Page 271 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

196 NOTES 3.1.

S.D. Loc. (Rowe) 'Storm...lightning' (Rowe).
Cf. 2. 4. 280, n. F 'Storme still.'. Entry (Cap.) Q
'Enter Kent and a Gentleman at seuerall doores.', F
'Enter Kent, and a Gentleman, seuerally.'.
6-7. Or swell...cease Cf. Troil. 1. 3.109-13, 'Take
but degree away...the bounded waters Should lift their
bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all
this solid globe'. See G. 'main'.
7. things=all created things, 'the whole order of
nature' (K.).
7-15. tears...all. From Q. F om. (perhaps
abridgement). J. remarks 'the whole speech is forcible
but too long for the occasion, and properly retrenched\
Few will now agree.
8. eyeless rage—blind (indiscriminate) rage; or poss.
implies they might spare Lear cd they see he is old.
9. make nothing of= treat with irreverence [Delius];
the opposite of'make much of [Schmidt]; or 'disperse
to nothing as fast as he tears it off' (Heath). All <Furn.
I o. little., .man In the thought of the time, man was
frequently thought of as a microcosm. Cf. Cor. 2.1, 61,
'the map of my microcosm'.
out-storm (Muir <Steev. conj.) Q 'outscorne'—an
easy misreading. Steev. points out as close parallel
Comp. 7, 'storming her world with sorrow's, wind and
rain', and the same misprint in Troil. 1. 1. 37 (F) 'as
when the sunne doth light a-scome'. Further, Muir
notes that the Q compositor prints 'terrer' (terror) as
'curre' at 4. 2. 12, and 'home' as 'hand' at 2. 1. 124,
though m/n, t/c misreadings are commonplace errors
(e.g. F 'scale' for 'stale', Cor. 1. 1. 91).
11. to-and-fro-confiicting Cap.'s hyphens.
12. cub-drawn see G. And so ravenous for prey.
13. belly-pinche'd Pope's hyphen.