Good sir, to the purpose.
King Lear
Who put my man i’ the stocks?
Tucket within
Cornwall
What trumpet’s that?
Regan
I know’t, my sister’s: this approves her letter,
That she would soon be here.
Enter Oswald
Is your lady come?
King Lear
This is a slave, whose easy-borrow’d pride
Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows.
Out, varlet, from my sight!
Cornwall
What means your grace?
King Lear
Who stock’d my servant? Regan, I have good hope
Thou didst not know on’t. Who comes here? O heavens,
Enter Goneril
If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
Allow obedience, if yourselves are old,
Make it your cause; send down, and take my part!
To Goneril
Art not ashamed to look upon this beard?
O Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand?
Goneril
Why not by the hand, sir? How have I offended?
All’s not offence that indiscretion finds
And dotage terms so.
King Lear
O sides, you are too tough;
Will you yet hold? How came my man i’ the stocks?
Cornwall
I set him there, sir: but his own disorders
Deserved much less advancement.
King Lear
You! did you?
Regan
I pray you, father, being weak, seem so.
If, till the expiration of your month,
You will return and sojourn with my sister,
Dismissing half your train, come then to me:
I am now from home, and out of that provision
Which shall be needful for your entertainment.
King Lear
Return to her, and fifty men dismiss’d?
No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose
To wage against the enmity o’ the air;
To be a comrade with the wolf and owl,—
Necessity’s sharp pinch! Return with her?
Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took
Our youngest born, I could as well be brought
To knee his throne, and, squire-like; pension beg
To keep base life afoot. Return with her?
Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter
To this detested groom.
Pointing at Oswald
Goneril
At your choice, sir.
King Lear
I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad:
I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell:
We’ll no more meet, no more see one another:
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, an embossed 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 to high-judging Jove:
Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure:
I can be patient; I can stay with Regan,
I and my hundred knights.
Regan
Not altogether so:
I look’d not for you yet, nor am provided
For your fit welcome. Give ear, sir, to my sister;
For those that mingle reason with your passion
Must be content to think you old, and so —
But she knows what she does.
King Lear
Is this well spoken?
Regan
I dare avouch it, sir: what, fifty followers?
Is it not well? What should you need of more?
Yea, or so many, sith that both charge and danger
Speak ’gainst so great a number? How, in one house,
Should many people, under two commands,
Hold amity? ’Tis hard; almost impossible.
Goneril
Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance
From those that she calls servants or from mine?
Regan
Why not, my lord? If then they chanced to slack you,
We could control them. If you will come to me,—
For now I spy a danger,— I entreat you
To bring but five and twenty: to no more
Will I give place or notice.
King Lear
I gave you all —
Regan
And in good time you gave it.
King Lear
Made you my guardians, my depositaries;
But kept a reservation to be follow’d
With such a number. What, must I come to you
With five and twenty, Regan? said you so?
Regan
And speak’t again, my lord; no more with me.
King Lear
Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favour’d,
When others are more wicked: not being the worst
Stands in some rank of praise.
To Goneril
I’ll go with thee:
Thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty,
And thou art twice her love.
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?
King 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’s as 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 stir 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 cheeks! 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:
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!
Exeunt King Lear, Gloucester, Kent, and Fool
Storm and tempest
Cornwall
Let us withdraw; ’twill be a storm.
Regan
This house is little: the old man and his people
Cannot be well bestow’d.
Goneril
’Tis his own blame; hath put himself from rest,
And must needs taste his folly.
Regan
For his particular, I’ll receive him gladly,
But not one follower.
Goneril
So am I purposed.
Where is my lord of Gloucester?
Cornwall
Follow’d the old man forth: he is return’d.
Re-enter Gloucester
Gloucester
The king is in high rage.
Cornwall
Whither is he going?
Gloucester
He calls to horse; but will I know not whither.
Cornwall
’Tis best to give him way; he leads himself.
Goneril
My lord, entreat him by no means to stay.
Gloucester
Alack, the night comes on, and the bleak winds
Do sorely ruffle; for many miles a bout
There’s scarce a bush.
Regan
O, sir, to wilful 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.
Cornwall
Shut up your doors, my lord; ’tis a wild night:
My Regan counsels well; come out o’ the storm.
Exeunt
ACT III
SCENE I. A HEATH.
Storm still. Enter Kent and a Gentleman, meeting
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 fretful element:
Bids the winds blow the earth into the sea,
Or swell the curled water ’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 out-scorn
The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.
This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,
The lion and the belly-pinched wolf
Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs,
And bids what will take all.
Kent
But who is with him?
Gentleman
None but the fool; who labours to out-jest
His heart-struck injuries.
Kent
Sir, I do know you;
And dare, upon the warrant of my note,
Commend a dear thing to you. There is division,
Although as yet the face of it be cover’d
With mutual cunning, ’twixt Albany and Cornwall;
Who have — as who have not, that their great stars
Throned and set high?— servants, who seem no less,
Which are to France the spies and speculations
Intelligent of our state; what hath been seen,
Either in snuffs and packings of the dukes,
Or the hard rein which both of them have borne
Against the old kind king; or something deeper,
Whereof perchance these are but furnishings;
But, true it is, from France there comes a power
Into this scatter’d kingdom; who already,
Wise in our negligence, have secret feet
In some of our best ports, and are at point
To show their open banner. Now to you:
If on my credit you dare build so far
To make your speed to Dover, you shall find
Some that will thank you, making just report
Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow
The king hath cause to plain.
I am a gentleman of blood and breeding;
And, from some knowledge and assurance, offer
This office to you.
Gentleman
I will talk further with you.
Kent
No, do not.
For confirmation that I am much more
Than my out-wall, open this purse, and take
What it contains. If you shall see Cordelia,—
As fear not but you shall,— show her this ring;
And she will tell you who your fellow is
That yet you do not know. Fie on this storm!
I will go seek the king.
Gentleman
Give me your hand: have you no more to say?
Kent
Few words, but, to effect, more than all yet;
That, when we have found the king,— in which your pain
That way, I’ll this,— he that first lights on him
Holla the other.
Exeunt severally
SCENE II. ANOTHER PART OF THE HEATH. STORM STILL.
Enter King Lear and Fool
King Lear
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!
Fool
O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters’ blessing: here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool.
King Lear
Rumble 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, call’d 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 have with two pernicious daughters join’d
Your high engender’d battles ’gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! ’tis foul!
Fool
He that has a house to put’s head in has a good head-piece.
The cod-piece 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.
For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.
King Lear
No, I will be the pattern of all patience;
I will say nothing.
Enter Kent
Kent
Who’s there?
Fool
Marry, here’s grace and a cod-piece; that’s a wise man and a fool.
Kent
Alas, sir, are you here? 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 sheets 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
The affliction nor the fear.
King Lear
Let the great gods,
That keep this dreadful pother o’er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,
Unwhipp’d of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjured, and thou simular man of virtue
That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming
Hast practised on man’s life: close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinn’d against than sinning.
Kent
Alack, bare-headed!
Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;
Some friendship will it lend you ’gainst the tempest:
Repose you there; while I to this hard house —
More harder than the stones whereof ’tis raised;
Which even but now, demanding after you,
Denied me to come in — return, and force
Their scanted courtesy.
King 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. Come, your hovel.
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That’s sorry yet for thee.
Fool
[Singing]
He that has and a little tiny wit —
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,—
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
For the rain it raineth every day.
King Lear
True, my good boy. Come, bring us to this hovel.
Exeunt King Lear and Kent
Fool
This is a brave night to cool a courtezan.
I’ll speak a prophecy ere I go:
When priests are more in word than matter;
When brewers mar their malt with water;
When nobles are their tailors’ tutors;
No heretics burn’d, 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 gold i’ the 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.
Exit
SCENE III. GLOUCESTER’S CASTLE.
Enter Gloucester and Edmund
Gloucester
Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing. When I desire their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house; charged me, on pain of their perpetual displeasure, neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain him.
Edmund
Most savage and unnatural!
Gloucester
Go to; say you nothing. There’s a division betwixt the dukes; and a worse matter than that: I have received a letter this night; ’tis dangerous to be spoken; I have locked the letter in my closet: these injuries the king now bears will be revenged home; there’s part of a power already footed: we must incline to the king. I will seek him, and privily relieve him: go you and maintain talk with the duke, that my charity be not of him perceived: if he ask for me. I am ill, and gone to bed. Though I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king my old master must be relieved. There is some strange thing toward, Edmund; pray you, be careful.
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