Page 292 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

3.4. N O T E S 217
It is in fact the passage above all others in Horace we
might expect Sh. to know, probably by heart, certainly
to have in mind as he walked his own tragic tight-rope
of King Lear.
145. Our fie sh and blood i.e. our children. No
wonder Edg. shudders at this.
154. philosopher=ma.T\ of science. Suggested by
Edg.'s 'unaccommodated' condition. Cf. the life
'philosophers commend' in Lyly's Campaspe (1. 2. 3):
'a crumme for thy supper, an hande for thy cup and thy
clothes for thy sheetes.—For Natura paucis contenta?
And Edg.'s hovel and blanket might have recalled
Diogenes' entry from his tub in the same play, in which
too (1. 3) Plato, Aristotle and Cleanthes discuss the
'natural causes' of phenomena like 'the ebbing and
flowing of the Sea'. Aristotle is of course represented as
Alexander's court philosopher; and as Gordon notes
(Sh. Comedy, 1944, pp. 126-8):
all kings formerly kept such a philosopher, who was
technically so called, just as they kept a Fool and other
court officers. Lear, we are to suppose, had a philosopher
when he was king, and is now adding him to his mock
court....In the Middle Ages one of the most popular forms
of instructive reading was the dialogue or catechism, in
which one of these celebrated philosophers instructed his
royal pupil. The pupil asks questions about every sort of
thing—including, of course, 'the cause of thunder'—that
was a stock question.
Gordon refers also to 1. 5. 19 ff. (see n.), where the
Fool questions Lear—'reversing things' (inver-
sion being an important motif in this play) and putting
'the "reasons of nature" to his master'. Cf. Muir'sn.
ad loc.
155. What...thunder? Cf. 1. 154, n. adfin. But an
apt question with the storm raging.
157. Theban Cf. 'Athenian' (1. 180). Prob.