I.i.174 (320,3) Which nor our nature, nor our place, can bear;/ Our potency made good] [T:  (Which ... bear) ... made good] [Warburton defended “make”] Theobald only inserted the parenthesis; he found made good in the best copy of 1623.  Dr. Warburton has very acutely explained and defended the reading that he has chosen, but I am not certain that he has chosen right.  If we take the reading of the folio, our potency made good, the sense will be less profound indeed, but less intricate, and equally commodious. As thou hast come with unreasonable pride between the sentence which I had passed, and the power by which I shall execute it, take thy reward in another sentence which shall make good, shall establish, shall maintain, that power.  If Dr. Warburton’s explanation be chosen, and every reader will wish to choose it, we may better read,

  Which nor our nature, nor our state can bear,
  Or potency make good.—­

Mr. Davies thinks, that our potency made good relates only to our place.—­Which our nature cannot bear, nor our place, without departure from the potency of that place.  This is easy and clear.—­Lear, who is characterized as hot, heady, and violent, is, with very just observation of life, made to entangle himself with vows, upon any sudden provocation to vow revenge, and then to plead the obligation of a vow in defence of implacability.

I.i.181 (322,4) By Jupiter] Shakespeare makes his Lear too much a mythologist:  he had Hecate and Apollo before.

I.i.190 (322,6) He’ll shape his old course] He will follow his old maxims; he will continue to act upon the same principles.

I.i.201 (323,7) If aught within that little, seeming, substance] Seeming is beautiful.

I.i.209 (323,9) Election makes not up on such conditions] To make up signifies to complete, to conclude; as, they made up the bargain; but in this sense it has, I think, always the subject noun after it.  To make up, in familiar language, is, neutrally, to come forward, to make advances, which, I think, is meant here.

I.i.221 (324,2)

   Sure her offence
  Must be of such unnatural degree,
  That monsters it:  or your fore-vouch’d affection
  Fall into taint]

The common books read,

  —­or your fore-vouch’d affection
  Fall’n into taint:—­

This line has no clear or strong sense, nor is this reading authorized by any copy, though it has crept into all the late editions.  The early quarto reads,

  —­or you for vouch’d affections
  Fall’n into taint.—­

The folio,

  —­or your fore-vouch’d affection
  Fall into taint.—­

Taint is used for corruption and for disgrace.  If therefore we take the oldest reading it may be reformed thus: