III. iv. 185. Child Rowland, etc. Child means Knight or Lord, cf. Child Harold. This is probably the fragment of an old ballad, now lost. The first line inspired Browning's great poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, published in 1855.
III. vi. 8. Frateretto . . . Nero. From Harsnet. The allusion to Nero may be mere nonsense. Rabelais said Nero was a fiddler in hell, and Trajan an angler.
III. vi. 28. Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me. Bourn here means brook, a burn. An old song, addressed to Queen Elizabeth on her coronation day.
III. vi. 55. joint-stool. A joint-stool was one made by joiners, as opposed to the usual rough homemade ones. The frequent mention of this article illustrates the lack of good furniture in Shakespeare's time.
III. vi. 92. noon. Much sentimental nonsense has been gushed about this, some commentators believing the Fool meant he would die in the noontide of his life. Manifestly the Fool is simply playing up to Lear's remark, 'We'll go to supper in the morning.'
III. vii. 65. All cruels else subscrib'd. A puzzling phrase. Possibly it means that the Porter would subscribe, i.e., give up everything cruel in wolves or other wild beasts, and remember only that they needed shelter on such a night. This is Furness's conjecture.
IV. i. 11. strange mutations, etc. If hate can be taken in the sense of despise, then the passage might mean 'the strange reverses in fortune make us despise life altogether, and thus stoically await old age and natural death. Otherwise, we should kill ourselves; no one would grow old.' Perhaps Moberly is right, who paraphrases 'we so hate life that we gladly find ourselves lapsing into old age and approaching death, which will deliver us from it.'
IV. i. 20. Our means secure us. 'Advantages make us careless.'
