II.ii.9 (367,1) Lipsbury pinfold] The allusion which seems to be contained in this line I do not understand.  In the violent eruption of reproaches which bursts from Kent in this dialogue, there are some epithets which the commentators have left unexpounded, and which I am not very able to make clear.  Of a three-suited knave I know not the meaning, unless it be that he has different dresses for different occupations. Lilly-liver’d is cowardly; white-blooded and white-liver’d are still in vulgar use.  An one-trunk-inheriting slave, I take to be a wearer of old cast-off cloaths, an inheritor of torn breeches.

II.ii.36 (368,4) barber-monger] Of this word I do not clearly see the force.

II.ii.39 (368,5) Vanity the puppet’s] Alluding to the mysteries or allegorical shews, in which vanity, iniquity, and other vices, were personified.

II.ii.45 (369,6) neat slave] You mere slave, you very slave.

II.ii.69 (369,8) Thou whoreson zed; thou unnecessary letter!] I do not well understand how a man is reproached by being called zed, nor how Z is an unnecessary letter.  Scarron compares his deformity to the shape of Z, and it may be a proper word of insult to a crook-backed man; but why should Gonerill’s steward be crooked, unless the allusion be to his bending or cringing posture in the presence of his superiors.  Perhaps it was written, thou whoreson C (for cuckold) thou unnecessary letter.  C is a letter unnecessary in our alphabet, one of its two sounds being represented by S, and one by K. But all the copies concur in the common reading.

II.ii.87 (371,3) epileptic visage!] The frighted countenance of a man ready to fall in a fit.

II.ii.103 (372,5) constrains the garb/Quite from his nature] Forces his outside or his appearance to something totally different from his natural disposition.

II.ii.109 (372,8) Than twenty silly ducking observants] [W:  silky] The alteration is more ingenious than the arguments by which it is supported.

II.ii.119 (373,8) though I should win your displeasure to intreat me to’t] Though I should win you, displeased as you now are, to like me so well as to intreat me to be a knave.

II.ii.167 (375,3)

  Good king, that must approve the common saw! 
  Thou out of heaven’s benediction com’at
  To the warm sun!]

That art now to exemplify the common proverb, That out of, &c.  That changest better for worse.  Hanmer observes, that it is a proverbial saying, applied to those who are turned out of house and home to the open weather.  It was perhaps first used of men dismissed from an hospital, or house of charity, such as was erected formerly in many places for travellers.  Those houses had names properly enough alluded to by heaven’s benediction.

II.ii.173 (376,4)

  I know ’tis from Cordelia;
  Who hath most fortunately been inform’d
  Of my obscur’d coarse, and shall find time
  From this enormous state, seeking to give
  Losses their remedies]