King Lear (13 page)
Authors: William Shakespeare
Enter Kent
Disguised as Caius
LEAR
No, I will be the pattern of all patience:
I will say nothing.
KENT
Who’s there?
FOOL
Marry, here’s
grace and a codpiece
40
: 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
44
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
Th’affliction nor the fear.
LEAR
Let the great gods,
That keep this dreadful
pudder
51
o’er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulgèd crimes
Unwhipped of
54
justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand,
Thou perjured, and thou
simular
55
of virtue
That art incestuous:
caitiff
56
, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient
seeming
57
Has
practised on
58
man’s life: close pent-up guilts,
Rive
your concealing
continents
and
cry
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These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinned 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
65
—
More harder than the stones whereof ’tis raised,
Which even but now,
demanding
67
after you,
Denied me to come in — return and force
Their
scanted
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courtesy.
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
72
?
The art of our necessities is strange
73
,
And 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.
Sings
FOOL
He that has
and a
little tiny
wit
77
,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
Must
make content with his fortunes fit
79
,
Though the rain it raineth every day.
LEAR
True, boy.— Come, bring us to this hovel.
Exeunt
[
Lear and Kent
]
FOOL
This is a
brave
night to
cool
a
courtesan
82
.
I’ll speak a prophecy ere I go:
When priests are more
in word than matter
84
;
When brewers
mar
85
their malt with water;
When nobles
are their tailors’ tutors
86
;
No
heretics
burned, but
wenches’ suitors
87
;
When every case in law is
right
88
;
No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;
When slanders do not live in tongues;
Nor
cutpurses
come not to
throngs
91
;
When
usurers
tell their gold i’th’field
92
,
And
bawds
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and whores do churches build,
Then shall the realm of
Albion
94
Come to great
confusion
95
:
Then comes the time,
who
96
lives to see’t,
That
going shall be used with feet
97
.
This prophecy
Merlin
98
shall make, for I live before his time.
Exit
running scene 7
Carrying torches
Enter Gloucester and Edmund
GLOUCESTER
Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural
dealing. When I desired their
leave that I might pity
2
him,
they took from me the use of mine own house, charged me
on pain of perpetual displeasure neither to speak of him,
entreat for him, or any way sustain him.
EDMUND
Most savage and unnatural.
GLOUCESTER
Go to
7
; say you nothing. There is division between
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
10
. These injuries the king now
bears will be revenged
home
; there is part of a
power
11
already
footed
. We must
incline to
the king: I will
look
12
him and
privily relieve
13
him. Go you and maintain talk with the duke,
that
my charity be not
of
14
him perceived: if he ask for me, I
am ill and gone to bed: if I die for it — as no less is threatened
me — the king my old master must be relieved. There is
strange things
toward
17
, Edmund: pray you be careful.
Exit
EDMUND
This
courtesy forbid thee
18
shall the duke
Instantly know, and of that letter too:
This seems a fair deserving
20
and must draw me
That which my father loses: no less than all.
The younger rises when the old doth fall.
Exit
running scene 8
Enter Lear, Kent and Fool
Kent disguised as Caius
KENT
Here is the place, my lord. Good my lord, enter:
The tyranny of the open night’s too rough
For
nature
3
to endure.
Storm still
LEAR
Let me alone.
KENT
Good my lord, enter here.
LEAR
Will’t break my heart?
KENT
I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter.
LEAR
Thou think’st ’tis much that this contentious storm
Invades us to the skin so: ’tis to thee,
But where the
greater malady
10
is fixed
The lesser is scarce felt. Thou’dst shun a bear,
But if thy flight lay toward the roaring sea
Thou’dst meet the bear
i’th’mouth
. When the mind’s
free
13
,
The body’s
delicate
14
: the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!
Is it not
as
17
this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to’t? But I will punish
home
18
.
No, I will weep no more. In such a night
To shut me out? Pour on, I will endure.
In such a night as this? O Regan, Goneril,
Your old kind father, whose
frank
22
heart gave all —
O, that way madness lies: let me shun that:
No more of that.
KENT
Good my lord, enter here.
LEAR
Prithee go in thyself: seek thine own ease:
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more. But I’ll go in.—
To the Fool
In, boy, go first.—
You houseless poverty—
Nay, get thee in.— I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.
Exit
[
Fool
]
Kneels
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That
bide
32
the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed
sides
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,
Your
lopped and windowed
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raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take
physic
,
pomp
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,
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the
superflux
38
to them
And show the heavens more just.
Enter Edgar and Fool
Within the hovel
EDGAR
Fathom
and half,
fathom and half
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! Poor Tom!
FOOL
Come not in here, nuncle, here’s a
spirit
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. Help me,
help me!
KENT
Give me thy hand. Who’s there?
FOOL
A spirit, a spirit: he says his name’s poor Tom.
KENT
What art thou that dost
grumble
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there i’th’straw?
Come forth.
Edgar comes out, disguised as a mad beggar
EDGAR
Away! The foul fiend follows me! Through the sharp
hawthorn blow the winds. Hum! Go to thy bed and warm
thee.
LEAR
Did’st thou give all to thy daughters? And art thou
come to this?
EDGAR
Who gives anything to poor Tom? Whom the
foul
52
fiend hath led through fire and through flame, through ford
and whirlpool, o’er bog and quagmire, that hath laid
knives
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under his pillow, and halters in his pew, set
ratsbane
55
by his
porridge
, made him proud of heart, to ride on a
bay
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trotting-horse
over
four-inched
bridges, to
course
his own shadow
for
57
a traitor. Bless thy
five wits
! Tom’s a-cold. O,
do de, do de
58
, do
de. Bless thee from whirlwinds,
star-blasting
and
taking
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! Do
poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend
vexes
:
there
60
could I have him now — and there — and there again, and
there.
Storm still
LEAR
Has his daughters brought him to this
pass
63
?
Couldst thou save nothing? Wouldst thou give ’em all?
FOOL
Nay, he
reserved a blanket
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, else we had been all
shamed.
LEAR
Now, all the plagues that in the
pendulous
67
air
Hang
fated o’er men’s faults
68
light on thy daughters!
KENT
He hath no daughters, sir.
LEAR
Death, traitor! Nothing could have
subdued nature
70
To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.
Is it the fashion that discarded fathers
Should have
thus little mercy on their flesh
73
?
Judicious punishment! ’Twas this flesh begot
Those
pelican
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daughters.
EDGAR
Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill
:
alow, alow, loo, loo
76
!
FOOL
This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.
EDGAR
Take heed o’th’foul fiend:
obey
78
thy parents, keep thy
word’s justice, swear not,
commit not
79
with man’s sworn
spouse, set not thy sweetheart
on proud array
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. Tom’s a-cold.
LEAR
What hast thou been?
EDGAR
A servingman, proud in heart and mind, that
curled my hair, wore
gloves
83
in my cap, served the lust of my
mistress’ heart, and did the act of darkness with her: swore
as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet
face of heaven: one that
slept in
86
the contriving of lust, and
waked to do it: wine loved I dearly,
dice
87
dearly, and in woman
out-paramoured the Turk
: false of heart,
light of ear
88
, 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
90
the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman: keep
thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of
plackets
, thy
pen
92
from lenders’ books, and defy the foul fiend. Still through the