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I thought the king had more affected
the Duke of Albany than Cornwall

It did always seem so to us

But now in the division of the kingdom
it appears not which of the dukes he values most

- Is not this your son, my lord?
- His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge

I have so often blushed to acknowledge him
that now I am brazed to it

- I cannot conceive you
- 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?

I cannot wish the fault undone,
the issue of it being so proper

But I have a son, sir, 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

- Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund?
- No, my lord

My lord of Kent. Remember him hereafter
as my honourable friend

- My services to your lordship
- I must love you, and sue to know you better

- Sir, I shall study deserving
- He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again

The king is coming

- Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester
- I shall, my lord

Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.
Give me the map there

Know that we have divided
in three our kingdom

And ’tis our fast intent to shake
all cares and business from our age...

...conferring them on younger strengths
while we unburdened crawl toward death

Our son of Cornwall,
and you, our no less loving son of Albany

We have this hour a constant will
to publish our daughters’ several dowers...

...that future strife
may be prevented now

The 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

Since now we will divest us both of rule,
interest of territory, cares of state...

....which of you shall we say doth love us most?

That we our largest bounty may extend
where nature doth with merit challenge

Goneril, our eldest born, speak first

Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter

Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty,
beyond what can be valued rich or rare

No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour

As much as child ever loved, or father found

A love that makes breath poor and speech unable.
Beyond all manner of ‘so much’ I love you

What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent

Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,
with shadowy forests and with champaigns riched...

...with plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,
we make thee lady

To thine and Albany’s issues
be this perpetual

What says our second daughter,
our dearest Regan, wife of Cornwall?

I am made of that self-mettle as my sister,
and prize me at her worth

In my true heart,
I find she names my very deed of love

Only she comes too short, that I profess
myself an enemy to all other joys

And find I am alone felicitate
in your dear highness’ love

Then poor Cordelia. And yet not so, since I am sure
my love’s more ponderous than my tongue

To thee and thine hereditary ever
remain this ample third of our fair kingdom

No less in space, validity and pleasure
than that conferred on Goneril

Now our joy, although our last and least

To whose young love the vines of France
and milk of Burgundy strive to be interessed

What can you say to draw a third
more opulent than your sisters’? Speak

Nothing, my lord

- Nothing?
- Nothing

Nothing will come of nothing.
Speak again

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
my heart into my mouth

I love your majesty
according to my bond, no more nor less

How, how? Cordelia, mend your speech a
little, lest you may mar your fortunes

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?

Happily 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

- But goes thy heart with this?
- Ay, my good lord

- So young and so untender?
- So young, my lord, and true

Let it be so.
Thy truth then be 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 forever

- 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

Hence, and avoid my sight

Call France. Who stirs?
Call Burgundy

Cornwall and Albany,
with our two daughters’ dowers digest the third

Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her

I do invest you jointly with 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 turn

Only we shall retain the name
and all the addition to a king

The sway, revenue, execution of the rest,
beloved sons, be yours

Which to confirm,
this coronet part between you

Royal Lear, whom I have ever honoured as my king,
loved as my father, as my master followed...

The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft

Let it fall rather, though the fork invade
the region of my heart

Be Kent unmannerly when Lear is mad.
What wouldst thou do, old man?

Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
when power to flattery bows?

Reserve thy state, and in thy best consideration
check this hideous rashness

Answer my life my judgement.
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least

Kent, on thy life, no more

My life I never held but as a pawn
to wage against thine enemies

Out of my sight!

See better, Lear, and let me still remain
the true blank of thine eye

- Now, by Apollo...
- Now, by Apollo, king, thou swearest thy gods in vain

- O, vassal, miscreant
- Dear sir, forbear

Revoke thy doom, or whilst I can vent clamour
from my throat, I’ll tell thee thou dost evil

Hear me, recreant,
on thine allegiance hear me

That thou hast sought to make us break our vows,
which we durst never yet, take thy reward

Five days we do allot thee for provision
to shield thee from disasters of the world

And on the sixth 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

Fare thee well, king. Sith thus thou wilt appear,
freedom lives hence and banishment is here

The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid,
that justly think’st, and hast most rightly said

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

Here’s France and Burgundy, my noble lord

My lord of Burgundy,
we first address toward you

What in the least will you require in present
dower with her, or cease your quest of love?

Most royal majesty, I crave no more than hath
your highness offered, nor will you tender less

Right noble Burgundy, when she was dear to us
we did hold her so, but now her price is fallen

- Sir, there she stands. She’s there, and she is yours
- I know no answer

Will you, with those infirmities she owns,
unfriended, new-adopted to our hate...

...dowered with our curse
and strangered with our oath, take her or leave her?

Pardon me, royal sir.
Election makes not up in such conditions

Then leave her, sir, for by the power that made me,
I tell you all her wealth

For you, great king,
avert your liking a more worthier way...

...than on a wretch whom nature is ashamed
almost to acknowledge hers

This is most strange, that she whom even but now
was your object, the best, the 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

Which to believe of her must be a faith
that reason without miracle should never plant in me

I beseech your majesty that you make known
it is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness...

...that hath deprived me of your grace and favour,
but even for want of that for which I am richer

A still-soliciting eye and such a tongue
that I am glad I have not

Though not to have it
hath lost me in your liking

Better thou hadst not been born
than not to have pleased me better

Is it but this? A tardiness in nature, which often
leaves the history unspoke that it intends to do?

My lord of Burgundy, what say you to the lady?
Will you have her? She is herself a dowry

Royal king, give but that portion
which yourself proposed

And here I take Cordelia by the hand,
Duchess of Burgundy

Nothing.
I have sworn, I am firm

I am sorry, then, you have so lost a father
that you must lose a husband

Peace be with Burgundy. Since that respect
and fortunes are his love, I shall not be his wife

Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich being poor,
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 coldest 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

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

Bid farewell to your sisters

The jewels of our father,
with washed eyes Cordelia leaves you

I know you what you are. Love well our father.
To your professed bosoms I commit him

- So farewell to you both
- Prescribe not us our duty

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 want that you have wanted

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides.
Who covers faults, at last with shame derides

- Well may you prosper
- Come, my fair Cordelia

Sister, it is not little I have to say
of what most nearly appertains to us both

- I think our father will hence tonight
- That’s most certain, and with you. Next month with us

You see how full of changes his age is.
He always loved our sister most

And with what poor judgement he hath now
cast her off appears too grossly

’Tis the infirmity of his age.
Yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself

The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash.
Then must we look from his age...

...to receive the unruly waywardness
that infirm and choleric years bring with them

Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him
as this of Kent’s banishment

Pray you let us sit together. If our father
carry authority with such disposition as he bears...

...this last surrender of his will but offend us

- We shall further think of it
- We must do something, and in the heat

Thou, nature, art my goddess.
To thy law my services are bound

Wherefore should I stand in the plague of custom
and permit the curiosity of nations to deprive me...

...for that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
lag of a brother?

Why bastard? Wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact...

...my mind as generous, and my shape as true,
as honest madam’s issue?

Why brand they us with base?
With baseness? Bastardy? Base, base?

Who in the lusty stealth of nature take more
composition and fierce quality than doth...

...within a dull, stale, tired bed, go to the creating
a whole tribe of fops got ’tween a sleep and wake?

Well then, legitimate Edgar,
I must have your land

Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
as to the legitimate. Fine word, ‘legitimate’

Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed
and my invention thrive...

...Edmund the base shall top the legitimate

I grow, I prosper.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards

Kent banished thus?
And France in choler parted?

And the king gone tonight?
All this done upon the gad?

- Edmund, how now? What news?
- So please your lordship, none

- Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
- I know no news, my lord

- What paper were you reading?
- Nothing, my lord

No? What needed, then,
that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket?

The quality of nothing hath not such need
to hide itself. Let’s see

Come, if it be nothing
I shall not need spectacles

I beseech you, sir, pardon me. It is a letter
from my brother, that I have not all o’er-read

And for so much as I have perused,
I find it not fit for your o’erlooking

- Give me the letter, sir
- I shall offend either to detain or give it

Let’s see, let’s see

I hope for my brother’s justification
he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue

I begin to find an idle and fond bondage
in the oppression of aged tyranny

Come to me, that of this I may speak more

If our father would sleep till I waked him,
you should enjoy half his revenue for ever...

...and live the beloved of your brother, Edgar

Conspiracy! ‘Sleep till I wake him,
you should enjoy half his revenue'

My son Edgar?
Had he a hand to write this?

A heart and brain to breed it in?
When came you to this? Who brought it?

It was not brought me, my lord,
there’s the cunning of it

- I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet
- You know the character to be your brother’s?

- I would fain think it were not
- It is his

It is his hand, my lord,
but I hope his heart is not in the contents

- Has he never before sounded you in this business?
- Never, my lord

But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit that,
sons at perfect age and fathers declined...

...the father should be as ward to the son,
and the son manage his revenue

O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter.
Abhorred villain. Unnatural, detested, brutish villain

Worse than brutish.
Go, sirrah, seek him, I’ll apprehend him

- Abominable villain, where is he?
- I do not well know, my lord

If it shall please you to suspend
your indignation against my brother...

...till you can derive from him better testimony
of his intent, you should run a certain course

I dare pawn down my life, that he hath writ
this to feel my affection to your honour...

- ...and to no other pretence of danger
- Think you so?

If your honour judge it meet, I will place you
where you shall hear us confer of this

- He cannot be such a monster
- Nor is not, sure

To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him.
Heaven and Earth! Edmund, seek him out

- Wind me into him, I pray you
- I will, sir, presently

These late eclipses in the sun and moon
portend no good to us

Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide.
In cities mutinies, in countries discord

In palaces treason,
and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father

This villain of mine comes under the prediction.
There’s son against father

The king falls from bias of nature.
There’s father against child

We have seen the best of our time

Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous
disorders follow us disquietly to our graves

Find out this villain, Edmund,
it shall lose thee nothing. Do it carefully

And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished.
His offence, honesty. ’Tis strange

This is the excellent foppery of the world

That when we are sick in fortune,
often the surfeits of our own behaviours...

...we make guilty of our disasters
the sun, the moon and stars

As if we were villains on necessity,
fools by heavenly compulsion

Knaves, thieves and treachers
by spherical predominance

Drunkards, liars and adulterers
by an enforced obedience of planetary influence

And all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on

An admirable evasion of whoremaster man,
to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star

My father compounded with my mother
under the dragon’s tail

And my nativity was under Ursa major,
so that it follows I am rough and lecherous

Fut! I should have been that I am had the maidenliest
star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing

And pat he comes
like the catastrophe of the old comedy

O, these eclipses do portend these divisions

How now, brother Edmund,
what serious contemplation are you in?

I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read
this other day, what should follow these eclipses

- Do you busy yourself with that?
- I promise you...

...the effects he writes of succeed unhappily,
as of unnaturalness between the child and the parent

Death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities,
divisions in state, nuptial breaches...

- ...and I know not what
- How long have you been a sectary astronomical?

Come, come

- When saw you my father last?
- Why, the night gone by

- Spake you with him?
- Ay, two hours together

Parted you in good terms? Found you
no displeasure in him by word nor countenance?

- None at all
- Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him

And at my entreaty forbear his presence...

...until some little time hath qualified
the heat of his displeasure,

which at this instant so rageth in him

- Some villain hath done me wrong
- That’s my fear

Retire with me to my lodging, from whence
I will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak.

Pray ye go

- There’s my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed
- Armed, brother?

Brother, I advise you to the best, go armed.
I have told you what I have seen and heard...

...but faintly, nothing like the image
and horror of it. Pray you away

- Shall I hear from you anon?
- I do serve you in this business

A credulous father and a brother noble,
whose nature is so far from doing harms...

...that he suspects none.
I see the business

Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit.
All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit

Did my father strike my gentleman
for chiding of his fool?

- Ay, madam
- By day and night he wrongs me

Every hour he flashes into one gross crime or other
that sets us all at odds

I’ll not endure it. His knights grow riotous,
and himself upbraids us on every trifle

When he returns from hunting
I will not speak with him. Say I am sick

If you come slack of former services
you shall do well. The fault of it I’ll answer

He’s coming, madam, I hear him

Put on what weary negligence you please,
you and your fellows. I’d have it come to question

If he distaste it, let him to my sister,
whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one

- Remember what I have said
- Well, madam

And let his knights have colder looks among you.
What grows of it, no matter. Advise your fellows so

I’ll write straight to my sister, to hold my course.
Prepare for dinner

If but as well I other accents borrow,
that can my speech defuse...

...my good intent may carry through itself
to that full issue for which I razed my likeness

Now, banished Kent, if thou canst serve
where thou dost stand condemned...

...so may it come, thy master, whom thou lovest,
shall find thee full of labours

Let me not stay a jot for dinner.
Go, get it ready

- How now, what art thou?
- A man, sir

What dost thou profess?
What wouldst thou with us?

I do profess to be no less than I seem,
to serve him truly that will put me in trust

To love him that is honest,
to converse with him that is wise and says little

To fear judgement, to fight when I cannot choose
and to eat no fish

- What art thou?
- A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the king

If thou be’st as poor for a subject as he be
for a king, thou art poor enough

- What wouldst thou?
- Service

- Who wouldst thou serve?
- You

- Dost thou know me, fellow?
- No, sir

But you have that in your countenance
which I would fain call master

- What’s that?
- Authority

- What services canst thou do?
- I can keep honest counsel, ride, run...

...mar a curious tale in telling it,

and deliver a plain message bluntly,
and the best of me is diligence

How old art thou?

Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing,
nor so old to dote on her for anything

I have years on my back forty-eight,
and my name is Caius called

Follow me, Caius, thou shalt serve me,
if I like thee no worse after dinner

Dinner, ho, dinner!

Where’s my knave, my fool?
Go you and call my fool hither

- You, you, sirrah, where’s my daughter?
- So please you

What says the fellow there?
Call the clotpoll back

Where’s my fool?
Ho, I think the world’s asleep

- How now, where’s that mongrel?
- He says, my lord, your daughter is not well

Why came not the slave back to me
when I called him?

Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner,
he would not

- He would not?
- My lord, I know not what the matter is

But to my judgement your highness is not entertained
with that ceremonious affection as you were wont

- Ha, sayst thou so?
- I beseech you pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken

For my duty cannot be silent
when I think your highness wronged

Thou but rememberest me of mine own conception,
I have perceived a most faint neglect of late

I will look further into it.
But where’s my fool? I have not seen him this two days

Since my young lady’s going into France, sir,
the fool hath much pined away

No more of that, I have noted it well

Go you and tell my daughter I would speak with her.
Go you, call hither my fool

O, you sir, you, come you hither, sir

- Who am I, sir?
- My lady’s father

‘My lady’s father’?
You whoreson dog, you slave, you cur

- I am none of these, my lord, I beseech your pardon
- Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?

- I’ll not be strucken, my lord
- Nor tripped neither, you base football player

I thank thee, fellow

Come, sir, arise, away.
I’ll teach you differences. Away, away. So

Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee.
There’s earnest of thy service

Let me hire him too.
Here’s my coxcomb

How now, my pretty knave, how dost thou?

- Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb
- Why, my boy?

Why? For taking one’s part that’s out of favour

Nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits,
thou’lt catch cold shortly

There, take my coxcomb.
Why, this fellow has banished two on’s daughters...

...and did the third a blessing against his will.
If thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb

How now, nuncle?
Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters

- Why, my boy?
- If I gave them all my living...

...I’d keep my coxcombs myself.
There’s mine

- Beg another of thy daughters
- Take heed, sirrah, the whip

Truth’s a dog must to kennel. He must be whipped out
when the Lady Brach may stand by the fire and stink

- A pestilent gall to me
- Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech

- Do
- Mark it, nuncle

Have more than thou showest,
speak less than thou knowest

Lend less than thou owest,
ride more than thou goest

Learn more than thou trowest,
leave thy drink and thy whore, and keep in-a-door

And thou shalt have more
than two tens to a score

This is nothing, fool

Then ’tis like the breath of an unfeed lawyer,
you gave me nothing for it

- Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?
- Why, no, boy. Nothing can be made out of nothing

Prithee tell him,
so much the rent of his land comes to

- He will not believe a fool
- A bitter fool

Dost thou know the difference, my boy,
between a bitter fool and a sweet one?

No, lad, teach me

That lord that counselled thee
to give away thy land...

Come place him here by me,
do thou for him stand

The sweet and bitter fool
will presently appear

The one in motley here,
the other found out there

Dost thou call me fool, boy?

All thy titles thou hast given away,
that thou wast born with

- This is not altogether fool, my lord
- No, faith, lords and great men will not let me

If I had a monopoly out, they would have part on’t,
and ladies too

They will not let me have all the fool to myself,
they’ll be snatching

- Nuncle, give me an egg and I’ll give thee two crowns
- What two crowns shall they be?

Why, after I have cut the egg in the middle
and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg

When thou clovest thy crown in the middle
and gavest away both parts...

...thou bor’st thine ass on thy back over the dirt

Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown
when thou gav’st thy golden one away

If I speak like myself in this,
let him be whipped that first finds it so

Fools had never less grace in a year,
for wise men are grown foppish

And know not how their wits to wear,
their manners are so apish

When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?

I have used it, nuncle,
ever since thou madest thy daughters thy mothers

For when thou gavest them the rod
and puttest down thine own breeches...

Then they for sudden joy did weep,
and I for sorrow sung

That such a king should play bo-peep
and go the fools among

Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster
that can teach thy fool to lie

- I would fain learn to lie
- An you lie, sirrah, we’ll have you whipped

I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are

They’ll have me whipped for speaking true,
thou’lt have me whipped for lying

And sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace

I had rather be any kind of thing than a fool.
And yet I would not be thee, nuncle

Thou hast pared thy wit on both sides
and left nothing in the middle

Here comes one of the parings

How now, daughter? What makes that frontlet on?
You are too much of late in the frown

Thou wast a pretty fellow
when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning

I am better than thou art now.
I am a fool, thou art nothing

Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue,
so your face bids me, though you say nothing

- Not only, sir, this your...
- Mum

Not only, sir, this your all-licensed fool,
but other of your insolent retinue...

...do hourly carp and quarrel, breaking forth
in rank and not-to-be endured riots

Sir, I had thought by making this well known unto you
to have found a safe redress

But now grow fearful,
by what yourself too late have spoke and done

That you protect this course and put it on
by your allowance...

...which if you should, the fault
would not ’scape censure, nor the redresses sleep

For you know, nuncle, the hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo
so long, that it’s had it head bit off by it young

So, out went the candle,
and we were left darkling

Are you our daughter?

I would you would make use of your good wisdom,
whereof I know you are fraught

And put away these dispositions which of late
transport you from what you rightly are

May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?
Whoop, Jug! I love thee

Does any here know me?
This is not Lear

Does Lear walk thus? Speak thus?
Where are his eyes?

Either his notion weakens, his discernings
are lethargied. Ha, waking? ’Tis not so?

- Who is it that can tell me who I am?
- Lear’s shadow

This admiration, sir, is much of the savour
of other your new pranks

I do beseech you
to understand my purposes aright

As you are old and reverend,
should be wise

Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires,
men so disordered, so debauched and bold...

...that this our court, infected with their manners,
shows like a riotous inn

Epicurism and lust...

...makes it more like a tavern
or a brothel than a graced palace

The shame itself doth speak
for instant remedy

Be then desired by her, that else will take the thing
she begs, a little to disquantity your train

And the remainders, that shall still depend...

...to be such men as may besort your age,
which know themselves and you

Darkness and devils!
Saddle my horses, call my train together

Degenerate bastard, I’ll not trouble thee.
Yet have I left a daughter

You strike my people, and your disordered rabble
make servants of their betters

Woe that too late repents!
O, sir, are you come? Is it your will?

- Speak, sir. Prepare my horses
- Pray, sir, be patient

Detested kite, thou liest.
My train are men of choice and rarest parts

And in the most exact regard
support the worships of their name

O, most small fault,
how ugly didst thou in Cordelia seem

O Lear, Lear, Lear!

Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in,
and thy dear judgement out

Go, go, my people

My lord, I am guiltless as I am ignorant
of what hath moved you

It may be so, my lord

Hear, nature, hear, dear goddess, hear

Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend
to make this creature fruitful

Into her womb convey sterility,
dry up in her the organs of increase

And from her derogate body
never spring a babe to honour her

If she must teem, create her child of spleen, that it
may live and be a thwart disnatured torment to her

Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth

Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
to laughter and contempt

That she may feel how sharper than a serpent’s tooth
it is to have a thankless child

Away, away!

- Now, gods that we adore, whereof comes this?
- Never afflict yourself to know more of it

But let his disposition have that scope
as dotage gives it

What, fifty of my followers at a clap?
Within a fortnight?

- What’s the matter, sir?
- I’ll tell thee

Life and death! I am ashamed
that thou hast power to shake my manhood thus

That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,
should make thee worth them

Old fond eyes, beweep this cause again,
I’ll pluck ye out

I have another daughter,
who, I am sure, is kind and comfortable

When she shall hear this of thee,
with her nails she’ll flay thy wolvish visage

Thou shalt find that I’ll resume the shape
which thou dost think I have cast off forever

Do you mark that?

I cannot be so partial, Goneril,
to the great love I bear you...

Pray you, content.
What, Oswald, ho!

The knave turns fool that runs away,
the fool no knave, perdy

The knave turns fool that runs away,
the fool no knave, perdy

A fox, when one has caught her,
and such a daughter...

...should sure to the slaughter,
if my cap would buy a halter

So the fool follows after

This man hath had good counsel.
A hundred knights?

’Tis politic and safe to let him keep
at point a hundred knights?

Yes, that on every dream,
each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike...

...he may enguard his dotage with their powers
and hold our lives in mercy. Oswald, I say!

- Well, you may fear too far
- Safer than trust too far. I know his heart

How now, Oswald?
What, have you writ that letter to my sister?

- Ay, madam
- Take you some company and away to horse

Inform her full of my particular fear,
and thereto add such reasons of your own...

...as may compact it more.
Get you gone, and hasten your return

No, no, my lord, this milky gentleness and course
of yours though I condemn not, yet, under pardon...

...you are much more at task for want of wisdom
than praised for harmful mildness

How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell.
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well

- Nay, then...
- Well, well, the event

Go you before to Regan with this letter

If your diligence be not speedy,
I shall be there afore you

I will not sleep, my lord,
till I have delivered your letter

If a man’s brains were in’s heels,
were’t not in danger of kibes?

- Ay, boy - Then I prithee be merry.
Thy wit shall not go slip-shod

Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly, for
though she’s as like this as a crab’s like an apple...

- ...yet I can tell what I can tell
- What canst tell, boy?

She will taste as like this
as a crab does to a crab

Thou canst tell why one’s nose stands
in the middle on’s face?

- No
- Why, to keep one’s eyes of either side’s nose

That what a man cannot smell out
he may spy into

I did her wrong

- Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?
- No

- Nor I neither. But I can tell why a snail has a house
- Why?

Why, to put’s head in, not to give it away
to his daughters and leave his horns without a case

I will forget my nature. So kind a father

- Be my horses ready?
- Thy asses are gone about ’em

The reason why the seven stars
are no more than seven is a pretty reason

- Because they are not eight
- Yes, indeed. Thou wouldst make a good fool

To take it again perforce.
Monster ingratitude!

If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’d have thee beaten
for being old before thy time

How’s that?

Thou shouldst not have been old
till thou hadst been wise

O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven.
Keep me in temper. I would not be mad

- How now, are the horses ready?
- Ready, my lord

Come, boy

She that’s a maid now, and laughs at my departure,
shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter

- Save thee, Curan
- And you, sir. I have been with your father...

...and given him notice that the Duke of Cornwall
and Regan his duchess will be here with him this night

- How comes that?
- Nay, I know not

You have heard of the news abroad.
I mean the whispered ones...

- ...for they are yet but ear-kissing arguments?
- Not I. Pray you, what are they?

Have you heard of no likely wars toward
’twixt the dukes of Cornwall and Albany?

- Not a word
- You may do then in time. Fare you well, sir

The duke be here tonight? The better... best!
This weaves itself perforce into my business

My father hath set guard to take my brother

And I have one thing, of a queasy question,
which I must act. Briefness and fortune, work

Brother, descend.
A word, brother, I say

My father watches. O sir, fly this place.
Intelligence is given where you are hid

Have you not spoken against
the Duke of Cornwall?

He’s coming hither, now, in the night, in the haste,
and Regan with him

- I am sure on’t, not a word
- I hear my father coming, pardon me

In cunning I must draw my sword upon you.
Draw, seem to defend yourself

Now quit you well.
Yield, come before my father

Light ho, here!
Fly, brother

Torches, torches!
So, farewell

Some blood drawn on me would beget
opinion of my more fierce endeavour

I have seen drunkards
do more than this in sport

Father, father!
Stop, stop! No help?

- Now, Edmund, where’s the villain?
- Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out

Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon
to stand auspicious mistress...

- But where is he?
- Look, sir, I bleed

- Where is the villain, Edmund?
- Fled this way, sir. When by no means he could...

Pursue him, ho! Go after

- By no means what?
- Persuade me to the murder of your lordship

Let him fly far.
Not in this land shall he remain uncaught

O, strange and fastened villain,
I never got him

Hark, the duke’s trumpets.
I know not where he comes

All ports I’ll bar. The villain shall not scape,
the duke must grant me that

And of my land, loyal and natural boy,
I’ll work the means to make thee capable

How now, my noble friend?
Since I came hither I have heard strangeness

If it be true, all vengeance comes too short
which can pursue the offender

- How dost, my lord?
- O, madam, my old heart is cracked, it’s cracked

What, did my father’s godson seek your life?
He whom my father named, your Edgar?

O, lady, lady, shame would have it hid

Was he not companion with the riotous knights
that tended upon my father?

- I know not, madam. ’Tis too bad, too bad
- Yes, madam, he was of that consort

No marvel, then, though he were ill affected

I have this present evening from my sister
been well informed of them

And with such cautions that if they come
to sojourn at my house, I’ll not be there

Nor I, assure thee, Regan.
Edmund, I hear that you have shown your father...

- ...a child-like office
- It was my duty, sir

He did bewray his practice and received
this hurt you see striving to apprehend him

- Is he pursued?
- Ay, my good lord

If he be taken, he shall never more
be feared of doing harm

For you, Edmund, whose virtue and obedience
doth this instant so much commend itself...

...you shall be ours. Natures of such deep trust
we shall much need. You we first seize on

- I shall serve you, sir, truly, however else
- For him I thank your grace

- You know not why we come to visit you
- Thus out of season, threading dark-eyed night

Our father he hath writ, so hath our sister,
of differences...

...which I best thought it fit
to answer from our home

Our good old friend, lay comforts to your bosom,
and bestow your needful counsel...

...to our businesses,
which craves the instant use

I serve you, madam.
Your graces are right welcome

I heard myself proclaimed, and by the happy
hollow of a tree escaped the hunt

No port is free, no place that guard and most
unusual vigilance does not attend my taking

Whiles I may scape, I will preserve myself.
And am bethought to take the basest...

...and most poorest shape that ever penury,
in contempt of man, brought near to beast

My face I’ll grime with filth,
blanket my loins, elf all my hairs in knots

And with presented nakedness outface
the winds and persecutions of the sky

The country gives me proof and precedent
of Bedlam beggars, who with roaring voices...

...strike in their numbed and mortified arms
pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary

And with this horrible object, from low farms,
poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills...

...sometimes with lunatic bans,
sometime with prayers, enforce their charity

Poor Turlygod, poor Tom

That’s something yet.
Edgar I nothing am

- Good dawning to thee, friend. Art of this house?
- Ay

- Where may we set our horses?
- In the mire

Prithee, if thou lovest me, tell me

- I love thee not
- Why then, I care not for thee

If I had thee in Lipsbury pinfold,
I would make thee care for me

Why dost thou use me thus?
I know thee not

- Fellow, I know thee
- What dost thou know me for?

A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats

A base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave

A lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue

One that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service,
and art nothing but the composition...

...of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch

One whom I will beat into clamorous whining
if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition

Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou thus to rail
on one that is neither known of thee nor knows thee

What a brazen-faced varlet art thou
to deny thou knowest me

Is it two days since I tripped up thy heels
and beat thee before the king?

Draw, you rogue,
you whoreson cullionly barber-monger. Draw

- Away, I have nothing to do with thee
- Draw, you rascal

You come with letters against the king.
Draw, you rogue, or I’ll so carbonado your shanks

- Draw, you rascal, come your ways
- Help, ho! Murder, help!

Strike, you slave.
Stand, rogue, stand, you neat slave, strike!

How now, what’s the matter? Part

With you, goodman boy, if you please.
Come, I’ll flesh ye. Come on, young master

Weapons? Arms? What’s the matter here?

Keep peace, upon your lives.
He dies that strikes again

- What is the matter?
- The messengers from our sister and the king

- What is your difference? Speak
- I am scarce in breath, my lord

- No marvel, you have so bestirred your valour
- Speak yet, how grew your quarrel?

This ancient ruffian, sir,
whose life I have spared at suit of his grey beard...

Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter.
My lord, if you will give me leave...

...I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar
and daub the wall of a jakes with him

Spare my grey beard, you wagtail?

Peace, sirrah!
You beastly knave, know you no reverence?

- Yes, sir, but anger hath a privilege
- Why art thou angry?

That such a slave as this should wear a sword,
who wears no honesty

Such smiling rogues as these,
like rats, oft bite

A plague upon your epileptic visage.
Smile you my speeches, as I were a fool?

Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain,
I’d drive ye cackling home to Camelot

- What, art thou mad, old fellow? What is his fault?
- His countenance likes me not

- No more, perchance, does mine, nor his, nor hers
- Sir, ’tis my occupation to be plain

I have seen better faces in my time than stands
on any shoulder that I see before me at this instant

This is some fellow who, having been praised
for bluntness, doth affect a saucy roughness

He cannot flatter, he.
An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth

Sir, in good faith, in sincere verity,
under the allowance of your great aspect...

...whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire
on flickering Phoebus’ front...

What meanest by this?

To go out of my dialect, which you discommend
so much. I know, sir, I am no flatterer

- What was the offence you gave him?
- I never gave him any

It pleased the king his master very late
to strike at me, upon his misconstruction

When he, compact and flattering his displeasure...

...tripped me behind, got praises of the king
and drew on me again

Fetch forth the stocks. You stubborn ancient knave,
you reverent braggart, we’ll teach you

Sir, I am too old to learn.
Call not your stocks for me, I serve the king

Fetch forth the stocks. As I have life and honour,
there shall he sit till noon

Till noon?
Till night, my lord, and all night too

Why, madam, if I were your father’s dog
you should not use me so

Sir, being his knave, I will

Let me beseech your grace not to do so.
The king his master needs must take it ill...

...that he so slightly valued in his messenger,
should have him thus restrained

I’ll answer that

My sister may receive it much more worse
to have her gentleman abused, assaulted

Put in his legs.
Come, my good lord, away

I am sorry for thee, friend.
’Tis the duke’s pleasure...

...whose disposition all the world well knows
will not be rubbed nor stopped

- I’ll entreat for thee
- Pray do not, sir

I have watched and travelled hard.
Some time I shall sleep out, the rest I’ll whistle

The duke’s to blame in this.
’Twill be ill taken

Approach, thou beacon to this under globe,
that by thy comfortable beams I may peruse this letter

’Tis from Cordelia, who hath most fortunately
been informed of my obscured course...

...and shall find time
to give losses their remedies

Fortune, goodnight.
Smile once more, turn thy wheel

’Tis strange that they should so depart from home
and not send back my messenger

As I learned, the night before
there was no purpose in them of this remove

- Hail to thee, noble master
- Ha, makest thou this shame thy pastime?

- No, my lord
- Ha, ha, he wears cruel garters

What’s he that hath so much thy place mistook
to set thee here?

It is both he and she,
your son and daughter

- No
- Yes

- No, I say
- I say, yea

- By Jupiter, I swear, no
- By Juno, I swear, ay

They durst not do it.
They could not, would not do it

’Tis worse than murder
to do upon respect such violent outrage

Resolve me with all modest haste...

...which way thou might’st deserve or they impose
this usage, coming from us

My lord, here came a reeking messenger

Stewed in his haste, half breathless, panting forth
from Goneril his mistress salutations

It was the very fellow which of late
displayed so saucily against your highness

Having more man than wit about me, I drew

Your son and daughter found this trespass worth
the shame which here it suffers

Winter’s not gone yet
if the wild geese fly that way

- Where is this daughter?
- With the earl, sir, here within

Follow me not, stay here

How chance the king comes with so small a number?

An thou had’st been set in the stocks
for that question, thou’dst well deserved it

Why, fool?

All that follow their noses are led by their eyes
but blind men

And there’s not a nose among twenty
but can smell him that’s stinking

Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill
lest it break thy neck with following

But the great one that goes upward,
let him draw thee after

When a wise man gives thee better counsel,
give me mine again

I would have none but knaves follow it,
since a fool gives it

That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
and follows but for form...

...will pack when it begins to rain,
and leave thee in the storm

But I will tarry, the fool will stay,
and let the wise man flee

The knave turns fool that runs away,
the fool no knave, perdy

- Where learned you this, fool?
- Not in the stocks, fool

Deny to speak with me?

They are sick, they are weary,
they have travelled all the night?

- Fetch me a better answer
- My dear lord, you know the fiery quality of the duke

How unremovable and fixed
he is in his own course

Vengeance, plague, death, confusion!
Fiery? What quality?

Why, Gloucester, Gloucester,
I’d speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife

- Well, my good lord, I have informed them so
- Informed them? Dost thou understand me, man?

- Ay, my good lord
- The king would speak with Cornwall

The dear father would with his daughter speak,
commands, tends service

Are they informed of this?
My breath and blood!

Fiery? The fiery duke?
Tell the hot duke that...

No, but not yet.
Maybe he is not well

Infirmity doth still neglect all office
whereto our health is bound. I’ll forbear

Death on my state, wherefore should he sit here?
Give me my servant forth

Go tell the duke and his wife I’d speak with them,
now, presently. Bid them come forth and hear me

Or at their chamber-door I’ll beat the drum
till it cry sleep to death

- I would have all well betwixt you
- O me, my heart, my rising heart. But, down!

Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels
when she put ’em in the paste alive

She knapped ’em on the coxcombs with a stick
and cried ‘Down, wantons, down’

- Good morrow to you both
- Hail to your grace

- I am glad to see your highness
- Regan, I think you are

O, are you free?
Some other time for that

Beloved Regan, thy sister’s naught

O Regan, she hath tied
sharp-toothed unkindness, like a vulture, here

I can scarce speak to thee.
Thou’lt not believe with how depraved a quality...

- O Regan
- I pray you, sir, take patience

I have hope you less know how to value her desert
than she to scant her duty

Say? How is that?

I cannot think my sister in the least
would fail her obligation

If, sir, perchance she have restrained
the riots of your followers...

...’tis on such ground and to such wholesome end
as clears her from all blame

My curses on her

O, sir, you are old. Nature in you
stands on the very verge of her confine

Therefore, I pray you, that to our sister
you do make return. Say you have wronged her

Ask her forgiveness?
Do you but mark how this becomes the house

Dear daughter, I confess that I am old.
Age is unnecessary

On my knees I beg
that you’ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed and food

Good sir, no more. These are unsightly tricks.
Return you to my sister

Never, Regan. She hath abated me
of half my train, looked black upon me

Struck me with her tongue
most serpent-like upon the very heart

All the stored vengeances of heaven
fall on her ingrateful top

Fie, sir, fie

Infect her beauty, you fen-sucked fogs
drawn by the powerful sun to fall and blister

O the blest gods! So will you wish on me
when the rash mood is on

No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse

Thy tender-hafted nature shall not give
thee over to harshness

Her eyes are fierce,
but thine do comfort and not burn

Thy half of the kingdom hast thou not forgot,
wherein I thee endowed

- Good sir, to the purpose
- Who put my man in the stocks?

Is your lady come?

This is a slave, whose easy-borrowed pride
dwells in the sickly grace of her he follows

- Out, varlet, from my sight
- What means your grace?

Who stocked my servant? Regan,
I have good hope thou didst not know on’t

Who comes here?
O heavens

If you do love old men, if you yourselves are old,
make it your cause, send down, and take my part

Art not ashamed to look upon this beard?
O Regan, will you take her by the hand?

Why not by the hand, sir?
How have I offended?

All’s not offence that indiscretion finds
and dotage terms soe

O sides, you are too tough. Will you yet hold?

How came my man in the stocks?

I set him there, sir. But his own disorders
deserved much less advancement

- You? Did you?
- 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
- Return to her? And fifty men dismissed?

No, rather I abjure all roofs

And choose 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

Return with her? Persuade me rather
to be slave and sumpter to this detested groom

- At your choice, sir
- 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 embossed carbuncle, in my corrupted blood

But I’ll not chide thee.
Let shame come when it will, I do not call it

Mend when thou canst,
be better at thy leisure

I can be patient, I can stay with Regan,
I and my hundred knights

Not altogether so. I looked 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

- Is this well spoken?
- 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

Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance
from those that she calls servants, or from mine?

Why not, my lord? If then they chanced to slack ye,
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

- I gave you all
- And in good time you gave it

Made you my guardians, my depositaries, but kept
a reservation to be followed with such a number

What, must I come to you
with five-and-twenty? Regan, said you so?

- And speak it again, my lord. No more with me
- I’ll go with thee

Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty,
and thou art twice her love

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?

- What need one?
- O, reason not the need

Our basest beggars
are in the poorest thing superfluous

Allow not nature more than nature needs,
man’s life is cheap as beast’s

Thou art a lady.
If only to go warm were gorgeous...

...why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wearest,
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

Let us withdraw, ’twill be a storm

This house is little. The old man and his people
cannot be well bestowed

’Tis his own blame hath put himself from rest
and must needs taste his folly

For his particular, I’ll receive him gladly,
but not one follower

So am I purposed

- Where is my lord of Gloucester?
- Followed the old man forth, he is returned

- The king is in high rage
- Whither is he going?

- He calls to horse, but will I know not whither
- ’Tis best to give him way, he leads himself

- My lord, entreat him by no means to stay
- Alack, the night comes on

And the high winds do sorely ruffle,
for many miles about there’s scarce a bush

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

Shut up your doors, my lord, ’tis a wild night.
My Regan counsels well, come out of the storm

- Who’s there, besides foul weather?
- One minded like the weather, most unquietly

- I know you. Where’s the king?
- Contending with the fretful elements

Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,
that things might change or cease

- But who is with him?
- None but the fool...

...who labours to out-jest
his heart-struck injuries

Sir, I do know you, and dare, upon the warrant
of my note commend a dear thing to you

>From France there comes a power
into this scattered kingdom...

...who already, wise in our negilence,
have secret feet in some of our best ports...

...and are at point
to show their outward 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 will talk further with you
- 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 that fellow is that yet you do not know

Fie on this storm

Let’s go seek the king.
He that first lights on him holla the other

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks

Rage, blow, you cataracts and hurricanoes

Spout till you have drenched our steeples,
drowned the cocks

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts...

...singe my white head

And you, all-shaking thunder,
smite flat the thick rotundity of the world

Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once,
that makes ingrateful man

O, nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house
were 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

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, called 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 your high engendered battles against
a head so old and white as this. Oh ho, ’tis foul

He that has a house to put his 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

No, I will be the pattern of all patience,
I will say nothing

Who’s there?

Marry, here’s grace and a cod-piece,
that’s a wise man and a fool

Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night
love not such nights as these

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

Let the great gods, that keep this dreadful pudder
o’er our heads, find out their enemies now

I am a man
more sinned against than sinning

Alack, bare-headed?
Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel

Some friendship will it lend you
against the tempest. Repose you there

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?

Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
that’s sorry yet for thee

He that has and a little tiny wit,
with hey, ho, the wind and the rain...

- ...must make content with his fortunes fit
- Though the rain it raineth every day

True, boy.
Come, bring us to this hovel

Alack, alack, Edmund,
I like not this unnatural dealing

When I desired their leave that I might pity
the king, 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

- Most savage and unnatural
- Go to, say you nothing

I have received a letter this night,
’tis dangerous to be spoken

There is a French power already footed.
We must incline to the king

I will look 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 strange things toward, Edmund.
Pray you be careful

This courtesy forbid thee shall the duke
instantly know, and of this 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

Here is the place, my lord.
Good my lord, enter

The tyranny of the open night’s too rough
for nature to endure

- Let me alone
- Good my lord, enter here

- Wilt break my heart?
- I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter

Thou think’st ’tis much that this contentious storm
invades us to the skin. So ’tis to thee

But where the greater malady is fixed
the lesser is scarce felt

The tempest in my mind
doth from my senses take all feeling else...

...save what beats there, filial ingratitude

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 lies, let me shun that.
No more of that

- Good my lord, enter here
- 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.
In, boy, go first

You houseless poverty...
Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep

Poor naked wretches, wheresover you are,
that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
your lopped and windowed raggedness...

...defend you from seasons such as these?

O, I have taken too little care of this

Take physic, pomp.
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
and show the heavens more just

Fathom and half, fathom and half!
Poor Tom

Come not in here, nuncle, here’s a spirit.
Help me, help me

- Give me thy hand. Who’s there?
- A spirit, a spirit. He says his name’s poor Tom

What art thou that dost grumble there in the straw?
Come forth

Away, away, away!
The foul fiend follows me

Through the sharp hawthorn blow the winds

Go to thy bed and warm thee

Did’st thou give all to thy daughters?
And art thou come to this?

Who gives anything to poor Tom?

Whom the foul fiend hath led
through fire and through flame,

through ford and whirlpool, o’er bog and quagmire

That hath laid knives under his pillow,
and halters in his pew, set ratsbane by his porridge

Made him proud of heart,
to course his own shadow for a traitor

Bless thy five wits! Tom’s a-cold.
Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting and taking

Do poor Tom some charity,
whom the foul fiend vexes

There could I have him now... and there...
and there again, and there

Has his daughters brought him to this pass?
Couldst thou save nothing? Wouldst thou give them all?

Nay, he reserved a blanket,
else we had been all shamed

Now, all the plagues that in the pendulous air
hang fated over men’s faults light on thy daughters

- He hath no daughters, sir
- Death, traitor

Nothing could have subdued nature
to such a lowness but his pelican daughters

Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill

This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen

Take heed of the foul fiend.
Obey thy parents, keep thy word’s justice, swear not

Commit not with man’s sworn spouse, set not
thy sweetheart on proud array. Tom’s a-cold

What hast thou been?

A servingman, proud in heart and mind,
that curled my hair, wore gloves 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 the contriving of lust,
and waked to do it

Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly,
and in woman out-paramoured the Turk

Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks
betray thy poor heart to woman

Keep thy foot out of brothels,
thy hand out of plackets, and defy the foul fiend

Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind,
says suum, mun, nonny

Dolphin my boy, boy sessa!
Let him trot by

Thou wert better in a grave than to answer
with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies

Is man no more than this?
Consider him well

Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide,
the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume

Ha? Here’s three on’s are sophisticated.
Thou art the thing itself

Unaccommodated man is no more
but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art

Off, off, you lendings.
Come, unbutton here

Prithee, nuncle, be contented,
’tis a naughty night to swim in

Look, here comes a walking fire

This is the foul Flibbertigibbet.
He begins at curfew and walks till the first cock

He gives the web and the pin,
squinnies the eye and makes the hare-lip

Mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor
creature of earth. Aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!

- How fares your grace?
- What’s he?

- Who’s there? What is’t you seek?
- What are you there? Your names?

Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad,
the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water

That in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend
rages, eats cow-dung for salads

Swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog,
drinks the green mantle of the standing pool

Who is whipped from tithing to tithing,
and stocked, punished and imprisoned

Who hath had three suits to my back,
six shirts to my body

Horse to ride, and weapon to wear,
but mice and rats and such small deer...

...have been Tom’s food for seven long year

Beware my follower.
Peace, Smulkin, peace, thou fiend

What, hath your grace no better company?

The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
Modo he’s called, and Mahu

Our flesh and blood, my lord, is grown so vile,
that it doth hate what gets it

Poor Tom’s a-cold

Go in with me. My duty cannot suffer
to obey in all your daughters’ hard commands

Though their injunction be to bar my doors
and let this tyrannous night take hold upon you...

...yet have I ventured to come seek you out
and bring you where both fire and food is ready

First let me talk with this philosopher.
What is the cause of thunder?

Good my lord, take his offer.
Go into the house

I’ll talk a word with this same learned Theban.
Let me ask you one word in private

Importune him once more to go, my lord.
His wits begin to unsettle

Canst thou blame him?
His daughters seek his death

Ah, that good Kent.
He said it would be thus, poor banished man

Thou sayest the king grows mad.
I’ll tell thee, friend, I am almost mad myself

I had a son, now outlawed from my blood.
He sought my life but lately, very late

I loved him, friend, no father his son dearer.
True to tell thee, the grief hath crazed my wits

What a night’s this!
I do beseech your grace

O, cry you mercy, sir.
Noble philosopher, your company

- Tom’s a-cold
- In, fellow, there, into the hovel. Keep thee warm

- Come let’s in all
- This way, my lord

With him,
I will keep still with my philosopher

Good my lord, soothe him.
Let him take the fellow

- Take him you on
- Sirrah, come on, go along with us

- Come, good Athenian
- No words, no words, hush

Child Rowland to the dark tower came

His word was still fie, foh and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man

I will have my revenge
ere I depart your father’s house

This is the letter he spoke of, which approves him
an intelligent party to the advantages of France

O heavens!
That this treason were not, or not I the detector

Go with me to the duchess. If the matter of this paper
be certain, you have mighty business in hand

True or false,
it hath made thee Earl of Gloucester

Seek out where thy father is,
that he may be ready for our apprehension

I will persevere in my course of loyalty,
though the conflict be sore between that and my blood

I will lay trust upon thee,
and thou shalt find a dearer father in my love

Here is better than the open air, take it thankfully

I will piece out the comfort with what addition I can

The gods reward your kindness

Frateretto calls me, and tells me
Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness

Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend

Prithee, nuncle, tell me
whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman?

- A king, a king
- No, he’s a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son

For he’s a mad yeoman
that sees his son a gentleman before him

To have a thousand with red burning spits
come hizzing in upon ’em

The foul fiend bites my back

He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf,
a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath

It shall be done. I will arraign them straight.
Come, sit thou here, most learned justice

Thou, sapient, sir, sit here.
No, you she-foxes

Look where he stands and glares!
Want’st thou eyes at trial, madam?

- Come o’er the bourn, Bessy, to me
- Her boat hath a leak

And she must not speak
why she dares not come over to thee

The foul fiend haunts poor Tom
in the voice of a nightingale

Hoppedance cries in Tom’s belly
for two white herring

Croak not, black angel,
I have no food for thee

How do you, sir? Stand you not so amazed.
Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?

I’ll see their trial first. Bring in the evidence

Thou robed man of justice, take thy place

And thou, his yoke-fellow of equity,
bench by his side

You are of the commission,
sit you too

Let us deal justly

Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?
Thy sheep be in the corn

And for one blast of thy minikin mouth
thy sheep shall take no harm

Purr, the cat is grey

I here take my oath before this honourable assembly,
she kicked the poor king her father

I here take my oath before this honourable assembly,
she kicked the poor king her father

- Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?
- She cannot deny it

Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool

And here’s another whose warped looks
proclaim what store her heart is made on

Stop her there!
Arms, arms, sword, fire!

Corruption in the place.
False justicer, why hast thou let her ’scape?

Bless thy five wits!

O pity! Sir, where is the patience now
that you so oft have boasted to retain?

My tears begin to take his part so much
they mar my counterfeiting

The little dogs and all,
Trey, Blanch and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me

Tom will throw his head at them.
Avaunt, you curs!

Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim,
hound or spaniel, brach or him

Or bobtail tyke or trundle-tail,
Tom will make them weep and wail

For, with throwing thus my head,
dogs leapt the hatch, and all are fled

Sessa! Come, march to wakes and fairs
and market towns. Poor Tom, thy horn is dry

Then let them anatomize Regan.
See what breeds about her heart

Is there any cause in nature
that make these hard hearts?

You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred.
Only I do not like the fashion of your garments

You will say they are Persian,
but let them be changed

Now, good my lord, lie here and rest awhile

Make no noise, make no noise,
draw the curtains

- So, so, we’ll go to supper in the morning
- And I’ll go to bed at noon

- Come hither, friend. Where is the king my master?
- Here, sir, but trouble him not. His wits are gone

I have overheard a plot of death upon him

Here is a litter ready, lay him in it
and drive toward Dover, friend...

...where thou shalt meet
both welcome and protection

Take up thy master.
If thou shouldst dally half an hour...

...his life, with thine and all that offer
to defend him stand in assured loss.

Take up, take up

When we our betters see bearing our woes,
we scarcely think our miseries our foes

How light and portable my pain seems now,
when that which makes me bend makes the king bow

He childed as I fathered

Oppressed nature sleeps.
This rest might yet have balmed his broken sinews

- Come, help to bear thy master.
Thou must not stay behind - Come, come away

Tom, away.
Mark the high noises, and thyself bewray

What will halp more tonight, safe ’scape the king.
Lurk, lurk

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 burned, but wenches’ suitors...

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 in 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 it,
that going shall be used with feet

This prophecy Merlin shall make,
for I live before his time

The army of France is landed

- Go fetch the traitor Gloucester
- Hang him instantly

- Pluck out his eyes
- Leave him to my displeasure

Edmund, keep you our sister company

The revenges we are bound to take upon
your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding

Farewell, dear sister, farewell, my lord of Gloucester

- How now? Where’s the king?
- Old Gloucester hath conveyed him hence

Some gone with him to Dover,
where they boast to have well-armed friends

- Get horses for your mistress
- Farewell, sweet lord, and sister

- Who’s there? The traitor?
- Ingrateful fox! ’Tis he

Bind fast his corky arms

What means your graces?
Good my friends, consider you are my guests

- Do me no foul play, friends
- Bind him, I say

- Hard, hard. O filthy traitor
- Unmerciful lady as you are, I’m none

To the chair, bind him.
Villain, thou shalt find...

By the kind gods, ’tis most ignobly done
to pluck me by the beard

So white, and such a traitor?

Naughty lady, I am your host.
You should not ruffle thus

What will you do?

- Come, sir, what letters had you late from France?
- Be simple answered, for we know the truth

And what confederacy have you with the traitors
late footed in the kingdom?

To whose hands you have sent the lunatic king?
Speak

I have a letter guessingly set down...

...which came from one that’s of a neutral heart,
and not from one opposed

- Cunning
- And false

- Where hast thou sent the king?
- To Dover

Wherefore to Dover?
Wast thou not charged at peril...

- Wherefore to Dover? Let him answer that
- Wherefore to Dover?

Because I would not see thy cruel nails
pluck out his poor old eyes

Nor thy fierce sister
in his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs

But I shall see the winged vengeance
overtake such children

See it shalt thou never.
Fellows, hold the chair

Upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my foot

He that will think to live till he be old,
give me some help

O cruel! O you gods!

One side will mock another. The other too

- If you see vengeance...
- Hold your hand, my lord

I have served you ever since I was a child...

...but better service have I never done you
than now to bid you hold

How now, you dog?

If you did wear a beard upon your chin,
I’d shake it on this quarrel

- What do you mean?
- My villain?

Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger

Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus?

O, I am slain. My lord, you have one eye left
to see some mischief on him

Lest it see more, prevent it

Out, vile jelly.
Where is thy lustre now?

All dark and comfortless.
Where is my son Edmund?

Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature
to quit this horrid act

Out, treacherous villain.
Thou call’st on him that hates thee

It was he
that made the overture of thy treasons to us

O, my follies! Then Edgar was abused.
Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him

Go thrust him out at gates,
and let him smell his way to Dover

How is it, my lord? How look you?

I have received a hurt, follow me, lady

Turn out that eyeless villain.
Throw this slave upon the dunghill

Regan, I bleed apace

Untimely comes this hurt. Give me your arm

I’ll never care what wickedness I do,
if this can come to good

If she live long and in the end meet the old
course of death, women will all turn monsters

Let’s follow the old earl and get the Bedlam
to lead him where he would

Go thou. I’ll fetch some flax and whites of eggs
to apply to his bleeding face

Now, heaven help him

Yet better thus, and known to be contemned,
than still contemned and flattered

To be worst, the lowest and most dejected thing of
fortune, stands still in esperance, lives not in fear

The lamentable change is from the best,
the worst returns to laughter

Welcome, then,
thou unsubstantial air that I embrace

The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
owes nothing to thy blasts

But who comes here?
My father, poorly led?

World, world, O world

But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,
life would not yield to age

O, my good lord, I have been your tenant
and your father’s tenant these fourscore years

Away, get thee away. Good friend, be gone

Thy comforts can do me no good at all,
thee they may hurt

- You cannot see your way
- I have no way and therefore want no eyes

I stumbled when I saw

O dear son Edgar. Might I but live to see thee
in my touch, I’d say I had eyes again

How now? Who’s there?

O gods! Who is’t can say, ‘I am at the worst’?
I am worse than e’er I was

’Tis poor mad Tom

And worse I may be yet. The worst is not
so long as we can say ‘This is the worst’

- Fellow, where goest?
- Is it a beggar-man?

- Madman and beggar too
- He has some reason, else he could not beg

In the last night’s storm I such a fellow saw,
which made me think a man a worm

My son came then into my mind and yet
my mind was then scarce friends with him

I have heard more since

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,
they kill us for their sport

- Bless thee, master
- Is that the naked fellow?

- Ay, my lord
I prithee, get thee gone

If for my sake thou wilt o’ertake us hence
a mile or twain in the way toward Dover...

...do it for ancient love, and bring some covering
for this naked soul, which I’ll entreat to lead me

- Alack, sir, he is mad
- ’Tis the time’s plague, when madmen lead the blind

Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure.
Above the rest, be gone

I’ll bring him the best ’pparel that I have,
come on it what will

- Sirrah, naked fellow
- Poor Tom’s a-cold. I cannot daub it further

- Come hither, fellow
- And yet I must

Bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed

- Knowest thou the way to Dover?
- Both stile and gate, horseway and footpath

Here, take this purse, thou whom the heavens’ plagues
have humbled to all strokes

That I am wretched
makes thee the happier. Heavens, deal so still

Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,
that slaves your ordinance...

...that will not see because he does not feel,
feel your power quickly

So distribution should undo excess,
and each man have enough

- Dost thou know Dover?
- Ay, master

There is a cliff, whose high and bending head
looks fearfully in the confined deep

Bring me but to the very brim of it
and from that place I shall no leading need

Give me thy arm.
Poor Tom shall lead thee

Welcome, my lord.
I marvel our mild husband not met us on the way

- Now, where’s your master?
- Madam, within, but never man so changed

I told him of the army that was landed,
he smiled at it

I told him you were coming,
his answer was ‘The worse’

Of Gloucester’s treachery and of the loyal service
of his son when I informed him...

...then he called me ‘sot’
and told me I had turned the wrong side out

It is the cowish terror of his spirit,
that dares not undertake

He’ll not feel wrongs
which tie him to an answer

Back, Edmund, to my brother.
Hasten his musters and conduct his powers

I must change names at home
and give the distaff into my husband’s hands

This trusty servant
shall pass between us

Ere long you are like to hear, if you dare venture
in your own behalf, a mistress’s command

Wear this, spare speech
Decline your head

This kiss, if it durst speak,
would stretch thy spirits up into the air

- Conceive, and fare thee well
- Yours in the ranks of death

My most dear Gloucester.
To thee a woman’s services are due

My fool usurps my body

O, the difference of man and man!

- Madam, here comes my lord
- I have been worth the whistle

O Goneril, you are not worth the dust
which the rude wind blows in your face

Milk-livered man, that bear’st a cheek for blows,
a head for wrongs

Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
thine honour from thy suffering

Where’s thy drum?
France spreads his banners in our noiseless land

Whilst thou, a moral fool, sits still and cries
‘Alack, why does he so?’

See thyself, devil. Proper deformity
shows not in the fiend so horrid as in woman

Marry, your manhood, mew

- O, my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall’s dead
- Slain by his servant

- Going to put out the other eye of Gloucester
- Gloucester’s eyes?

- A servant that he bred...
- Thrilled with remorse...

- Opposed against the act...
- ...did bend his sword to his great master

This shows you are above, you justices,
that these our nether crimes so speedily can venge

- But, O, poor Gloucester. Lost he his other eye?
- Both, my lord

This letter, madam, craves a speedy answer.
’Tis from your sister

One way I like this well.
But being widow, and my Gloucester with her...

...may all the building in my fancy
pluck upon my hateful life

Another way, the news is not so tart.
I’ll read, and answer

- Where was Edmund when they did take his eyes?
- Come with my lady hither

- He is not here
- No, my good lord, we met him back again

- Knows he the wickedness?
- Ay, my good lord

- ’Twas he informed against him
- And quit the house on purpose...

...that their punishment
might have the freer course

Gloucester, I live to thank thee for the love
thou showed’st the king and to revenge thine eyes

Come hither, friends.
Tell me what more thou knowest

Alack, ’tis he. Why, he was met even now
as mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud

Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,
with burdocks, hemlock, nettles...

...cuckoo-flowers, darnel, and all
the idle weeds that grow in our sustaining corn

A sentry send forth. Search every acre
in the high-grown field and bring him to our eye

What can man’s wisdom
in the restoring his bereaved sense?

There is means, madam

Our foster-nurse of nature is repose,
the which he lacks. That to provoke in him...

...are many simples operative,
whose power will close the eye of anguish

All blest secrets, all you unpublished virtues
of the earth, spring with my tears

Be aidant and remediate
in the good man’s distress

Seek, seek for him, lest his ungoverned rage
dissolve the life that wants the means to lead it

News, madam.
The British powers are marching hitherward

’Tis known before.
Our preparation stands in expectation of them

O dear father,
it is thy business that I go about

No blown ambition doth our arms incite,
but love, dear love, and our aged father’s right

Soon may I hear and see him

But are my brother’s powers set forth?

- Ay, madam
- Himself in person there?

Madam, with much ado.
Your sister is the better soldier

- Lord Edmund spake not with your lord at home?
- No, madam

- What might import my sister’s letter to him?
- I know not, lady

Faith, he is posted hence on serious matter

It was great ignorance,
Gloucester’s eyes being out, to let him live

Where he arrives he moves
all hearts against us

Edmund, I think, is gone, in pity of his misery,
to dispatch his nighted life

Moreover, to descry
the strength of the enemy

I must needs after him, madam,
with my lady’s letter

Why should she write to Edmund?
Might not you transport her purposes by word?

Belike, some things I know not what...

- I’ll love thee much, let me unseal the letter
- Madam, I had rather...

I know your lady does not love her husband,
I am sure of that. And at her late being here...

...she gave strange oeillades
and most speaking looks to noble Edmund

- I know you are of her bosom
- I, madam?

I speak in understanding. You are, I know it.
Therefore I do advise, take note of this

My lord is dead.
Edmund and I have talked

And more convenient is he for my hand
than for your lady’s. So, fare you well

If you do chance to hear of that blind traitor,
preferment falls on him that cuts him off

Would I could meet, madam,
I should show what party I do follow

Fare thee well

- When shall I come to the top of that same hill?
- You do climb up it now, look how we labour

- Methinks the ground is even
- Horrible steep

- Hark, do you hear the sea?
- No, truly

Why, then, your other senses
grow imperfect by your eyes’ anguish

So may it be, indeed

Methinks thy voice is altered and thou speakest
in better phrase and matter than thou didst

You’re much deceived.
In nothing am I changed but in my garments

Methinks you’re better spoken

Come on, sir, here’s the place, stand still

How fearful and dizzy it is
to cast one’s eyes so low

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
show scarce so gross as beetles

Half way down hangs one
that gathers samphire, dreadful trade

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head

The fishermen that walk upon the beach
appear like mice

And yond tall anchoring bark
diminished to her cock...

...her cock,
a buoy almost too small for sight

The murmuring surge, that on the unnumbered
idle pebbles chafes, cannot be heard so high

I’ll look no more, lest my brain turn,
and the deficient sight topple down headlong

- Set me where you stand
- Give me your hand

You are now within a foot of the extreme verge.
For all beneath the moon would I not leap upright

Let go my hand. Here, friend, is a jewel well
worth a poor man’s taking

Fairies and gods
prosper it with thee

Go thou further off.
Bid me farewell, and let me hear thee going

- Now fare ye well, good sir
- With all my heart

Why I do trifle thus with his despair
is done to cure it

O you mighty gods

This world I do renounce, and in your sights
shake patiently my great affliction off

If I could bear it longer, and not fall
to quarrel with your great opposeless wills...

...my snuff and loathed part of nature
should burn itself out

If Edgar live, O bless him

Now, fellow...

Fare thee well

Had he been where he thought,
by this had thought been past

Alive or dead?

Ho, you sir, friend! Hear you, sir, speak!
Thus might he pass indeed

- What are you, sir?
- Away, and let me die

Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air,
so many fathom down precipitating...

...thou’dst shivered like an egg

But thou dost breathe, hast heavy substance,
bleed’st not, speak’st, art sound

Thy life’s a miracle. Speak yet again

- But have I fallen or no?
- From the dread summit of this chalky bourn

Look up a-height. The shrill-gorged lark so far
cannot be seen or heard. Do but look up

Alack, I have no eyes

Is wretchedness deprived that benefit,
to end itself by death?

Give me your hand.
Up, so. How is it? Feel you your legs?

- You stand
- Too well, too well

This is above all strangeness.
Upon the crown of the cliff...

- ...what thing was that which parted from you?
- A poor unfortunate beggar

As I stood here below, methought his eyes
were two full moons

He had a thousand noses,
horns whelked and waved like the enraged sea

It was some fiend

Therefore, thou happy father,
think that the clearest gods have preserved thee

I do remember now. Henceforth I’ll bear affliction
till it do cry out itself ‘Enough, enough’ and die

No, they cannot touch me for coining,
I am the king himself

O thou side-piercing sight

Nature’s above art in that respect.
There’s your press-money

That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper.
Draw me a clothier’s yard

Look, look, a mouse

Peace, peace,
this piece of toasted cheese will do it

There’s my gauntlet, I’ll prove it on a giant.
Bring up the brown bills

O, well flown, bird!
In the clout, in the clout

- Give the word
- Sweet marjoram

- Pass
- I know that voice

Ha? Goneril with a white beard?

They flattered me like a dog and told me I had the
white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there

To say ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to everything that I said
‘ay’ and ‘no’ to was no good divinity

When the rain came to wet me once
and the wind to make me chatter...

...when the thunder would not peace at my bidding,
there I found them, there I smelt them out

Go to, they are not men of their words. They told me
I was everything. ’Tis a lie, I am not ague-proof

The trick of that voice I do well remember.
Is it not the king?

Ay, every inch a king.
When I do stare, see how the subject quakes

I pardon that man’s life

What was thy cause? Adultery?
Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery? No

The wren goes to it and the small gilded fly
does lecher in my sight

Let copulation thrive

For Gloucester’s bastard son was kinder to his father
than were my daughters got ’tween the lawful sheets

To it, luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers

Behold yond simpering dame,
whose face between her forks presages snow

That minces virtue and does shake the head
to hear of pleasure’s name

The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to it
with a more riotous appetite

Down from the waist they are centaurs,
though women all above

But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
beneath is all the fiend’s

There’s hell, there’s darkness,
there is the sulphurous pit

Burning, scalding, stench, consumption.
Fie, fie, fie, pah, pah!

Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary,
sweeten my imagination. There’s money for thee

- O, let me kiss that hand
- Let me wipe it first, it smells of mortality

O, ruined piece of nature. This great world
shall so wear out to nought

- Dost thou know me?
- I remember thine eyes well enough

Dost thou squinny at me?
No, do thy worst, blind Cupid, I’ll not love

- Read thou this challenge, mark but the penning of it
- Were all thy letters suns, I could not see

I would not take this from report.
It is, and my heart breaks at it

- Read
- What, with the case of eyes?

O, ho, are you there with me?
No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse?

Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light,
yet you see how this world goes

- I see it feelingly
- What, art mad?

A man may see how this world goes with no eyes.
Look with thine ears

See how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief.
Hark, in thine ear

Change places, and handy-dandy,
which is the justice, which is the thief?

Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar?

- Ay, sir
- And the creature run from the cur?

There thou mightst behold the great image of authority.
A dog’s obeyed in office

Through tattered clothes great vices do appear.
Robes and furred gowns hide all

Plate sins with gold,
and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks

Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it

None does offend, none, I say, none

Get thee glass eyes, and like a scurvy politician
seem to see the things thou dost not

Now, now, now, now.
Pull off my boots. Harder, harder, so

Reason in madness

If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes

I know thee well enough, thy name is Gloucester

Thou must be patient. We came crying hither

Thou knowest the first time that we smell the air
we wall and cry

- I will preach to thee, mark
- Alack, alack the day

When we are born, we cry that we are come
to this great stage of fools

This is a good block. It were a delicate stratagem
to shoe a troop of horse with felt

I’ll put it in proof,
and when I have stolen upon these son-in-laws...

...then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

O, here he is, lay hand upon him.
Sir, your most dear daughter...

No rescue? What, a prisoner?
I am even the natural fool of fortune

Use me well, you shall have ransom.
Let me have surgeons, I am cut to the brains

You shall have anything

No seconds? All myself?

Why, this would make a man a man of salt
to use his eyes for garden water-pots

I will die bravely, like a smug bridegroom

What? I will be jovial

Come, come, I am a king, masters, know you that?

You are a royal one, and we obey you

Then there’s life in it.
Come, an you get it, you shall get it by running

You ever-gentle gods,
take my breath from me

Let not my worser spirit tempt me again
to die before you please

Well pray you, father

- Now, good sir, what are you?
- A most poor man, made tame to fortune’s blows

Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows,
am pregnant to good pity

Give me your hand

- I’ll lead you to some biding
- Hearty thanks

The bounty and the benison of heaven
to boot, and boot

A proclaimed prize! Most happy

That eyeless head of thine
was first framed flesh to raise my fortunes

- The sword is out that must destroy thee
- Now let thy friendly hand put strength enough to it

Wherefore, bold peasant, darest thou support
a published traitor? Let go his arm

- I’ll not let go, sir, without further ’casion
- Let go, slave, or thou diest

Good gentleman, go your gait,
and let poor folk pass

- Nay, come not near the old man
- Out, dunghill

Slave, thou hast slain me

Villain, take my purse.
If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body

And give the letters which thou findest about me
to Edmund, Earl of Gloucester. O, untimely death

- I know thee well, a serviceable villain
- What, is he dead?

Let’s see these pockets.
The letters that he speaks of may be my friends

The king is mad. Better I were distract,
so should my thoughts be severed from my griefs

O, Goneril,
O, undistinguished space of woman’s will!

A plot upon her virtuous husband’s life,
and the exchange my brother

For Albany ’tis well
that of thy death and business I can tell

Give me thy hand. Far off, methinks,
I hear the beaten drum. Come, father

O thou good Kent

How shall I live and work
to match thy goodness?

My life will be too short,
and every measure fail me

To be acknowledged, madam, is overpaid

These weeds are memories of those worser hours,
I prithee put them off

Pardon, dear madam,
yet to be known shortens my made intent

My boon I make it, that you know me not
till time and I think meet

Then be it so, my good lord

- How does the king?
- Madam, sleeps still

O you kind gods,
cure this great breach in his abused nature

The untuned and jarring senses,
O, wind up of this child-changed father

So please your majesty
that we may wake the king

- He hath slept long
- Be governed by your knowledge, and proceed

Be by, good madam, when we do awake him.
I doubt of his temperance

Softer the music there

O my dear father! Restoration hang
thy medicine on my lips

And let this kiss repair those violent harms
that my two sisters have in thy reverence made

Kind and dear princess

Had you not been their father,
these white flakes did challenge pity of them

Was this a face
to be opposed against the jarring winds?

To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder...

...in the most terrible and nimble stroke
of quick cross lightning?

Mine enemy’s dog, though he had bit me,
should have stood that night against my fire

And wast thou fain, poor father,
to hovel thee with rogues forlorn?

Alack, ’tis wonder that thy life and wits
at once had not concluded all

- He wakes, speak to him
- Madam, do you. ’Tis fittest

How does my royal lord?
How fares your majesty?

You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss

But I am bound upon a wheel of fire,
that mine own tears do scald like molten lead

- Sir, do you know me?
- You are a spirit, I know. Where did you die?

- Still, still, far wide
- He’s scarce awake, let him alone awhile

Where have I been? Where am I?
Fair daylight?

I am mightily abused. I should even die with pity
to see another thus

I know not what to say.
I will not swear these are my hands

Let’s see. I feel this pinprick.
Would I were assured of my condition

O, look upon me, sir,
and hold your hand in benediction over me

- You must not kneel
- Pray, do not mock me

I am a very foolish fond old man,
fourscore and upward

And to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind

Methinks I should know you
and know this man, yet I am doubtful

For I am mainly ignorant
what place this is

And all the skill I have remembers not these garments,
nor I know not where I did lodge last night

Do not laugh at me, for, as I am a man,
I think this lady to be my child Cordelia

And so I am, I am

Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray, weep not.
If you have poison for me, I will drink it

I know you do not love me, but your sisters
have, as I do remember, done me wrong

- You have some cause, they have not
- No cause, no cause

- Am I in France?
- In your own kingdom, sir

Do not abuse me

Be comforted, good madam.
The great rage, you see, is killed in him

- Desire him to go in
- Will it please your highness walk?

You must bear with me. Pray you now,
forget and forgive. I am old and foolish

Now, sweet lord,
you know the goodness I intend upon you

Tell me but truly, but then speak the truth,
do you not love my sister?

In honoured love

But have you never found my brother’s way
to the forfended place?

That thought abuses you

I am doubtful that you have been conjunct
and bosomed with her

No, by mine honour, madam

I never shall endure her

- Dear my lord, be not familiar with her
- Fear not

She and the duke her husband

Our very loving sister, well be-met.
Sir, this I heard

The king is come to his daughter, with others
whom the rigour of our state forced to cry out

- Why is this reasoned?
- Where I could not be honest, I never yet was valiant

Combine together gainst the enemy,

for these domestic and particular broils
are not the question here

Let’s then determine
with the ancient of war on our proceeding

- Sister, you’ll go with us?
- No

- ’Tis most convenient. Pray, go with us
- Oho, I know the riddle. I will go

If ever your grace had speech with man so poor,
hear me one word

I’ll overtake you.
Speak

Before you fight the battle, ope this letter

If you have victory, let the trumpet sound
for him that brought it

Wretched though I seem, I can produce a champion
that will prove what is avouched there

- Fortune love you
- Stay till I have read the letter

I was forbid it. When time shall serve,
let but the herald cry and I’ll appear again

Why, fare thee well.
I will overlook thy paper

The enemy’s in view, draw up your powers

- Your haste is urged
- And we will greet the time

To both these sisters have I sworn my love

Each jealous of the other,
as the stung are of the adder

Which of them shall I take?
Both? One? Or neither?

Neither can be enjoyed
if both remain alive

To take the widow exasperates,
makes mad her sister Goneril

And hardly shall I carry out my side,
her husband being alive

Now then, we’ll use his countenance for the battle,
which being done...

...let her who would be rid of him
devise his speedy taking off

As for the mercy
which he intends to Lear and to Cordelia...

...the battle done and they within our power,
shall never see his pardon

For my state stands on me to defend,
not to debate

Here, father, take the shadow of this tree
for your good host

Pray that the right may thrive.
If ever I appear to you again, I’ll bring you comfort

Grace go with you, sir

Away, old man. Give me thy hand, away!

King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter
taken. Give me thy hand, come on

- No further, sir. A man may rot even here
- What, in ill thoughts again?

Men must endure their going hence,
even as their coming hither

- Ripeness is all
- And that’s true too

Some officers take them away

Good guard, until their greater pleasures
first be known that are to censure them

We are not the first
who with best meaning have incurred the worst

For thee, oppressed king, I am cast down.
Myself could else out-frown false fortune’s frown

- Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?
- No, no, no, no

Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds in the cage

When thou dost ask me blessing,
I’ll kneel down and ask of thee forgiveness

So we’ll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales,
and laugh at gilded butterflies

And hear poor rogues
talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too

Who loses and who wins,
who’s in, who’s out

And take upon us the mystery of things,
as if we were God’s spies

Take them away

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
the gods themselves throw incense

He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven
and fire us hence like foxes

Wipe thine eyes. The good years shall devour them,
flesh and fell, ere they shall make us weep

We’ll see them starved first.
Come

Come hither, captain, hark,
go follow them to prison

If thou dost as this instructs thee,
thou dost make thy way to noble fortunes

- Either say thou’lt do it, or thrive by other means
- I’ll do it, my lord

Sir, you have showed today your valiant strain,
and fortune led you well

You have the captives who were the opposites
of this day’s strife. I do require them of you

Sir, I thought it fit to send
the old and miserable king

to some retention and appointed guard

With him I sent the queen, Cordelia, and they are ready
to appear anon where you shall hold your session

Sir, by your patience, I hold you
but a subject of this war, not as a brother

That’s as we list to grace him. He led our powers,
bore the commission of my place and person

The which immediacy may well stand up
and call itself your brother

Not so hot. In his own grace he doth exalt himself
more than in your addition

In my rights, by me invested,
he compeers the best

- That were the most if he should husband you
- Jesters do oft prove prophets

Holla, holla!
That eye that told you so looked but asquint

Lady, I am not well, else I should answer
from a full-flowing stomach

General,
take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony

Witness the world that I create thee here
my lord and master

- Mean you to enjoy him?
- The let-alone lies not in your good will

- Nor in thine, lord
- Half-blooded fellow, yes

- Let the drum strike and prove my title thine
- Stay yet, hear reason

Edmund, I arrest thee on capital treason,
and, in thy arrest, this gilded serpent

For your claim, fair sister,
I bar it in the interest of my wife

’Tis she is subcontracted to this lord,
and I, her husband, contradict your banns

If you will marry, make your loves to me,
my lady is bespoke

An interlude!

Thou art armed, Gloucester.
Let the trumpet sound

If none appear to prove upon thy person
thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons...

...there is my pledge, I’ll make it on thy heart

Sick, O, sick

If not, I’ll never trust medicine

Here is my exchange. What in the world he is
that calls me traitor, villain-like he lies

He that dares approach, on him, on you,
who not...

- ...I will maintain my truth and honour firmly
- A herald, ho

- My sickness grows upon me
- She is not well, convey her to my tent

Come hither, herald, and read out this

If any man of quality or degree will maintain
upon Edmund, supposed Earl of Gloucester...

....that he is a manifold traitor,
let him appear by the third sound of the trumpet

Again

Again

Ask him his purposes

What are you? Your name, your quality,
and why you answer this present summons?

Know, my name is lost by treason’s tooth
bare-gnawn and canker-bit

- Yet am I noble as the adversary I come to cope
- Which is that adversary?

- What’s he that speaks for Edmund Earl of Gloucester?
- Himself. What sayest thou to him?

Thou art a traitor,
false to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father

In wisdom I should ask thy name,
but since thy outside looks so fair and warlike...

...back do I toss these treasons to thy head.
Trumpets, speak!

Save him, save him

This is practice, Edmund. By the law of war
thou wast not bound to answer an unknown opposite

Thou art not vanquished,
but cozened and beguiled

Shut your mouth, dame,
or with this paper shall I stop it. Hold, sir

Thou worse than any name, read thine own evil.
No tearing, lady, I perceive you know it

Say, if I do, the laws are mine, not thine.
Who can arraign me for it?

Most monstrous!
Go after her, she’s desperate. Govern her

- O, knowest thou this paper?
- Ask me not what I know

What you have charged me with,
that have I done, and more, much more

The time will bring it out.
’Tis past and so am I

- But what art thou?
- My name is Edgar, and thy father’s son

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
make instruments to plague us

The dark and vicious place where he thee
got cost him his eyes

Thou hast spoken right, 'tis true.
The wheel is come full circle. I am here

- How have you known the miseries of your father?
- By nursing them, my lord

I met my father with his bleeding rings,
their precious stones new lost, became his guide

Never, O fault, revealed myself unto him
until some half-hour past

But his flawed heart,
alack, too weak the conflict to support...

...'twixt two extremes of passion, joy and
grief, burst smilingly

This speech of yours hath moved me,
and shall perchance do good

- Help, help, O, help
- What kind of help?

- Speak, woman
- What means this bloody knife?

- It came even from the heart of... O, she’s dead
- Who dead? Speak, woman

Your lady, sir, your lady. And her sister
by her is poisoned, she confesses it

I was contracted to them both.
All three now marry in an instant

I am come to bid my king and master aye good night.
Is he not here?

Great thing of us forgot! Speak, Edmund.
Where’s the king? And where’s Cordelia?

I pant for life, some good I mean to do

Quickly send to the castle, for my writ
is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia

- Nay, send in time
- Run, run, O, run

To who, my lord? Who has the office?
Send thy token of reprieve

- Well thought on. Take my sword, give it the captain
- Haste thee, for thy life

He hath commission from thy wife and me
to hang Cordelia in the prison...

...and to lay the blame upon her own despair,
that she fordid herself

The gods defend her! Bear him hence awhile

Howl, howl, howl!

O, you are men of stones

Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them
so that heaven’s vault should crack

She’s gone forever

I know when one is dead and when one lives.
She’s dead as earth

Lend me a looking-glass. If that her breath
will mist or stain the stone, why, then she lives

- Is this the promised end?
- Or image of that horror?

Fall and cease

This feather stirs, she lives

If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem
all sorrows that ever I have felt

- O my good master
- Prithee, away

- ’Tis noble Kent, your friend
- A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all

I might have saved her.
Now she’s gone forever

Cordelia, Cordelia! Stay a little

Ha? What is’t thou sayest?

Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low

I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee

- ’Tis true, my lords, he did
- Did I not, fellow?

I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion
I would have made him skip

Who are you?
Mine eyes are not of the best, I’ll tell you straight

If fortune brag of two she loved and hated,
one of them we behold

This is a dull sight.
Are you not Kent?

The same, your servant Kent.
Where is your servant Caius?

He’s a good fellow, I can tell you that.
He’ll strike, and quickly too

- He’s dead and rotten
- No, my good lord, I am the very man...

I’ll see that straight

...that from your first of difference and decay
have followed your sad steps

- You are welcome hither
- Nor no man else

All’s cheerless, dark and deadly

Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves,
and desperately are dead

- Ay, so I think
- He knows not what he says

- And vain is it that we present us to him
- Very bootless

- Edmund is dead, my lord.
- That is but a trifle here

You lords and noble friends,
know our intent

What comfort to this great decay may come
shall be applied

For us, we will resign, during the life of this
old majesty, to him our absolute power

O, see, see

And my poor fool is hanged.
No, no, no life?

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
and thou no breath at all?

Thou’lt come no more,
never, never, never, never, never

Pray you undo this button

Thank you, sir

Do you see this?
Look on her, look, her lips

Look there, look there

He faints. My lord, my lord!

- Break, heart, I prithee, break
- Look up, my lord

Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass

He hates him that would upon the rack
of this tough world stretch him out longer

He is gone, indeed

The wonder is he hath endured so long.
He but usurped his life

Friends of my soul, you twain
rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain

I have a journey, sir, shortly to go.
My master calls me, I must not say no

The weight of this sad time we must obey,
speak what we feel, not what we ought to say

The oldest hath borne most. We that are young
shall never see so much nor live so long