And let the wise man fly:
The knave turns fool that runs away;
The fool no knave, perdy.’
The last two lines have caused difficulty. Johnson wanted to read,
The knave no fool, perdy;
i.e. if I ran away, I should prove myself to be a knave and a wise man, but, being a fool, I stay, as no knave or wise man would. Those who rightly defend the existing reading misunderstand it, I think. Shakespeare is not pointing out, in ‘The knave turns fool that runs away,’ that the wise knave who runs away is really a ‘fool with a circumbendibus,’ ‘moral miscalculator as well as moral coward.’ The Fool is referring to his own words, ‘I would have none but knaves follow [my advice to desert the King], since a fool gives it’; and the last two lines of his song mean, ‘The knave who runs away follows the advice given by a fool; but I, the fool, shall not follow my own advice by turning knave.’
For the ideas compare the striking passage in Timon, 1. I. i. 64 ff.
3. ‘Decline your head.’
At IV. ii. 18 Goneril, dismissing Edmund in the presence of Oswald, says:
Shall pass between us: ere long you are like to hear,
If you dare venture in your own behalf,
A mistress’s command. Wear this; spare speech;
Decline your head: this kiss, if it durst speak,
Would stretch thy spirits up into the air.
I copy Furness’s note on ‘Decline’: ‘Steevens thinks that Goneril bids Edmund decline his head that she might, while giving him a kiss, appear to Oswald merely to be whispering to him. But this, Wright says, is giving Goneril credit for too much delicacy, and Oswald was a “serviceable villain.” Delius suggests that perhaps she wishes to put a chain around his neck.’
Surely ‘Decline your head’ is connected, not with ‘Wear this’ (whatever ‘this’ may be), but with ‘this kiss,’ etc. Edmund is a good deal taller than Goneril, and must stoop to be kissed.
