'No more, but e'en a woman; and _commanded_ By such poor passion, as the maid that milks, And does the meanest chares.' So busy is he, indeed, in laying by this king's 'ceremonies' for him, beginning with the first doubtful perception of a most faint neglect,--a falling off in the ceremonious affection due to majesty 'as well in the general dependents as in the duke himself and his daughter,'--so faint that the king dismisses it from his thought, and charges it on his own jealousy till he is reminded of it by another,--beginning with that faint beginning, and continuing the process not less delicately, through all its swift dramatic gradations,--the direct abatement of the regal dignities,--the knightly train diminishing,--nay, 'fifty of his followers at a clap' torn from him, his messenger put in the stocks,--and '_it is worse than murder_,' the poor king cries in the anguish of his slaughtered dignity and affection, 'to do upon _respect_ such violent outrage,'--so bent is the Poet upon this analytic process; so determined that this shaking out of a '_preconception_,' shall be for once a thorough one, so absorbed with the dignity of the scientific experiment, that he seems bent at one moment on giving a literal finish to this process; but the fool's scruples interfere with the philosophical humour of the king, and the presence of Mad Tom in his blanket, with the king's exposition, suffices to complete the demonstration. For not less lively than this, is the preaching and illustration, from that new rostrum which this 'Doctor' has contrived to make himself master of. 'His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man,' says King Hal. 'Couldst thou save nothing?' says King Lear to the Bedlamite. 'Why thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.' '_Is man_,'--it is _the king_ who generalises, it is the king who introduces this levelling suggestion here in the _abstract_, while the Poet is content with the responsibility of the concrete exhibition--'_Is man no wore than this_? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the cat no perfume:--Ha! here's three of us are _sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself_. UNACCOMMODATED MAN is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal, as thou art. Off, off, you lendings.' But 'the fool' is of the opinion that this scientific process of unwrapping the artificial majesty, this philosophical undressing, has already gone far enough. 'Pry'thee, Nuncle, be contented,' he says, 'it is a naughty night to swim in.' For it is the great heath wrapped in one of those storms of wind and rain and thunder and lightning, which this wizard only of all the children of men knows how to raise, that he chooses for his physiological exhibition of majesty, when the palace-door has been shut upon it, and the last 'additions of a king' have been subtracted. It is a night--