KING LEAR. William Shakespeare
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grace and a codpiece; 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
Th’ affliction nor the fear.
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 perjur’d, and thou simular man of virtue
That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake
That under covert and convenient seeming
Hast practis’d 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, bareheaded!
Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;
Some friendship will it lend you ‘gainst the tempest:
Repose you there, whilst I to this hard house,—
More harder than the stones whereof ‘tis rais’d;
Which even but now, demanding after you,
Denied me to come in,—return, and force
Their scanted 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?
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.
Lear.
True, boy.—Come, bring us to this hovel.
[Exeunt 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 us’d with feet.
This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.
[Exit.]
SCENE III. A Room in Gloster’s Castle.
[Enter Gloster and Edmund.]
Glou. Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing. When I desired their leave that I might pity 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, nor any way sustain him.
Edm.
Most savage and unnatural!
Glou. Go to; say you nothing. There is 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. If 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.
[Exit.]
Edm.
This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke
Instantly know; and of that letter too:—
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.
[Exit.]
SCENE IV. A part of the Heath with a Hovel. Storm continues.
[Enter Lear, Kent, and Fool.]
Kent.
Here is the place, my lord; good my lord, enter:
The tyranny of the open night’s too rough
For nature to endure.
Lear.
Let me alone.
Kent.
Good my lord, enter here.
Lear.
Wilt 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 is fix’d,
The lesser is scarce felt. Thou’dst shun a bear;
But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,
Thou’dst meet the bear i’ the mouth. When the mind’s free,
The body’s delicate: the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there.—Filial ingratitude!
Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to’t?—But I will punish home:—
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 heart gave all,—
O, that way madness