I'll bring you comfort.

_Glo._ Grace go with you, sir!

[_Exit_ Edgar

_Alarum and retreat within._ _Re-enter_ EDGAR.

_Edg._ Away, old man; give me thy hand; away!
King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en:
Give me thy hand; come on.

_Glo._ No farther, sir; a man may rot even here.

_Edg._ What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither:
Ripeness is all: come on.

_Glo._ And that's true too. [_Exeunt_.

The battle, it will be seen, is represented only by military music
within the tiring-house, which formed the back of the stage. 'The
scene,' says Spedding, 'does not change; but 'alarums' are heard, and
afterwards a 'retreat,' and on the same field over which that great army
has this moment passed, fresh and full of hope, re-appears, with tidings
that all is lost, the same man who last left the stage to follow and
fight in it.[276] That Shakespeare meant the scene to stand thus, no one
who has the true faith will believe.'

Spedding's suggestion is that things are here run together which
Shakespeare meant to keep apart. Shakespeare, he thinks, continued Act
IV. to the '_exit_ Edgar' after l. 4 of the above passage. Thus, just
before the close of the Act, the two British armies and the French army
had passed across the stage, and the interest of the audience in the
battle about to be fought was raised to a high pitch. Then, after a
short interval, Act V. opened with the noise of battle in the distance,
followed by the entrance of Edgar to announce the defeat of Cordelia's
army. The battle, thus, though not fought on the stage, was shown and
felt to be an event of the greatest importance.

Apart from the main objection of the entire want of evidence of so great
a change having been made, there are other objections to this idea and
to the reasoning on which it is based. (1) The pause at the end of the
present Fourth Act is far from 'faulty,' as Spedding alleges it to be;
that Act ends with the most melting scene Shakespeare ever wrote; and a
pause after it, and before the business of the battle, was perfectly
right. (2) The Fourth Act is already much longer than the Fifth (about
fourteen columns of the Globe edition against about eight and a half),
and Spedding's change would giv