Original subtitles

[BELL STRIKES THREE]

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.

My lord. Oh!

Is not this your son, my lord?

His breeding hath been at my charge.

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

I cannot conceive you. This young fellow's mother could.

Whereupon she grew round-wombed,

and had indeed 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, by order of law... Edgar.

Hmm... 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 lady, Edmund?

No, my lord.

The Countess of Kent.

Remember her hereafter as my honourable friend.

My services to your ladyship.

I must love you, and sue to know you better.

Lady, I shall study deserving.

He has been out nine years, and away he shall again.

[DRUMBEAT] The King is coming.

[STATELY, REGAL MUSIC PLAYS]

♪ Ultima Cumae venit iam

♪ Carminis aetas

♪ Magnus ab integro sanctorum

♪ Nascitur ordo

♪ Iam redit Virgo, redent

♪ Saturnia regna

♪ Iam nova progenies

♪ Carlo demittur alto

♪ Tu modo nascenti pero

♪ Quo ferrea primum

♪ Desinet ac toto

♪ Surget gens aurea mundo

♪ Casta fave Lucina

♪ Tuus iam Apollo

♪ Casta fave Lucina

♪ Tuus iam Apollo! ♪

The two great 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.

[CHEERING]

Attend the Lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.

I shall, my liege.

LEAR: Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.

Give me the map.

There.

Know that we have divided in three our kingdom.

DAUGHTERS: What? And 'tis our fast intent

to shake all cares and business from our age,

conferring them on younger strengths,

whilst 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' separate dowers,

that future strife may be prevented.

Now...

Tell me, my daughters...

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 e'er loved, or father found.

A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.

Beyond all manner of 'so much', I love you.

Of all these bounds...

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

..even from this line to this,

with shadowy forests 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?

Speak.

Sir, I am made of that self-mettle as my sister is,

and prize me at her worth.

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

Only she came too short.

[LAUGHS]

That I profess myself an enemy to all other joys

which the most precious square of sense possesses,

and find I am alone felicitate

in your dear highness' love.

To thee and thine, hereditary ever,

remain this ample third of our fair kingdom...

(LAUGHTER)

..no less in space, validity, or pleasure

than that conferred on Goneril.

But now...

..our joy, although the last, not least in our dear love.

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, now, 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?

Haply 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,

the operation of the orbs, from whom we do exist, and cease to be,

here I disclaim all my paternal care...

What?! ..propinquity and property of blood,

and as a stranger to my heart and me, hold thee from this for ever.

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, avoid my sight!

So be my grave my peace,

as here I give her father's heart from her. Call France.

Who stirs?

Call Burgundy.

Cornwall, Albany.

With my two daughters' dowers,

digest this 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 one 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 fly 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?

To plainness honour's bound, when majesty stoops to folly.

Answer my life my judgment.

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,

and nor are those empty-hearted,

whose low sounds reverb no hollowness.

Kent, on thy life, no more.

My life I never held but as a pawn

to wage against thine enemies,

nor fear to lose it, thy safety being the motive.

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 swear'st thy gods in vain.

O, vassal!

Miscreant! [SCREAMING]

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.

Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow,

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,

since 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 for your large speeches may your deeds approve,

that good effects may spring from words of love.

Thus Kent, O Princes,

bids you all adieu.

She'll shape her old course in a country new.

GLOUCESTER: Here's France and Burgundy, my noble lord.

Right noble 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.

If aught within that little-seeming substance, or all of it,

may fitly like your grace,

she's there, and she is yours.

I know no answer.

Sir, will you, with these 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. Then leave her, sir,

for by the power that made me, I tell you all her wealth.

For you, great king, I would not from your love make such a stray,

to match you where I hate.

Therefore beseech you to 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 best object,

the argument of your praise,

balm of your age,

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.

I yet beseech your majesty.

If for I want that glib and oily art to speak and purpose not,

that you make known it is no vicious blot,

murder, or foulness,

no unchaste action or dishonoured step

that hath deprived me of your grace and favour.

Better thou hadst not been born,

than not to have pleased me better.

Is it but this?

My Lord of Burgundy, what say you to the lady?

Love's not love when it is mingled with regards

that stand aloof from the entire point.

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,

most choice forsaken, and most loved despised.

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.

Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy

can buy this unprized precious maid of me.

Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind.

Thou losest here, a better where to find.

Thou hast her, France. Let her be thine.

For we have no such daughter,

nor shall ever see that face of hers again.

Therefore begone, 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.

And like a sister am most loath to call your faults as they are named.

Love well our father.

To your professed bosoms I commit him.

But yet, alas, stood I within his grace,

I would prefer him to a better place.

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 pleated cunning hides.

Who covers faults, at last with shame derides.

Well may you prosper.

Come, my fair Cordelia.

Wow!

(LAUGHTER) [LAUGHS]

I think our father will hence tonight.

That's most certain, and with you.

[LAUGHS] Oh, next month with us.

You see how full of changes his age is.

He always loved our sister most,

and with what poor judgment 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.

Let us hit 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 of a whole tribe of fops...

got 'tween asleep 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?

Subscribed his power? All this done upon the gad?

How now, Edmund? 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 no such need to hide itself.

Come, let's see - 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.

The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.

Let's see.

Let's see.

I hope, for my brother's justification,

he wrote this but as an assay or test of my virtue.

'I begin to find an idle and fond bondage

'in the oppression of aged tyranny,

'who sways not as it hath power but as it is suffered.

'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.'

'If our father would sleep till I waked him,

'you should enjoy half his revenue for ever.'

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?

If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it were his.

But in respect of that, 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.

His very opinion in the letter!

Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain!

I'll apprehend him. Where is he?

I do not well know, my lord.

I dare pawn down my life for him,

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, and by an auricular assurance

have your satisfaction, and without any further delay than this very evening.

He cannot be such a monster…

Nor is not, sure.

..to his father that so tenderly and entirely loves him.

Heaven and earth!

Seek him out, Edmund.

I will seek him, sir, presently.

Convey the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal.

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...

BOTH: treason.

And the bond cracked between son and father.

The King falls from bias of nature.

Ah! There's father against child.

We have seen the best of our times.

Machinations,

hollowness, treachery,

and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves.

Find out this villain, Edmund.

It shall lose thee nothing.

But do it carefully.

And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! Her offence, honesty.

Ah! 'Tis strange.

'Tis strange.

This is the excellent foppery of the world,

that when we are sick in fortune

we make guilty of our disasters

the sun, the moon, and stars,

as if we were villains by necessity.

An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition

to the charge of a star.

Now, 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 Edgar...

Pat - he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy.

My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam.

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.

How long have you been a secretary astronomical?

When saw you my father last?

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

that with the mischief of your person it would scarcely allay.

Some villain hath done me wrong. That's my fear.

Now, retire with me to my lodging.

Pray ye, go - there's my key.

If you do stir abroad, go armed. Armed, brother?

Brother, I advise you to the best.

I am no honest man, if there be any good meaning toward you.

Go armed. I have told you what I have seen and heard, but faintly,

nothing like the image and the 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.

On whose foolish honesty my practices ride easy.

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, ma'am.

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.

[CLAMOUR] He's coming, ma'am.

I hear him.

Oswald. Put on what weary negligence you please.

What? 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,

not to be overruled.

Idle old man,

that still would manage those authorities he hath given away!

Now, by my life, old fools are babes again,

and must be used with checks as flatteries, when they are seen abused.

Remember what I have said. Well, ma'am.

And let his knights have colder looks among you.

Oh, no… What comes of it, no matter.

Advise your fellows so.

I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall,

that I may speak.

I'll write straight to my sister to hold my very course.

Prepare for dinner.

Now, banished Kent,

If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemned,

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

ALL: Ohhhhhh!

♪ I'll drink up my drink, and speak what I think

♪ Strong drink will make us speak truly

♪ We cannot be termed, all drunkards confirmed

♪ So long as we are not unruly

♪ We'll drink and be civil, intending no evil

♪ If none be offended at me

♪ As I did before, so I'll add one more

♪ And he that made two, made three! ♪

[ALL CHEER]

[ROWDY CHANTING]

[CHEERING]

Gentlemen! [ALL CHEER]

♪ I'll drink up my drink, and speak what I think

♪ Strong drink will make us speak truly

♪ We cannot be termed, all drunkards confirmed

♪ So long as we are not unruly

♪ We'll drink and be civil, intending no evil

♪ If none be offended at me

♪ As I did before, so I'll add one more

♪ And he that made two, made three! ♪

ALL: Drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink!

[CHEERING]

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

How now.

What art thou?

A man, sir. What dost thou profess?

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 judgment,

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 is for a king,

thou art poor enough.

What wouldst thou?

Service.

Who wouldst thou serve?

You. Dost thou know me, fellow?

No, sir. [LAUGHTER]

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

And what's that?

Authority. LEAR: Your name?

Caius. Follow me, Caius.

[CROWD CHEERS]

If I like thee no worse after dinner, I will not part from thee yet.

Dinner, ho! CROWD: Dinner!

Dinner! Where's my knave?

My Fool?

Go you, tell my daughter I would speak with her,

and call my Fool hither.

You, sirrah, you, where is my daughter?

Oh, so please you.

What says the fellow? Would you call that clotpoll back?

Where's my Fool?

Where?

I think the world's asleep.

How now? Where is 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 judgment,

your highness is not entertained with that ceremonious affection as you were wont.

I have perceived a most faint neglect of late, I will look further into it.

But where is 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. O you sir, you sir, come you hither, sir.

Who am I, sir?

My lady's father.

[MIMICKING HIM] 'My lady's father'?

[LAUGHTER]

My lord's knave, 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 struck, my lord.

Nor tripped neither, you base football-player.

Come sir, arise, away, I'll teach you differences.

Away, away, go to!

Have you wisdom? [CROWD JEERS]

Well, now Caius, my friendly knave, I thank thee.

And there is earnest of thy service.

[CHEERING]

♪ When priests are more in word than matter

♪ When brewers mar their malt with water

♪ When nobles are the tailors' tutors

♪ No heretics burnt but wenches' suitors

♪ When every case in law is right No squire's in debt nor no poor knight

♪ When slanders do not live in tongues Nor cut-purses come not to throngs

♪ When usurers tell their gold in the field

ALL: ♪ And bawds and whores do churches build

♪ Then shall the reign of Albion Come to great confusion. ♪

[ALL CHEER]

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, Fool? Why?

For taking one's part that's out of favour.

There, take my coxcomb.

Why, this fellow has banished two on's daughters,

and did the third a blessing against his will.

If I follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb.

How now, nuncle?

Take heed, sirrah, the whip.

Truth's a dog that must to kennel - he must be whipped out...

Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!

..while the Lady Bitch 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

Set less than thou throwest.

Heyyyy! [LEAR CHUCKLES]

♪ 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.

Well, then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd 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 lands come to -

he will not believe a Fool.

A bitter Fool!

Oh! Dost thou know the difference, my boy,

between a bitter fool and a sweet one?

No, lad. Teach me.

[LAUGHTER]

Heyyy!

♪ The lord that counselled thee To give away thy land

♪ Come place him here by me

♪ Thou for him do 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 other titles thou hast given away.

That thou wast born with.

This is not altogether fool, my lord.

[CHUCKLES] Nuncle, give me an egg

and I'll give thee two crowns.

And which two crowns shall they be?

Why...

[LAUGHTER]

After I have cut the egg in the middle and...

..ate up the meat...

ALL: Ohhhh!

Ahhh!

..the two crowns of the egg. Hey, hey!

Thou hadst little wit in thy silver crown

when thou gavest thy golden one away.

♪ Fools had ne'er less grace in a year For wise men are grown foppish

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

♪ Apish! ♪

(LAUGHTER)

When were't thou wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?

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

For when thou gav'st them the rod and put'st down thine own breeches.

Prithee, nuncle, teach thy Fool to lie.

I would fain learn to lie.

If 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.

Parp, parp!

[FOOL LAUGHS]

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 o'the parings.

[WOLF WHISTLE]

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, for so your face bids me.

[LAUGHTER]

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.

[JEERING]

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 said and done,

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

Are you our daughter?

Come, sir, I would you would make use of your good wisdom,

whereof I know you are fraught,

and put away these dispositions,

which of late transform you from what you rightly are.

May not an ass know when a cart draws the horse?

Does any here know me?

Why, this is not Lear. Does Lear walk thus?

Speak thus? Where are his eyes?

Either his notion weakens, or his discernings are lethargied. Ha!

Waking or sleeping?

'Tis not so.

Who is it that can tell me who I am?

Lear's shadow.

I would learn that - for by the marks of sovereignty, knowledge, and reason,

I should be false persuaded I had daughters.

Which they will make an obedient father.

Your name, fair gentlewoman?

[LAUGHTER]

This admiration sir, is much o'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 deboshed, 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...

[JEERING AND WHISTLING] ..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 remainder 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 you.

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.

Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,

more hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child,

than the sea-monster.

Pray, sir, be patient. Detested kite, thou liest.

My train are men of choice, and rarest parts,

that all particulars of duty know.

O most small fault how ugly didst thou in Cordelia show...

..which like an engine, wrenched my frame of nature from the fixed place,

drew from my heart all love,

and added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear!

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

that 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,

with cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,

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.

[MUTTERS]

I am ashamed...

..that thou hast power to shake my manhood thus,

that these hot tears that break from me perforce

should make thee worth them.

Blasts and fogs upon thee!

Old fond eyes, weep thou this cause again, I'll pluck thee out.

Let it be such.

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 wolfish visage.

And thou shalt find that I'll resume the shape

which thou dost think I have cast off for ever.

Do you mark that, my lord?

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

Pray you, content. What, Oswald, ho!

You, sir, more knave than fool, after your master.

Nuncle Lear, nuncle Lear, tarry!

And take thy Fool with thee.

'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, ma'am.

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 a-taxed 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.

Acquaint my daughter no further with anything you know...

..than comes from her demand out of the letter.

If your diligence be not speedy I shall be there before you.

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

If a man's brains were in his heels,

were't not in danger of corns?

Ay, boy.

Then I prithee be merry, thy wit shall not go slip-shod.

Oh ha ha ha!

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 of one's face?

No.

Why, to keep one's eyes of either side's nose.

[LEAR CHUCKLES]

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. [CHUCKLES]

But I can tell why a snail has a house. Why?

Why, to put his head in,

not to give it away to his daughters,

and leave his horns without a case.

I shall forget my own 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.

Oh! 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. [RUNNING FOOTSTEPS]

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

Come, boy.

EDMUND: 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-buzzing arguments.

Not I. Pray you, what are they?

Have you heard of no likely wars toward,

'twixt the two 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 guards to take my brother,

and I have one thing of a queasy question which I must act.

Briefness, and fortune, work!

Brother... a word.

Descend.

Brother, I say!

My father watches. O, sir, fly this place.

Intelligence is given where you are hid.

You have now the good advantage of the night.

Have you not spoken against the Duke of Cornwall?

He's coming hither, now, i'the night, i'the haste,

and Regan with him Not a word.

I hear my father coming. Pardon me, in cunning,

I must draw my knife upon you. Draw.

[GRUNTS]

Seem to defend yourself.

[GRUNTING]

Now quit you well.

Yield, come before my father.

Light ho, here! [WHISPERS] Fly, brother, fly!

[SHOUTS] Torches, torches!

And 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! Help!

GLOUCESTER: Now, Edmund, where's the villain?

Here stood he in the dark, his sharp blade out,

mumbling of wicked charms,

conjuring the moon to stand auspicious mistress.

But where is he?

Look, sir, I bleed. (LAUGHTER)

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.

O, let him fly far. Not in this land shall he remain uncaught,

and found - dispatch.

The noble Duke, my master, ay worthy arch and patron, comes tonight.

On his authority I will proclaim it,

that he which finds him shall deserve our thanks,

bringing the murderous coward to the stake.

He that conceals him, death.

I threatened to discover him.

He replied, 'Thou unpossessing bastard,

'dost thou think if I would stand against thee,

'would the reposal of any trust, virtue, or worth in thee make thy words faithed?'

O strange and fastened villain! [HORN TOOTS]

Hark, 'tis the Duke.

I know not why he comes.

All ports I'll bar.

The villain shall not escape.

And... for my land,

thou loyal and natural boy...

..I'll make the means to make thee capable.

CORNWALL: How now, my noble friend.

Since I came hither I have heard strange news.

REGAN: How dost, my lord?

O madam, my old heart is cracked, it is cracked.

What, did my father's godson seek your life?

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. Yes, madam, he was of that consort.

No marvel then, though he were ill affected,

'tis they have put him on the old man's death,

to have the expense and waste of his revenues.

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.

GLOUCESTER: He did reveal his practice,

and received this hurt you see, striving to apprehend him.

CORNWALL: Is Edgar pursued? Ay, my good lord.

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

Make your own purpose, how in my strength you please.

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 hereby thank your grace. You know not why we came to visit you?

No. Thus out of season,

threading dark-eyed night.

Occasion, noble Gloucester, of some poise,

wherein we must have use of your advice.

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

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

The several messengers from hence attend dispatch.

Our good old friend,

lay comfort to your bosom,

and bestow your needful counsel to our businesses.

I serve you, madam.

Your graces are right welcome.

OSWALD: Ah! Good dawning to thee, friend.

Art of this house?

Ay.

Where may we set our horses?

I'the mire.

Prithee, if thou lov'st me, tell me.

I love thee not.

Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.

O fellow, I know thee. What dost thou know me for?

A knave,

a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, filthy knave,

one that art nothing but the composition of a beggar,

son and heir of a mongrel bitch.

And 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 at 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?

O no! Aha!

Draw, you rogue!

Away, I have nothing to do with thee!

Draw, you rascal.

You came with letters against the King.

Draw, you rogue, or I'll so carbonado your shanks.

[LAUGHS INCREDULOUSLY] Draw, you rascal,

come your ways.

Murder! Help, help! Help! [GROANS]

[HOWLS]

EDMUND: How now! What's the matter?

Part!

With you, goodman boy, if you please.

Come, sir, 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 my sister, and the King.

What is your difference? Speak!

I am scarce in breath, my lord.

Speak yet, how grew your quarrel?

This ancient ruffian,

whose life I have spared...

My lord, if you will give me leave,

I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar,

and daub the wall of a privy with him!

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

Yes sir, but anger hath a privilege

A plague upon your epileptic visage!

[GASPS] What, art thou mad, old fellow?

How fell you out? Say that.

No contraries hold more antipathy than I and such a knave.

Why dost thou call him knave? 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 with bluntness,

doth affect a saucy roughness,

and constrains the garb quite from his nature.

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 does thou mean by this?

To go out of me 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 in the fleshment of this dread exploit,

drew on me here again.

Fetch forth the stocks! Aha!

You stubborn ancient knave, you reverend braggart,

we'll teach you.

Sir, I am too old to learn.

Call not your stocks for me.

I serve the King, on whose employment I was sent to you.

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. Come, bring away the stocks.

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, for following her affairs.

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

[LAUGHTER]

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.

KENT: Pray do not, sir.

I've watched and travelled hard. Some time I shall sleep out,

the rest I'll whistle.

A good man's fortune may grow out his heels.

Give you good morrow.

[KENT GROANS]

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.

Nothing almost sees miracles but misery.

I know 'tis from Cordelia,

who hath most fortunately been informed of my obscured course.

'And shall find time…'

From this enormous state...

'This enormous state...'

Seeking to give losses their remedies.

'Losses their remedies.'

Fortune goodnight, smile once more.

Turn thy wheel.

[SIREN WAILS]

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 bare arms

pins, wooden pricks,

nails, sprigs of rosemary.

And with this horrible object, from low farms, poor pelting villages,

sheep-cotes, and mills, sometime with lunatic bans,

sometime with prayers enforce their charity.

[HOWLING] Poor Turlygod!

Poor Tom!

That's something yet.

Edgar I nothing am.

[SIREN WAILS]

'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.

KENT: Hail to thee, noble master. Caius?

Mak'st thou this shame thy pastime?

No, my lord.

FOOL: Thou'rt still hanging around, are you?

What's he, that hath so much thy place mistook

to set thee there?

It is both he and she, your son and daughter.

No. Yes.

No, I say.

I say yea. No, no, they would not.

Yes, they have.

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

'Tis worse than murder, to do upon respect such violent outrage.

O...

..how this mother swells up toward my heart!

Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow,

thy element's below.

Where is this daughter?

With the Earl of Gloucester, sir, here within.

Follow me not.

You stay there.

How chance the King comes with so small a number?

An thou hadst been set i'the stocks for that question,

thou'dst well deserved it.

Why, Fool?

All those that follow their noses are led by their eyes,

but blind men.

And there's not a nose among a hundred 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.

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

I would ha' none but knaves use it,

since a fool gives it.

Where learned you this, Fool?

Not in the stocks, fool.

Deny to speak with me?

They are 'sick', they are 'weary'...

..they've '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? Breath and blood! 'Fiery'?

The 'fiery' Duke?

Tell the hot Duke that...

No, but not yet.

Maybe he is not well.

I will forbear.

Death on my state! Wherefore should he sit there?

Give me my servant forth.

Go tell the Duke and his wife I'd speak with them, now, instantly.

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 pastry alive.

She knapped 'em o'the coxcombs with a stick, and cried 'Down, wantons, down!'

[LEAR CHUCKLES]

CORNWALL: Hail to your grace.

Good morrow to you both.

I am glad to see your highness.

Regan, I think you are.

I know what reason I have to think so.

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!

O! O!

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 his confine.

You should be ruled and led by some discretion that discerns your state

better than you yourself.

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.

Strike her young bones, you taking airs, with lameness.

CORNWALL: Fie, sir, fie!

You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames

into her scornful eyes.

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-hefted nature shall not give thee o'er to harshness.

Her eyes are fierce, but thine...

..do comfort, and not burn.

Thou better know'st the offices of nature,

bond of childhood, effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude.

Thy half o'the kingdom hast thou not forgot,

wherein I thee endowed.

Good sir, to the purpose.

Who put my man in the stocks?

[HORN BLASTS] Who is it that comes?

I know it, tis my sister.

This approves her letter, that she would soon be here. Is your lady come?

This is a slave, whose easy-borrowed pride dwells in the fickle 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 be 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 so.

O sides, you are too tough!

Will you yet hold?

How came my man in the stocks?

I set him there, sir. 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 wage against the enmity of the air,

to be a comrade with the wolf and owl, necessity's sharp pinch.

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 you, my child. Farewell.

We'll no more meet, no more see one another.

And yet thou art my flesh and blood...

..my daughter.

Or rather a disease that's in my flesh.

Thou art a boil, a plague-sore,

an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.

But I'll not chide thee.

I can be patient.

I can stay with Regan, I and my hundred knights.

Not altogether so, sir.

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?

Since 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.

No more with me.

Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favoured

when others are more wicked.

Not being the worst stands in some rank of praise.

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 wear'st,

which scarcely keeps thee warm. But for true need...

O heavens, give me that patience...

Patience I need.

[SNIFFS] 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 for weeping,

but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws

or ere I'll weep.

[THUNDER CRACKS]

[LEAR SOBS]

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'd receive him gladly.

But not one follower. So am I purposed.

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 bleak winds do sorely ruffle.

For many miles around there's scarce a bush.

O sir, to wilful men,

the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.

Shut up your doors! [GIGGLES]

He is attended with a desperate train,

and what they may incense him to, being apt to have his ear abused...

..wisdom bids fear

[THUNDER CRACKS] Shut up your doors, my lord.

'Tis a wild night.

My Regan counsels well.

Come...

..out of the storm.

[THUNDER CRACKS]

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,

strives in his little world of man

to out-storm the to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.

This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,

the lion and the belly-pinched wolf keep their fur dry,

unbonneted he runs,

and bids what will take all.

But who is with him?

None but the Fool,

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

Lady, I do know you...

..and dare upon the warrant of my note commend a dear thing to you.

There is division,

although as yet the face of it is covered with mutual cunning,

'twixt Albany and Cornwall.

From France there comes a power into this scattered kingdom,

who already, wise in our negligence, have secret feet

in some of our best ports,

and are at point to show their open banner.

Now to you.

If on my credit you dare build so far to make your speed to Dover,

you shall find some that will thank you, making just report

of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow the King hath cause to complain.

I will talk further with you.

For confirmation that I am much more than my out-wall, open this purse,

and take what it contains.

[THUNDER CRACKS] Fie on this storm!

I will go seek the King.

Have you no more to say?

Few words, but to effect, more than all yet.

[THUNDER CRACKS]

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 thou, all-shaking thunder,

strike flat the thick rotundity of the world,

crack Nature's moulds, all germens spill at once

that make ingrateful man.

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 will with two pernicious daughters join your high-engendered battles

'gainst a head as old and white as this.

O! 'Tis foul.

He that has a house to put his head in has a good headpiece.

No, I will be the pattern of all patience.

I will say nothing.

Alas, sir, are you here?

Things that love night love not such nights as these.

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.

Tremble, thou wretch, that hast within thee undivulged crimes

unwhipped of justice.

Hide thee, thou bloody hand,

thou perjured, and thou simular of virtue that art incestuous.

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 'gainst the tempest.

Repose you there.

My wits begin to turn.

Come on, my boy. How dost thou? Art cold?

I am cold myself.

Where is this straw, my fellow?

The art of our necessities is strange,

and can make vile things precious.

Come, your hovel. O, poor knave and Fool.

There's one part in my heart that's sorry yet for thee.

♪ He that has and a little tiny wit

♪ With a hey-ho, the wind and the rain

♪ Must make content with his fortunes fit

♪ For the rain it raineth every day. ♪

That's true, my good boy.

Come, bring us to your hovel.

[THUNDER CRACKS]

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 with him, entreat for him, or in any way sustain him.

Most savage and unnatural! Go to - say you nothing.

There is division between the Dukes,

and a worse matter than that.

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

I have locked the letter in my closet.

These injuries the King now bears will be revenged home.

There is part of a power already footed.

We must incline to the King.

I will look him and presently relieve him.

Go you, maintain talk with the Duke, that my charity be not of him perceived.

If he asks for me, I am ill, and gone to bed.

If I should die for it, as no less is threatened me,

the King, my old master, must be relieved.

Ah, there are strange things toward, Edmund.

I pray you... be careful.

This courtesy, forbid thee,

shall the Duke instantly know,

and of that letter too.

This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me that which my father loses -

no less than all.

The younger rises, when the old doth fall.

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.

This tempest in my mind

doth from my senses take all feeling else,

save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!

Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand

for lifting food to it?

But I will punish home.

No, I will weep no more.

On such a night, to shut me out? [THUNDER CRACKS]

Pour on, I will endure

On such a night as this!

O Regan, Goneril,

your old kind father, whose frank heart gave you all...

But that way madness lies.

Let me shun that. No more of that.

Good my lord, enter here.

Prithee go in thyself, and seek thine own ease.

You houseless poverty...

Nay, get thee in.

I'll pray... and then I'll sleep.

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are...

..that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

how shall your houseless heads, your unfed sides,

your looped and windowed raggedness defend you

against 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.

EDGAR: Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom!

[SHOUTING]

Come not in here, nuncle.

Here's a spirit - he says his name's Poor Tom.

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

Away!

The foul fiend follows me.

Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind.

Didst 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?

Do Poor Tom some charity...

..whom the foul fiend vexes.

There could I have him now.

And there, and there again, and there.

What, has his daughters brought him to this pass?

Couldst thou save nothing? Didst 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 o'er men's faults,

light on your daughters.

He hath no daughters, sir. Death, traitor!

Nothing could have subdued nature to such a lowness,

but his unkind daughters.

(LAUGHTER)

Is it the fashion for discarded fathers

to have thus little mercy on their flesh?

Judicious punishment, 'twas this flesh begot those pelican daughters.

Pillicock sat on Pillicock hill...

This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.

Take heed o'the foul fiend, obey thy parents, keep thy word justly,

swear not, commit not with man's sworn spouse,

set not thy sweet heart on proud array.

Tom's a-cold.

What hast thou been?

A serving-man, 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.

One that slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it.

Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly.

False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand.

Hog in sloth, fox in stealth,

wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.

Is man no more than this?

Consider him well.

Thou ow'st the worm no silk,

the beast no hide, the sheep no wool...

[SNIFFS] ..the cat no perfume.

[LAUGHS]

There's three of us 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!

Unbutton here.

Good my lord! Prithee, nuncle, be content.

'Tis a naughty night to swim in.

(LAUGHTER)

Look, here comes a walking fire.

This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet -

he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock.

Aroint thee, witch, aroint thee! What is he?

KENT: 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, drinks the green mantle of the standing pool,

is whipped from tithing to tithing, and stock-punished and imprisoned.

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

What, hath your grace no better company?

The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman.

Our flesh and blood, my lord, is grown so vile,

that it doth hate what gets it.

Poor Tom's a-cold. Come, go with me.

My duty cannot suffer to obey in all your daughters' hard commands.

Though their injunction be to bar my doors,

and let the tyrannous night take hold upon you,

yet I have ventured to come seek you out

and bring you where both fire and food is ready.

First let me talk a word with this philosopher.

What is the cause of thunder?

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

I'll speak a word with this same learned Theban.

What is your study?

How to prevent the fiend, and kill vermin.

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? [THUNDER CRACKS]

His daughters seek his death.

Ah, that good Kent, she said it would be thus -

poor banished woman.

Thou say'st 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 has crazed my wits.

What a night is this! Let me beseech your grace...

I cry you mercy, sir.

Noble philosopher, your company.

Poor 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'll 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.

Childe Rowland to the dark tower came.

His word was still, 'Fie, foh, and fum'...

[SHOUTING]

'..I smell the blood of a British man'.

I will have my revenge ere I depart his house.

How malicious is my fortune, that I must repent to be just.

Here is the letter which my father spoke of,

which approves him an intelligent party to the advantages of France.

O heavens, that his 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.

If I find my father comforting the King,

it will stuff his suspicion more fully.

I will persever 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.

GLOUCESTER: Here is better than the open air, take it thankfully.

I will piece out the comfort with what addition I can.

I will not be long from you. The gods reward your kindness.

To have a thousand with red burning spits come hissing 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

Thou robed man of justice, your take your place.

Thou, sapient sir, sit you.

You are of the commission.

Sit you too.

Now, you she-foxes!

Look where she stands and glares!

Want'st thou eyes at trial, madam?

[GROWLS]

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 their evidence.

Let us deal justly.

I will arraign her first.

[SNIFFS]

'Tis Goneril.

(LAUGHTER)

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 cow's head.

And here's another,

whose warped looks proclaim what store her heart is made on.

[HOWLS] Stop her there!

Arms, arms, sword, fire!

Corruption in the place!

Thou false justicer, why didst thou let her escape?

Bless thy five wits!

KENT: O pity!

Sir, where is that 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,

look, they bark at me.

Tom will throw his head at them.

Avaunt, you curs!

Then let them anatomise Regan.

See what breeds about her heart.

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

Sir, I entertain you for one of my hundred -

but I do not like the fashion of your garments.

You will say they are Persian...

..but let them be changed.

Good my lord, lie here and rest awhile.

Make no noise, make no noise.

Draw the curtains.

So...

I'll go to supper in the morning.

And I'll go to bed at noon.

GLOUCESTER: Where is the King my master?

He is here, sir - but trouble him not, his wits are gone.

I prithee, take him in thy arms - I have o'erheard a plot of death upon him.

There is a litter ready - lay him in it, And drive toward Dover, friend,

where thou shalt meet both welcome and protection.

Take up, take up, and follow me, that will to some provision give thee quick conduct.

Help to bear our master.

Thou must not stay behind.

Oppressed nature sleeps.

This rest might yet have balmed thy broken sinews,

which, if convenience will not allow,

stand in hard cure.

GLOUCESTER: Come, come, away!

CORNWALL: How now, where's the King?

My treacherous father hath conveyed him hence.

Seek out the traitor Gloucester. Bring him before us.

Hang him instantly!

Pluck out his eyes!

Leave him to my displeasure.

Post speedily to my lord your husband, show him this letter.

The army of France is landed.

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.

Edmund, farewell. Farewell, my Lord.

Farewell, dear sister.

Sweet lord... farewell.

Though well we may not pass upon his life without the form of justice,

yet our power shall do a curtsy to our wrath,

which men may blame, but not control.

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!

[SHRIEKS]

Filthy...

traitor!

Unmerciful lady as you are, I am none.

To this chair bind him.

Villain, thou shalt find...

Argh! By the kind gods, 'tis most ignobly done

to pluck me by the beard.

So white, and such a traitor?

I am your host. With robbers' hands my hospitable favours

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 of a neutral heart, 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.

I am tied to the stake, and must stand the course.

Wherefore to Dover... sir?

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.

The sea, in such a storm on his bare head

in hell-black night endured,

would have buoyed up and quenched the stelled fires.

Yet he,

poor old heart,

helped the heavens to rain.

If wolves had at thy gate howled that dern time,

you would have said, 'Good porter, turn the key. All cruels else subscribe.'

Yet 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 think to live till he grow old, give me some help!

Help! O gods!

O cruel!

[GLOUCESTER SCREAMS]

[REGAN SHRIEKS]

[SCREAMING]

[REGAN WHOOPS]

[LAUGHS] One side will mock another.

The other too!

CORNWALL: 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! My villain!

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

REGAN: Give me thy blade.

Ah! A peasant stand up thus! [GRUNTS]

My lord, you have one eye left to see some mischief on him.

[REGAN HOWLS]

Lest it see more, prevent it.

Out, vile jelly!

[GLOUCESTER SCREAMS]

Where is thy lustre now?

[GLOUCESTER GROANS] All dark and comfortless.

Where's my son Edmund?

Out...

..treacherous villain!

Thou call'st on him that hates thee.

It was he that made the overtures of thy treason to us.

O... my follies!

Then Edgar was abused.

Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him.

[WAILS]

Go!

Thrust him out at gates, and let him smell his way to Dover.

How is't, my lord?

How look you?

I have received a hurt. Follow me, lady.

Turn out that eyeless villain.

And throw this slave upon the dunghill.

[REGAN SHRIEKS]

O, Regan, I bleed apace.

Untimely comes this hurt.

Give me your arm.

[REGAN WHIMPERS]

(APPLAUSE)

[BUZZ OF CONVERSATION]

Yet better thus, and known to be despised,

than still despised 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!

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 my dear son... Edgar...

..the food of thy abused father's wrath,

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 it can say 'I am at the worst'?

I am worse than ever I was.

'Tis a 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?

A madman, and beggar too.

He has some reason, else he could not beg.

In 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 then was scarce friends with him.

[CHUCKLES] 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 it the naked fellow?

Ay, my lord.

Then prithee get thee away.

If, for my sake, thou dost o'ertake us hence a mile or twain

i'the way toward Dover,

do it for ancient love,

and bring some covering for this naked soul

which I'll intend to lead me.

Alack, sir, he is mad.

'Tis the time's plague,

when madmen lead the blind.

Well, I will bring him the best 'parel that I have,

come on't 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.

Know'st thou the way toward Dover?

Poor Tom hath been scared out of his good wits.

Dost thou know Dover? Ay, master.

There is a cliff,

whose high and bending head looks fearfully into the confined deep.

Bring me but to the very brim of it,

and I'll repair the misery thou dost bear

with something rich about me.

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?

Ma'am, 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.

Then shall you go no further.

It is the cowish terror of his spirit

that dares not undertake.

Back, Edmund, to my brother, hasten his musters,

and conduct his powers.

I must change arms at home, and give the distaff into my husband's hands.

This trusty servant will 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 raise thy spirits up into the air.

(LAUGHTER)

Conceive, and fare thee well.

Yours in the ranks of death.

My most dear Gloucester!

O, the difference of man and man.

To thee a woman's services are due.

A fool usurps my bed.

Ma'am, here comes my lord.

(LAUGHTER)

I have been worth the whistling.

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

No more - the text is foolish.

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.

Filths savour but themselves.

What have you done?

Tigers, not daughters, what have you performed?

A father, and a gracious aged man,

whose reverence even the head-lugged bear would lick,

most barbarous, most degenerate, have you madded.

If that the heavens do not their visible spirits send quickly down

to tame these vile offences, it will come.

Humanity must perforce prey on itself like monsters of the deep.

Milk-livered man!

Where's thy drum?

France spreads his banner 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.

O vain fool!

Thou changed and self-covered thing, for shame,

be-monster not thy feature.

Were't my fitness to let these hands obey my blood,

they are apt enough to dislocate and tear thy flesh and bones.

However thou art a fiend, a woman's shape doth shield thee.

Marry, your manhood!

Mew!

What news? 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? Both, 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 Edmund 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 his son when they did take his eyes?

Come with my lady hither.

He is not here? No, my good lord,

I 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 show'dst the King,

and to revenge thine eyes.

Come hither, friend, tell me what more thou know'st.

Did my letter pierce Cordelia to any demonstration of grief?

You have seen sunshine and rain at once -

her smiles and tears were like a better way.

Made she no verbal question?

Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of 'father' pantingly forth,

as if it pressed her heart,

cried 'Sisters! Sisters! Shame of ladies!

'Sisters! Kent! Father! Sisters!

'What, i'the storm, i'the night?'

Then away she started to deal with grief alone.

It is the stars, the stars above us govern our conditions.

You spoke not with her since?

No. Well, sir,

the poor distressed Lear's in the town,

who sometime in his better tune remembers what we are come about,

and by no means will yield to see his daughter.

Why, good lady?

A sovereign shame so elbows him -

his own unkindness, that stripped her from his benediction,

turned her to foreign casualties,

gave her dear rights to his dog-hearted daughters.

These things sting his mind so venomously

that burning shame detains him from Cordelia.

Alack, poor gentleman!

Of Albany's and Cornwall's powers you heard not?

They are afoot.

Well, sir, let us go seek Cordelia.

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 century 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?

He that helps him, take all my outward worth.

There is means, madam.

Our foster-nurse of nature is repose, the which he lacks.

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.

Therefore great France my mourning and importuned tears hath pitied.

No blown ambition doth our arms incite,

but love, dear love,

and our aged father's right.

Soon may I hear and see him!

[FUNEREAL MUSIC]

It was great ignorance, Gloucester's eyes being out...

..to let him live.

Ha! 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 discover the strength of the enemy.

I must needs after him, ma'am, with my letter.

But are my brother's powers set forth?

Ay, ma'am. Our troops set forth tomorrow.

Stay with us.

The ways are dangerous.

Ma'am, I may not. My lady charged my duty in this business.

Why should she write to Edmund? Might not you transport her purposes by word?

Belike some thing, I know not what.

I'll love thee well, let me unseal the letter.

Madam, I had rather...

I know your lady does not love her husband.

[GASPS] I am sure of that.

And at her late being here,

she gave strange œilliades and most speaking looks

to noble Edmund.

I know you are of her bosom.

I, ma'am? I speak in understanding.

You are.

I know't.

Therefore I do advise you, take this note.

My lord is dead.

Edmund and I have talked,

and more convenient is he for my hand than for your lady's.

You may gather more.

If you do find him, I pray you...

..give him this.

And when your mistress hears thus much from you,

I pray desire her call her wisdom to her.

So... fare you well.

Ha! And if you do chance to hear of that blind traitor,

preferment falls on him that cuts him off.

Would I could meet him, ma'am, I would show what lady I do favour.

Fare you well.

[SEABIRDS CAW]

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 speak'st in better phrase and matter than thou didst.

You are much deceived - in nothing am I changed but in my garments.

Methinks you are better spoken.

Come on, sir.

Here's the place.

Stand still.

How fearful and dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low.

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

show scarce so gross as beetles.

Halfway down hangs one that gathers samphire.

Dreadful trade.

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

[CHUCKLES]

The fishermen that walk upon the beach appear like mice.

The murmuring surge, that on the unnumbered idle pebble 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.

Let go my hand.

Here, friend, another purse.

In it, a jewel well worth a poor man's taking.

Go now further off, and bid me farewell.

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...

..ye 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...

..bless him.

Now, friend, fare thee well.

Gone sir. Farewell.

[GLOUCESTER GROANS]

[SCREAMS]

And yet I know not how conceit may rob the treasury of life,

when life itself yields to the theft.

Had he been where he thought, by this had thought been past.

Alive or dead?

[DIFFERENT ACCENT] Ho, you sir!

Friend!

Hear you, sir?

Speak!

Thus might he pass indeed.

Yet he revives.

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.

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 in death?

[GROANS]

Give me your hand.

Up.

[CHUCKLES] So, how is it?

Feel you your legs?

You stand!

Too well, too well. This is above all strangeness.

Upon the crown o'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.

What?

He had a thousand noses,

horns whelked and waved like the enridged sea.

It was some fiend.

Therefore, thou happy father,

think that the clearest gods, who make them honours of men's impossibilities,

have preserved thee.

I do remember now. Henceforth I'll bear affliction,

till it do cry out itself 'Enough, enough', and die.

That thing you spake of,

I took it for a man.

'Twould often cry out 'The fiend, the fiend'.

He led me to that place.

Bear free and patient thoughts.

LEAR: No, they cannot touch me for coining.

But who comes here?

[LAUGHTER]

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 scarecrow.

Draw me a clothier's yard.

Look...

Look, a mouse.

Peace… This toasted cheese will do it.

And there's my gauntlet.

I'll prove it on a giant.

Bring up the brown bills.

O, well flown, bird. I'the clout… Hewgh! I'the clout.

Give the word.

Sweet marjoram. Pass.

I… I know that voice.

Goneril, with a white beard?

They flattered me like dogs,

told me I had the white hairs in my beard

ere the black ones were there.

And 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 'em, there I smelt 'em out.

Go to, they are not men of their words.

They told me I was everything.

'Tis a lie.

I'm not ague-proof.

The trick of that voice I do well remember.

Is't not the King?

Ay, every inch a king.

Ah-ah! (LAUGHTER)

When I do stare, do you 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 my daughters got between the lawful sheets.

To it, lechery, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.

Behold... yond simpering dame...

..that minces virtue, shakes 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 fiends'.

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.

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 naught.

Dost thou know me?

I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squinny at me?

You do your worst, blind Cupid, I'll not love.

Read thou this challenge, mark but the penning of it.

Were all the letters suns, I could not see one.

I would not take this from report.

It is… and my heart breaks at it.

Read. What with, the case of eyes?

Are you there with me now?

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.

Are you mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes.

Look with thine ears.

See how yon 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.

O thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand.

Why dost thou lash that whore?

Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind for which thou whipp'st her.

The usurer hangs the cozener.

Through tattered clothes great vices do appear -

robes and furred gowns hide all.

None does offend, none, I say, none.

[SIGHS HEAVILY]

Get thee glass eyes...

..and like a scurvy politician seem to see the things thou dost not.

Now...

(LAUGHTER)

Now there.

If you pull off my boots...

Go on - harder.

Harder! So.

O matter and impertinency mixed.

Reason in madness!

If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.

I know thee well enough...

thy name is Gloucester.

[GLOUCESTER WAILS]

Thou must be patient.

We came crying hither.

Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air we wawl and cry.

I will preach to thee.

You mark me. Alack, alack the day!

When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

[LAUGHS]

That's a good block.

[MAKES CLOPPING NOISES]

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 sons-in-laws...

..then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill...

Here he is - lay hand upon him, sirs. ..kill!

Sir!

Your most dear daughter...

No seconds?

Am I a prisoner?

I'm 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 rescue? All myself? Good sir...

I will die bravely, like a smug bridegroom.

I will be jovial.

Come, come, I am a king,

My masters, know you that?

You are a royal one, and we obey you.

Then there's life in it.

You get it, you shall get it by running.

[ROARS]

Hail, gentle sir, do you hear aught of a battle toward?

Everyone hears that, which can distinguish sound.

But, by your favour, how near's the other army?

Near, and on speedy foot.

I thank you, sir.

You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me.

Let not my worser spirit die before you please.

Well pray you, father.

Now, 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.

Come, father, I'll lead you to some biding.

Hearty thanks.

Thou old, unhappy traitor,

briefly thyself remember.

The steel is out that will destroy thee.

Now let thy friendly arm put strength enough to it.

Wherefore, bold peasant, darest thou support a published traitor?

Hence, lest that the infection of his fortune take like hold on thee.

Let go his arm. I'll not let go, sir.

Let go, slave, or thou diest!

I'll pick your teeth, sir! Out, dunghill!

Die, traitor, die!

[SCREAMS]

[SCREAMS]

If ever thou wilt live,

bury my body...

..and... give...

the letter which thou find'st about me...

..to Edmund...

Earl of Gloucester.

Seek him out upon the British party.

I know thee well.

A serviceable villain,

as duteous to the vices of thy mistress as badness would desire.

What, is he dead?

Sit you down, father - rest you.

Let's see these pockets.

These letters that he speaks of may be my friends.

Let's see.

'My dearest Edmund,

'Let our reciprocal vows be remembered.

'You have many opportunities to cut him off.

'If you are willing, time and place will be fruitfully offered.

'If he return the conqueror, then am I the prisoner,

'and his bed my gaol,

'from the loathed warmth whereof deliver me.

'Your wife, so I would say, affectionate servant, Goneril.'

Here in the sands, thee I'll rake up,

the post unsanctified of murderous lechers, and with this ungracious paper

strike the sight of the death-practised Duke.

For him 'tis well that of thy death and business I can tell.

The King is mad.

Better I were distract,

so should my thoughts be severed from my griefs,

and woes by wrong imaginations lose

the knowledge of themselves.

Give me your hand.

Far off methinks I hear the beaten drum.

Come, father...

..I'll bestow you with a friend

O thou good Kent, how should I live and work to match thy goodness?

My life will be too short, and every measure fail me.

To be acknowledged, madam, is o'er-paid.

Be better suited - these weeds are memories of those worser hours.

I prithee, put them off. [MUSIC PLAYS]

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 in the sway of your own will.

Be by, good madam, when we do awake him - I doubt not of his temperance.

Very well.

Please you, draw near.

Louder the music there. [MUSIC INCREASES IN VOLUME]

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!

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 swine and rogues forlorn, in short and musty straw?

Alack...

..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 would even die of pity to see another thus.

I know not what to say. I will not swear these are my hands.

Let's see. [CORDELIA GASPS]

Ooh, I felt that...

(LAUGHTER)

..pin-prick.

I would I were assured of my condition.

O look upon me, sir,

and hold your hand in benediction o'er me.

No, sir, you must not kneel.

Pray do not mock me. I am a very foolish fond old man,

fourscore... and upward,

not an hour more nor less.

And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you...

..and know this man but I am doubtful.

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, for your sisters have, as I 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.

And yet it is danger to make him even o'er the time he has lost.

Desire him to go in.

Trouble him no more till further settling.

Will it please your highness walk?

You must bear with me.

I pray you now, forget...

..and forgive.

I am old...

..and foolish.

'Tis time to look about.

The powers of the kingdom approach apace.

The arbitrement is like to be bloody.

My point and period shall be throughly wrought,

or well or ill, as this day's battle's fought.

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,

..as far as we call hers.

No, by mine honour, madam.

I never will endure her.

Dear my lord, be not familiar with her.

ALBANY: Hup!

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.

Where I could not be honest, I never yet was valiant.

For this business, it touches us as France invades our land,

not bolds the King,

with others whom, I fear, most just and heavy causes make oppose.

Sir, you speak nobly. Why is this reasoned?

Combine together 'gainst the enemy.

For these domestic and particular broils are not the issue here.

Let's then determine with the ancient of war on our proceeding.

I shall attend you presently at your tent.

Sister...

..you'll go with us?

No.

'Tis most convenient.

I pray you, go with us.

O ho, I know the riddle.

I will go.

My lord, if e'er 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 signal sound for him that brought it.

Wretched though I seem, I can produce a champion

that will prove what is avouched there.

If you miscarry, your business of the world hath so an end,

and machination ceases.

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 o'erlook thy paper.

The enemy's in view. Now draw up your powers.

Here is the guess of their true strength and forces by diligent discovery.

But your haste is now urged on you.

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.

[HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRR]

[ENGINE ROARS]

[EXPLOSION]

Ho!

Follow me.

Here, father, take the shadow of this tree for your good host.

Pray that the right may thrive.

If ever I return to you again, I'll bring you comfort.

Go with Grace, 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.

Come on.

And that's true too.

Some officers take them away.

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 shall sing like birds in the cage.

And when you ask me blessing, I'll kneel down and ask of you forgiveness

and 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.

EDMUND: Take them away.

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,

the gods themselves throw incense.

What, have I caught thee?

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 will make us weep.

We'll see them starved first.

Come.

Come hither, captain.

Hark.

Take thou this note, go follow them to prison.

Now… one step I have advanced thee.

If thou dost as this instructs thee,

thou dost make thy way to noble fortunes.

Know thou this, that men are as the time is.

To be tender-minded does not become a sword.

Thy great employment will not bear question.

Either say thou'lt do it, or thrive by other means.

I'll do it, my lord. About it,

and write happy when thou hast done.

Mark, I say, instantly, and carry it so as I have set it down.

If it be man's work, I'll do it.

Sir, you have the captives who were the opposites of this day's strife.

I do require them of you, so to use them

as we shall find their merits and our safety may equally determine.

Sir, I thought it fit to send the old and miserable King

to some retention and appointed guard.

With him I sent the Queen, and they are ready to appear tomorrow,

or at further space, 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.

Methinks our pleasure might have been demanded ere you had spoke so far.

He led our powers...

Whoa! ..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 advancement.

By 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… [SIGHS]

..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 then?

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...

[REGAN GIGGLES] ..on capital treason.

And, in thy attaint, this gilded serpent.

For your claim, fair sister, I bar it in the interest of my wife.

'Tis she is sub-contracted 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, Edmund.

If none appear to prove upon thy head thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons,

there is my pledge. I'll prove it on thy heart,

ere I taste bread, thou art in nothing less than I have here proclaimed thee.

Sick... O sick!

If not, I'll ne'er trust poison.

There's my exchange.

What in the world he is that names me traitor, villain-like he lies.

He that dares, approach.

On him, on you, who not, I will maintain my truth and honour firmly.

My sickness grows upon me. [GROANS]

She is not well, convey her to my tent.

ALBANY: Trust to thy single virtue,

for thy soldiers,

all levied in my name, have in my name took their discharge.

Let the signal be called.

[KLAXON BLARES]

If any man of quality or degree within the lists of the army

will maintain upon Edmund, supposed Earl of Gloucester,

that he is a manifold traitor,

let him appear by the third signal.

He is bold in his defence. Sound!

[KLAXON BLARES]

Again! [KLAXON BLARES]

Again. Again.

[KLAXON BLARES]

EDGAR: Hold!

Ask him his purposes, why he appears upon this signal.

What are you?

Your name, your quality, and why you answer this present summons?

Know, my name is lost,

yet am I noble as the adversary I come to cope withal.

Which is that adversary?

What's he that speaks for Edmund Earl of Gloucester?

Himself - what sayst thou to him?

Thou art a traitor.

False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father,

conspirant against this high illustrious prince,

and from the extremest upward of thy head

to the descent and dust below thy foot,

a most toad-spotted traitor.

Say thou 'no', this staff, this arm, and my best spirits

are bent to prove upon thy heart, whereto I speak,

thou liest.

Back do I toss these treasons to thy head,

which for they yet glance by, and scarcely bruise.

This blade of mine shall give them instant way,

where they shall rest for ever.

[KLAXON BLARES]

[GRUNTING]

[SCREAM] Save him, save him!

This is mere practice, Gloucester.

By the law of war, thou wast not bound to face 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.

Nay, no tearing, lady, I perceive you know it.

Say if I do, the law is mine, not thine. Who can arraign me for it?

Most monstrous!

Know'st thou this paper?

Ask me not what I know.

Go after her. She's desperate, govern her.

What you have charged me with,

that have I done, and more, much more,

the time shall bring it out.

'Tis past...

..and so am I.

But what art thou that hast this fortune on me?

If thou'rt noble, I do forgive thee.

Let's exchange charity.

I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund.

If more, the more thou hast wronged me.

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 thee he got cost him his eyes.

The wheel is come full circle.

I am here.

I must embrace thee.

Let sorrow split my heart, if ever I did hate thee, or thy father.

Worthy prince, I know it.

How have you known the miseries of your father?

By nursing them, my lord.

[SIGHS]

List a brief tale,

and when 'tis told,

O that my heart would burst!

The bloody proclamation taught me to shift into a madman's rags,

and in this habit met I my father

with his bleeding rings,

their precious stones new lost -

became his guide,

led him, begged for him, saved him from despair.

Never...

O fault!

..revealed myself unto him,

until some half hour past,

and from first to last told him my pilgrimage.

But... his flawed heart,

alack, too weak the conflict to support,

'twixt two extremes of passion,

joy and grief...

..burst... smilingly.

If there be more, more woeful, hold it in,

for I am almost ready to dissolve, hearing of this.

GENTLEMAN: Help, help! O help!

What kind of help? Speak, man.

What means this bloody knife?

'Tis hot, it smokes. It came even from the heart of...

She's dead!

Who dead? Speak, man.

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.

Produce the bodies, be they alive or dead.

This judgment of the heavens, which makes us tremble,

touches us not with pity.

But who comes here?

The banished Kent, sir. Is this she?

I am come to bid my King and master aye goodnight.

Is he not here?

Great thing of us forgot! Edmund, where's the King? And where's Cordelia?

Alack!

See'st thou this object, Kent?

Why thus?

Yet Edmund was beloved.

The one the other poisoned for my sake,

and after slew herself.

Cover their faces.

EDMUND: I pant for life...

Some good I mean to do, despite of mine own nature.

Send quickly send - be brief in it -

to the castle,

for my writ is on the life of Lear,

and on Cordelia.

Nay, send in time!

ALBANY: Run, run, O run! EDGAR: To who, my lord?

Who has the office? Send thy token of reprieve.

Well thought on - take my blade, give it the captain.

[GUNSHOT] ALBANY: 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.

May the gods defend her.

LEAR: Howl!

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...

..for ever.

I know when one is dead, and when one lives.

She's dead...

..as earth.

Lend me a looking-glass.

If that her breath do 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 that 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 for ever.

Cordelia…

Cordelia!

Stay a little.

Ha?

What is't thou sayst?

Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low,

an excellent thing in woman.

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'd have made them skip.

I am old now, and these same crosses spoil me.

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.

Are you not Kent?

The same, your servant Kent.

Where is your servant Caius?

He's a good fellow, I can tell you that.

(LAUGHTER)

He'll strike and quickly too.

He's dead and rotten.

No, my good lord,

I'm the very man...

O, 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.

CAPTAIN: Edmund is dead, my lord.

That's but a trifle here.

You lords and noble friends, know our intent.

What comfort for 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.

All friends shall taste the wages of their virtue,

and all foes... the cup of their deservings.

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.

O!

O...

O!

Do you see this?

Look on her.

Look, her lips.

Look there.

Look there.

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.

(APPLAUSE)

(CHEERING)

(CHEERING)

(CHEERING)

(CHEERING)