.'
I. iv. 95. football. Football was a rough game for rough lads, not regarded as a gentleman's sport.
I. iv. 127. A pestilent gall to me! Probably refers, not to Oswald, as most commentators think, but to the Fool, who is continually reminding Lear of his folly.
I. iv. 136. Learn more than thou trowest. Trowest may mean believest in the sense of accept; but it probably means knowest. The precept is, 'never be satisfied with the present state of your knowledge, but strive ever to learn more than you already know.'
I. iv. 168. if I had a monopoly out. This alludes to a common commercial abuse in Shakespeare's time. Individuals or companies were granted the exclusive right to trade in various commodities (as wine, sugar, etc.), and often thus amassed huge fortunes.
I. iv. 247. Whoop, Jug! Probably mere nonsense, though many ingenious explanations have been suggested.
II. ii. 9. Lipsbury pinfold. Unknown reference, perhaps Finsbury; a pinfold is a cattle-pound.
II. ii. 16. three-suited. This is often taken to indicate poverty of wardrobe, but cf. III. iv. 139, who hath had three suits to his back, where Edgar plainly alludes to a former state of affluence. It may refer to a servant's liveries, and thus would be a natural term of contempt applied to Oswald; and Edgar, in the later passage, would refer to the 'enough and to spare' enjoyed by hired servants. At the extortionate price of Elizabethan clothes the possession of three suits was quite beyond the ordinary man. Similarly hundred-pound and worsted-stocking suggest luxury. Kent is contrasting the pampered lackey's outward exquisiteness with his mental and moral poverty.
II. ii. 68. zed. Z was regarded as a superfluous ​letter, its necessary work being done by S. Remember that Z is pronounced Zed in England today.
II. ii. 79, 80. holy cords, etc. The holy cords are the bonds of affection between father and daughters: intrinse means either tightly drawn or intricate.
II. ii. 83. halcyon. The kingfisher: the popular superstition was that if a dead kingfisher were hung up, his bill would point toward the quarter from which the wind was blowing.
II. ii. 89. Camelot. Supposed to have been in Somerset, but the Elizabethans identified it with Winchester and believed that King Arthur's round table was still to be seen there (see the play of Eastward Hoe, composed about a year before King Lear.) Winchester is about a day's journey by foot from Sarum (Salisbury) Plain. It is possible that Kent's words, Goose . . . cackling . . . Camelot, imply an allusion to an unsavory disease known to Shakespeare as 'Winchester goose.'
II. ii. 132. Ajax. Possibly it means that Ajax, the Greek warrior, could not begin to brag with Oswald. But has Oswald bragged? Ajax was pronounced A-jakes, and there may have been a vulgar pun, which would account for Cornwall's rage. Just such a pun occurs in Love's Labour's Lost, V. ii. 578. Or, it may be that Kent meant that Oswald was making a fool out of Cornwall, as cheap rascals could out of the powerful and unsuspecting Ajax.
II. ii. 146. away. This has the sense of hither in the boys' street game, often played in New England, 1870–1890, 'Come away!' In 1893, in Michigan, I heard a hostess call from the dining-room, 'Come away! supper is ready.'
II. ii. 169. sun. An old proverb. Malone cites Howell's Collection of English Proverbs in his Dictionary, 1660: 'He goes out of God's blessing to the warm sun,' viz., from good to worse. It occurs also in Lyly's novel, Euphues (1579).
​II. ii. 172. miracles, etc. The miracle is the letter from Cordelia, which he reads aloud, picking out the words in the uncertain light: enormous state means prodigious state of affairs.
II. iii. 14. Bedlam. These beggars, called 'Tom o' Bedlam,' pretended to have been confined in Bedlam (Bethlehem Hospital for lunatics); they called themselves 'Poor Tom.'
II. iii. 20. Turlygood. Possibly a corruption of thoroughly good; but no one knows.
II. iv. 271. gorgeous. What Lear means is, that if clothes were worn merely for warmth, then Regan is absurd; for her clothes are evidently chosen for appearance rather than for comfort. Possibly the line (meaningless as it literally stands), if only to go warm were gorgeous, has the following significance: 'if you are going to condemn a beggar for loving finery when really his clothing is only sufficient for warmth, why, then, how much more worthy of condemnation is Regan.'
III. ii. 84. No heretics burned, but wenches' suitors. This refers either to syphilis, or the treatment for it.
III. ii. 95. Merlin. A playful anachronism. King Lear's reign was supposed to have happened long before the time of Christ. Merlin was the magician of King Arthur's court. Thus the Fool would have lived about 1300 years before Merlin.
III. iv. 49. Who gives, etc. Theobald was the first to show that the allusions to superstitions and fiends in Edgar's simulated ravings were largely taken from Harsnet's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, 1603.
III. iv. 74. pelican. The pelican's offspring were believed to smite their parents.
III. iv. 144. Smulkin . . . Modo . . . Mahu. From Harsnet.
​III. iv. 185. Child Rowland, etc. Child means Knight or Lord, cf. Child Harold. This is probably the fragment of an old ballad, now lost. The first line inspired Browning's great poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, published in 1855.
III. vi. 8. Frateretto . . . Nero. From Harsnet. The allusion to Nero may be mere nonsense. Rabelais said Nero was a fiddler in hell, and Trajan an angler.
III. vi. 28. Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me. Bourn here means brook, a burn. An old song, addressed to Queen Elizabeth on her coronation day.
III. vi. 55. joint-stool. A joint-stool was one made by joiners, as opposed to the usual rough homemade ones. The frequent mention of this article illustrates the lack of good furniture in Shakespeare's time.
III. vi. 92. noon. Much sentimental nonsense has been gushed about this, some commentators believing the Fool meant he would die in the noontide of his life. Manifestly the Fool is simply playing up to Lear's remark, 'We'll go to supper in the morning.'
III. vii. 65. All cruels else subscrib'd. A puzzling phrase. Possibly it means that the Porter would subscribe, i.e., give up everything cruel in wolves or other wild beasts, and remember only that they needed shelter on such a night. This is Furness's conjecture.
IV. i. 11. strange mutations, etc. If hate can be taken in the sense of despise, then the passage might mean 'the strange reverses in fortune make us despise life altogether, and thus stoically await old age and natural death. Otherwise, we should kill ourselves; no one would grow old.' Perhaps Moberly is right, who paraphrases 'we so hate life that we gladly find ourselves lapsing into old age and approaching death, which will deliver us from it.'
IV. i. 20. Our means secure us. 'Advantages make us careless.'
​IV. i. 72. Dover. If the heath where Lear wandered in the storm and the one given in the common stage direction at the head of this scene are both identified with Egdon Heath in Dorset, as seems generally to be supposed, Gloucester has a long walk ahead of him to Dover.
IV. ii. 29. I have been worth the whistle. Alluding to the proverb, 'It is a poor dog that is not worth the whistling'; that is, there was a time when I was worthy of notice.
IV. ii. 54. Fools do those villains pity. Villains probably refers to Lear, though many think it means Gloucester, while Furness ingeniously suggests it means Albany himself.
IV. vi. 40. My snuff, etc. The useless part of me alone is left, and is only a hindrance. The wick is encumbered with the snuff.
IV. vi. 74. the clearest gods. Perhaps the adjective is used in the sense of the Latin clarissimi, the most illustrious. However, Stewart (see next note) explains the phrase as meaning the gods that perform miracles.
IV. vi. 89. 'clothier's yard.' Charles D. Stewart, in his book, Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare, Yale University Press, 1914, says, p. 86: 'A "clothier's yard" does not refer to a particular sort of yard as a standard of measurement; it is the distance from the tip of the nose to the end of the thumb when he arm is stretched out sidewise. A bowman who could draw a clothier's yard was one who, when the butt of the shaft was at his nose, had the strength to force the bow out the full length of the arm. . . . An archer of size and strength had to have an arrow of such length that he could use it in this way; and . . . "an arrow of a cloth-yard long" . . . refers to this ability, and not to a standard of measurement.'
IV. vi. 101. 'ay' and 'no.' Stewart was the first to give a satisfactory explanation of this passage. ​On p. 84 of book quoted above, he says: 'There had just resounded, in slow impressive tones, on Lear's irresponsible brain, the words "I—know—that voice."; As to divinity, Stewart says, 'A man who will say ay or no to anything whatever, according as his interest lies, is simply a liar; [Stewart's pun is probably unintentional] and lying is no good divinity.'
IV. vi. 158. handy-dandy. An expression from a child's game meaning 'which hand will you have?'—i.e., they both look alike.
IV. vi. 218. main descry, etc. 'Every hour we expect to get a distant view of the main body of the other army.'
V. i. 13. as far as we call hers. These six words, which are not in the Folios, seem puzzling to me, though Furness passes them without comment. Possibly they mean 'to the limit of what she has to give,' possessing everything she is and has.
V. i. 26. Not bolds the king, etc. A confused phrase at best. Either It or France is the subject of bolds. Albany apparently means 'This business concerns me because France invades England, not because France comforts King Lear along with others, whom, I fear, righteous and serious causes impel against us.'
V. i. 32. ancient of war. Ordinarily ancient means ensign. Either Albany had in mind some especially well-informed ensign, or ancient of war means veteran officers.
V. iii. 24. good years. An expression of disputed origin, used as a term of disgust. Some editors take it to be derived from the name of a disease, and spell goujeres. Definite authority for this is lacking.
V. iii. 176. The wheel is come full circle. Fortune's wheel. Edmund began at the bottom, reached the top (Earl of Gloucester) and is now again at the bottom.