between Kent and a gentleman, the reader or spectator learns that the King of France is not in the camp and that Cordelia has received a letter from Kent and is greatly grieved by what she learns about her father. The gentleman says that her face reminded one of sunshine and rain.

Her smiles and tears Were like a better day: Those happy smilets, That play’d on her ripe lip, seem’d not to know What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence, As pearls from diamonds dropp’d,

and so forth. The gentleman says that Cordelia desires to see her father, but Kent says that Lear is ashamed to see the daughter he has treated so badly.

In Scene IV Cordelia, talking with a physician, tells him that Lear has been seen, and that he is quite mad, wearing on his head a wreath of various weeds and roaming about, and that she has sent soldiers to find him, and she adds the wish that all secret medicinal virtues of the earth may spring to him in her tears, and so forth.

She is told that the forces of the Dukes are approaching; but she is only concerned about her father, and goes off.

In Scene V of Act IV, which is in Gloucester’s castle, Regan talks with Oswald, Goneril’s steward, who is carrying a letter from Goneril to Edmund, and tells him that she also loves Edmund and that as she is a widow it is better for her to marry him than for Goneril to do so, and she asks Oswald to persuade her sister of this. Moreover she tells him that it was very unwise to put out Gloucester’s eyes and yet to let him live, and therefore she advises Oswald, if he meets Gloucester, to kill him, and promises him a great reward if he does so.

In Scene VI Gloucester again appears with his unrecognised son Edgar, who, now dressed as a peasant, is leading his father to the cliff. Gloucester is walking along on level ground, but Edgar assures him that they are with difficulty ascending a steep hill. Gloucester believes this. Edgar tells his father that the noise of the sea is audible; Gloucester believes this also. Edgar stops on a level place and assures his father that he has ascended the cliff and that below him is a terrible abyss, and he leaves him alone. Gloucester, addressing the gods, says that he shakes off his affliction as he could not bear it longer without condemning them, the gods, and having said this he leaps on the level ground and falls, imagining that he has jumped over the cliff. Edgar thereupon utters to himself a yet more confused phrase:

And yet I know not how conceit may rob The treasury of life, when life itself Yields to the theft; had he been where he thought, By this had thought been past,

and he goes up to Gloucester pretending to be again a different man, and expresses astonishment at the latter not having been killed by his fall from such a dreadful height. Gloucester believes that he has fallen, and prepares to die, but he feels that he is alive, and begins to doubt having fallen. Then Edgar assures him that he really did jump from a terrible height, and says that the man who was with him at the top was a fiend, for he had eyes like two full moons, and a thousand noses, and wavy horns.

Gloucester believes this, and is persuaded that his despair was caused by the devil, and therefore decides that he will despair no longer but will quietly await death. Just then Lear enters, for some reason all covered with wild flowers. He has gone mad, and utters speeches yet more meaningless than before. He talks about coining money, about a bow, calls for a clothier’s yard, then he cries out that he sees a mouse which he wishes to entice with a piece of cheese, and then he suddenly asks the password of Edgar, who at once replies with the words, “Sweet Marjoram.” Lear says, “Pass!” and the blind Gloucester, who did not recognise his son’s or Kent’s, recognises the King’s voice.

Then the King, after his disconnected utterances, suddenly begins to speak ironically about flatterers who said “ay and no” like the theologians and assured him that he could do everything, but when he got into a storm without shelter, he saw that this was not true; and then he goes on to say that as all creatures are wanton, and as Gloucester’s bastard son was kinder to his father than his own daughters had been to him (though Lear, according to the course of the play, could know nothing of Edmund’s treatment of Gloucester), therefore let copulation thrive, especially as he, a King, lacks soldiers. And thereupon he addresses an imaginary, hypocritically virtuous lady who acts the prude while at the same time, like an animal in heat, she is addicted to lust. All women “but to the girdle do the gods inherit. Beneath is all the fiend’s ...” and saying this Lear screams and spits with horror. This monologue is evidently meant to be addressed by actor to audience, and probably produces an effect on the stage, but is quite uncalled for in the mouth of Lear--as is his desire to wipe his hand because it “smells of mortality” when Gloucester wishes to kiss it. Then Gloucester’s blindness is referred to, which gives an opportunity for a play of words on eyes and Cupid’s blindness, and for Lear to say that Gloucester has “no eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a _heavy_ case, your purse in a _light_.” Then Lear declaims a monologue on the injustice of legal judgment, which is quite out of place in his mouth seeing that he is insane. Then a gentleman enters with attendants sent by Cordelia to fetch her father. Lear continues to behave madly and runs away. The gentleman sent to fetch Lear does not run after him but continues to tell Edgar lengthily about the position of the French and the British armies.

Oswald enters and, seeing Gloucester and wishing to obtain the reward promised by Regan, attacks him; but Edgar, with his stave, kills Oswald, who when dying gives Edgar (the man who has killed him) Goneril’s letter to Edmund, the delivery of which will earn a reward. In this letter Goneril promises to kill her husband and marry Edmund. Edgar drags out Oswald’s body by the legs, and then returns and leads his father away.