Page 283 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

208 N O T E S 3.4.
blow the cold winds (J.D.W.) F 'blow the windes'
Q (+Camb.) 'blowes the cold wind'. The F. comp.
prob. omitted 'cold' (cf. 1. 98 below) or perh. the
collator deleted 'cold in Q here and before' bed' (1.47).
The reporter would preserve the ballad metre.
47. Humh <F) He shivers (K.). Go to thy bed (Y)
(
Q ( + Camb.) 'Goe to thy cold bed'. Cf. Shrew Ind. 1,
8-9, 'go by, S. Jeronimy, go to thy cold bed and warm
thee'—which Mai. claimed proved Q the correct text;
but Sh. had no metrical inducement to quote himself.
Enough to recall the lines of mad Hieronimo in The
Spanish Tragedy (apt for a pretended madman); viz.
2. 5. 1, 'What outcries pluck me from my naked bed?'
and 3.12. 31 'Hieronimo beware; go by, go by*. On
the other hand the Q actor-reporter might well have
recollected Shrew.
48. Didst thou give ( <F) Q (+Camb.) 'Hast thou
giuen'. thy (F) Q ( + Camb.) 'thy two'. Cf. 1. 63
(
'Wouldst' <F) Q 'didst'. Q is a tissue of memorial
confusion hereabouts.
50 ff. Who gives etc. 'Edg., taking his cue from
Lear's word "give", repeats the kind of petition
expected of Bedlam beggars' (K.).
51. through fire (Q) F 'though Fire', through flame
(<F) Qom.
52. ford (<£) 'foord') F 'Sword'—literal mis-
reading.
53. laid knives etc. The quickest way for the Devil
to catch a soul was to tempt him to the sin of suicide.
Cf. Doctor Faustus (ed. Greg, 1950), 2. 2. 20-2—
'Then guns and knives, | Swords, poison, halters, and
envenomed steel | Are laid before me to dispatch myself;
and Harsnett relates how 'a new halter, and two blades
of knives' were said to have been left 'upon the gallerie
floare' of a certain house [Muir, p. 256].
pew —'a gallery in a house or outside a chamber