To make Spedding’s view quite clear I may remind the reader that in the preceding scene the two British armies, that of Edmund and Regan, and that of Albany and Goneril, have entered with drum and colours, and have departed.  Scene ii. is as follows (Globe): 

SCENE II.—­A field between the two camps.

Alarum within.  Enter, with drum and colours_, LEAR, CORDELIA,
and Soldiers, over the stage; and exeunt. Enter EDGAR
and GLOSTER.

Edg. Here, father, take the shadow of this tree
For your good host; pray that the right may thrive: 
If ever I return to you again,
I’ll bring you comfort.

Glo. Grace go with you, sir!

[Exit Edgar

Alarum and retreat within. Re-enter EDGAR.

Edg. Away, old man; give me thy hand; away! 
King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta’en: 
Give me thy hand; come on.

Glo. No farther, sir; a man may rot even here.

Edg. What, in ill thoughts again?  Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither: 
Ripeness is all:  come on.

Glo. And that’s true too. [Exeunt.

The battle, it will be seen, is represented only by military music within the tiring-house, which formed the back of the stage.  ’The scene,’ says Spedding, ’does not change; but ‘alarums’ are heard, and afterwards a ‘retreat,’ and on the same field over which that great army has this moment passed, fresh and full of hope, re-appears, with tidings that all is lost, the same man who last left the stage to follow and fight in it.[276] That Shakespeare meant the scene to stand thus, no one who has the true faith will believe.’

Spedding’s suggestion is that things are here run together which Shakespeare meant to keep apart.  Shakespeare, he thinks, continued Act IV. to the ‘exit Edgar’ after l. 4 of the above passage.  Thus, just before the close of the Act, the two British armies and the French army had passed across the stage, and the interest of the audience in the battle about to be fought was raised to a high pitch.  Then, after a short interval, Act V. opened with the noise of battle in the distance, followed by the entrance of Edgar to announce the defeat of Cordelia’s army.  The battle, thus, though not fought on the stage, was shown and felt to be an event of the greatest importance.

Apart from the main objection of the entire want of evidence of so great a change having been made, there are other objections to this idea and to the reasoning on which it is based. (1) The pause at the end of the present Fourth Act is far from ‘faulty,’ as Spedding alleges it to be; that Act ends with the most melting scene Shakespeare ever wrote; and a pause after it, and before the business of the battle, was perfectly right. (2) The Fourth Act is already much