King Lear by William Shakespeare.
Title: King Lear.
Author: William Shakespeare.
Genre: Literature, fiction, play, tragedy.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: ~1606.
Summary: Loosely based on the mythological Leir of Britain, the play is a story of an aging, flummoxed king, and his three daughters. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, offers to divide his power and land between his daughters Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, in exchange for a declaration of their love. But when the youngest daughter offers not empty compliments and flattery, but familial respect, she is banished from the kingdom. And when his two remaining daughters break their promises to host the King and his entourage, and plot to deprive him of all of his power and authority, and he begins to slowly lose his mind, the aging king and his soulless kingdom are doomed to fall.
My rating: 9/10
My review:
♥ Kent. Is not this your son, my lord?
Gloucester. His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am brazed to't.
Kent. I cannot conceive you.
Gloucester. Sir, this young fellow's mother could; whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?
Kent. I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of being so proper.
Gloucester. But I have a son, sir, by order of law, some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer to my account: though this knave came some thing saucily to the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair, there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged.
♥ Lear. Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.
Give me the map there. Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom; and 'tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business form our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburdened crawl toward death.
&heart; Lear. Tell me, my daughters
(Since now we will divest us both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state),
Which of you shall we say doth love us most,
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril,
Our eldest-born, speak first.
Goneril. Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter;
Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor;
As much as child e'er loved, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable:
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.
Cordelia. [Aside] What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.
Lear. ..What says our second daughter,
Our dearest Regan, wife of Cornwall? Speak.
Regan. I am made of that self mettle as my sister,
And prize me at her worth. In my true heart
I find she names my very deed of love;
Only she comes too short, that I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys
Which the most precious square of sense professes,
And find I am alone felicitate
In your dear Highness' love.
Cordelia. [Aside] Then poor Cordelia!
And yet not so, since I am sure my love's
More ponderous than my tongue.
Lear. ..Now, our joy,
Although our last and least; to whose young love
The vines of France and milk of Burgundy
Strive to be interest; what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
Cordelia. Nothing, my lord.
Lear. Nothing?
Cordelia. Nothing.
Lear. Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.
Cordelia. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty
According to my bond, no more nor less.
Lear. How, how, Cordelia? Mend your speech a little.
Lest you may mar your fortunes.
Cordelia. Good my lord,
You have begot me, bred me, loved me. I
Return those duties back as are right fit,
Obey you, love you, and most honor you.
Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty,
Sure I shall never marry like my sisters,
To love my father all.
Lear. But goes thy heart with this?
Cordelia. Ay, my good lord.
Lear. So young, and so untender?
Cordelia. So young, my lord, and true.
Lear. Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower!
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night,
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my parental care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever.
♥ Kent. Good my liege-
Lear. Peace. Kent!
Come not between the Dragon and his wrath.
♥ Kent. What wouldst thou do, old man?
Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows? To plainness honor's bound
When majesty falls to folly. Reserve thy state,
And in thy best consideration check
This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgement,
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,
Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sounds
Reverb no hollowness.
Lear. Kent, on thy life, no more!
Kent. My life I never held but as a pawn
To wage against thine enemies; nor fear to lose it,
Thy safety being motive.
..Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow
Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift,
Or, whilst I can vent clamor from my throat,
I'll tell thee thou dost evil.
♥ Lear. Our potency made good, take thy reward.
Five days we do allot thee for provision
To shield thee from diseases of the world,
And on the sixth to turn thy hated back
Upon our kingdom. If, on the tenth day following,
Thy banished trunk be found in our dominions,
The moment is thy death. Away! By Jupiter,
This shall not be revoked.
Kent. Fare thee well, King. Sith thus thou wilt appear,
Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here.
..Thus Kent, O Princes, bids you all adieu;
He'll shape his old course in a country new.
♥ France. This is most strange,
That she whom even but now was your best object,
The argument of your praise, balm of your age,
The best, the dearest, should in this trice of time
Commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle
So many folds of favor. Sure her offense
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it, or your fore-vouched affection
Fall into taint; which to believe of her
Must be a faith that reason without miracle
Should never paint in me.
..Is it but this? A tardiness in nature
Which often leaves the history unspoke
That it intends to do. My Lord of Burgundy,
What say you to the lady? Love's not love
When it is mingled with regards that stands
Aloof from th' entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dowry.
..Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich being poor;
Most choice forsaken, and most loved despised,
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.
Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! 'Tis strange that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.
Thy dow'rless daughter, King, thrown to my chance,
Is Queen of us, of ours, and our fair France.
Not all the dukes of wat'rish Burgundy
Can buy this unprized precious maid of me.
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind.
Thou losest her, a better where to find.
♥ Cordelia. The jewels of our father, with washed eyes
Cordelia leaves you. I know you what you are,
And, like a sister, am most loath to call
Your faults as they are named. Love well our father.
To your professèd bosoms I commit him.
But yet, alas, stood I within his grace,
I would prefer him to a better place.
..Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides,
Who covers faults, at last shame them derides,
Well may you prosper.
♥ Edmund. Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My kind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base? Base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to th' creating a whole tribe of fops
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to th' legitimate. Fine word, "legitimate."
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top th' legitimate. I grow, I prosper.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards.
♥ Gloucester. What paper were you reading?
Edmund. Nothing, my lord.
Gloucester. No? What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself.
♥ Gloucester. These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of Nature can reason it thus and thus, yet Nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction, there's a son against father; the King falls from bias of nature, there's father against child. We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves.
♥ Edmund. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star. My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's Tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
♥ Edmund. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses. ..I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily: as of unnaturalness between the child and the parent, death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities, divisions in state, menaces and maledictions against King and nobles, needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.
♥ Edmund. I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit.
All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.
♥ Goneril. Now, by my life,
Old fools are babes again, and must be used
With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abused.
Remember what I have said.
♥ Lear. How now, what art thou?
Kent. A man, sir.
Lear. What dost thou profess? What wouldst thou with us?
Kent. I do profess to be no less than I seem, to serve him truly that will put me in trust, to love him that is honest, to converse with him that is wise and says little, to fear judgment, to fight when I cannot choose, and to eat no fish.
Lear. What art thou?
Kent. A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the King.
Lear. If thou be'st as poor for a subject as he's for a king, thou art poor enough.
♥ Lear. How old art thou?
Kent. Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor so old to dote on her for anything. I have years on my back forty-eight.
♥ Fool. Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest,
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score.
♥ Lear. A bitter Fool.
Fool. Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter Fool and a sweet one?
Lear. No, lad; teach me.
Fool. That lord that counseled thee
To give away thy land,
Come place him here by me,
Do thou for him stand.
The sweet and bitter fool
Will present appear;
The one in motley here,
The other found out there.
Lear. Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool. All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.
Kent. This is not altogether fool, my lord.
Fool. No, faith; lords and great men will not let me. If I had a monopoly out, they would have part on't. And ladies too, they will not let me have all the fool to myself; they'll be snatching. Nuncle, give me an egg, and I'll give thee two crowns.
♥ Fool. Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav'st thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in this, let him be whipped that first finds it so.
[Singing.] Fools had ne'er less grace in a year,
For wise men are grown foppish,
And know not how their wits to wear,
Their manners are so apish.
Lear. When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?
Fool. I have used it, Nuncle, e'er since thou mad'st thy daughters thy mothers; for when thou gav'st them the rod, and put'st down thine own breeches,
[Singing] Then they for sudden joy did weep,
And I for sorrow sung,
That such a king should play bo-peep
And go the fools among.
..I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are. They'll have me whipped for speaking true; thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o' thing than a Fool, and yet I would not be thee, Nuncle: thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides and left nothing i' th' middle.
♥ Lear. Does any here know me? This is not Lear.
Does Lear walk thus? Speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, or his discernings
Are lethargied-Ha! Waking? 'Tis not so.
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
Fool. Lear's shadow.
♥ Goneril. Be then desired
By her, that else will take the thing she begs,
A little to disquantity your train,
And the remainders that shall still depend,
To be such men as may besort your age,
Which know themselves, and you.
Lear. Darkness and devils!
♥ Lear. Woe, that too late repents. O, sir, are you come?
Is it your will? Speak, sir. Prepare my horses.
Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child
Than the sea-monster.
♥ Lear. O most small fault,
How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show!
Which, like an engine, wrenched my frame of nature
Form the fixed place; drew from my heart all love,
And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear!
Beat at this gate that let thy folly in [Striking his head.]
And thy dear judgement out.
♥ Lear. Hear, Nature, hear; dear Goddess, hear:
Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful.
Into her womb convey sterility,
Dry up in her the organs of increase,
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honor her. If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen, that it may live
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her.
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child. Away, away!
♥ Lear. [To Goneril] Life and death, I am ashamed
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus!
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,
Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon thee!
Th' untented woundings of a father's curse
Pierce every sense about thee! Old fond eyes,
Beweep this cause again, I'll pluck ye out
And cast you, with the waters that you loose,
To temper clay. Yea, is it come to this?
Ha! Let it be so.
♥ Albany. Well, you may fear too far.
Goneril. Safer than trust too far.
Let me still take away the harms I fear,
Not fear still to be taken.
♥ Goneril. No, no, my lord,
This milky gentleness and course of yours,
Though I concern not, yet under pardon,
You are much more attasked for want of wisdom
Than praised for harmful mildness.
Albany. How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell;
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.
♥ Fool. Thou canst tell why one's nose stands i' th' middle on's face?
Lear. No.
Fool. Why, to keep one's eyes of either side's nose, that what a man cannot smell out, he may spy into.
♥ Fool. Thou wouldst make a good Fool.
Lear. To take't again perforce! Monster ingratitude!
Fool. If thou wert my Fool, Nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time.
Lear. How's that?
Fool. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.
♥ Fool. She that's a maid now, and laughs at my departure,
Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter.*
* - the maid who laughs, missing the tragic implications of this quarrel, will not have sense enough to preserve her virginity ("things" = penises)
♥ Oswald. Good dawning to thee, friend. Art of this house?
Kent. Ay.
Oswald. Where may we set our horses?
Kent. I' th' mire.
Oswald. Prithee, if thou lov'st me, tell me.
Kent. I love thee not.
Oswald. Why then, I care not for thee.
..Kent. Fellow, I know thee.
Oswald. What dost thou know me for?
Kent. A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.
♥ Cornwall. What is your difference? Speak.
Oswald. I am scarce in breath, my lord.
Kent. No marvel, you have so bestirred your valor. Your cowardly rascal, nature disclaims in thee. A tailor made thee.
Cornwall. Thou art a strange fellow. A tailor make a man?
Kent. A tailor, sir. A stonecutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though they had been but two years o' th' trade.
Cornwall. Speak yet, how grew your quarrel?
Oswald. This ancient ruffian, sir, whose life I have spared at suit of his gray beard-
Kent. Tho whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter!
..Cornwall. Peace, sirrah!
You beastly knave, know you no reverence?
Kent. Yes, sir, but anger hath a privilege.
Cornwall. Why art thou angry?
Kent/. That such a slave as his should wear a sword.
Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these,
Like rats, oft bite the hole cords atwain
Which are too intrince t' unloose; smooth every passion
That in the natures of their lords rebel,
Being oil to fire, snow to the colder moods;
Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters,
Knowing naught, like dogs, but following.
A plague upon your epileptic visage!
♥ Cornwall. Why dost thou call him knave? What is his fault?
Kent. His countenance likes me not.
Cornwall. No more perchance does mine, nor his, nor hers.
Kent. Sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain:
I have seen better faces in my time
Than stands on any shoulder that I see
Before me at this instant.
Cornwall. This is some fellow
Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature. He cannot flatter, he;
An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth.
And they will take it, so; if not, he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness
Harbor more craft and more corrupter ends
Than twenty silly-ducking observants
'That stretch their duties nicely.
♥ Kent. None of these rogues and cowards
But Ajax is their fool.
Cornwall. Fetch forth the stocks!
You stubborn ancient knave, you reverent braggart,
We'll teach you.
Kent. Sir, I am too old to learn.
♥ Kent. A good man's fortune may grow out at heels.
Give you good morrow.
♥ Kent. Good King, that must approve the common saw,
Thou out of Heaven's benediction com'st
To the warm sun.
Approach, thou beacon to this under globe,
That by thy comfortable beams I may
Peruse this letter. Nothing almost sees miracles
But misery. I know 'tis from Cordelia,
Who hath most fortunately been informed
Of my obscurèd course. And shall find time
From this enormous state, seeking to give
Losses their remedies. All weary and o'erwatched,
Take vantage, heavy eyes, not to behold
This shameful lodging. Fortune, good night;
Smile once more, turn thy wheel.
♥ Edgar. I heard myself proclaimed,
And by the happy hollow of a tree
Escaped the hunt. No port is free, no place
That guard and most unusual vigilance
Does not attend my taking. Whiles I may 'scape,
I will preserve myself; and am bethought
To take the basest and most poorest shape
That ever penury, in contempt of man,
Brought near to beast; my face I'll grime with filth,
Blanket my loins, elf all my hairs in knots,
And with presented nakedness outface
The winds and persecutions of the sky.
The country gives me proof and precedent
Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
Strike in their numbed and mortified bare arms
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;
And with this horrible object, from low farms,
Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills,
Sometimes with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,
Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod, Poor Tom,
That's something yet: Edgar I nothing am.
♥ Fool. Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way.
Fathers that wear rags
Do make their children blind,
But fathers that bear bags
Shall see their children kind.
Fortune, that arrant whore,
Ne'er turns the key to the' poor.
But for all this, thou shalt have as many colors for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year.
Lear. O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!
Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element's below.
♥ Fool. We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there's no laboring i' the' winter. All that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men, and there's not a nose among twenty but can smell him that's stinking. Let go thy hold when a great heel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following. But the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again. I would have none but knaves follow it since a Fool gives it.
That sir, which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack, when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm.
But I will tarry; the Fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly.
The knave turns Fool and runs away,
The Fool no knave, perdy.
♥ Lear. May be he is not well.
Infirmity doth still neglect all office
Whereto out health is bound. We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body. I'll forbear;
And am fallen out with my more headier will
To take the indisposed and sickly fit
For the sound man.
♥ Lear. Go tell the Duke and's wife I'd speak with them!
Now, presently! Bid them come forth and hear me,
Or at their chamber door I'll beat the drum
Till it cry sleep to death.
♥ Regan. I am glad to see your Highness.
Lear. Regan, I think you are. I know what reason
I have to think so. If thou shouldst not be glad,
I would divorce me from thy mother's tomb,
Sepulchring an adultress.
♥ Regan. O, sir, you are old,
Nature in you stands on the very verge.
Of his confine. You should be ruled, and led
By some discretion that discerns your state
Better than you yourself.
♥ Lear. O heavens!
If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
Allow obedience, if you yourselves are old,
Make it your cause. Send down, and take my part.
♥ Regan. I pray you, father, being weak, seem so.
♥ Lear. But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter,
Or rather a disease that's in my flesh,
Which I must needs call mine. Thou art a boil,
A plague-sore, or embossèd carbuncle
In my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee.
Let shame come when it will, I do not call it.
I do not bid the Thunder-bearer shoot,
Nor tell tales of thee in high-judging Jove.
Mend when thou canst, be better at thy leisure,
I can be patient..
♥ Goneril. Hear me, my lord,
What need you five-and-twenty? ten? or five?
To follow in a house where twice so many
Have a command to tend you?
Regan. What need one?
Lear. O reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beast's. Thou art a lady:
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need-
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need.
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age, wretched in both.
If it be you that stirs these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women's weapons, water drops,
Stain my man's cheek. No, you unnatural hags!
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall-I will do such things-
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep.
No, I'll not weep.
Storm and tempest.
I have full cayuse of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I'll weep. O Fool, I shall go mad!
♥ Regan. O, sir, to willful men
The injuries that they themselves procure
Must be their schoolmasters. Shut up your doors,
He is attended with a desperate train,
And what they may incense him to, being apt
To have his ear abused, wisdom bids fear.
♥ Kent. Who's there besides foul weather?
Gentleman. One minded like the weather most unquietly.
Kent. I know you. Where's the King?
Gentleman. Contending with the fruitful elements;
Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,
Or swell the curlèd waters 'bove the main,
That things might change, or cease; tears his white hair,
Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,
Catch in their fury, and make nothing of;
Strives in his little world of man to outscorn
The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.
♥ Lear. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks. Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks.
You sulp'rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world,
Crack Nature's molds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man.
..Tumble thy bellyful. Spit, fire. Spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, called you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engendered battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O, ho! 'tis foul.
♥ Fool. The codpiece that will house
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse:
So beggars marry many.
The man that makes his toe
What he his heart should make
Shall of a corn cry woe,
And turn his sleep to wake.
♥ Kent. Things that love night
Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark
And make them keep their caves. Since I was man
Such sheet of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
Remember to have heard. Man's nature cannot carry
Th' affliction nor the fear.
♥ Lear. My wits begin to turn.
Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious.
..Fool. [Singing.] He that has and a little tiny wit,
With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain,
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
Though the rain it raineth every day.
♥ Fool. When priests are more in word than matter;
When brewers mar their mark with water;
When nobles are their tailors' tutors,
No heretics burned, but wenches' suitors;
When every case in law is right,
No squire in debt nor no poor knight;
When slanders do not live in tongues;
Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;
When usurers tell their fold i' th' field,
And bawds and whores do churches build,
Then shall the realm of Albion
Come to great confusion.
Then comes the time, who lives to see't,
That going shall be used with feet.
This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time.
♥ Edmund. This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me
That which my father loses-no less than all.
The younger rises when the old doth fall.
♥ Lear. Wilt break my heart?
Kent. I had rather break mine own.
♥ Lear. O Regan, Goneril,
Your old kind father, whose frank heartr gave all-
O, that way madness lies let me shun that.
No more of that.
♥ Lear. Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
♥ Edgar. Bless thy five wits,* Tom's a-cold. O, do, de, do, de do, de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, stare-blasting, and taking. Do Poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes.
* five wits i.e., common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, memory.
♥ Fool. This cold night will turn us all to fools and mad-men.
♥ Edgar. Take heed o' th' foul fiend; obey thy parents; keep thy word's justice; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse; set not thy sweet heart on proud array. ..Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly; and in woman out-paramoured the Turk. False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend. Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind; says suum, mun, nonny. Dolphin my boy, boy, sessa! let him trot by.
Storm still.
Lear. Thou wert better in a grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou ow'st the worm no silk, the best no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha!
♥ Enter Gloucester, with a torch.
Edgar. This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. He begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock. He gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.
Swithold footed thrice the old;
He met the nightmare, and her nine fold;
Bid her alight
And her troth plight,
And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!
♥ Edgar. Beware my follower! Peace, Smulkin, peace, thou fiend!
Gloucester. What, hath your Grace no better company?
Edgar. The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman.
Modo he's called, and Mahu.
Gloucester. Our flesh and blood, my Lord, is grown so vile
That it doth hate what gets it.
♥ Kent. His wits begin t' unsettle.
Gloucester. Canst thou blame him?
Storm still.
His daughters seek his death. Ah, that good Kent,
He said it would be thus, poor banished man!
Thou say'st the King grows mad-I'll tell thee, friend,
I am almost mad myself. I had a son,
Now outlawed from my blood; he sought my life
But lately, very late. I loved him, friend,
No father his son dearer. True to tell thee,
The grief hath crazed my wits. What a night's this!
♥ Fool. He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.
♥ Lear. So, so. We'll go to supper i' th' morning.
Fool. And I'll go to bed at noon.*
* the Fool's last words.
♥ Edgar. When we our betters see bearing our woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
Who alone suffers suffers most i' th' mind,
Leaving free things and happy shows behind;
But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip
When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.
How light and portable my pain seems now,
When that which makes me bend makes the King bow.
He childed as I fathered. Tom, away.
Mark the high noises, and thyself bewray
When false opinion, whose wrong thoughts' defile thee,
In thy just proof repeals and reconciles thee.
What will hap more tonight, safe 'scape the King!
Lurk, lurk.
♥ Edgar. Yet better thus, and known to be contemned,
Than still contemned and flattered. To be worst,
The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear;
The lamentable change is from the best,
The worst returns to laughter. Welcome then,
Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!
The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
Owes nothing to thy blasts.
♥ Edgar. World, world, O world!
But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,
Life would not yield to age.
♥ Old Man. You cannot see your way.
Gloucester. I have no way and therefore want not eyes;
I stumbled when I saw. Full oft 'tis seen,
Our means secure us, and our mere defects
Prove our commodities.
♥ Edgar. [Aside] And worse I may be yet: the worst is not
So long as we can say "This is the worst."
♥ Gloucester. As flies to wanton boys, are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport.
♥ Gloucester. And bring some covering for this naked soul,
Which I'll entreat to lead me.
Old Man. Alack, sir, he is mad.
Gloucester. 'Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind.
Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure;
Above the rest, be gone.
♥ Gloucester. Here, take this purse, thou whom the heaven's plagues
Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched
Makes thee the happier. Heavens, deal so still!
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he does not feel, feel your pow'r quickly
Do distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough.
♥ Goneril. I have been worth the whistle.
Albany. O Goneril!
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face. I fear your disposition:
That nature which contemns its origin
Cannot be bordered certain in itself;
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use.
Goneril. No more; the text is foolish.
Albany. Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile:
Filths savor but themselves.
♥ Goneril. Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
Thine honor from thy suffering; that not know'st
Fools do those villains pity who are punished
Ere they have done their mischief.
♥ Albany. Thou changèd and self-covered 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.
♥ Gentleman. And now and then an ample tear trilled down
Her delicate cheek: it seemed she was a queen
Over her passion, who most rebel-like
Sought to be king o'er her.
♥ Edgar. Bear free and patient thoughts.
Enter Lear [fantastically dressed with wild flowers].
But who comes here?
The safer sense will ne'er accommodate
His master thus.
♥ Lear. Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester's bastard son
Was kinder to his father than my daughters
Got 'tween the lawful sheets.
To 't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers.
Behold yond simp'ring dame,
Whose face between her forks presages snow,
That minces virtue and does shake the head
To hear of pleasure's name.
The fitchew, nor the spoilèd horse, goes to 't
With a more riotous appetite.
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above:
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiend's.
There's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit,
Burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie!
♥ Gloucester. O ruined piece of nature! This great world
Shall so wear out to nought. Dost thou know me?
♥ Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places, and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?
Gloucester. And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office.
♥ Lear. When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools. This' a good block.
♥ Gloucester. You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me;
Let not my worser spirit tempt me again
To die before you please.
♥ Edgar. Let's see these pockets: the letters that he speaks of
May be my friends. He's dead; I am only sorry
He had no other deathsman. Let us see:
Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not:
To know our enemies' minds, we rip their hearts,
Their papers is more lawful.
♥ Gloucester. ..how stiff is my vile sense,
That I stand up, and have ingenious feeling
Of my huge sorrows! Better I were distract:
So should my thoughts be severed from my griefs,
And woes by wrong imaginations lose
The knowledge of themselves.
♥ Kent. 'Tis time to look about; the powers of the kingdom approach apace.
Gentleman. The arbitrement is like to be bloody.
Fare you well, sir.
Exit.
Kent. My point and period will be throughly wrought,
Or well or ill, as this day's battle's fought.
♥ Albany. We will greet the time.
♥ Edmund. ..for my state
Stands on me to defend, not to debate.
♥ Edgar. What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither:
Ripeness is all. Come on.
Gloucester. And that's true too.
♥ Cordelia. We are not the first
Who with best meaning have incurred the worst.
♥ Lear. Have I caught thee?
He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,
And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes;
The good years shall devour them, flesh and fell,
Ere they shall make us weep. We'll see 'em starved first.
Come.
♥ Edmund. ..know thou this, that men
Are as the time is: to be tender-minded
Does not become a sword: thy great employment
Will not bear question; either say thou'lt do 't,
Or thrive by other means.
♥ Edmund. At this time
We sweat and bleed: the friend hath lost his friend;
And the best quarrels, in the heat, are cursed
By those that feel their sharpness.
♥ Regan. Jesters do oft prove prophets.
♥ Regan. Lady, I am not well; else I should answer
Form a full-flowing stomach. General,
Take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony;
Dispose of them, of me; the walls is thine:
Witness the world, that I create thee here
My lord, and master.
♥ Edgar. Draw thy sword,
That if my speech offend a noble heart,
Thy arm may do thee justice: here is mine.
Behold it is my privilege,
The privilege of mine honors,
My path, and my profession. I protest,
Maugre thy strength, place, youth, and eminence,
Despite thy victor sword and fire-new fortune,
Thy valor and thy heart, thou art a traitor,
False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father,
Conspirant 'gainst this high illustrious prince,
And from th' extremest upward of thy head
To the descent and dust below thy foot,
A most toad-spotted traitor. Say thou "No,"
This sword, this arm and my best spirits are bent
To prove upon thy heart, whereto I speak,
Thou liest.
♥ Edgar. The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us..
♥ Edgar. -O, our lives' sweetness,
That we the pain of death would hourly die
Rather than die at once!
♥ Albany. Fall and cease.
♥ Albany. All friends shall taste
The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings.
♥ Lear. ..no, no, no life?
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never.
Pray you, undo thus button. Thank you, sir.
Do you see this? Look on her. Look, her lips.
Look there, look there.
He dies.
♥ Kent. The wonder is he hath endured so long:
He but usurped his life.
♥ Albany. Friends of my soul, you twain,
Rule in this realm and the gored state sustain.
♥ Edgar. The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.