Bryan– Thanks for your comments as well. I was trying to see if my new understanding would still hold up as an example of unexpected modernity, and it didn’t… Regarding your theory about intensifying “or”, I’m not sure I’m following. I agree about the “do X or I’ll do Y” structure being an “if(not)/then”, but I’m not getting how the “or” part helps that.

I had thought it meant as follows:

If you do not draw, I will cut you.

That ‘so’ acted as an intensifier but not an intensifier of the carbonado but an intensifier of ‘or’.

However, I still like the notion of Bill S., tossing his locks like a Valley girl, penning this line…

““he’s so not into you””

“so” acts as an intensifying adverb. In the Lear usage

“I’ll so carbonado your shanks”

“so” seems to me to be more of a demonstrative adverb (I’m not a linguist, so I make no claims about the linguistic rigor of my terms). Basically:

“I’ll [in this manner] carbonado your shanks”

I expect that our spleen-spitting Kent has drawn his own rapier, and uses “so” to mean “this here’s what I’ll use to carry out this threat, buster”.

A more likely modern equivalent IMO would be. “I said so” or “so let it be done” or “knead the dough firmly, so”.

I’m not only so not a linguist, but I’m, like, so not a scholar of Shakespeare, so take my point with the deserved skepticism (IOW, don’t jump on my say-so).

By the way, only after I did this whole long post, I suddenly wondered if “so” in this quote is some reference back to “draw”, as in “Draw, you rogue, or I’ll [do so myself and] carbonado your shanks.” But even that takes a lot of squinting. Hopefully a Shakespearean scholar will wander by here and explain all.