King Lear (12 page)

Art not ashamed to look upon this
beard
³⁸⁹
?—

O Regan, will you take her by the hand?

Regan and Goneril join hands

GONERIL
    Why not by th’hand, sir? How have I offended?

All’s not offence that
indiscretion
³⁹²
finds

And dotage terms so.

LEAR
    O
sides
³⁹⁴
, you are too tough!

Will you yet hold?— How came my man i’th’stocks?

CORNWALL
    I set him there, sir: but his own
disorders
³⁹⁶

Deserved
much less advancement
³⁹⁷
.

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
⁴⁰⁴
.

LEAR
    Return to her? And fifty men dismissed?

No, rather I
abjure
⁴⁰⁶
all roofs, and choose

To
wage against the enmity o’th’air
⁴⁰⁷
,

To be a comrade with the wolf and owl,

Necessity’s
⁴⁰⁹
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
⁴¹²
beg

To keep base life
afoot
⁴¹³
. Return with her?

Persuade me rather to be slave and
sumpter
⁴¹⁴

To this detested
groom
⁴¹⁵
.

Points at Oswald

GONERIL
    At your choice, sir.

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, or
embossèd carbuncle
⁴²³
,

In my
corrupted blood
⁴²⁴
. 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
⁴²⁸
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
looked not for
⁴³²
you yet, nor am provided

For your fit welcome. Give ear, sir, to my sister,

For those that
mingle reason with your passion
⁴³⁴

Must be content to think you old, and so —

But she knows what she does.

LEAR
    Is this well spoken?

REGAN
    I dare
avouch
⁴³⁸
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
⁴⁴⁰

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 ye
⁴⁴⁶
,

We could
control
⁴⁴⁷
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
⁴⁵⁰
.

LEAR
    I gave you all—

REGAN
    And
in good time you gave it
⁴⁵²
.

LEAR
    Made you my
guardians, my depositaries
⁴⁵³
,

But
kept a reservation
⁴⁵⁴
to be followed

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.

LEAR
    Those wicked creatures yet do look
well-favoured
⁴⁵⁸

When others are more wicked: not being the worst

Stands in some rank of praise
⁴⁶⁰
.— 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?

LEAR
    O, reason not the need!
Our basest beggars
⁴⁶⁸

Are in the poorest thing superfluous:

Allow not
⁴⁷⁰
nature more than nature needs,

Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady;

If only to go warm were gorgeous
⁴⁷²
,

Why, nature needs not
what thou gorgeous wear’st
⁴⁷³
,

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
⁴⁷⁹

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
⁴⁸⁸
,

Or ere
⁴⁸⁹
I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

CORNWALL
    Let us withdraw: ’twill be a storm.

REGAN
    This house is little: the old man
and’s
⁴⁹¹
people

Cannot be well
bestowed
⁴⁹²
.

GONERIL
    ’Tis his own
blame
hath
put himself from rest
⁴⁹³

And must needs taste his folly.

REGAN
    For
his particular
⁴⁹⁵
, I’ll receive him gladly,

But not one follower.

GONERIL
    So am I purposed.

Where is my lord of Gloucester?

CORNWALL
    Followed the old man forth: he is returned.

GLOUCESTER
    The king is in high rage.

CORNWALL
    Whither is he going?

GLOUCESTER
    He calls to horse, but
will
⁵⁰²
I know not whither.

CORNWALL
    ’Tis best to
give him way
⁵⁰³
: he leads himself.

GONERIL
    My lord, entreat him by no means to stay.

GLOUCESTER
    Alack, the night comes on, and the high winds

Do sorely
ruffle
⁵⁰⁶
, for many miles about

There’s scarce a bush.

REGAN
    O, sir, to wilful men

The injuries that they
themselves procure
⁵⁰⁹

Must be their schoolmasters. Shut up your doors:

He is attended with a
desperate train
⁵¹¹
,

And what they may incense him to, being apt

To
have his ear abused
⁵¹³
, wisdom bids fear.

CORNWALL
    Shut up your doors, my lord, ’tis a wild night.

My Regan counsels well: come out o’th’storm.

KENT
    Who’s there, besides foul weather?

GENTLEMAN
    One
minded like the weather, most unquietly
²
.

KENT
    I know you. Where’s the king?

GENTLEMAN
    
Contending
⁴
with the fretful elements;

Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea

Or swell the curlèd waters ’bove the
main
⁶
,

That things might change or cease.

KENT
    But who is with him?

GENTLEMAN
    None but the fool, who labours to
out-jest
⁹

His
heart-struck injuries
¹⁰
.

KENT
    Sir, I do know you,

And dare, upon the
warrant of my note
¹²

Commend a dear thing to you
¹³
. There is division —

Although as yet the face of it is covered

With mutual cunning — ’twixt Albany and Cornwall,

Who have —
as who have not, that their great stars
¹⁶

Throned and set high? — servants, who
seem no less
¹⁷
,

Which are to
France
the spies and
speculations
¹⁸

Intelligent of
¹⁹
our state. What hath been seen,

Either in
snuffs
and
packings
²⁰
of the dukes,

Or the
hard rein
which both of them hath
borne
²¹

Against the old kind king, or something deeper,

Whereof perchance these are but
furnishings
²³
.

GENTLEMAN
    I will talk further with you.

KENT
    No, do not.

For confirmation that I am much more

Than my
out-wall
²⁷
, open this purse and take

Gives a purse

What it contains. If you shall see Cordelia —

As fear not but you shall — show her this ring,

And she will tell you who
that fellow
³⁰
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
³⁴
, more than all yet:

That when we have found the king —
in which your pain
³⁵

That way, I’ll this — he that first lights on him

Holla
³⁷
the other.

LEAR
    Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow,

You
cataracts
and
hurricanoes
²
, spout

Till you have drenched our steeples, drown the
cocks
³
!

You sulphurous and
thought-executing fires
⁴
,

Vaunt-couriers
⁵
of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Strike flat the thick rotundity o’th’world!

Crack
nature’s moulds
, all
germens
⁸
spill at once

That makes ingrateful man!

FOOL
    O, nuncle,
court holy-water
¹⁰
in a dry house is better

than this rain-water out o’door. Good nuncle, in, ask thy

daughters’ blessing: here’s a night pities neither wise men

nor fools.

LEAR
    Rumble thy bellyful! Spit fire! Spout rain!

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters.

I
tax not you, you elements, with
¹⁶
unkindness:

I never gave you kingdom, called you children;

You owe me no
subscription
¹⁸
. 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
²¹
,

That will with two
pernicious
²²
daughters join

Your
high-engendered battles
gainst a
head
²³

So old and white as this. O, ho, ’tis
foul
²⁴
!

FOOL
    He that has a house to
put’s
²⁵
head in has a good

head-piece
²⁶
:

    The
codpiece
that will
house
²⁷

    Before the head has
any
²⁸
,

    The head and he shall
louse
²⁹
,

    
So beggars marry many
³⁰
.

    The man that
makes his toe
³¹

    What he his heart should make

    Shall of a
corn
³³
cry woe,

    And turn his sleep to wake.

For there was never yet fair woman, but she
made mouths
³⁵

in a glass.