_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.
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