When that royal edict is obeyed,--when the wonders of the magician's art are put in requisition to fulfil it,--when the road from the palace to the hovel is laid open,--when the hovel, where Tom o' Bedlam is nestling in the straw, is produced on the stage, and THE KING--THE KING--stoops, before all men's eyes, to creep into its mouth,--surely we do not need 'a _chorus_ to interpret for us'--we do not need to wait for the Poet's own deferred exposition to seize the more obvious meanings. Surely, one catches enough in passing, in the dialogues and tableaux here, to perceive that there is something going on in this play which is not all play,--something that will be earnest, perhaps, ere all is done,--something which 'the groundlings' were not expected to get, perhaps, in 'their sixe-penn'orth' of it at the first performance,--something which that witty and splendid company, who made up the Christmas party at Whitehall, on the occasion of its first exhibition there, who sat there 'rustling in silk,' breathing perfumes, glittering in wealth that the alchemy of the storm had not tried, were not, perhaps, all informed of; though there might have been one among them, 'a gentleman of blood and breeding,' who could have told them what it meant. 'We construct,' says the person who describes this method of philosophic instruction, speaking of the subtle prepared history which forces the inductions--'we construct tables and combinations of instances, upon such a plan, and in such order, that the understanding may be enabled to act upon them.' 'They told me I was everything.' _They told me I was everything_,' says the poor king himself, long afterwards, when the storm has had its ultimate effect upon him. 'To say ay and no to everything that I said!--[To say] ay and no _too_ WAS NO GOOD DIVINITY. They told me, I had _white_ hairs in my beard, ere the _black_ ones were there. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at _my bidding_; there I found them, _there_ I smelt them out. Go to, they are not men of their words: they told me I was everything; _'tis a lie; I am not ague-proof_.' '_I_ think the king is but a man, as I am' [says King Hal], 'All his _senses_ have the like conditions; and his _affections_, though higher mounted, when they stoop, stoop with _the like wing_.' But at the door of that rude hut the ruined majesty pauses. In vain his loving attendants, whom, for love's sake, this Poet will still have with him, entreat him to enter. Storm-battered, and wet, and shivering as he is, he shrinks back from the shelter he has bid them bring him to. He will not '_in_.' Why? Is it because 'the tempest will not give him leave to ponder on things would hurt him more.' That is his excuse at first; but another blast strikes him, and he yields to 'the to and fro conflicting wind and rain,' and says-- '_But_ I'll go in.'