Note to King Lear, 3.2.80: "I'll speak a prophecy ere I go"

a prophecy ere I go: What follows may have been inspired by a medieval manuscript entitled The Prophecy of Merlin, in which the corruption of England is satirized by a "prophecy" predicting that when certain vices are widespread, England will be in serious trouble. The satiric point is that those vices, such as priests not meaning what they say, are already widespread. This is the pattern followed by lines 81 - 86 of the Fool's prophecy. Lines 87 - 94 use a different satiric technique: They predict that when everyone is impossibly virtuous (so virtuous, for example, that whores build churches) then everyone can stroll about free and easy ("going shall be used with feet"). Of course that time will never come.