rdy.

The last two lines have caused difficulty. Johnson wanted to read,

The fool turns knave that runs away,
The knave no fool, perdy;

_i.e._ if I ran away, I should prove myself to be a knave and a wise
man, but, being a fool, I stay, as no knave or wise man would. Those who
rightly defend the existing reading misunderstand it, I think.
Shakespeare is not pointing out, in 'The knave turns fool that runs
away,' that the wise knave who runs away is really a 'fool with a
circumbendibus,' 'moral miscalculator as well as moral coward.' The Fool
is referring to his own words, 'I would have none but knaves follow [my
advice to desert the King], since a fool gives it'; and the last two
lines of his song mean, 'The knave who runs away follows the advice
given by a fool; but I, the fool, shall not follow my own advice by
turning knave.'

For the ideas compare the striking passage in _Timon_, I. i. 64 ff.

3. '_Decline your head._'

At IV. ii. 18 Goneril, dismissing Edmund in the presence of Oswald,
says:

This trusty servant
Shall pass between us: ere long you are like to hear,
If you dare venture in your own behalf,
A mistress's command. Wear this; spare speech;
Decline your head: this kiss, if it durst speak,
Would stretch thy spirits up into the air.

I copy Furness's note on 'Decline': 'STEEVENS thinks that Goneril bids
Edmund decline his head that she might, while giving him a kiss, appear
to Oswald merely to be whispering to him. But this, WRIGHT says, is
giving Goneril credit for too much delicacy, and Oswald was a
"serviceable villain." DELIUS suggests that perhaps she wishes to put a
chain around his neck.'

Surely 'Decline your head' is connected, not with 'Wear this' (whatever
'this' may be), but with 'this kiss,' etc. Edmund is a good deal taller
than Goneril, and must stoop to be kissed.

4. _Self-cover'd_.

At IV. ii. 59 Albany, horrified at the passions of anger, hate, and
contempt expressed in his wife's face, breaks out:

See thyself, devil!
Proper deformity seems not in the fiend
So horrid as in woman.

_Gon._ O vain fool!

_Alb._ Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame,
Be-monster not thy feature. Were't my fitness
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislo