We see them arrive at a place on the plain; we watch with interest and possibly a smile as Edgar describes the locality in imaginary details; and finally we see him place the blind Gloucester on the supposed verge and formally leave him, calling back to prove that he has gone. All this time there is not the least mention of a miracle. Only at the last moment, when Gloucester is about to pray, and this trifling with his belief might excite the resentment of the audience, does Edgar give any hint that he has an object in all this. And then he merely says, in an aside to the audience: "Why I do trifle thus with his despair, is done to cure it" but with no indication of what the nature of that cure is going to be. This is all held in the realm of curiosity and suspense so that the revelation may fall with the greater weight when it suddenly comes out. Neither the word miracle, nor the idea of it, is given us. The whole explanation of the scene and its deeper motives are made to rest on those two lines. It is important therefore that we should understand them.

I here append a few of the principal conjectures. Note how the critics try to arrive at meanings by mere verbal means.

THEOBALD: That is, open and righteous in their dealing. So in Timon, iv, iii, 27, “Ye clear heavens."

JOHNSON: The purest; the most free from

evil.

CAPELL: It may have the sense of clearsighted, given with some reference to the imposition on Gloucester, his weak belief of his bastard.

WHITE: The sense of the context, and the great similarity in manuscript between cl and d, make it more than possible that the correct reading here is dearest. Yet by such a change we should lose the fine opposition of "clearest" and "impossibilities.

SCHMIDT says that bright, pure, glorious are all contained in the word "clear."

Furness does not offer a solution.

THE FAIRIES' RINGLETS

Titania. These are the forgeries of jealousy;
And never since the middle summer's spring
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.
(Midsummer Night, ii, 1, 86)

W. A. WRIGHT, in annotating this passage in the Cambridge edition, explained these "ringlets" as being the same as Titania's "orbs upon the green" which are mentioned a few lines before; that is, the little circles of grass known as fairy rings.

Furness, in getting out the Variorum, found a considerable difficulty with Wright's note. Ringlets of grass do not grow upon the beached margent of the sea. As the only way out of the difficulty he decided that the fairies danced upon the sandy beach for the sake of letting the wind blow through their hair.

It is easy enough to pronounce this view ridiculous which it certainly must be to anyone with a literary sense of humor- but it must be remembered that the objection is perfectly valid. Shakespeare was so painstaking in every line and had such vivid conceptions of everything he wrote that it is

impossible to conceive him as speaking of rings of grass on the blank "margent" of the sea. As Furness says, "The fairy rings 'whereof the ewe not bites' are found where the grass grows green in pastures, but not by the paved fountain nor by rushy brook, and never in the beached margent of the sea, on those yellow sands where of all places, from Shakespeare's day to this, fairies foot it featly and toss their gossamer ringlets to the whistling and the music of the wind."

How are we to straighten out this profound question?

We have got to start by remarking that Wright and Furness are both wrong: these 'ringlets" are neither circles of grass nor ringlets of hair.

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The orbs or circles of grass in the meadow are the result of the fairies' having danced there. They are not pre-existent circles of grass which the fairies dance round. Shakespeare evidently had a perfect understanding of this: —

you demi-puppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make
Whereof the ewe not bites. - Tempest, v, 1, 37.

Fairies dance in circles; they have an allhands-round way of disporting themselves in their moonlight revels; and in their footsteps spring up these circles of grass in the pasture. Now, inasmuch as fairies can dance wherever they please, whether in the pasture or by the rushy brook or in the beached margent of the

sea, it is evident they are going to do so; and if the soil does not happen to be fertile enough to bring up grass in their footsteps, what care they? The point is that these "ringlets" are simply the circles in which they danced. We are here supposed to get a live picture of the little people themselves. If a large circle is a ring a little circle is a ringlet; and the diminutive gives an impression of the smallness of the fairies.