Page:King Lear (1917) Yale.djvu/152

136 Dover. If the heath where Lear wandered in the storm and the one given in the common stage direction at the head of this scene are both identified with Egdon Heath in Dorset, as seems generally to be supposed, Gloucester has a long walk ahead of him to Dover.

I have been worth the whistle. Alluding to the proverb, 'It is a poor dog that is not worth the whistling'; that is, there was a time when I was worthy of notice.

Fools do those villains pity. Villains probably refers to Lear, though many think it means Gloucester, while Furness ingeniously suggests it means Albany himself.

My snuff, etc. The useless part of me alone is left, and is only a hindrance. The wick is encumbered with the snuff.

the clearest gods. Perhaps the adjective is used in the sense of the Latin clarissimi, the most illustrious. However, Stewart (see next note) explains the phrase as meaning the gods that perform miracles.

clothier's yard. Charles D. Stewart, in his book, Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare, Yale University Press, 1914, says, p. 86: 'A "clothier's yard" does not refer to a particular sort of yard as a standard of measurement; it is the distance from the tip of the nose to the end of the thumb when he arm is stretched out sidewise. A bowman who could draw a clothier's yard was one who, when the butt of the shaft was at his nose, had the strength to force the bow out the full length of the arm. An archer of size and strength had to have an arrow of such length that he could use it in this way; and "an arrow of a cloth-yard long"  refers to this ability, and not to a standard of measurement.'

ay' and 'no. Stewart was the first to give a satisfactory explanation of this passage.