He does not appear
'armed,' according to the Folio, till V. iii. 117.]
[Footnote 277: Spedding supposed that there was a front curtain, and
this idea, coming down from Malone and Collier, is still found in
English works of authority. But it may be stated without hesitation that
there is no positive evidence at all for the existence of such a
curtain, and abundant evidence against it.]
NOTE Y.
SOME DIFFICULT PASSAGES IN _KING LEAR_.
The following are notes on some passages where I have not been able to
accept any of the current interpretations, or on which I wish to express
an opinion or represent a little-known view.
1. _Kent's soliloquy at the end of_ II. ii.
(_a_) In this speech the application of the words 'Nothing, almost sees
miracles but misery' seems not to have been understood. The 'misery' is
surely not that of Kent but that of Lear, who has come 'out of heaven's
benediction to the warm sun,' _i.e._ to misery. This, says Kent, is just
the situation where something like miraculous help may be looked for;
and he finds the sign of it in the fact that a letter from Cordelia has
just reached him; for his course since his banishment has been so
obscured that it is only by the rarest good fortune (something like a
miracle) that Cordelia has got intelligence of it.
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