[Footnote 167:  Imagination demands for Lear, even more than for Othello, majesty of stature and mien.  Tourgenief felt this and made his ’Lear of the Steppes’ a gigantic peasant.  If Shakespeare’s texts give no express authority for ideas like these, the reason probably is that he wrote primarily for the theatre, where the principal actor might not be a large man.]

[Footnote 168:  He is not present, of course, till France and Burgundy enter; but while he is present he says not a word beyond ’Here’s France and Burgundy, my noble lord.’  For some remarks on the possibility that Shakespeare imagined him as having encouraged Lear in his idea of dividing the kingdom see Note T. It must be remembered that Cornwall was Gloster’s ‘arch and patron.’]

[Footnote 169:  In this she stands alone among the more notable characters of the play.  Doubtless Regan’s exclamation ‘O the blest gods’ means nothing, but the fact that it is given to her means something.  For some further remarks on Goneril see Note T. I may add that touches of Goneril reappear in the heroine of the next tragedy, Macbeth; and that we are sometimes reminded of her again by the character of the Queen in Cymbeline, who bewitched the feeble King by her beauty, and married him for greatness while she abhorred his person (Cymbeline, V. v. 62 f., 31 f.); who tried to poison her step-daughter and intended to poison her husband; who died despairing because she could not execute all the evil she purposed; and who inspirited her husband to defy the Romans by words that still stir the blood (Cymbeline, III. i. 14 f.  Cf. King Lear, IV. ii. 50 f.).]

[Footnote 170:  I. ii. 1 f.  Shakespeare seems to have in mind the idea expressed in the speech of Ulysses about the dependence of the world on degree, order, system, custom, and about the chaos which would result from the free action of appetite, the ‘universal wolf’ (Troilus and Cr. I. iii. 83 f.).  Cf. the contrast between ‘particular will’ and ’the moral laws of nature and of nations,’ II. ii. 53, 185 (’nature’ here of course is the opposite of the ‘nature’ of Edmund’s speech).]

[Footnote 171:  The line last quoted is continued by Edmund in the Folios thus:  ‘Th’ hast spoken right; ‘tis true,’ but in the Quartos thus:  ’Thou hast spoken truth,’ which leaves the line imperfect.  This, and the imperfect line ‘Make instruments to plague us,’ suggest that Shakespeare wrote at first simply,

Make instruments to plague us.

Edm. Th’ hast spoken truth.

The Quartos show other variations which seem to point to the fact that the MS. was here difficult to make out.]

[Footnote 172:  IV. i. 1-9.  I am indebted here to Koppel, Verbesserungsvorschlaege zu den Erlaeuterungen und der Textlesung des Lear (1899).]

[Footnote 173:  See I. i. 142 ff.  Kent speaks, not of the injustice of Lear’s action, but of its ‘folly,’ its ‘hideous rashness.’  When the King exclaims ‘Kent, on thy life, no more,’ he answers: