Page 278 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

3.a. NOTES 203

When euery Case in Law, is right;
No Squire in debt, nor no poore Knightj
When Slanders do not Hue in Tongues j
Nor Cut-purses come not to throngs j
When Vsurers tell their Gold i'th'Field,
And Baudes, and whores, do Churches build,
Then shal the Realme of 4lbion, come to great
confusion:
Then comes the time, who liues to see't*
That going shalbe vs'd with feet.
This prophecie Merlin shall make, for I liue before
his time.

upon which Warb.'s. comment (as cited in J.'s ed.
1765) ran:

The judicious reader will observe...that this is not one but
two prophecies. The first, a satyrical description of the
present manners as future: And the second, a satyrical
description of future manners, which the corruption of the
present njoouldprevent from ever happening. Each of these
prophecies has its proper inference or deduction: yet, by an
unaccountable stupidity, the first editors took the whole to
be all one prophecy, and so jumbled the two contrary
inferences together.
He then rearranged, as we do, but placed the two
'inferences' (11.85-6,93-4) in the reverse position. We
prefer our order, since it gives a couple of stanzas
meaning: 'When things shall be as in fact they are,
Britain will be in a state of ruin, as in fact she is; when
things shall be as they should be, then walking will
customarily be done with feet, i.e. the proper order will
prevail, and men will walk uprightly—but no one will
ever live to see this.' Note that 11. 8 5-6 are set as a single
line in F, which suggests a marginal insertion. Perhaps
the F collator was bothered to have to copy out so long a
passage from the playhouse MS. on to a separate slip or
at right angles into the margin of Qi and, working
N.S.K.L.-15