sconnected utterances, suddenly begins to
speak ironically about flatterers, who agreed to all he said, "Ay, and
no, too, was no good divinity," but, when he got into a storm without
shelter, he saw all this was not true; and then goes on to say that as
all creation addicts itself to adultery, and Gloucester's bastard son
had treated his father more kindly than his daughters had treated him
(altho Lear, according to the development of the drama, could not know
how Edmund had treated Gloucester), therefore, let dissoluteness
prosper, the more so as, being a King, he needs soldiers. He here
addresses an imaginary hypocritically virtuous lady who acts the prude,
whereas

"The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't
With a more riotous appetite.
All women inherit the gods only to the girdle
Beneath is all the fiend's"--

and, saying this, Lear screams and spits from horror. This monolog is
evidently meant to be addressed by the actor to the audience, and
probably produces an effect on the stage, but it is utterly uncalled for
in the mouth of Lear, equally with his words: "It smells of mortality,"
uttered while wiping his hand, as Gloucester expresses a desire to kiss
it. Then Gloucester's blindness is referred to, which gives occasion for
a play of words on _eyes_, about blind Cupid, at which Lear says to
Gloucester, "No _eyes_ in your head, nor no money in your _purse_? Your
_eyes_ are in a _heavy_ case, your purse in a _light_." Then Lear
declaims a monolog on the unfairness of legal judgment, which is quite
out of place in the mouth of the insane Lear. After this, enter a
gentleman with attendants sent by Cordelia to fetch her father. Lear
continues to act as a madman and runs away. The gentleman sent to fetch
Lear, does not run after him, but lengthily describes to Edgar the
position of the French and British armies. Oswald enters, and seeing
Gloucester, and desiring to receive the reward promised by Regan,
attacks him, but Edgar with his club kills Oswald, who, in dying,
transmits to his murderer, Edgar, Goneril's letter to Edmund, the
delivery of which would insure reward. In this letter Goneril promises
to kill her husband and marry Edmund. Edgar drags out Oswald's body by
the legs and then returns and leads his father away.

The seventh scene of the fourth act takes place in a tent in the French
camp. Lear is asleep on a bed. Enter Cordelia and Kent, still in
disguise. Lear is awakened by the m