Page 305 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

Z3© NOTES 3.7.
99. If...good i.e. if Corn, escapes divine punish-
ment.
99,105. sp.-hdgs. (<Cap.) Q '2 Seruant.'; '2 Ser.*
100. old see G. course see G.
101. /«r» monsters sc. they'll never care either.
102. the bedlam A double though trivial incon-
sistency: (i) most unlikely that the disguised Edg. wd
be known to servants in the Castle, see 2. 3 head-note;
4
(ii) in .1. Glo. is led by an old man, who resigns him to
'the bedlam' with reluctance (cf. 4. 1. 45).
103. he would: his Here 'he' = (Glo.) and 'his' =
the Bedlam's, roguish (Q uncorr.) Q corr. om.
Needed for the metre, and prob. removed from Q corr.
by accident [Greg, Variants, p. 169].
104. Allows...anything i.e. 'can be persuaded to do
anything'; cf. On. 'lends itself (J.C.M.).
105-6. some flax...face Banister's Popular Treatise
of Surgery (1575) prescribes the white of eggs spread
upon flax for a hurt eye [Ver.]; and Sir Geoffrey Keynes
privately supplies this from a medical text-book of
1698:

Take of the white of an Egg, beat it in a Pewter-dish with
a piece of Allum very well, till it come to the consistence of
an Oyntment, which you must spread upon a linen-cloth
and apply it warm to the eye.
See below 4. 1. 10, n.
106. S.D. g'Exit.*.

4 . 1
S.D. loc. (Cap.) Entry (Q, F).
1-9. Yet...blasts This cheerful declaration that he
has faced the worst is deeply ironical in view of what
immediately follows.
I. thus i.e. like a beggar, known sc. to myself.