Oxford Shakespeare by Shakespeare William; Wells Stanley; Taylor Gary

Author:Shakespeare, William; Wells, Stanley; Taylor, Gary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2000-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

465 Regan] Q (Reg)

8.0.1 Storm.] F (Storme still.); not in Q 0.1 the . . . First] Q (Kent and a) 0.1–2 First Gentleman] OXFORD; a Gentleman Q

457 rustle Q prints ‘russel’; F, ‘ruffle’. Weis adopts F in his Q-based text because ‘Q’s text makes awkward sense only’ and misreading would have been easy; but Cooper’s definition in his Thesaurus (1565) of Strepito as ‘to make noise often; to make a great noise: to rustle’ (cited OED v. 1a) supports Q.

461 with by

desperate reckless, violent

462 being i.e. he being

463 wisdom . . . fear prudence advises us to take precautions against

465 The stocks would presumably have been removed at the end of the scene.

8 The action is imagined as taking place in an open space traditionally referred to as a heath, though the word does not occur in the play. The sounds of the storm called for in the opening direction (not in Q) recur sporadically throughout this and the following scene, and may have been accompanied by visual effects, desirably more impressive than those satirized in the Induction to the play A Warning for Fair Women (anon., 1599), where at the appearance of a ghost ‘a little rosin flasheth forth, like smoke out of a tobacco pipe, or a boy’s squib’ (ll. 59–60). The interplay between the external and the internal storm requires careful orchestration. Roger Warren writes (privately) that in Peter Hall’s 1997 Old Vic production ‘although the sound effects were tremendous, they punctuated the speeches, so that the actors never had to shout them down’. Kent needs a purse from which he produces a ring (37–40).

0.1–2 First Gentleman Associated with Kent and Cordelia, he reappears in Sc. 17, 20, and 21. He is not the same as the messenger figure associated with Regan and Gonoril who appears in Sc. 16 and 24, and is usually given to the actor who plays the principal servant in Sc. 4.

FIRST GENTLEMAN One minded like the weather,

Most unquietly.

KENT I know you. Where’s the King?

FIRST GENTLEMAN

Contending with the fretful element;

Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea

Or swell the curlèd waters ’bove the main, 5

That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,

Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,

Catch in their fury and make nothing of;

Strives in his little world of man to outscorn

The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain. 10

This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,

The lion and the belly-pinchèd wolf

Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs,

And bids what will take all.

3 element] Q; Elements F 9 outscorn] Q (outscorne); not in F; outstorm MUIR (conj. Steevens)

3 fretful agitated, gusty. This predates OED’s first instance (3b) of this sense, from 1613.

element Possibly a misprint for F’s ‘elements’, but Shakespeare uses the singular with a similar sense at e.g. Henry V 4.1.102–3: ‘the element shows to him as it doth to me’.

4–5 wind . . . main A Renaissance commonplace which Shakespeare often uses, possibly influenced by Psalm 46: 2–3: ‘Though the earth be moved, and though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof rage and swell’.

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