The clear-eyed intensity of Shakespeare’s tragic vision in King Lear has been too much for some audiences, and Nahum Tate’s adaptation, which gave the play a happy ending, held the stage from 1681 to 1843; since then, increased understanding of Shakespeare’s stagecraft along with a greater seriousness in theatre audiences has assisted in the rehabilitation of a play that is now recognized as one of the profoundest of all artistic explorations of the human condition.
In the text which follows, the Quarto scene numbers are followed by the equivalent Folio act and scene numbers in parentheses. There is no equivalent to Sc. 17 in the Folio.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
LEAR, King of Britain
GONORIL, Lear’s eldest daughter
Duke of ALBANY, her husband
REGAN, Lear’s second daughter
Duke of CORNWALL, her husband
CORDELIA, Lear’s youngest daughter
Earl of KENT, later disguised as Caius
Earl of GLOUCESTER
EDGAR, elder son of Gloucester, later disguised as Tom o’ Bedlam
EDMUND, bastard son of Gloucester
OLD MAN, a tenant of Gloucester
CURAN, Gloucester’s retainer
Lear’s FOOL
OSWALD, Gonoril’s steward
Three SERVANTS of Cornwall
DOCTOR, attendant on Cordelia
Three CAPTAINS
A HERALD
A KNIGHT
A MESSENGER
Gentlemen, servants, soldiers, followers, trumpeters, others
The History of King Lear
Sc. 1 Enter the Earl of Kent, the Duke of Gloucester, and Edmund the bastard
KENT I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.
GLOUCESTER It did always seem so to us, but now in the division of the kingdoms it appears not which of the Dukes he values most; for equalities are so weighed that curiosity in neither can make choice of either’s moiety.
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 it.
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 it being so proper.
GLOUCESTER But I have, sir, a son by order of law, some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account. Though this knave came something saucily into 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. (To Edmund) Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund?
EDMUND No, my lord.
GLOUCESTER (to Edmund) My lord of Kent. Remember him hereafter as my honourable friend.
EDMUND (to Kent) My services to your lordship.
KENT I must love you, and sue to know you better.
EDMUND Sir, I shall study deserving.
GLOUCESTER (to Kent) He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again.
Sound a sennet
The King is coming.
Enter one bearing a coronet, then King Lear, then the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall; next Gonoril, Regan, Cordelia, with followers
LEAR
Attend my lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.
GLOUCESTER I shall, my liege.
⌈Exit⌉
LEAR
Meantime we will express our darker purposes.
The map there. Know we have divided
In three our kingdom, and ’tis our first intent
To shake all cares and business off our state,
Confirming them on younger years.
The two great princes, France and Burgundy—
Great rivals in our youngest daughter’s love—
Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,
And here are to be answered. Tell me, my daughters,
Which of you shall we say doth love us most,
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where merit doth most challenge it?
Gonoril, our eldest born, speak first.
GONORIL
Sir, I do love you more than words can wield the
matter;
Dearer than eyesight, space, or liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life; with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e’er loved, or father, friend;
A love that makes breath poor and speech unable.
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.
CORDELIA (aside)
What shall Cordelia do? Love and be silent.
LEAR (to Gonoril)
Of all these bounds even from this line to this,
With shady forests and wide skirted meads,
We make thee lady. To thine and Albany’s issue
Be this perpetual.—What says our second daughter?
Our dearest Regan, wife to Cornwall, speak.
REGAN Sir, I am made
Of the self-same mettle that my sister is,
And prize me at her worth. In my true heart
I find she names my very deed of love—
Only she came short, that I profess
Myself an enemy to all other joys
Which the most precious square of sense possesses,
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 richer than my tongue.
LEAR (to Regan)
To thee and thine hereditary ever
Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom, No less in space, validity, and pleasure
Than that confirmed on Gonoril. (To Cordelia) But
now our joy,
Although the last, not least in our dear love:
What can you say to win a third more opulent
Than your sisters?
CORDELIA Nothing, my lord.
LEAR
How? Nothing can 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, nor more nor less.
LEAR
Go to, go to, mend your speech a little
Lest it 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 honour 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 this with thy heart?
CORDELIA Ay, good my lord.
LEAR So young and so untender?
CORDELIA So young, my lord, and true.
LEAR
Well, let it be so. Thy truth then he 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 paternal care,
Propinquity, and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation
Messes to gorge his appetite,
Shall be as well neighboured, pitied, and relieved
As thou, my sometime daughter.
KENT Good my +liege-
Peace, Kent. Come not between the dragon and his
wrath.
I loved her most, and thought to set my rest
On her kind nursery. ⌈To Cordelia⌉ Hence, and avoid
my sight!—
So be my grave my peace as here I give
Her father’s heart from her. Call France. Who stirs?
Call Burgundy.
⌈Exit one or more⌉
Cornwall and Albany,
With my two daughters’ dowers digest this third.
Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.
I do invest you jointly in my power,
Pre-eminence, and all the large effects
That troop with majesty. Ourself by monthly course,
With reservation of an hundred knights
By you to be sustained, shall our abode
Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain
The name and all the additions to a king.
The sway, revenue, execution of the rest,
Beloved sons, be yours; which to confirm,
This crownet part betwixt you.
KENT Royal Lear,
Whom I have ever honoured as my king,
Loved as my father, as my master followed,
As my great patron thought on in my prayers—
LEAR
The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.
KENT
Let it fall rather, though the fork invade
The region of my heart. Be Kent unmannerly
When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man?
Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour’s
bound
When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom,
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 sound
Reverbs no hollowness.
LEAR Kent, on thy life, no more!
KENT
My life I never held but as a pawn
To wage against thy enemies, nor fear to lose it,
Thy safety being the motive.
LEAR Out of my sight!
KENT
See better, Lear, and let me still remain
The true blank of thine eye.
LEAR Now, by Apollo-
KENT
Now, by Apollo, King, thou swear’st thy gods in vain.
LEAR ⌈making to strike himl ⌉
Vassal, recreant!
KENT Do, kill thy physician,
And the fee bestow upon the foul disease.
Revoke thy doom, or whilst I can vent clamour
From my throat I’ll tell thee thou dost evil.
LEAR
Hear me; on thy allegiance hear me!
Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow,
Which we durst never yet, and with strayed pride
To come between our sentence and our power,
Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,
Our potency made good take thy reward:
Four days we do allot thee for provision
To shield thee from dis-eases of the world,
And on the fifth to turn thy hated back
Upon our kingdom. If on the next day following
Thy banished trunk be found in our dominions,
The moment is thy death. Away! By Jupiter,
This shall not be revoked.
KENT
Why, fare thee well, King; since thus thou wilt
appear,
Friendship lives hence, and banishment is here.
(To Cordelia) The gods to their protection take thee,
maid,
That rightly thinks, and hast most justly said.
(To Gonoril and Regan)
And your large speeches may your deeds approve,
That good effects may spring from words of love.
Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu;
He’ll shape his old course in a country new.
Exit
Enter the King of France and the Duke of
Burgundy, with the Duke of Gloucester
GLOUCESTER
Here’s France and Burgundy, my noble lord.
LEAR My lord of Burgundy,
We first address towards you, who with a king
Hath rivalled for our daughter: what in the least
Will you require in present dower with her
Or cease your quest of love?
BURGUNDY Royal majesty,
I crave no more than what your highness offered;
Nor will you tender less.
LEAR Right noble Burgundy,
When she was dear to us we did hold her so;
But now her price is fallen. Sir, there she stands.
If aught within that little seeming substance,
Or all of it, with our displeasure pieced,
And nothing else, may fitly like your grace,
She’s there, and she is yours.
BURGUNDY I know no answer.
LEAR
Sir, will you with those infirmities she owes,
Unfriended, new-adopted to our hate,
Covered with our curse and strangered with our oath,
Take her or leave her?
BURGUNDY Pardon me, royal sir.
Election makes not up on such conditions.
LEAR
Then leave her, sir; for by the power that made me,
I tell you all her wealth. (To France) For you, great
King,
I would not from your love make such a stray
To match you where I hate, therefore beseech you
To avert your liking a more worthier way
Than on a wretch whom nature is ashamed
Almost to acknowledge hers.
FRANCE
This is most strange, that she that even but now
Was your best object, the argument of your praise,
Balm of your age, most best, most dearest,
Should in this trice of time commit a thing
So monstrous to dismantle
So many folds of favour. Sure, her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it, or your fore-vouched affections
Fall’n into taint; which to believe of her
Must be a faith that reason without miracle
Could never plant in me.
CORDELIA (to Lear)
I yet beseech your majestyIf for I want that glib and oily art
To speak and purpose not—since what I well intend,
I’ll do’t before I speak—that you acknow
It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
No unclean action or dishonoured step
That hath deprived me of your grace and favour,
But even the want of that for which I am rich—
A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue
As I am glad I have not, though not to have it
Hath lost me in your liking.
LEAR Go to, go to.
Better thou hadst not been born than not to have
pleased me better.
FRANCE
Is it no more but this—a tardiness in nature,
That often leaves the history unspoke
That it intends to do?—My lord of Burgundy,
What say you to the lady? Love is not love
When it is mingled with respects that stands
Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dower.
BURGUNDY Royal Lear,
Give but that portion which yourself proposed,
And here I take Cordelia by the hand,
Duchess of Burgundy—
LEAR Nothing. I have sworn.
BURGUNDY (to Cordelia)
I am sorr
y, then, you have so lost a father
That you must lose a husband.
CORDELIA
Peace be with Burgundy; since that respects
Of fortune are his love, I shall not be his wife.
FRANCE
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 dowerless daughter, King, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France.
Not all the dukes in wat’rish Burgundy
Shall buy this unprized precious maid of me.—
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind.
Thou losest here, a better where to find.
LEAR
Thou hast her, France. Let her be thine, for we
Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see
That face of hers again. Therefore be gone,
Without our grace, our love, our benison.—
Come, noble Burgundy.
[Flourish.! Exeunt Lear and Burgundy, then
Albany, Cornwall, Gloucester, ⌈Edmund,⌉
and followers
FRANCE (to Cordelia) Bid farewell to your sisters.
CORDELIA
Ye 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. Use well our father.
To your professed bosoms I commit him.
But yet, alas, stood I within his grace
I would prefer him to a better place.
So farewell to you both.
GONORIL Prescribe not us our duties.
REGAN Let your study
Be to content your lord, who hath received you
At fortune’s alms. You have obedience scanted,
And well are worth the worst that you have wanted.
CORDELIA
Time shall unfold what pleated cunning hides.
Who covers faults, at last shame them derides.
Well may you prosper.
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 294