know, shrank
from him, 'shunn'd [his] abhorr'd society' (V. iii. 210). So he is left
to return to the hovel where he was first found. When the others depart,
then, he must be left behind, and surely would not go off without a
word. (2) If his speech is spurious, therefore, it has been substituted
for some genuine speech; and surely that is a supposition not to be
entertained except under compulsion. (3) There is no such compulsion in
the speech. It is not very good, no doubt; but the use of rhymed and
somewhat antithetic lines in a gnomic passage is quite in Shakespeare's
manner, _more_ in his manner than, for example, the rhymed passages in
I. i. 183-190, 257-269, 281-4, which nobody doubts; quite like many
places in _All's Well_, or the concluding lines of _King Lear_ itself.
(4) The lines are in spirit of one kind with Edgar's fine lines at the
beginning of Act IV. (5) Some of them, as Delius observes, emphasize the
parallelism between the stories of Lear and Gloster. (6) The fact that
the Folio omits the lines is, of course, nothing against them.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 270: I ignore them partly because they are not significant for
the present purpose, but mainly because it is impossible to accept the
division of battle-scenes in our modern texts, while to depart from it
is to introduce intolerable inconvenience in reference. The only proper
plan in Elizabethan drama is to consider a scene ended as soon as no
person is left on the stage, and to pay no regard to the question of
locality,--a question theatrically insignificant and undetermined in
most scenes of an Elizabethan play, in consequence of the absence of
movable scenery. In dealing with battles the modern editors seem to have
gone on the principle (which they could not possibly apply generally)
that, so long as the place is not changed, you have only one scene.
Hence in _Macbeth_, Act V., they have included in their Scene vii. three
distinct scenes; yet in _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act III., following the
right division for a wrong reason, they have two scenes (viii. and ix.),
each less than four lines long.]

[Footnote 271: One of these (V. i.) is not marked as such, but it is
evident that the last line and a half form a soliloquy of one remaining
character, just as much as some of the soliloquies marked as such in
other plays.]

[Footnote 272: According to modern editions, eight, Act II., scene ii.,
being an instance. But it is quite ridiculous to reckon