eave him alive, and therefore advises Oswald, should he meet
Gloucester, to kill him, promising him a great reward if he does this.

In the sixth scene, Gloucester again appears with his still unrecognized
son Edgar, who (now in the guise of a peasant) pretends to lead his
father to the cliff. Gloucester is walking along on level land but Edgar
persuades him that they are with difficulty ascending a steep hill.
Gloucester believes this. Edgar tells his father that the noise of the
sea is heard; Gloucester believes this also. Edgar stops on a level
place and persuades his father that he has ascended the cliff and that
in front of him lies a dreadful abyss, and leaves him alone. Gloucester,
addressing the gods, says that he shakes off his affliction as he can
bear it no longer, and that he does not condemn them--the gods. Having
said this, he leaps on the level ground and falls, imagining that he has
jumped off the cliff. On this occasion, Edgar, soliloquizing, gives vent
to a yet more entangled utterance:

"I know not how conceit may rob
The treasury of life when life itself
Yields to the theft; had he been where he thought,
By this had thought been past."

He approaches Gloucester, in the character of yet a different person,
and expressing astonishment at the latter not being hurt by his fall
from such a dreadful height. Gloucester believes that he has fallen and
prepares to die, but he feels that he is alive and begins to doubt that
he has fallen from such a height. Then Edgar persuades him that he has
indeed jumped from the dreadful height and tells him that the
individual who had been with him at the top was the devil, as he had
eyes like two full moons and a thousand noses and wavy horns. Gloucester
believes this, and is persuaded that his despair was the work of the
devil, and therefore decides that he will henceforth despair no more,
but will quietly await death. Hereupon enters Lear, for some reason
covered with wild-flowers. He has lost his senses and says things wilder
than before. He speaks about coining, about the moon, gives some one a
yard--then he cries that he sees a mouse, which he wishes to entice by a
piece of cheese. Then he suddenly demands the password from Edgar, and
Edgar immediately answers him with the words "Sweet marjoram." Lear
says, "Pass," and the blind Gloucester, who has not recognized either
his son or Kent, recognizes the King's voice.

Then the King, after his di