Page 238 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

i.4. NOTES 163
fitting climax to the epithets 'mongrel', 'whoreson
dog', 'cur' that the angry Lear had just been heaping
upon the Steward. Moreover, by 'Truth's a dog' the
Fool clearly means himself, who he says in 1. 183 had
been 'whipped for speaking true'. His antithesis should
therefore be another person, a member of Gon.'s
household, and one Lear wd know as a liar. It is this
indubitably personal note behind the corrupt text that
other emendations lack. E.g. Steev.'s 'Lady the brach',
accepted by most edd., because 'Lady' happens to be
the name of Hotspur's 'brach' (1 H. IF, 3. 1. 235),
provides no antithesis either to Truth or to the Fool
himself, while it leaves the Q reading unexplained.
Equally lacking in satisfactory antithesis are 'Liar the
brach' (G.I.D. in the 1949 ed. p. 373) and 'the lie o'
th' brach' (Alice Walker, Text. Prob. p. 66) where 'lie'
(
is taken to be a quibble on 'lye' ='the detergent made
from urine'). Finally if Sh. wrote 'the Lady's brach'
the F variant is seen to be an ordinary misprint of the
omitted letter type, while the Q 'Ladie oth'e brach'
suggests that the reporter remembered the two names
'lady' and 'brach', remembered that one should be in
the possessive case, but forgot which it was.
115. A pestilent...me! Some take this as referring
to the Fool (cf. 1.137), though there seems nothing in the
context to justify such an outburst. Moberly (ap. Furn.)
rightly sees it as 'a passionate remembrance of Oswald's
insolence'—which had been past bearing in 11. 79-95,
and which the Fool's words now calls to mind, gall (F)
see G. Q misprints it 'gull'.
116. Sirrah As usual the Fool inverts, applying to
his master the term his master has just applied to him
( I )
( )
118. Mark it, nuncle! The speech' bids Lear be
everything a Fool is not: canny, close-fisted, unsociable,
strait-laced, in short a miser or usurer whose sole aim
N.S.K.L.-13