Page 26 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

INTRODUCTION xxi
On the surface the meaning is simply that her beautiful
eyes shed tears which were caused by her truly filial
feeling. And it would be absurd to brush the surface
meaning aside as unimportant—it is the primary mean-
ing. But the words 'holy water', conjoined with the
word 'heavenly', could not but suggest to Shakespeare's
contemporary audiences a Christ-like atmosphere about
Cordelia. 'The reference is certainly to the holy water of
1
ecclesiastical usage', says Mr Bethell; and he points out
that holy water, 'being prepared with the addition of
salt, furnishes an especially appropriate conceit'. In the
next scene Cordelia says
O, dear father,
It is thy business that I go about,

echoing words of the child Christ quoted in the second
chapter of St Luke. In 4.7 she says to her father who, as
yet, cannot hear her,
and wast thou fain> poor father,
To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn,
In short and musty straw?
No doubt Shakespeare has in memory the line in Higgins
in which Cordila, contrasting her earlier life of prosperity
with her subsequent experience in prison, uses the words
From dainty beds of down, to be of straw full fain.

But surely he also has in mind the story of the Prodigal
Son who, according to one version, 'wolde faine have
3
e
filled his bellie with y huskes, that the swine ate'. The
Prodigal returned to his father and declared that he was
1
Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition (1944),
p. 59.
* Quoted from The Newe Testament (Geneva, 1560). So
also The Bible...Imprinted at London by the Deputies of
Christopher Barker...1594—'And he woulde faine have
filled his bellie with the huskes, that the swine ate....'
N.S.K.L.-Z