Shakspeare, therefore, gave himself little more
trouble than what reference occasioned him to
Harsnet's " Declaration of Egregious Popish
Impostures to withdraw Her Majesty's Subjects
from their Allegiance ;" a work written to ex-
pose the craft of the Jesuits, whose pretended
cures of feigned demoniacs were used as a
means for the sedudjon of converts to the Ca-
tholic religion. It was from this work that he
extracted the names of all the fiends and devils
with which Edgar displays such extreme fami-
liarity. " Frateretto, Hopdance, Obdicut, prince
of lust ; Hobbididance, of dumbness ; Mahu, of
stealth ; Modo, of miu-der ; and Flibbertigibbet,
of mopping and mowing ; who since possesses
chambermaids and waiting-women,'^ are all ex-
hibited in turn by the lynx-eyed bishop, frpm
whom Shakspeare also borrowed, for the use of
Edgar, many casual phrases, which, being inex-

VOL. II. K



ISO KING LEAR.
pressive of valuable ideas, are devoid of sufficient
interest to justify their individual quotation.
Edgar loses nothing in the comparison of
heroism with the Paphlagonian prince. Like
him he exposes his life in defence of his father,
like him he is victorious ; and his impeachment,
challenge, and punishment of the villanous
Edmund, are in the highest strain of chivalric
gallantry.
When Edgar throws aside his disguise, and
proclaims himself the son of Gloster, he shortly
recounts the way in which he passed the day^ of
bis adversity ; all which the audience were as
well acquainted with as himselfi for bis actions
had all been exhibited before them. But Shak-
speiure found the story twice narrated in the
Arcadia, and he was seduced, on this occasion,
to the commission of tautology, as he had been
by the poem of Arthur Brooke, when he wrote
Eomeo and Juliet.
