A note on a phrase in Shakespeare's play King Lear: 'a plague upon your epileptic visage'.

In Shakespeare's play King Lear the word 'epileptic' appears (used in a derogatory manner). This is held to be the first appearance of the word in the English language (although we have found earlier English references to the word which Shakespeare may have read). Textual analysis of the lines following the use of 'epileptic' suggests that it is actually a reference to the pock-marks of syphilis, endemic in Elizabethan England, and is not actually a reference to epilepsy itself.