'No contraries hold more antipathy than I, and such a knave,' he says to Cornwall, by way of explaining his apparently gratuitous attack upon the steward.
No one, indeed, who reads the play with any care, can doubt the poet's intention to incorporate into it, for some reason or other, and to bring out by the strongest conceivable contrasts, his study of loyalty and service, and especially of regal counsel, and his criticism of it, as it stood in his time in its most approved patterns. 'Such smiling rouges as these' ('that bite the holy cords atwain').
'Smooth every passion
That in the nature of their lord rebels;
Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods;
Revenge, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters,
As knowing nought like dogs but—following.'
Such ruses as this would not, of course, be wanting in such a time as that in which this piece was planned, if Edmund's word was, indeed, the true one. 'Know thou this, men are as the time is.'
And even amidst the excitement and rough outrage of that scene—in which Gloster's trial is so summarily conducted, even in that so rude scene—the relation between the guest and his host, and the relation of the slave to his owner, is delicately and studiously touched, and the human claim in both is boldly advanced, in the face of an absolute authority, and age and personal dignity put in their claims also, and demand, even at such a moment, their full rights of reverence.
[Re-enter servants with GLOSTER.]
Regan. Ingrateful fox! 'tis he.
Cornwall. Bind fast his corky arms.
Gloster. What mean your graces?—Good my friends, consider. You are my guests: do me no foul play, friends.
Cornwall. Bind him, I say.