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Had it th' ability of life to thank you;
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since so full upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arrived; give order, that these bodies,
High on a stage be placed to the view,
And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world,
How these things came about. So shall you
Of cruel, bloody, and unnatural acts ;
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;
Of deaths put on by cunning, and forced cause;
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook,

hear

Fallen on th' inventors' heads. All this can I Truly deliver.

Fort. Let us haste to hear it,

And call the Noblesse to the audience.

For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune;

I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Hor. Of that I shall have also cause to speak, And from his mouth whose voice will draw on But let this same be presently performed, [more: Even while men's minds are wild, lest more misOn plots and errors happen. [chance

For. Let four captains (90)

(90) Four human likenesses, corresponding with such four captains, may be recognized in the map, two at Ham

Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have proved most royally. And for his passage,
The soldier's music, and the rites of war

Speak loudly for him—|

Take up the body such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shews much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

[Exeunt, marching: after which, a peal of
ordnance is shot off.

let's head, and two at his feet: but the characters they fill, like those of the embassadors from England, are so inconsiderable, that it is not thought necessary to draw or point them out.

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Knights attending on the King, Officers, Messengers, Soldiers,

and Attendants.

SCENE lies in Britain.

ACT I

SCENE I.

Enter KENT, GLO'STER, and EDMUND the

Bastard.

Kent. I thought the King (1) had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.

Glo. It did always seem so to us: but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which

KING LEAR.

I now offer a few short notes upon the play of King Lear; and they need not be other than short, if the reader will carry in his recollection the figures already drawn, and compare them and the references thereto in the notes with their originals in the moon: for the same prototypes, with some occasioal additions to their numbers, are again about to be brought into action under other characters.

(1) King Lear himself is referable to the same prototype as Crowdero in Hudibras (fig. 14), and Polonius in Hamlet (fig. 56); but it is scarcely necessary to observe, that, as the character now ascribable to the prototype is endowed with even royal dignity, so the original, or prototype itself, is to be considered as exalted proportionally in all the exterior appendages of costume, manners, &c. as Crowdero's name is derived from a crowd, or fiddle, so is Lear's from a lyre or fiddle.

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of the Dukes (2) he values most; for qualities are so weigh'd, that curiosity in neither can make choice of either's moiety.

Kent. Is not this your son, my Lord? (3)

Glo. His breeding, Sir, hath been at my charge. (4) I have so often blush'd to acknowledge him, that now I am braz'd to it. (5)

(2) Figure 78 gives a view of Gloster, who is to be referred to the same original in the moon as King Claudius in Hamlet (fig. 54). Fig. 78.

(3) Kent is the same as Talgol in Hudibras (fig. 17), and Laertes in Hamlet (fig. 57).

(4) Edmund the Bastard is the same as Magnano in Hudibras (fig. 19), and Guildenstern in Hamlet (fig. 67).

(5) The terms weighed and moiety refer to the librations and changes of the moon, as that of brazed does to its general colour of brass.

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