But it is never the custom of this author to leave the diligent student of his performances in any doubt whatever as to his meaning. It is a rule, that everything in the play shall speak and reverberate his purpose. He prolongs and repeats his burthens, till the whole action echoes with them, till 'the groves, the fountains, every region near, seem all one mutual cry.' He has indeed the Teacher's trick of repetition, but then he is 'so rare a wondered teacher,' so rich in magical resources, that he does not often find it necessary to weary _the sense_ with sameness. He is prodigal in variety. It is a Proteus repetition. But his charge to his Ariel in getting up his Masques, always is,-- 'Bring a corollary, Rather than want a spirit.' Nay, it would be dangerous, not wearisome merely, to make the text of this living commentary continuous, or to bring too near together 'those short and pithy sentences' wherein the action unwinds and fashions into its immortal groups. And the curtain must fall and rise again, ere the outcast duke,--his eyes gouged out by tyranny, turned forth to smell his way to Dover,--can dare to echo, word by word, the thoughts of the outcast king. Led by one whose qualification for leadership is, that he is 'Madman and Beggar, too,'--for as Gloster explains it to us, explaining also at the same time much else that the scenic language of the play, the dumb show, the transitory hieroglyphic of it presents, and _all_ the criticism of it, ''T IS THE TIME'S PLAGUE WHEN MADMEN LEAD THE BLIND'-- groping with such leadership his way to Dover--'smelling it out'--thus it is that his secret understanding with the king, in that mad and wondrous philosophical humour of his, betrays itself. _Gloster_. Here, take this purse [to Tom o'Bedlam], _thou whom the heaven's plagues Have humbled to all strokes_: that I am wretched Makes thee the happier:--_Heavens, deal so still_! Let the _superfluous_ and lust-dieted man That _slaves_ your ordinance, that will not SEE _Because_ he doth not FEEL, feel your power quickly; _So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough_. _Lear_. O I have taken _Too little care of this._ Take physic, Pomp; Expose thyself to FEEL what wretches FEEL, _That_ thou may'st shake the _superflux to them, And show the Heavens more just_.