4. Self-cover’d.
At IV. ii. 59 Albany, horrified at the passions of anger, hate, and contempt expressed in his wife’s face, breaks out:
Proper deformity seems not in the fiend
So horrid as in woman.
Gon. O vain fool!
Alb. Thou changed and self-cover’d thing, for shame,
Be-monster not thy feature. Were’t my fitness
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
Thy flesh and bones: howe’er thou art a fiend,
A woman’s shape doth shield thee.
The passage has been much discussed, mainly because of the strange expression ‘self-cover’d,’ for which of course emendations have been proposed. The general meaning is clear. Albany tells his wife that she is a devil in a woman’s shape, and warns her not to cast off that shape by be-monstering her feature (appearance), since it is this shape alone that protects her from his wrath. Almost all commentators go astray because they imagine that, in the words ‘thou changed and self-cover’d thing,’ Albany is speaking to Goneril as a woman who has been changed into a fiend. Really he is addressing her as a fiend which has changed its own shape and assumed that of a woman; and I suggest that ‘self-cover’d’ means either ‘which hast cover’d or concealed thyself,’ or ‘whose self is covered’ [so Craig in Arden edition], not (what of course it ought to mean) ‘which hast been covered by thyself.’
Possibly the last lines of this passage (which does not appear in the Folios) should be arranged thus:
To dislocate and tear thy flesh and bones:
Howe’er thou art a fiend, a woman’s shape
Doth shield thee.
Gon. Marry, your manhood now—
Alb. What news?
5. The stage-directions at V. i. 37, 39.
In V. i. there first enter Edmund, Regan, and their army or soldiers: then, at line 18, Albany, Goneril, and their army or soldiers. Edmund and Albany speak very stiffly to one another, and Goneril bids them defer their private quarrels and attend to
